Continuing from the first article on Mahabharat series on how to control one’s mind. This article provides an overview of the key bad actors in the story that operate within us.
Overview
Unfortunately, our mind is the one thing we all use without reading any user guide or instruction manual. But this problem could potentially be mitigated. As I have explained in my earlier article, different characters in the ancient Indian epic of Mahabharat personify different forces at work within our minds. Once we understand these forces (they have characteristics like people have personalities and interact with each other similarly), we begin to understand them and what is happening inside the mind. In so doing, we could take our first step towards controlling our minds.
In this article, I will provide an overview of key characters of Mahabharat that play out the main roles in the mind. In later articles, I will go deeper into each of these characters and the implications for us.1
Note: For those not familiar with the story of Mahabharat, I would recommend a reading of this summary of Mahabharat. Also, it is important to read my Mahabharat series of articles in sequence. As mentioned above, the first (and earlier) one may be found here.
Key Characters on the Kauravs side
Kauravs represent the dark side within us that prevents a person from spiritual advancement towards true happiness. This true happiness is persistent and independent of the ups and downs of the world around us.
Dhratrashtra – the blind king personifies the “deciding mind”
On the throne2 sits Dhratrashtra, a person blind since birth. The Kaurav brothers are his sons. In the story of Mahabharat, he personifies what I would call the “deciding mind” or the decision-making part of the mind. Being “blind” to logic, he represents our tendency to act reflexively for sense-gratification (to satisfy our senses of sight, touch, sound, smell, and taste). This satisfaction of senses may be for the short or long term. But, unconstrained actions driven by this deciding-mind always tend to serve the senses even when they should not be. By “unconstrained”, I mean any decision wherein one has complete freedom to decide what he would like to do. There is thus no constraint in terms of time, money, social pressure, health, family, country, religious thought etc. Often (but not always), these unconstrained actions manifest as an intense focus on short-term sense-gratification.
The one defining feature of Dhratrashtra was his stubborn attachment to his eldest son, Duryodhan (who represents what I call “volatile desire” or the capricious tendency to want something or the other at any given moment; a person who can, even momentarily, freeze this tendency within quicky feels peace and happiness). Despite all the warnings and evidence of Duryodhan being a destructive person, Dhratrashtra acted in accordance with Duryodhan’s wishes. Dhratrashtra did so when he felt unconstrained and often when constrained too. It was as though the king was on auto-pilot mode to serve the wishes of his son. The only times Dhratrashtra would not act in line with Duryodhan’s stated wishes were then he was cornered and prevented from doing so.
Dhratrashtra was torn between his duty to have a deserving person groomed heir to the throne, and his burning desire to have Duryodhan rule the kingdom. Dhratrashtra tolerated his son’s increasingly evil actions including multiple plots to kill the heir apparent (Duryodhan’s cousin Yudhisthir, the son of Dhratrashtra’s late brother, who was king before Dhratrashtra). Dhratrashtra was not happy about these plots. And, while he really wanted his son to rule, Dhratrashtra did not plot against Yudhisthir or blatantly order his execution.
Like Dhratrashtra, the decision-making part of the mind3 will typically act to serve our sense-satisfaction. It would also remain conflicted between siding with the mental peace that transcends all desires and selflessly makes a person do what is right without considering any rewards (Yudhisthir) on one hand and selfish, volatile desire (Duryodhan) that keeps us trapped in a vortex of emotions, on the other. This internal conflict is like that of a thief who steals repeatedly while feeling guilty, but does not stop stealing.
A normal person will fear living a life without desires. And yet, a life spent chasing desires will eventually appear hollow to one who lives it, as problems pile up, age catches up, or life slips away. As Mahabharat story illustrates, it is futile to try and find a balance between mental peace and chasing desires because of the rapacious nature of volatile desire (Duryodhan). Gita describes this desire as a fire that covers our wisdom and only intensifies when we try to satisfy it.
Note: This “deciding mind” that Dhratrashtra symbolizes should not be confused with “the mind”. The “deciding mind” is that part of the mind that decides (like a king makes decisions and orders their implementation). On the other hand, “the mind” is a much larger entity than decision-making, and encompasses the full mental faculties within that host all the Mahabharat characters like desire, anger, ego, habits, intuition, detachment, and so on.
Duryodhan – the prince of the dark side represents volatile, momentary desire
Duryodhan was the central force on the Kauravs side and the one person responsible for the all-consuming epic battle between the dark side (Kauravs) and the good side (Pandavs). Duryodhan represents what a person wants at any given moment. This momentary desire has no sense of balance, morality, or logic. If there are no external constraints set upon the deciding mind to restrain it then this desire will get its way.
Duryodhan was like a stubborn brat to the point of being self-destructive. He would typically be ready to pursue his want to any limit and to any level of escalation. One way to look at him is like a 5-year-old who never grew up mentally even though, physically, he became a formidable warrior. On the battlefield, he was one of the bravest and would not hesitate to fight against any odds. He was also very attached to his younger brother Dushashan (representing anger) and his friend Karna (representing self-justification / motivated reasoning).
Even though he was the eldest son of the reigning king, Duryodhan was not the heir to the throne. That was his cousin Yudhisthir, the eldest in their generation and nephew of Dhratrashtra. Yudhisthir set the gold standard in virtuousness and was seen as the most deserving to inherit the throne. Duryodhan grew up with a deep, burning hatred of Yudhisthir and his four brothers (called Pandavs).
While a lot of the people on Duryodhan’s side were conflicted, he was not. He was clear that he would go to any lengths to harm the Pandavs. In one story of Mahabharat, Duryodhan was dealing with Pandavs from a position of strength. When presented with an offer of compromise, he was not ready to let them have even a tiny spec of land when he had the opportunity to keep the rest of the kingdom. Volatile desire, that Duryodhan represents, similarly tries to invade any corner of the mind that spiritual peace tries to inhabit – not ready to let peace abide anywhere. And trying to strike a compromise4 with this force of desire is just as futile as it was with Duryodhan.
In the end, Duryodhan was killed by Bheem.5
Dushasan – the prince representing anger
The younger brother of Duryodhan and personification of anger. Dushasan subordinated his entire life and being to the love of and devotion to his elder brother, Duryodhan. This affection was reciprocal and Duryodhan always had Dushasan by his side as a close confidant and companion. Dushashan was always prepared to follow Duryodhan’s directives and to protect the interests of the latter.
Anger can flare up when a person does not get what he desires at that very moment. This is the mental parallel of Dushashan springing up to protect the interests of Duryodhan when these were threatened. Without this fixation on momentary desire, there is no anger.
Dushashan was a formidable warrior in his own right. Anyone who has tried to subdue his own anger would have felt Dushashan’s power inside. Combining strength and cunning in his battles, he would find one way or another to win.
In the final war of Mahabharat, Dushashan was killed by Bheem.5
Bheeshma – the ego
The first commander of the Kaurav armies in the war, Bheeshma was two generations senior to the Karav and Pandav brothers. Revered by both sides, he was blessed with the power to stay alive for as long as he wished. Rephrased, Bheeshma could die only when he himself wanted to and not otherwise. Regardless of this blessing, Bheeshma was so powerful that he could not be defeated in a straight battle by anyone, except God (personified by Krishna). And Krishna had pledged to not take up arms in the final war.
Generations before the Mahabharat War, Bheeshma had pledged to always protect and defend the throne as though his father sat on it. Since he revered his father as one would revere God, his loyalty to the King was unconditional and complete. He could see the evil that Kauravs perpetuated under the throne’s protection and wished the Pandavs to rule. Nonetheless, he fought alongside the Kauravs as he had pledged to protect whoever sat on the throne.
Bheeshma represents a person’s ego – which would not subside unless it itself agrees to. In a spiritual sense, this ego is the basic tendency of a person to see himself as the mortal body and not as immortal soul. This makes the spiritual concept of ego very different from its western counterpart. This ego is a very stubborn force that is almost impossible to overcome. The deep-rooted view of the self as the body is the first formidable barrier to spiritual advance, just as Bheeshma was the first general of the Kaurav armies who stood between Pandavs and victory.
Like Bheeshma, this ego-force within a person is very conflicted. It prefers the spiritual side to win but instinctively and forcefully fights along the dark side of Kauravs. As a result of this conflicted nature, Bheeshma refused to kill the Pandavs on the battlefield but also did not let key Kaurav warriors die. While this balance ensures that Pandavs are not defeated, it also ensures that their forces are relentlessly weakened by Bheeshma’s attacks and they cannot win as long as Bheeshma continues to fight.
Interestingly, Bheeshma once pointed out to Duryodhan that he fights for the kingdom and not Duryodhan. This is important. The force of ego does not operate to satisfy momentary desires. It springs from attraction to the body and the importance given to it as well as people related to it (a sort of extension of the ego). Bheeshma also said that he would refuse heaven any number of times and prefer to instead live in the kingdom he called home. This suggests that the ego values the body over anything else, including the prospect of heaven (if the alternative means giving up the body). This stubborn attraction of the physical body acts at both overt and covert levels in the mind and is the biggest obstacle to spiritual advance.
In the Mahabharat war, Arjun incapacitated Bheeshma though hundreds of arrows he shot and pierced Bheeshma with. Bheeshma refused to die but could no longer fight either. Interestingly, Arjun brought down Bheeshma by using a plan Bheeshma himself advised. And just as Bheeshma refused to die, this force of ego within does not fully go away. The self-perception remains when it is brought down, but it ceases to drive actions.
Drona – habits and deep mental thought patterns
Drona was deemed as the best teacher in the world. He taught the art of war to both the Pandav and Kaurav princes. But he sided with the Kauravs in the final war. He was appointed commander of Kaurav armies after Bheeshma fell.
A formidable warrior, Drona could not be defeated in a straight battle by the Pandav side. But he was a bit less conflicted than Bheeshma about defeating the Pandavs. While Bheeshma was not agreeable to defeating the Pandavs, Drona fought to win. Since Drona was also attached to the Pandavs, his war strategy centered on taking Yudhisthir prisoner and end the fighting without killing him.
Drona represents the full force of habits and related stubborn mental thought-patterns within us that push us to stick with historical thoughts and actions. Habits and related thought patterns can imprison a person and prevent him from moving forward on a spiritual quest. For example, past patterns push us into routines we like and these routines reinforce the patterns. Interestingly, Drona was not born from a womb but from an earthen pot. Through this, Mahabharat probably suggests that habits and related mental patterns are formed after birth through upbringing and conditioning and not within a womb.
Drona was not just a great warrior but also the best teacher in the world. It is not uncommon for him to be teaching bad actors without the conscious attention of the person. For example, a person could be mentally (but not consciously) going over a plan of how to express his anger (the equivalent of Drona teaching Prince Dushashan inside the mind in a one-on-one session). As a person becomes more self-aware, he can mentally intervene and have the appropriate counter-warrior from Pandav side also “trained” by Drona or simply stop the “training” of the bad actor.
In the war, Drona was killed by Dhristadyumn, who personifies introspection and who was also one on Drona’s disciples.
Karna – motivated reasoning / self-justification
Karna was probably the person dearest to Duryodhan. After Bheeshma and Drona fell, he was appointed commander of the Kaurav armies. He appears to have been a more powerful warrior than each of the Pandav brothers.6 In the battlefield, he was feared by the Pandav side because unlike previous two Kaurav commanders, he was determined to finish the battle by killing Arjun, a key Pandav warrior.
Karna personifies motivated reasoning / self-justification. It is our tendency to do what we would like to and use logic to convince ourselves and others that the decisions are rational and right. Karna’s character shows how far this can go – in Mahabharat, he fought knowing fully well that he was waging war against God’s side, and yet he justified this as his duty as a friend of Duryodhan.
During his life, Karna encouraged Duryodhan to pursue his wants in the same way motivated reasoning serves our desires. Karna was also one of the most generous figures of the story. He is known to have given away anything that he was humbly requested to, up to the point where he even agreed to a request to give away the divine armor that made him invincible. Apparently, the same force of selfish and motivated reasoning within us also pushes us to justify unlimited generosity.
More than perhaps anyone else on Kaurav side, Karan evokes sympathy from readers of Mahabharat. Even though he was of divine birth (son of the Sun god), he was cast away by his unwed mother to avoid social stigma. As a result, he grew up learning the art of war while being ridiculed as being of lower social status by others who also learnt the same arts. He was the eldest brother of the Pandavs but kept this secret due to his loyalty to Duryodhan. And, he was disrespected by Pandavs (who were ignorant of his brith secret), and yet he spared each of their lives in battle because he had promised his mother he would show restraint.
Interestingly, Karna was prohibited from fighting by Bheeshma when he was the Kaurav army’s commander. This suggests that when the ego is in force, the driver of actions is purely the love of the body and motivated reasoning is not at play. It can be hard to make this distinction but it is helpful since the two warriors were brought down in very different ways.
In the Mahabharat war, Karana was killed by Arjun (who personifies the strong drive within us to achieve spiritual perfection). After Karna died, Duryodhan lamented that he did not know how to live without Karna and that he did not feel this desolate even when Dushashan was killed. During his life, Karana often made it clear that as long as he lived, he would allow no harm to come to Duryodhan. All this goes to show how dependent the force of volatile desire is upon motivated reasoning and how important it is to first take out the latter.
Shakuni – representing Maya (illusion that flows from ignorance)
Shakuni was Duryodhan’s maternal uncle and the primary instigator behind Duryodhan’s sense of entitlement. He was also the primary conspirator behind Duryodhan’s pre-war plots to kill Pandavs. Shakuni inflicted immense harm upon the Pandavs without resorting to war. It was Shakuni’s devious game of dice that drew out the gambling instincts of the eldest Pandav, Yudhisthir. As a result of his gambling, Yudhisthir lost his kingdom, the freedom of his family, and even that of himself.
Shakuni represents the illusion that we can do well in life by or despite pandering to our momentary desires. Even when a person becomes wiser and sees that desires do not lead to peace or happiness,7 the full force of this illusion pushes him to keep gambling his spiritual self and true happiness by flirting with desires again and again. Like Yudhisthir in Mahabharat, a person loses his kingdom (represented by happiness that comes with peace of mind) and then his own spiritual freedom, as thoughts and actions become subservient to volatile desires (Duryodhan).
While his role was decisive in shaping Kaurav side’s thinking and actions before the war, in the final war Shakuni was not a key warrior. With God (Krishna) on Pandav’s side in the battlefield, Shakuni’s tricks were no longer effective. But an important lesson here is that most people do not reach the conviction to get to the final spiritual battle and remain under the illusionary energy of Shakuni. Thus trapped, they keep flirting with desire, betting their spiritual life and invariably losing their peace-of-mind.
In the war, Shakuni was killed by Sehdev, the youngest Pandav prince.
Endnote
As a reader may now appreciate, Kauravs have a formidable army that keeps a person under its sway. What’s more, their side includes warriors that the Pandavs could simply not defeat in a fair fight. It is said that Bheeshma, Drona, and even Karna could not be defeated by all armies combined. They had to be brought down using questionable techniques by Pandavs. But this understanding should not be a cause for pessimism as there are also reasons for optimism. For one (for the religious minded), with God actively counseling and supporting the spiritual side, spiritual victory is only a matter of time. Secondly, during spiritual setbacks it helps to recall that the Kaurav side is strong and thus tactical challenges are inevitable in a spiritual journey. And finally, Pandavs have formidable warriors on their side too. For example, Arjun’s son Abhimanyu, was able to dominate the entire Kaurav army by himself and Kauravs were forced to break the rules of war to bring him down. This also provided the justification for Pandavs to subsequently break the rules of war and exploit the weaknesses of each Kaurav warrior.
It is important to note that waging war against desire is a distant prospect for most people. Even those who accept the perniciousness of desire (and there are not many who do), desire remains the only way they know how to live and enjoy life. As Arjun asked in Bhagwad Gita when he was told to wage war on Duryodhan’s army, “If we destroy the enemy, would that really be better for us?”.
Just understanding this dynamic within the mind is a crucial first step. After this, a person is in a much better place to “see” what is happening inside of his mind. Thus begins a journey of self-discovery and realization. Desire should not be accepted as an enemy just because someone says so. A person needs to look within and come to that conclusion himself. This starts with turning the spotlight within. Just as it took Pandavs decades to realize that Duryodhan was not going to let them live in peace, it takes a lot of time for a person to conclude that desire is indeed harmful and must be put down within himself.8 Without reaching this conclusion himself, there is no determination to wage a full spiritual struggle.
In the end, Pandavs’ victory was decisive and complete. Their side had an array of formidable fighters too. In my next article, I write about them.
Recommended further reading
Controlling the mind – Article 3: Third in the series of articles on controlling the mind based on learnings from the Indian epic of Mahabharat. This post covers the good actors within the mind that make us more spiritual, at peace, and happy.
Footnotes
1: While I have put in a lot of thinking into how to interpret Mahabharat characters and their actions, the original insights on how to interpret them are not mine. I have read about interpreting of Mahabharat characters from multiple sources. The best source I would recommend is Yogananda’s interpretation of Gita.
2: This is the throne of the most powerful kingdoms in the story, called “Hastinapur”. The word “hastin” has several meanings in Sanskrit. The most relevant one for this context is “chief or the best of its kind”. And, “pur” means town. So, this translates to “the best town”. It may appear that this word is talking about the mind, which is arguably the “chief” or “best” part of the body. Most body functions are controlled by the brain and the mind “sits” on top of the brain. For this reason, things that impact us psychologically, subsequently impact the brain and then cascade down to the body.
3: I call this the “deciding mind”. It could also be characterized as “robotic mind” that is “programmed” to serve our senses.
4: Duryodhan compromising with Pandav’s is akin to a person successfully striking a balance in his mind between volatile desires on one hand and persistent mental peace that is free of desires on the other hand. The force of volatile desire within does not allow this balance to last. This was the primary reason for the Pandavs to wage war against the Kauravs.
5: Bheem was a younger brother of Yudhisthir and personifies yogic breath control.
6: It may be argued that Abhimanyu, the son of Arjun was able to dominate Karna in a one-to-one fair battle. Arjun was one of Pandav brothers and the younger brother of Yudhisthir.
7: For more on this, see my articles of desire: (1) on why it is the root cause of suffering, and (2) on why recognizing it for how disruptive it truly is makes us take the first step towards happiness.
8: This is a struggle within. This is not a struggle a person can force upon others. Without a person fully committed to fighting this battle within, spiritual progress remains limited. This also points to the futility of imposing any external force (such as religious rules) to push a person to advance spiritually or become virtuous. With the person not ready and committed, there is precious little that can be achieved through external coercion.
