Decision, decisions

When I was young, either by ignorance or defiance, I tended to look down at the wisdom laid down by the Eastern sages but looked up at what, at that time appeared avant-garde, pop culture. With age, hopefully, wiser, I am exposed to the much wisdom that the Eastern philosophers had to offer. And I was just thinking of something I heard the other day.

Amongst the numerous moral dilemmas highlighted in the Mahabaratha, there is one which involved a priest. He was just sitting minding his business doing his priestly work. Along came a group of desperate men apparently running from something or someone. The desperate people were running from a band of thieves who were out to rob and probably kill them. They did not want the priest to tell them the direction of their route.

Sure enough, moments later, a group of menacing looking robbers appear.  The priest was put in a spot when asked about the whereabouts of the earlier men. His understanding of life is that one should be telling the truth, and nothing else would do. If he were to show them the right direction, which is the right thing to do, the innocents would be killed and robbed. If he were to deny any knowledge, the dacoits would surely beat the truth out of him. To lie and show them the opposite direction would be deceit, which was a no-no! Hence, the dilemma! He did what he thought was the best thing to do, to tell the truth. Apparently, the Gods were not happy when he died. He was sent to Hell.

Another moral conundrum evidenced in the Mahabaratha, as from many, is the process of assailing of Drona. The teacher who changed allegiance, after being humiliated by the Pandavas, had the knowledge of a secret weapon. The only way to defeat him was to catch him off-guard. Krishna, sometimes referred to as the inner conscious, suggested that the Pandavas tell a white lie. He was to be told that Ashwatthama, his son, was dead.

The truth of the matter is that Ashwatthama was not dead, it was all a facade. The question was that whether it was alright to lie. Krishna asserted that winning for an honourable reason was noble. When an enemy could not be defeated in the usual the straight-forward manner, victory by deceit is acceptable. For Yudhishtra, the eldest of the Gaurava's sons, who could tell no lie, could not proceed such a line of a devious plan. He was made to be convinced that indeed there was an elephant named Ashwartthama which was killed. Hence, technically he was not lying! For other brothers, Arjuna and Bheema, it did not really matter. They felt that they, of the warrior stock, just wanted to win.

The point here is that it is not easy to make the right decision that would satisfy all quarters. Nobody actually knows whether an act is a noble one at that juncture. Prevailing circumstances and the societal set of moralities determine its appropriateness. The wisdom of a particular action could be a judgement in retrospect. We are mere mortals, how are we to know?

N.B. These are just part of a tale of intertwiningly epic proportions. Every action in Mahabharata is justified in sometimes contradictory fashions. What is good for the Kings may not be appropriate for the peasant. Like Schopenhauer said, we glorify the past and the points that suit our agenda. Not everything in the past is bad, and not everyone in the past was noble.