Kṛṣṇa’s Advice Rejected

Duryodhana is understood from the first verses of Bhagavad-gita to be a brilliant administrator and political leader. But the most important thing he didn't know. Absorbed in false ego, Duryodhana thought that he was doing everything by himself. Actually, Duryodhana, like every conditioned soul in the material world, is under the direct control of God. In the Bhaktivedanta Purports to Srimad-Bhagavatam it is stated: "The external energy of the Lord, or the material nature, is fully under the control of the Supreme Lord, and the conditioned soul is fully under the grip of the external energy. Therefore, the conditioned soul is fully under the control of the law of the Lord. But, illusioned, he thinks that he is independent in his activities."

Duryodhana refused the instructions of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Sri Krsna, and plotted his own destiny in terms of removing Vidura and warring against the Panḍavas. We can understand that only the first act-rejecting the personal instructions of God-was factually performed freely, of his own volition. According to the revealed scriptural sources, our minute amount of free will can be exercised in choosing either to follow the dictation of God or to follow the dictation of His material energy, maya. There is no other choice. Once one refuses God, one must follow His material energy. Whatever one's personal philosophy may be, one must grow old, one must be subjected to diseases and material miseries (miseries caused by the body and mind, miseries caused by other living entities, and miseries caused by natural disturbances like earthquakes, droughts, etc.), and eventually one must die. And after death, one must go wherever nature sends one. By the law of karma, action is necessarily followed by reaction, and all actions in the world take place under mixed modes of goodness, passion and ignorance. The Vedic understanding is that God is transcendental to the material laws and conditions-He is their master. He is eternal, free and unlimited in knowledge and pleasure, and when we, the infinitesimal individual souls, dovetail our own small amount of free will with His, then we can directly experience those same qualities of bliss, eternity and knowledge. By that dovetailing process, we can be freed from the misgivings of the body, mind and intelligence and can be situated on the transcendental plane. But when, instead, we come to this material world due to forgetfulness of the Supreme Person, then our plight (from which only the pure devotees of Godhead are excluded) is that we suffer a covering of our eternally pleasurable qualitative oneness with the Supreme Spirit.

We think, "I am this body," but actually the real person is still spirit soul; due to contacting a material body, however, the spirit soul finds himself frustrated by an incompatible situation, like a fish on land. The example given by the spiritual masters is that the spirit can be compared to electric force. Electricity is unlimited in the tasks it can perform-it can heat, cool, drive giant machines, etc.-but once the unlimited electricity is put into one limited appliance, it can perform only a limited function. For example, the electricity in a toaster can do nothing else but make toast. The electricity has become limited or conditioned in its expression due to the vehicle in which it is confined. Similarly, thinking that we are this body, we are forced to react in terms of goodness, passion and ignorance within the material world, under the control of the inferior material energy. In material consciousness, we are no more free than a cow tied to the end of a rope: even if the rope is long, the cow is still not free.

When God or His pure devotee speaks, that is direct, superior, spiritual energy; by following His will directly, one can return to one's original, eternal, happy state of consciousness, both immediately, in this body, as well as in the next life, after the demise of the body. The atheist or materialist who misuses his free will and derides the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krsna, must nevertheless come under the strict superintendence of the material energy. Thus, one may think oneself the almighty supreme enjoyer, the benefactor and proprietor of all, but despite these grand illusions, one must be limited by God's material laws. Duryodhana is the typical materialist of the present civilization of Kali-yuga (the age of quarrel). He had just heard Vidura criticize him for being a nondevotee of Krsna, and he at once affirmed this status by insulting and threatening bodily harm to Vidura. This is the height of rascaldom, adopted here by Duryodhana; he wants to beat Vidura, whose only offense is that he is speaking the truth, that God is great and we are small. The Kali-yuga materialists in today's godless civilization are also intent on destroying the brahminical culture and denying the advice of the bona fide spiritual teachers. "Why should I listen to God? Who is God? I am God! I shall enjoy as I like." These are materialists' symptomatic responses to brahminical or spiritual guidance. It will be seen in the case of Duryodhana that thinking himself to be God Almighty did not prevent him from being broken to pieces on the battlefield and ruining all his allies.

Under the illusion of material energy, he could not see the best course for his people, and therefore he led them into war. But even the present-day peacemakers who are trying to secure peace without authoritative spiritual guidance are finding no success. They are trying to establish Utopia-the kingdom of God without God-but it cannot be. As the expert politician Vidura said, a path without God is inauspicious for the state, the society the family, and the individual. We can get no profit by saying that we are God or by trying to conquer the material nature but we can gain all good fortune in this world if we can be directly led by the superior, spiritual energy of Godhead, which comes in the form of guidance from the pure devotees of the Absolute Truth. In his materialistic folly, thinking he was independent, Duryodhana was the dreamer, off in the clouds. In contrast, Vidura shrewdly offered Dhrtarastra the key to success.

But the Battle of Kuruksetra was not avoided. As for Vidura, he took the opportunity of Duryodhana's insult as a blessing in disguise. He saw that Duryodhana was on the path of ruin. As a devotee, he also saw that the Lord's internal energy was helping him to come back to Godhead. A devotee is always in a temperament of renunciation because the worldly attractions can never satisfy him. Vidura had never been attracted by the royal palace of his brother, and now he had the opportunity, by the grace of Duryodhana, to quit the place and devote himself completely to the transcendental loving service of the Lord. Instead of being sorry, he thanked Duryodhana from within because he had given him the chance to live alone in a holy place and thus be fully engaged in the cultivation of spiritual life. Also, he saw no more hope in defending his brother, so he left the palace without Duryodhana's taking physical steps for his removal.

Srimad-Bhagavatam describes the fate of General Duryodhana on the Battlefield of Kuruksetra: "Duryodhana lost his good fortune, as well as his life, because of the intricacy of ill advice given by Karna, Duḥsasana, etc. Although he was very powerful, he finally lay on the ground, his thighs broken, and his followers were with him." It is described that Krsna is harder than a thunderbolt to the wrongdoers and softer than a rose to the devotees. Duryodhana was misled by bad associates and ill advice, contrary to the established principles of the Lord's order, and so he became subject to punishment.

Of course, ultimately, anyone who can be so fortunate as to associate directly with the Personality of Godhead when He appears in this universe to enact His pastimes is liberated as a final result. In this way, all the soldiers and sons of Dhrtarastra who were able to see the Lord at the time of their death and could appreciate the beauty of His face and features were transferred, in their original spiritual forms, to the spiritual sky, beyond the material universes which are limited by death and pain. That is the version of the Vedic texts.

As previously stated, the banished saint Vidura turned out to be the only true friend of King Dhrtarastra, After the war, the defeated, blind Dhrtarastra, whose sons had all been killed, wanted to remain as King in the palace. As a matter of duty, King Yudhisthira, the leader of the victorious Panḍavas, maintained Dhrtarastra in royal honor. Dhrtarastra, therefore, was happily passing away his numbered days in the illusion that he was the royal uncle of King Yudhisthira. At that time, Vidura returned from traveling to holy places all over the earth and especially from inquiring on transcendental topics from the great sage Maitreya. Vidura had of course been thoroughly involved in court politics, but after being thrown out of the palace by Dhrtarastra and his son Duryodhana, he had taken full advantage of existing conditions and had become fully Krsna conscious, fixed in loving service to the Supreme Lord, by taking instructions from a great devotee-sage. He was therefore received as a godly person on his return to the palace. The court personalities and his kinsmen like Yudhisthira and the Panḍavas, Dhrtarastra, Kunti, Draupadi and many others with their wives and children, in a tearful post-war reunion, all rushed to hear and see him. The Bhagavatam says that when the court family saw Vidura again after the long separation, it was as if their lost consciousness was revived. They gathered around him like students sitting before a teacher. They were very eager to hear spiritual instructions from him, and they listened with rapt attention. Vidura spoke for the welfare of all, but he especially directed himself to his oldest brother, Dhrtarastra.

Vidura knew the situation of Dhrtarastra, and he addressed him as follows: "My dear King, please get out immediately. Do not delay in the least. Just see how fearfulness has overtaken you. You are very old, and there is no remedial measure for your death. My brother, please understand that death is identical with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and it is approaching for all of us. Your father, sons and well-wishers are all dead, your body is overtaken by invalidity, and here at the last stage you are living in another's home. You have been blind from birth, and recently you have become hard of hearing. Your teeth are loosened, your liver is diseased, and you are coughing with mucus."

Vidura's words cut to pieces the network of illusion in which he found his brother rotting. Vidura addressed him as King because actually he was not the king. Overtaken by foolish ideas, Dhrtarastra was living for temporary comforts and was trying to make a permanent settlement for his perishable body. Vidura's sharp but compassionate words were to wake up his brother so that, before it was too late, he could make progress for the welfare of his real self, his eternal soul.

Vidura said: "Alas! So powerful is the living being's hope to continue life indefinitely. You are living just like a household dog and taking scraps of food from the warrior who killed your son Duryodhana!" Vidura did not avoid the naked truth of Dhrtarastra's humiliating position. Dhrtarastra was living at the house of the Panḍavas because he wanted to continue his comfortable life, even at the cost of being humiliated. Vidura pointed out to him that the whole raison d'etre of the human form of life is to get a chance to wake up to self-realization and to go back to Godhead, where life is eternal and from where, once going, no one comes back to this material world. "There is no necessity of living a degraded life," Vidura continued, "subsisting on the charity of those whom you tried to kill. In spite of your desires, your body will certainly dwindle and die, like an old, deteriorated garment."

Wakened in no uncertain terms by his well-wishing brother, Dhrtarastra left the palace without saying anything, and under the guidance of Vidura, he sat on the bank of the Ganges and engaged in the beginning of yoga practice. He took regular baths, performed special sacrifices and fasted by drinking only water. This helped him to control his mind and senses and to free himself from thoughts of family affection. Due to his offenses at the feet of pure devotees, the Panḍavas, Dhrtarastra was not able to become a pure devotee of the Personality of Godhead, but by the grace of Vidura, and to the astonishment of all the court, Dhrtarastra was able to cut himself off from all external sense attraction and concentrate on his pure being. The Bhagavatam describes, "He had to amalgamate his pure identity with intelligence and then, with knowledge of being qualitatively one with the supreme eternal living entity, merge into the impersonal aspect of the Supreme Being. Thus he rescued his consciousness from the clutches of the five elements and realized his qualitative identity with the eternal Supersoul who is sitting in everyone's heart." Practicing under the instructions of Vidura, Dhrtarastra achieved the impersonal perfection of liberation from his body, and after many such liberated births, he transcended the material sky to become engaged in the transcendental loving service of the Lord. Despite Dhrtarastra's many offenses, the Lord's mercy was bestowed on him by his contact with Vidura, and he was able to attain the perfectional stage. He quit his body by turning it into ashes in a self-made fire of mystic power.