Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Scriptures -their purpose


Note : The question asked on 30th Oct 13 was “What is the essence of Mahabharata? ….” Refer comment of 30th Oct 13 for full understanding of this question and answer.

Mahabharata or any other scripture doesn’t ‘tell’ us how to lead a life.  That is the best part of Hindu Dharma.  It respects our right of ‘free will’ (already explained in one of the previous blogs- please check) and so gives us picture of the effects of a certain act in our life. 

For eg., Dhritarashtra stands for the ultimate of ‘moham’ or ‘attachment’ – more precisely ‘putra moham’ i.e., attachment for his son.  By looking at Dhritarashtra and understanding his character we can see how he ended up taking steps which ultimately brought about downfall of not only his son but of the entire dynasty and the entire Bharata Khanda eventually.  One person’s blind attachment can be the cause of the end of this world.  All the dynasties of that era were wiped out completely because of ‘kurukshetra war’. 

Here Dhritarashtra doesn’t stand for a physically blind person.  He is shown as blind to explain that if one sense is blinded by our greed, ego, lust or anger, then imagine what our plight would be when we are blinded by all our senses?


…contd….