Storytelling: Dharma

“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.”

Ekalavya looked at him curiously and smiled.  Arjuna smiled back cautiously.  He wasn’t sure what to make of this forest boy with the uncanny talent for archery.  He could sense Drona’s displeasure, however, and knew to stay back.

“I want you to cut your thumb off,” Drona said dismissively.

Arjuna stared in shock as Ekalavya merely smiled and obeyed immediately.

“Thank you, sage,” the boy murmured as his blood dripped on the ground.  Arjuna couldn’t stop watching the casual fall of the blood droplets from the stump on his hand.

He thought he would be sick, but he couldn’t do that in front of Drona, so he made himself numb.  As they walked by Ekalavya to go home, Arjuna could not stop himself from glancing back at the boy that they had taken everything from.

“Don’t worry,” Ekalavya whispered, startling Arjuna.  “I reached too high.  I’m not meant to be a warrior, but you are.  Do what I cannot.”

And Arjuna could do nothing but nod.

“No one should abandon duties because he sees defects in them.”

“Please Arjuna, see reason!” Yudhishthira begged.  “There is no need for you to go into exile!  You had a justifiable reason to interrupt us!  I won’t force you to go!”

“No, Yudhishthira,” Arjuna sighed.  “I knew what I was doing when I came upon you and Draupadi.  I knew what it meant, but I had no choice.  And there is still no choice now.”

“But there is!  None of us will force you into exile!  Draupadi understands the circumstances!  Everyone understands the circumstances!”

Arjuna looked him in the eyes.  “And what does that say about me if I will forget my oaths because others understand why I could?  Oaths are oaths, Yudhishthira, you know this best.  They are my duty, no matter how I or you feel.  I knew the consequences, and I will pay the price.”

“But—“

Sighing, Arjuna placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder.  “I know there is no reason for me to go.  But that is why I must go.”

“Then go,” Yudhishthira whispered, and Arjuna forced himself to walk out without looking back.

“Performing the duty prescribed by (one’s own) nature, one incurreth no sin.”

Arjuna had wondered from a young age what made a good person.  It seemed everyone had a different answer:  Yudhishthira always told the truth and adhered strictly to all rules and promises; Bhima was courageous and never shied from a fight to protect the innocent; and Drona obeyed his duties every day.

But what would they do now?

No, he knew better than to ask.  He knew what they would do, what they would say.

He surveyed the battlefield bleakly, watching as cousin after cousin of his poured through the frontlines.  He could remember playing at war with Duryodhana, laughing as they teamed up against Bhima, and chasing each other through the gardens.  Duryodhana wasn’t playing at battles now, though, and Arjuna knew that he would have to kill many of the same people he had pretended to kill as a child.

In his heart, he despaired and mourned every one of his cousins and family members on the other side.

Closing his eyes, he said a final farewell and loosed a volley of arrows.

Arjuna and Krishna.  Web Source.

Author's Note:  This is the story from the story planning post last week!  Thanks to Ankitha's suggestions, I was able to come up with a decent idea and explored what Arjuna thinks of dharma.  I chose to add some different sections of his life, notably his meeting with Ekalavya, his exile after seeing Yudhishthira and Draupadi, and the battle with the Kauravas where the Bhagavad Gita takes place.  I tried to examine how he would feel about each of the different aspects of dharma and used quotes from the Bhagavad Gita to emphasize what Krishna would say about each of the incidents.

Bibliography:  Goodreads Quotes.  Web Source.

50 Most Inspiring Quotes from the Bhagavad Gita.  Web Source.

Reading Notes: Epified Mahabharata Part D

• I wonder how Draupadi feels about this whole thing.  She doesn't even get to really decide who she marries; this contest will.
• Well she does get a bit of choice, I suppose, haha.  Poor Karna again!  I honestly can't blame him for being so close to the Kauravas especially when everyone else treats him like this.  And just because of his class too!  She didn't even let him try!  No wonder he resents and wants to humiliate her later.
• I wonder how she feels about this too!  Now she has 5 possibly unwanted husbands.  She doesn't seem too troubled by this later but who knows.  I'm kind of sad they didn't talk about Narayan's version of why she has 5 husbands in the videos.  In his version he says that she is the reincarnation of a devoted wife to an ugly sage, who near the end of his life rewarded her by taking on the form of 5 men.  When he died, she wished to have 5 husbands again, and now this is her fate.  I like that version better!
• I wish they had just been able to avoid the war by living in peace in Indraprastha.  I can understand Duryodhana being jealous of their city, but still, leave them be!
• Poor Arjuna!  I understand why their arrangement was necessary but it still seems like such an honest mistake and justifiable in terms of the circumstances.  But I guess that's what makes him so "good" since he followed the oath anyway.
• I wonder what happens while Arjuna is in exile.  It seems like not much.
• Now I'm wondering how old everyone is.  They never really mention ages but it seems like they can just have 7 year exiles without significant changes or getting older.  They even have the 14 year exile later and they still seem in the prime of their life!

Indraprastha.  Web Source.

Bibliography:  Epified Mahabharata.  Reading Guide.

Reading Notes: Epified Mahabharata Part C

• Poor Karna :( I feel so bad for him because he can never claim his birthright.  He doesn't want to betray his "parents" but he could have so much more.
• I'm glad that Duryodhana recognizes Karna's potential!  He's more "progressive" than the Pandavas in that sense.  I wonder if this attitude is frowned upon actually because of the idea that Karna should have stuck to his assumed class.
• I feel so bad for Drona too!  You'd think that one of the best archers in the world would have found some employment, but I can't believe that his friend wouldn't help him!  Or that he would be so condescending to him.
• What an elaborate scheme to kill the Pandavas.  I get that they don't want people to know that they killed them but sheesh they could have just hired some assassins or something.
• They glossed over this in these videos too!  In the original version, they invite some lower class people in and leave them to die so that people will think that they are dead.  It's just awful that they would do that, so I'm glad in other versions they remove that.
• Narayan's version didn't really emphasize Bhima all that much.  It's cool to hear some of what he did while Arjuna and the others were doing stuff.  It seemed like Arjuna was the "hero" of the Pandavas in Narayan's retelling, but this version makes it seem like Bhima's no slouch either.
• Draupadi's birth seems so strange.  She's almost an afterthought in the birth of her brother, but then it ends up being her brother that isn't mentioned much later.  Although maybe that's just the selective focus and not being able to include everything in the story.

Birth of Draupadi.  Web Source.

Bibliography:  Epified Mahabharata.  Reading Guide.

Story Planning: Dharma

• Reading the Bhagavad Gita made me very intrigued about Hindu value systems and what they regard as a "good person"
• I really want to write a story somehow examining this?  I'm having a very hard time trying to put this into a story context though.  I feel like I'm thinking of it more as an essay describing my thoughts rather than a story, but I'm not sure how to make it more into a story.
• Some possibilities I was thinking of was examining Arjuna's actions through this and seeing how and when he violates or follows the principles of dharma, but that also seems kind of boring.  I want something a little more creative.
• Another idea I had was moving these principles into a more modern environment and examining people's actions through there, but this is also rather difficult because I'm not sure whose actions I should examine.  Arjuna's again but just modern?  Not sure how that would work.
• Really I just want to write a story about what a good person according to these principles is but I don't know how to do that.
• I want to maybe talk something about the caste system as well because Krishna says that somebody who does his duty poorly is better than someone who does an exceptional job that isn't his duty.  Kind of plays into Ekalavya and why he's beaten back down rather than praised, but I don't really want to write another story about Ekalavya.
• I could move that principle into a modern context and maybe talk about somebody who wants to do something else but his parents want him to keep up the family business?  So this conflict between what he wants and what he should do?
• Basically I have lots of half formed ideas but no concrete thing I want to write about :( if anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear it.

Arjuna and Krishna.  Web Source.

Bibliography:  Bhagavad Gita:  The Song Celestial translated by Edwin Arnold.  Reading Guide.

Reading Notes: Arnold's Bhagavad Gita Part B

• Thanks to Dr. Gibbs pointing it out I found Arnold's version of J. Robert Oppenheimer's famous quote!  It is much more different in this version, but I like how poetic it is.  Would have been much harder for him to quote though.
• This half of the Bhagavad Gita intrigued me a lot more than the first half.  I liked how it delved deeper into the differences between a good person and a bad person and the different types of qualities.
• I was especially interested in the difference between sattva, rajas, and tamas.  I think it's rather interesting that Hinduism regards doing things for pleasure and passion to be worse than doing things without attachment or emotion.  In Christian and Western culture, people typically prefer doing things with passion and for their happiness.  Tamas seems to be more similar to the Christian idea of a "bad person."
• I also think it's interesting that Hindus regard people trying to get material wealth to be one of the worst kinds of people while most Americans and Westerners wholeheartedly believe in this path; it's even the American Dream.
• The justification for the caste system was very interesting.  Krishna says that it's better to do the job that you were assigned poorly than to do something that you shouldn't do well.  That is very against most Western ideals, and my own opinions too, but it's a very interesting viewpoint either way.
• I kind of just flipped through most of the pictures when I was reading, but at the end I discovered that they had an appendix that went through each of the pictures in detail and described the symbolism in each one.  It was so helpful!  I had no idea of all of the nuances present in the positioning of the people or the borders and it helped me understand the Bhagavad Gita a lot more.

First frontispiece in the book.  It is Dhritarashtra asking Sanjaya to tell him what happens in the battle.  Web Source.

Bibliography:  Bhagavad Gita:  The Song Celestial translated by Edwin Arnold.  Reading Guide.

Reading Notes: Arnold's Bhagavad Gita Part A

• I love how the book is presented!  I checked out the copy from the Bizzell library and it is gorgeous!  It comes in a cute red box and it has very pretty illustrations in it!  It also has Sanskrit next to the English, which is cool to look at even though I don't understand a word.
• The style of this is so different from Narayan's version.  Obviously, Narayan's was a narrative so he didn't really have a lot of room for the preaching (for lack of a better term) that is in Arnold's version, but besides that the poetry of this version is so nice.  It's a really good translation!  I don't know what it sounded like in the original Sanskrit, but if it's anything like the translation, it must have been beautiful.
• This style of back-and-forth conversation helping to demonstrate the principles of the religion really reminds me of the Bible.  Some of the Bible verses are similar to this with the apostles questioning Jesus, so it's really interesting to see how the same idea holds in Hinduism.
• I was really intrigued by Krishna's argument that life is life and cannot be destroyed.  It is kind of an interesting view, but it makes some sense, I guess, since even with the death of one person, there is still life in general.
• I keep waiting for the infamous line quoted by J. Robert Oppenheimer about "I am become death, destroyer of worlds" but it looks like I'll be waiting a little longer!  Either that or it's not in this translation.

Arjuna questioning Krishna.  Web Source.

Bibliography:  Bhagavad Gita:  The Song Celestial translated by Edwin Arnold.  Reading Guide.

Storytelling: One Last Day

“This is the best day of my life,” Radha sighed, smiling happily.  There were flowers draped all over her hair and body, and in her red and gold dress, she looked as radiant as the sun.

He smiled tightly.  If only you knew what I did.

Closing his eyes, he saw what would happen, followed the same thread he had so many times, and watched her as she grew old.

He watched as she waited and pined and remained loyal to only him.

Watched as she sat and prayed.

And wished for him to come back.

But he never did.

And that’s how she died, waiting and waiting for a love that would never return.

He hated watching her future.

“Krishna?” she asked, shyly, tapping his shoulder, jolting his attention back to the present.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he murmured.  “I’m glad you’re happy, that’s all.”  It was true; he’d worked so hard to make this day perfect for her.  He’d arranged for the weather to be breezy and warm, begged the flowers to bloom early, coaxed the cows into behaving on the field, and persuaded all of the gopis to come down to the meadow.

Now, in this gorgeous day, she threw her head back and laughed, full of joy and sparkle and hope, and Krishna fixed the memory in his heart.  He never wanted to forget this day.

“Play the flute!” she said.  “I want to dance!”

And dance she did, as he wove golden melodies and every note glittered and twirled with her.  Nobody could take their eyes off her, least of all Krishna.  He savored every spin and every step.

The future danced with her in Krishna’s eyes, and he saw the armies clashing, the spears twirling with her arms, the shields glinting like her bangles, the screams mixed with his flute.

He saw the destruction of the warriors in the soft grass and fragrant flowers and saw the blood splashed on the mountainside.

He saw a rain of arrows perfectly placed, a figure wheeling a chariot, the flash of a silver sword, and the savage blow of a mace.

He saw kings and princes humbling themselves before him, begging for his help.

He saw his future queens laughing and talking before him, each gazing at him adoringly.

He saw the sage before him, admonishing him, reminding him of his duty.

“You are the savior of Dharma!  You know this is your destiny!”

Yes, he wanted to yell, yes, but I hadn’t met her yet.

He saw himself leaving the next day, shifting the universe and going down the right path.

But he also saw the other path, the one where he stayed, where he refused his destiny, and he saw their short but happy lives, saw a beautiful son and a wonderful daughter.

He saw all this and more, the entire universe, all pasts, presents, and futures, in his eyes, but most of all he saw her lonely figure waiting for him through eternity.

Because he could never pick the other path.

“Dance with me?” she asked, holding her hand out to him.  Her flushed face looked like heaven and he knew that he would come back to this moment every day for the rest of his life.

Tomorrow I will be gone, he thought, and he held her hand for the last time.

Radha and Krishna.  Web Source.

Author's Note:  Radha and Krishna's love story is so sad to me because they love each other so much, but they can never be together.  They lived in the same village together as children, but Krishna was actually divine and related to a princess while Radha was merely the daughter of a villager.  It was impossible for their destinies to be together.  Radha's devotion touched me especially because she is willing to do so much for Krishna, but he can't be with her because his destiny is with the Pandavas.  I wanted to express how hard of a choice it was for him to give her up, and how what he knows of his destiny moves him and influences his decisions.

Bibliography:  Epified Krishna.  Web Source.