UNDERSTANDING KRISHNA
Man's mind has always wanted to choose between the seeming opposites. His mind has always divided existence into two parts and chose one part against the other. And from choice arises duality, which brings conflict and pain .
One who chooses will always be incomplete because the part he choose will continue to delude him and the part he denies will continue to pursue and haunt him. He can never be rid of what he rejects and represses.
Nothing in life has to be denied it's place and given up. We have to accept and live life in its totality. And one who lives wholly attains to life's wholeness.
A defensive mind, cannot gather that strength and enthusiasm necessary to win.
Our country was enslaved for a full thousand years just because of our incapacity to fight war. Similarly, our five thousand year old poverty and degradation is nothing but the result of a lack of courage and fearlessness in our lives, a lack of expansiveness in our hearts and minds.
So, after Mahabharata, for five thousand years we have been a frightened people, frightened for our lives. And a community that is afraid of death, afraid of war, eventually begins to be afraid of life itself. We are really trembling with fear. We are neither alive nor dead, we art just in limbo.
In my view, mankind will suffer if they accept what Russell and Gandhi say. There is no need to be afraid of war. But it is true we have reached a point where war on this earth has become meaningless.
War is meaningful so long as one side wins and another losses, but in a nuclear war there will be no victor and no vanquished. It is easy to understand warmongers like Genghis, Tamerlane, Hitler and Mussolini, because they believe in war as only way of life. Pacifiers like Gandhi and Russell believe that peace alone is the right way.
Krishna is altogether different from both of them, and that is what makes him difficult to understand. He says that life passes through both doors, of peace and war. And he says that if man wants to maintain peace, he needs to have the strength and ability to fight a war and win it. And he asserts that in order to fight a war well, it is necessary, simultaneously, to make due preparations for peace.
We would not have been that impotent if our country had understood Krishna rightly. But we have covered all our ugliness with beautiful words. Our cowardice is hidden behind our talk of non-violence . Our fear of death is disguised by our opposition to war. And this refusal of war simply became an invitation to others to wage war on us. War will not disappear just because we refuse to fight. Our refusal will only result in our slavery. And this is what has actually happened.
War and peace are twin limbs of life, and we can't do without either of them. How can a man walk one leg alone? No progress is possible.
Now to end friends I'll mention a historical contest that happened about three hundred years agop when countries of Europe where rushing toward Asia - because occupation is Asia had become immensely important for the expansionist power of Europe. But it has no importance whatsoever, and so, soon after the second world war, they left Asia. The people of Asia believe they won their freedom through their nationalist struggle, but it is only a half truth, the other half is quite different.
