Draupadi: A Rare Woman

Question 1:

As among men Krishna baffles our understanding, so does Draupadi among women. and how the critics look at Draupadi says more about the critics themselves than about Draupadi. What we see in others is only a reflection; others only serve as mirrors to us. We see in others only that which we want to see; in fact, we see what we are. We do nothing but project ourselves on the world.

It is difficult to understand Draupadi. But our difficulty does not come from this great woman, it really emanates from us. Our ideas and beliefs, our desires and hopes come in our way of understanding Draupadi.

To love five men together, to play wife to them at the same time is a great and arduous task. This needs to be understood rightly. Love does not have much to do with persons; it is a state of mind.

And love that is confined to a single person is a poor love. Let us go into this question of love in depth.

We all insist that one's love should be confined to a single person - a man or a woman. If someone loves you, you want that he should love you and you alone, that he not share his love with another person. You would like to possess that person, to monopolize him or her. We not only want to possess things, we also want to possess men and women. And if we had our way we would possess even the sun and the moon and the stars. So we crave to monopolize love. Because we do not know what love is, we are prone to think that if it is shared with many it will disperse and dwindle and die.

But the truth is that the more love is shared, the more it grows. And when we try to restrict it, to control it - which is utterly unnatural and arbitrary - it dries up and eventually dies.

I am reminded of a beautiful story.

A Buddhist nun had a statue of Buddha made of sandalwood. She loved the statue and always kept it with her. Being a nun she traveled from place to place, where she mostly stayed in Buddhist temples and monasteries. And wherever she lived she worshipped her own statue of Buddha.

Once she happened to be a guest at the famous temple of a thousand Buddhas. This temple was known for its thousand statues of Buddha; it was filled with statues and statues. The nun, as usual, sat for her evening worship, and she burned incense before her statue of Buddha. But with the passing breeze the perfume of the incense strayed to other statues of Buddhas which filled that temple.

The nun was distressed to see that while her own Buddha was deprived of the perfume, others had it in plenty. So she devised a funnel through which the smoke would ascend to her statue only. But this device, although successful, blackened the face of her Buddha and made it especially ugly. Of course the nun was exceedingly miserable, because it was a rare statue of sandalwood, and she loved it. She went to the chief priest of the temple and said, "My statue of Buddha has been ruined.

What am I to do?"

The priest said, "Such an accident, such an ugliness is bound to happen whenever someone tries to block the movement of truth and possess it for oneself. Truth by its nature has to be everywhere, it cannot be personalized and possessed,"

Up to now, mankind has thought of love in terms of petty relationship - relationship between two persons. We have yet to know love that is a state of mind, and not just relationship. And this is what comes in our way of understanding Draupadi If I am loving, if love is the state of my being, then it is not possible to confine my love to a single person, or even a few persons. When love enters my life and becomes my nature, then I am capable of loving any number of people. Then it is not even a question of one or many; then I am loving, and my love reaches everywhere. If I am loving to one and unloving to all others, even my love for the one will wither away. It is impossible to be loving to one and unloving to the rest. If someone is loving just for an hour every day and remains unloving for the rest of the time, his lovelessness will eventually smother his small love and turn his life into a wasteland of hate and hostility.

It is unfortunate that people all around the world are trying to capture love and keep it caged in their relationships. But it is not possible to make a captive of love, the moment you try to capture it, it ceases to be love. Love is like air; you cannot hold it in your fist. It is possible to have a little air on your open palm, but if you try to enclose it in your fist, the air escapes. It is a paradox of life that when you try to imprison love, to put it in bondage, love degenerates and dies. And we have all killed love in our foolish attempts to possess it. Really we don't know what love is.

We find it hard to understand how Draupadi could love five persons together. Not only we, even the five Pandava brothers had difficulty in understanding Draupadi. The trouble is understandable, even the Pandavas thought that Draupadi was more loving to one of them. Four of them believed that she favored Arjuna in particular, and they felt envious of him. So they had a kind of division of her time and attention. When one of the Pandava brothers was with her, others were debarred from visiting her.

Like us, they believed that it is impossible for someone to love more than one person at a time. We cannot think of love as anything different from a relationship between two persons - a man and a woman. We cannot conceive that love is a state of being, it is not directed to individuals. Love, like air, sunshine and rain, is available to all without any distinctions.

We have our own ideas of what love is and should be, and that is why we misunderstand Draupadi.

Despite our best efforts to understand her rightly, there is a lurking suspicion in our minds that there is an element of prostitution in Draupadi: our very definition of a sati, a faithful and loyal wife, turns Draupadi into a prostitute.

It is amazing that the tradition of this country respects Draupadi as one of the five most virtuous women of the past. The people who included her among the five great women of history must have been extraordinarily intelligent. The fact that she was the common wife of five Pandavas was known to them, and that is what makes their evaluation of Draupadi tremendously significant. For them it did not matter whether love was confined to one or many; the real question was whether or not one had love. They knew that if really there was love, it could flow endlessly in any number of channels; it could not be controlled and manipulated. It was symbolic to say that Draupadi had five husbands; it meant that one could love five, fifty, five hundred thousand people at the same time. There is no end to love's power and capacity.

The day really loving people will walk on this earth, the personal ownership of love rampant today in the form of marriages, families and groups, will disappear. It will not mean that the love relationship between two human beings will be prohibited and declared to be sinful - that would be going to the other extreme of stupidity. No, everybody will be free to be himself, and to function within his limits and no one will impose his will and ideas on others. Love and freedom will go together.

Draupadi's love is riverlike, overflowing. She does not deny her love even for a moment. Her marriage to the Pandava brothers is an extraordinary event - it came about almost playfully. The Pandavas came home with Draupadi, who they had won in a contest. They told their mother they had brought a very precious thing with them. Kunti, their mother, without asking what the precious object was, said, "If it is precious then share it together."

The Pandava brothers had no idea that their mother would say this; they just wanted to tease her.

But now they had to do their mother's bidding; they made Draupadi their common wife. And she accepted it without complaint. It was possible because of her infinite love. She has so much that she loved all her husbands profoundly, yet never felt any shortage of love in her heart. She had no difficulty whatsoever in playing her role as their common beloved, and she never discriminated between them.

Draupadi is certainly a unique woman. Women, in general, are very jealous; they really live in jealousy. If one wants to characterize man and woman, he can say that while ego is the chief characteristic of man, jealousy is the chief characteristic of woman. Man lives by ego and woman by jealousy. Really jealousy is the passive form of ego, and ego is the active form of jealousy.

But here is a woman who rose above jealousy and pettiness; she loved the Pandavas without any reservations. In many ways Draupadi towered over her husbands who were very jealous of one another on account of her love. They remained in constant psychological conflict with each other, while Draupadi went through this complex relationship with perfect ease and equanimity.

We are to blame for our failure to understand Draupadi. We think that love is a relationship between two persons, which it is not. And because of this misconception we have to go through all kinds of torment and misery in life. Love is a flower which once in a while blooms without any cause or purpose. It can happen to anyone who is open. And love accepts no bonds. no constraints on its freedom. But because society has fettered love in many ways we do everything to smother it, to escape it. Thus love has become so scarce, and we have to go without it. We live a loveless life.

We are a strange people; we can go without love, but we cannot love someone without possessing him or her. We can very well starve ourselves of love, but we cannot tolerate that the person I love should share his or her love with anybody else. To deprive others of love we can easily give up our own share of it. We don't know how terribly we suffer because of our ego and jealousy.

It is good to know that Draupadi is not a solitary case of this kind; she may be the last in a long line. The society that preceded Draupadi was matriarchal; perhaps Draupadi is the last vestige of that disintegrating social order. In a matriarchial society the mother was the head of the family and descent was reckoned through the female line. In a matriarchy a woman did not belong to any man; no man could possess her. A kind of polyandry was in vogue for a long time, and Draupadi seems to be the last of it. Today there are only a few primitive tribes who practice polyandry. That is why the society of her times accepted Draupadi and her marriage and did not raise any objections. If it was wrong, Kunti would have changed her instructions to her sons, but she did not. If there was anything immoral in polyandry even the Pandava brothers would have asked their mother to change her order. But nothing of the kind happened, because it was acceptable to the existing society.

It happens that a custom that is perfectly moral in one society appears completely immoral to another. Mohammed had nine wives, and his Koran allows every Mohammedan man to have four wives. In the context of modern societies, polygamy and polyandry are considered highly immoral.

And the prophet of Islam had nine wives. When he had his first marriage he was twenty-four years old, while his wife was forty.

But the society in which Mohammed was born was very different from ours and its circumstances were such that polygamy became both necessary and moral. They were warring tribes who constantly fought among themselves. Consequently they were always short of male members - many of whom were killed in fighting - while the number of their women went on growing. Out of four persons, three were women. So Mohammed ordained that each man should have four wives.

If it was not done, then three out of four women would have been forced to live a loveless life or take to prostitution. That would have been really immoral.

So polygamy became a necessity and it had a moral aura about it. And to set a bold example, Mohammed himself took nine women as his wives, and permitted each of his male followers to have four. No one in Arabia objected to it; there was nothing immoral about it.

The society in which the Mahabharat happened was in the last stages of matriarchy, and therefore polyandry was accepted. But that society is long dead and with it polygamy and polyandry are now things of the past. They have no relevance in a society where the numbers of men and women are in equal proportion. When this balance is disturbed for some reason, customs like polygamy and polyandry appear on the scene. So there was nothing immoral about Draupadi.

Even today I say that Draupadi was not an ordinary woman; she was unique and rare. The woman who loved five men together and loved them equally and who lived on their love could not be an ordinary woman. She was tremendously loving and it was indeed a great thing. We fail to understand her because of our narrow idea of love.

Question 2:

It is not a special kind of friendship, it is just a friendship. Here too, our ideas come in the way of our understanding. It seems to us that giving away all the wealth of the world in return for a handful of rice is too much. We fail to see that it is more difficult for poor Sudama to bring a handful of rice as a present for his friend, than it is for Krishna to give all the wealth of the world to Sudama. Sudama is so utterly poor, a beggar, that even a handful of rice is too much. Therefore his gift is more important than Krishna's; he is the real giver, not Krishna.

But we see it differently, we look at the quantity and not the quality of the gift. We are not aware how difficult it was for a beggar like Sudama to collect a handful of rice; it is not that difficult for Krishna to give away lots of wealth, he is a king. He does not do a special favor to Sudama, he only responds to his friend's gift; and I think Krishna is not satisfied with his own gift to Sudama. Sudama's gift is rare; he is destitute. In my eyes Sudama shines as a greater friend than Krishna.

I did say that Krishna does not make friends or foes, but it does not mean that he is against friendship. If someone advances the hand of friendship to him, he responds to it with greater love and friendship. He is like a valley which echoes your one call seven times. A valley is not waiting for your call, nor is it committed to respond to you, but it is its nature to return your call seven times. What Krishna does stems from his nature; he is just respond, ing to Sudama's love, which is extraordinary.

It is significant that Sudama comes to Krishna not for any favor, but just to express his friendship, his love to him, and even as a poor man he brings a gift for his old friend. Usually a poor person wants to receive something. he rarely gives anything. Here Sudama comes with a gift and not for a gift, he does not go to Krishna's palace as a beggar. And when a poor man gives his gift, his affluence of heart is in comparable. In the same way, a rich man is expected to give something to charity. But when the contrary happens, when the rich man chooses to beg, as it happened with Buddha - a king turned beggar is again something extraordinary.

If you consider Buddha and Sudama together you will know the significance. Sudama has nothing, and yet he gives; Buddha has everything, and yet he begs. These two events are extraordinary, unearthly. Ordinarily a poor man begs and a rich man gives; there is nothing special about it. But when they re verse their roles, it has immense significance. Sudama is as extraordinary as Buddha; both are rare persons. Poor Sudama bringing a gift to Krishna, who is a king, is what makes the event great. But this is love's way; it does not bother whether you have too much or too little, it goes on giving. Love will never accept that you have too much.

Let us understand this aspect of love, which does not accept the idea that anyone has so much he does not need more. Love goes on giving and it will never say it has given you enough. There is no end to love's bounty. Love goes on pouring its gifts and yet it feels shy that it is insufficient. If you tell a woman that she has done a lot for her child, if she is a nurse, she will thankfully acknowledge your compliments. But if she is a mother she will protest saying, "I could do only a little; a lot remains to be done." A nurse is aware of what she has done; a mother is aware of what she has yet to do. And if a mother brags about her sacrifices for her child, she is a nurse and not a mother. Love is always aware that a lot more remains to be done.

Sudama knows that Krishna lacks nothing; he is a king. Yet he is anxious to bring a gift to him.

When he was leaving his home, his wife said, "Your friend happens to be a king, don't forget to bring a substantial gift from him." But he comes with a gift, and does not ask for anything.

When Sudama meets Krishna he feels very hesitant about his gift; he hides the packet of a handful of rice from his friend. That is the way of love; even if it gives a lot it never thinks it is enough. Love does not give with fanfare as ordinary donors do; it likes to give anonymously. So Sudama hesitates, he hides his gift from Krishna. He is hesitant not just because it is a poor gift of rice; he would have hesitated even if he had rare diamonds. Love does not proclaim its gift; proclamation is the way of the ego.

So Sudama is hesitant and afraid; it is something rare. And what is more amusing is that immediately on seeing him Krishna begins to inquire what gift he has brought. Krishna knows that love always comes to give and not to take. And he also is aware that the ways of love are shy and secretive; he asks for his presents over and over again. And ultimately he succeeds in snatching his gift from his old friend. And what is more amazing, Krishna immediately begins to eat the raw rice that he finds in the packet.

There is nothing special about it; it is love's way. It is because love has become so scarce for us that we are so surprised about it.

Question 3:

This question has been raised often enough. Buddha, Krishna, Mahavira, Jesus, Mohammed, all can be accused of ignoring the problem of poverty which is so widespread. But there are reasons for it. It was not possible for them to think of this problem, because the social conditions in which they lived did not warrant such thinking. We think as conditions demand. Marx thought of it because an industrial revolution had taken place in the West. Before the industrial revolution nothing could have been done to change the economic conditions of society, even to make a dent on its poverty.

It is important to understand.

In the world preceding the industrial revolution, the only instrument of production in the hands of man was his manual labor. And what he produced with his hands was hardly enough to provide him with a decent meal; he could just somehow manage to keep his body together. Such a society was doomed to remain poor; there was no way to eliminate poverty. And the question of equitable distribution of production did arise; they had nothing much in the form of wealth to distribute among themselves. So along with poverty, inequality was inevitable. And I am going to go into it.

Firstly, it was not possible in the feudal society existing before the coming of industrialization to wipe out poverty, because it did not have the necessary wealth. It was possible of course to eliminate a handful of people who were rich; they could have been brought down to the same level as the poor If there was one rich person out of a thousand people, that person could have been reduced to the ranks of the poor, but it would not have made any difference whatsoever to the state of their poverty.

Human labor alone could never produce so much that it could raise society above the poverty line.

One could think of ending poverty only after machines took the place of human labor in producing wealth. Now a single machine could produce in a day as much as a hundred thousand men could produce with their hands. Only then production of wealth on a large scale became possible and we could conceive that the poor need not remain poor any longer. Now there was no historic need for poverty to exist.

So it was only after the Industrial Revolution that Marx came on the scene. The industrialization of society enabled him to conceive of equality. And if there was a Krishna in the place of Marx he would have thought with greater clarity than Marx did. But Krishna happened long before the Industrial Revolution. One can even ask Marx why he did not come before industrialization.

It is not that in the past man lacked the capacity to think, or that he had no idea of ending poverty.

Buddha had it; Mahavira had it. They had their own way of dealing with the problem of poverty. Both Mahavira and Buddha were kings and they voluntarily became poor. They voluntarily renounced their wealth and joined the huge ranks of the poor. Mahavira distributed all his wealth among the poor before he took up sannyas. But poverty remained, it could not be eliminated, their renunciation was no thing more than a moral support to the poor. Mahavira's own psychological pain was gone, but the poverty of the masses continued.

It is for this reason that all the thinkers of the past put so much emphasis on non acquisition, non- possession. They repeatedly said, "Don't hoard wealth." They could not have asked people not to be poor - that was just unthinkable given the social conditions of their days, but they did ask people not to amass wealth, not to be rich. They could not have done anything more to console the poor than ask the rich not to hoard and flaunt their wealth. All the religions of the past stood for renunciation and non-possession of wealth. They stood for sharing all one had with the less fortunate members of society.

But Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha also knew that non-acquisition and charity were not going to remove poverty from the society. It is like trying to sweeten the water of the ocean with a spoonful of sugar. A Mahavira or a Buddha can give away all they have, but it will not be more than a spoonful of sugar in the vast ocean of poverty. It does not make any difference.

Sages of the past did not think of eradicating poverty because it was not possible under the given conditions.

You also want to know why men like Krishna did not do anything to remove inequality. If it was not possible to abolish poverty, at least inequality should have been abolished. Why did not they give a thought to this problem?

There are reasons why no thought was given to the problem of inequality in society. We have to understand it carefully. The thought of removing inequality arises only when a measure of equality begins to surface in a given society. That there is inequality in the society, this awareness comes only when the society ceases to remain divided between distinct classes and instead is divided into different strata of property-holders. For instance, the wife of a poor scavenger will not feel any envy if she comes across a queen wearing a necklace of precious diamonds; the distance between the two is so vast that the poor woman cannot ever dream of competing with the queen. But the same woman will burn with envy if another woman of her own community visits her with a necklace of ordinary stones. Why? Because she be longs to the same class; the disparity between them is very small and there is a possibility to compete with the other.

As long as society was divided into two distinct classes - one consisting of the huge masses of the poor and the other of a handful of super-rich, and the gap between the two was unimaginably vast - there was no way to think of bringing about equality between the rich and the poor. It was just unthinkable that the gap could ever be bridged. So the status quo had to be accepted.

But with the advent of the industrial revolution, gaps began to be bridged and in the place of classes various strata began to be formed. Between the rich at the top and the poor at the bottom, middle strata of income groups came into existence. Between a Rockefeller at the top and a manual laborer at the bottom, there is now a whole army of middle-class people like managers and supervisors with varying scales of income. Society now is not divided into two clearcut classes of the rich and the poor, but into many strata of income groups. The industrial society is not like a two-storied house, it is like a long ladder with many rungs all joined with one another. And because of it every member of society can think of being equal with the one above him.

The idea of equality comes into being when a society is divided not into two classes but into various income groups, all joined with one another like the rungs of a ladder. Unless this happens, the thought of equality cannot arise.

This does not mean that Mahavira, Buddha and Krishna did not talk of equality. They did. They talked of the kind of equality that was possible in their times. It was spiritual equality that they preached throughout their lives. They said that the soul, the spirit of every human being was the same; spiritually all human beings were equal. They could not have said that with respect to external conditions of life like property, houses and clothes, all human beings were equal. Such equality was impossible then. Of course it is quite possible in our time.

But there are things which we cannot think of even today, and the coming generations will surely accuse us for our failure to do so. I will explain it to you with the help of an illustration:

Today a person has to work seven hours each day in a field or factory or office so that he can earn his bread. And we think this is how it should be. But the coming generations will wonder why no one amongst us considered that it is immoral to compel a person to work for a piece of bread. The time is not far away when all production will happen through automation and man will be freed from the drudgery of labor. Then it will not be at all necessary to work to earn one's bread. Human labor will cease to have the value which it has had down the ages. The necessities of life will be available to all without having to work for them. How to spend one's leisure time will be a problem then. not employment. Perhaps those who will demand work will be entitled to less amenities of life than those who agree to go without work. It will look odd if someone insists on having both - work and the good things of life together.

Already economists of America are grappling with a kind of futurist problem, when complete automation of production will make human labor superfluous and unnecessary. Just twenty-five to thirty years from now a situation will arise when people not doing any work will be paid more than those who work. After automation, a single person will operate a huge automobile factory, which today needs a hundred thousand people to operate it. Then people will begin to ask for work because to live without work will be harder than hard work itself. Besides, people will have to be paid by the powers-that-be so that they are enabled to buy cars and other things produced by automatic factories. These are the futurist problems that the economists are grappling with right today.

For sure, someone in the future is going to ask why men like Krishna, Buddha and Karl Marx did not say it is immoral and inhuman to compel people to work for the basic necessities of life. If people were hungry they should have been provided with adequate food and not made to work seven hours every day. But right now it is difficult to conceive it as a moral or social problem. Today sometimes even people with employment have to go without bread, so the question of getting bread without work does not arise.

Ideas and thoughts are intimately connected with the realities of time and space. The pain of inequality was never felt in the times of Krishna. Even the ache of poverty was not felt the way it is felt today. That is why the slogan of equality is not heard in the days of Krishna. It is interesting to know that a thinker like Plato, who was a pioneer of equality, could not think that slavery should be abolished. He believed that slavery was going to live, because slavery was so common in Greece in those days. Plato thought equality could not exist without the slaves.

Question 4:

An elite group has always been there, and it is going to be forever there. Forms change, but it makes no difference. The elite will always dominate the society. Sometimes it dominates in the form of emperors and kings, sometimes as messiahs and saints, and then as pioneers and leaders. I don't foresee a future when elites will disappear. In fact, so long as a few elites are there amongst us they will continue to be dominant over the rest of the society. The difference is that in the past we called them kings and emperors and now we call them presidents and prime ministers. In the past they came as incarnations and prophets and now they appear as mahatmas and leaders. Names don't matter, but elitism is going to live with us.

As long as human society does not evolve so that everyone attains to the same level of growth in every direction of life, there is no escape from elitism. And I don't think such a development is ever going to happen. And it will be a stupid and lackluster society where everyone is at the same level of growth physically and mentally. It will be terribly boring. A chosen few will always be there. A skilled sitar player will outshine one less skilled than he; there is no way to prevent it. An accomplished dancer will dominate the less accomplished ones. It can't be helped. An Einstein is bound to overshadow all those who cannot even put two and two together. In any given situation someone or other is bound to become elite, predominant.

It is true that from time to time we get bored with the old elites and replace them with new ones.

It is just natural. Elites of a particular kind also cease to be relevant in a changing world, and they have to be replaced by another variety. Russia made such a change through a bloody revolution; it liquidated all its old elitist classes. But soon a new class came into being in Russia and it is as dominant as the previous one. The truth is that the new class in Russia is much more domineering than any in the past. And the same story is being repeated in China.

So long as the disparity in intelligence, talent and ability remains between man and man, it is impossible to get rid of domination by the chosen few. And it is also impossible that there will not be those who want to be dominated by them: there will always be people wanting to be dominated by the elites. The elite and non-elite will continue to need each other. That is how the story goes on: one kind of elitism is replaced by another, and because we accept the new one the things of the past seem to be stupid.

In the time of Krishna, coexistence of poverty and richness was acceptable. The poor were content with being poor, and therefore the rich did not feel guilty about their richness. The feeling of guilt can arise only if the poor protest against the existence of the rich. In the absence of such a protest the rich is at ease with his riches; he suffers no qualms of conscience. And for this reason no one thinks of changing the status quo. Now we say there should be equality between rich and poor, but we say so not because we are intellectually ahead of Krishna's time, but because social conditions have undergone a great change.

But even today no one says there should be equality of intelligence: the less intelligent does not demand equality with the more intelligent person. But fifty years from now a slogan like that will be heard, because in fifty years' time science will be able to effectively manipulate man's intelligence.

Then every child will say that he is not going to remain stupid, he is as much entitled to have enough intelligence as everyone else. But he cannot say so right now, because the possibility is not yet there.

Now science has penetrated into the genes of man, the basic unit of heredity which carries with it a complete program for man's physical and mental growth from A to z. Science has gone a long way in exploring the possibilities of the gene and already it is on the threshold of a breakthrough. The science of genetics can tell the IQ of a child from the sperm and egg of his parents that go into his making. Not only that, soon genes will be manipulated in a manner that children will be assured of a good standard of physical and mental health and longevity even before they are born. Now you go to the market and buy flower seeds in beautiful packages that carry on their covers pictures of the complete flowers those seeds will produce in your garden. Similarly within fifty years human seeds will be available in packages that picture the children who may be born from those seeds.

The packages will furnish detailed information about the form and color, height and health, IQ and longevity of each future child. These things will be guaranteed in a way. These things are now quite possible; they were unthinkable only a few decades ago.

When the genetic revolution unfolds itself fully, we will again ask why Krishna did not think of equality of intelligence. It was not possible; there was no way to think of it then.

Question 5:

In this world you have to search for and find everything you need; nothing is given gratis. God is everywhere, and it is not that he is not aware of your sufferings. But you have turned your back on him - and you are free to do so. This much freedom you have that you can choose him or deny him.

Now if you turn your face to God and find him, can you complain why he did not seek you before you sought and found him? If you complain, God will say that it would be a trespass on your freedom if he forced himself on you without your asking.

Freedom means that I am entitled to find what I seek and not that which I don't seek. And remember, nothing in this world is had without seeking. Seeking is a must, and it is part of your freedom.

Sudama's difficult material condition is not the question; his freedom is the real question. Sudama could refuse Krishna's generosity. And I believe Sudama would have refused if Krishna had offered to help him on his own. It is not necessary that Sudama should accept. And there is also the question of Sudama's preparations to deserve it.

All these events have deep psychological meanings. We can find what we seek only after we have done everything to search for it. Without seeking and searching you cannot find even something that is Lying at arm's length. Seeking is the door to finding. The mere poverty of Sudama won't do, he is not alone, there are many who are as poor. And it makes no difference to Krishna whether Sudama is poor or someone else is poor; what makes a difference is that Sudama. in spite of his poverty, came to him to give and not to take. This man deserves to be rich. It is his capacity to give that brings about the transformation in his fortune.

Everyone is responsible for what he is. And everyone has to begin his journey of transformation as an individual, on his own. No one else can walk for him. And once he is started on his journey, all the forces in existence come rushing to his aid. If a person chooses to be poor, he will receive every help from existence; he will find around him everything that is necessary to make him poor. If another person chooses to be ignorant, existence will cooperate fully with him, so that he remains ignorant. And if some body else decides for knowledge, all the avenues of knowledge will become available to him.

In this world we only find that which we seek. Our own desires and longing and prayers come back to us, just like our own sounds are echoed back by the hills and valleys. If you explore the whole psyche of a poor man, you will be surprised to find he has done everything necessary to remain poor; poverty is his choice. Outwardly he may complain against his condition of poverty, but inwardly he is not only reconciled to it, he is at ease with it. If by chance his poverty disappears he will begin to miss it. Similarly an ignoramus is content with his ignorance, and he does everything to protect it. If you try to remove his ignorance he will not only resent it, he will defend it with all his strength.

No, we find what we seek. Sudama finds Krishna because he goes seeking him. It is not proper that Krishna should go to him unasked; Krishna of course will wait for him. Waiting on the part of Krishna is essential. It is not that God is not coming to you because he is unhappy with you, but it is necessary that you should go to him. And the day you go to him and meet him, you will know he was waiting long for you to come, he was standing at his gate to receive you, but it was you who were not willing to see him.

Question 6:

Draupadi fully deserves Krishna's love. Krishna's love is available to all, but Draupadi deserves it in a special way. The truth is that you come to have what you deserve. If you go to the ocean for water, it will give you only as much as your container can hold. The ocean is vast, but how much water you have depends on the size of your container. And the ocean does not refuse, everyone can take according to his capacity.

Draupadi's capacity to receive love is tremendous, and she received abundant love from Krishna.

And the love between them was so profound, so platonic that it could exist without any longing for physical intimacy. That is why Krishna's love and help has always been at the disposal of this extraordinary woman. Krishna does much more for her than he does for anyone else. I told you earlier that when she was being disrobed by the Kauravas, Krishna came rushing to her rescue.

There is a kind of love that is articulate, vocal, and there is another kind of love that is in articulate, silent. And remember, the love that is vocal is never deep, it is superficial, shallow. Words don't have much depth; silence is most profound. So is silent love. And Draupadi's love is silent and pro found. It is discernible on many occasions, but it is never open and aggressive. It is true that silent love makes a much deeper impression on the lovers than does any other kind of love.

Although Krishna's love is always available to Draupadi in the hours of her distress, it does not show itself often in physical intimacy. In fact, when love fails to achieve intimacy at the subtler levels, it craves physical intimacy. Love can be so silent and subtle that physical distances in time and space don't matter for it; it remains even in aloneness. Love can be so deeply silent that it need never express itself in words. And a man like Krishna can very well know this silent love, others cannot.

It is lack of love that gives rise to extravagance of words about love. What we don't have we compensate with words, because words can be easily understood. Now any number of books are being written on love. Psychologists are producing great volumes on love in which they stress that even if one does not feel love in his heart, he should not shrink from declaring it to the loved ones. When a husband returns home from the office in the evening, he should hug his wife and kiss her, even if it amounts to play-acting. He should not shy away from saying some words of love which we call sweet nothings. And when he leaves for his office the next morning, he must say he will miss her the whole day, although in his heart of hearts he is happy to be leaving.

And the psychologists are right; they are right because we live on words and we know nothing of real love. Love has disappeared from our lives; we live on words of love.

We have turned love into a ritual. Really we have turned everything into a ritual. Someone does you a good turn and you say, "Hearty thanks" to him without meaning it. And the other person is pleased to receive it even though you don't feel any thankful ness to him inside your heart. And he will be miserable if you don't say your thanks even though you feel in your heart really thankful for his favor.

Since we don't understand silence, we have to make do with words. Words are so important to us because we live on words.

But remember, when we really love someone, when we are overwhelmed with love for someone, words become futile. You may or may not have noticed it, but it is a fact that in moments of overwhelming love we suddenly find there is nothing to be said in words. Lovers prepare themselves mentally, rehearse for long, every word of a dialogue that they would like to have when they meet each other, but on actual meeting they find to their amazement that they have forgotten every word they had so meticulously rehearsed - the whole dialogue has suddenly evaporated and they are left utterly speechless, silent.

Draupadi's love for Krishna is utterly silent; it is not vocal, but it is deeply felt by Krishna nonetheless.

That is why he helps Draupadi more than anybody else. Throughout the story of the Mahabharat we find Krishna standing by the side of Draupadi as her shadow, protecting her against every danger.

This extraordinary relationship is too fine to be grossly visible; it does not manifest itself so often like ordinary relationships. It is ethereal, subtle; it is silently intimate.

Question 7:

Victory and defeat in life are like the warp and woof with which a piece of cloth is woven. Victory alone cannot make a life, as warp alone cannot create a piece of cloth. Nor can defeat alone make a life. To weave the cloth of life, the warp and woof of victory and defeat, success and failure, gain and loss, right and wrong, are essential. Life is made of these opposites; the opposites are like two sides of a coin.

The real question is not whether Krishna wins a battle or loses it; the real question is whether the totality of one's life results in victory or defeat. And it applies to everyone's life. It is immaterial whether one wins a battle here and loses a battle there. It is possible that a defeat becomes a stepping stone to victory. It is also possible that a victory may serve as a jumping board to fall into abysmal defeat. The warp and woof of life are so vast and complex, every defeat does not mean defeat and every victory does not mean victory. It is okay if one loses a battle or two and wins the war. The ultimate judgment on one's life depends not on a count of wins and losses, but on the final summation of one's whole life story.

It is natural that Krishna had moments of defeat in his life. It is inevitable with life. If God has to live in the world he will have to live as humans do; he will have to accept everything that life brings with it. Success and failure, happiness and pain, light and shade, will walk hand-in-hand together. In fact, one who is not ready to face defeats in life should give up all thought of victory.

Krishna's life contains both victory and defeat; that is why it is so human. But this humanness does not detract from the grandeur and glory of his life, really it adds much to it. It means that Krishna is so unique that he can take defeat too. He is not set on winning, not an egoist who is sworn to win and who is not going to accept a defeat. Krishna is prepared for everything that life brings with it.

He is prepared to lose a war, even to run away from it, to escape it from any point. He accepts the ups and downs of life unconditionally; he is really choiceless. He does not say that he will go this far and no further. This is what makes Krishna tremendously human, and at times because of his humanness he looks small in comparison to the divinity of Buddha and Mahavira. Both Buddha and Mahavira look absolutely divine; they do not look human at all. But remember, too much divinity is likely to turn harsh and inhuman; it loses that beautiful quality called human tenderness.

Krishna is not going to be harsh, so he accepts all that we call human weakness. A proverb says, "To err is human," but there is no corresponding proverb that says, "Not to err is inhuman." There should be one; it is utterly inhuman if one does not ever err. And Krishna does not take a mistake as mistake; he takes it in stride, as something coming with life.

And it is true that Krishna had to leave Mathura. A man like Krishna might have to leave many places; he might prove to be troublesome at many places. Any number of places may find it increasingly difficult to bear him; they can ask to be excused for their inability to go with him. To under stand him and to go with him is really arduous. So Krishna moves away without difficulty; he is not set on staying in a particular place. He moves from one place to another with the ease you move from one room of your house to another. And he leaves a place so utterly that he does not once turn his head to look back at it again. While his lovers feel disturbed about it, and implore him again and again to come back, they want to know if he still remembers them or not, on his part he has left them completely and finally. Now he is mindful of the other place to which he has moved; he forgets Mathura altogether. Wherever Krishna is, he is there totally. And because of it he sometimes seems to be harsh and hard-hearted.

Krishna's life is a flux; he moves with the winds. He goes eastward with the east wind; he goes westward with the westerly. He has no choice of his own to be here or there or anywhere; he goes with life totally. There is a saying of Lao Tzu: Be like the winds; move with the winds; go wherever they take you. And don't choose.

I am reminded of a small Zen parable:

There is a river which is flooded. It is rushing toward the ocean with tremendous speed and force, and two small stalks of some plant are also flowing with its currents. One of the stalks has placed itself crosswise against the currents; it is tense and anxious, tries to fight against them... it makes no difference for the currents which are too powerful to be resisted. The currents are not even aware that a little straw is in their way, trying to resist their triumphant advance. But as far as the little stalk is concerned, it is fighting for its life and wasting all its energy for nothing.

The other stalk has left itself lengthwise in the currents, which are taking it with them effortlessly.

This stalk is relaxed and joyous and festive. It is dancing with the ripples of the river; it has a feeling of sharing and celebrating with the great river. The ways of the stalks make not the least difference to the river, but make all the difference to themselves.

Like the two straws there are two kinds of people in the world. One is demanding, aggressive and resistant like the first stalk which places itself against the river and fights with it and suffers at every step. And there are people - the other kind of people - who say "Yes" to life, who cooperate with it like the other stalk, which places itself in the currents lengthwise and moves effortlessly and happily with them. These people have a sense of deep kinship with existence; they move with it, with a song in their hearts.

There is a flute in Krishna's hands because he has left himself completely in the hands of existence; he flows effortlessly with its currents. He does not come in the way of life, he does not fight with it.

That is how he sings and dances and plays the flute and goes blissfully through life. You cannot put a flute in the hands of Mahavira; he cannot play it. It is unthinkable.

Only Krishna can afford a flute, because he is totally with life, not against it. He is ready to go wherever the river of life takes him. He is as happy in Dwarka as he was in Mathura or anywhere else. And wherever he is, he is dancing and celebrating. That is the way of a choiceless person.

And choicelessness is the door to bliss, ecstasy.

Question 8:

These names are symbolic and they are parts of Krishna's story. They are part metaphor, part events and part metaphysics. That Krishna is driving someone into a cave is how it seems to us.

Even the person concerned can think so, but I understand it differently. A person like Krishna does not drive anyone, although someone can be driven to a point on his own. And it is possible that Krishna follows him. The situation is rather complex.

I have heard that a cowherd is taking his cow from one place to another. A rope is fastened around the neck of the cow and the cowherd has the other end of the rope in his hands. On his way, he meets with a group of traveling Sufis. The head of the group, the Master, halts the cowherd with his cow and asks his disciples to stand around them. This is how a Sufi Master teaches his disciples.

He asks of the cowherd, "Is it you who is tied to the cow, or the cow who is tied to you?"

The man promptly says, "The cow is tied to me. Why should I be tied to the cow?" The Master then removes the rope from the cow's neck and leaves the cow free, and the cow immediately takes off.

The cowherd is perplexed, but loses no time in running after the cow.

Then the Master says to his disciples, "Although the cowherd thinks the cow is in his hands, in reality he is in the hands of the cow."

In fact, every bondage is twofold: the driver is bound with the driven. Sometimes it is difficult to say what is what. Maybe Kalayavan is fleeing and Krishna is forced to run after him. This much is true, however, that a flight is taking place in which one is the driver and the other is the driven. Maybe both of them are being driven. As we know him, Krishna can accept any situation in life. If he has to struggle with something, his struggle too is a part of his great cooperation with existence. Here also he goes with the river.

The legend says that Kalayavan is reduced to ashes by the sight, the look of an awakened Muchkund. This is a metaphor to say that kaal, or time, ceases to exist for one who is awake. Time is perhaps the greatest tension and trouble of our life. Time is the conflict, anxiety, and anguish of man. To live in time means to live stretched between its two poles - the past and the future - and that is what tension is, what stress and anxiety are. Time is the only enemy which we have to fight constantly, and it is time that devours us. Only rarely does someone defeat time and is finished with it. Only rarely does someone transcend time and go beyond it. Only rarely time is burned and destroyed.

But who is it that burns time? You say that Krishna is running ahead of Kalayavan - that is time.

And he alone can destroy time who goes ahead of it, who transcends it. One who goes behind time cannot destroy it; he will live as time's camp-follower, its slave. But for one who goes ahead of time, time becomes his shadow, his slave. Here Muchkund's look after he wakes up, burns time.

As I said, this is a parable. Time exists for one who has his eyes closed, who is asleep. And it ceases the moment one opens his eyes and wakes up. Time always exists in exact proportion to our unconsciousness, to our psychological sleep. And when we are fully awake, aware, time ceases to be. The fire of awareness burns time altogether.

We are all like people sleeping in the caves of their unconsciousness. Krishna's presence can be instrumental in opening our eyes, in awakening us. And time trailing behind Krishna can be burned with his look. I believe time does not exist for Krishna, it exists for Muchkund, and Krishna can free Muchkund too from the grip of time.

If we apply these symbols to the realities of our lives and explore them, they can bring us astonishing experiences and rare insights. It is unfortunate that we take them as just stories and parables and repeat them meaninglessly over and over again. We treat them as historic episodes and relay them from generation to generation. They are really more psychological than historical; they are stories of our psychological potentialities. They are parts of the great psychological drama that man is. But we have never tried carefully to look at them with this perspective, and so a great treasure is being lost. It is for this reason that a rare person like Krishna is gradually reduced into a myth. There is so much in his life that it becomes difficult to know that it is real.

It is necessary to explore the lives of men like Krishna from the perspective of psychology; they are entitled to extensive psychological commentaries.

And lastly I want to say that in the past there was no other way except to express even the great psychological truths of life through symbols, metaphors and parables. They not only served as good vehicles of expression for these truths, they were also safe vaults for keeping treasures of such immense value. These stories have precious gems of wisdom hidden in them. The ancients had no other way than this to preserve them for posterity. But now we have to uncover them and interpret them rightly. Jesus has said somewhere that he speaks in a language which will be understood by those who can understand it, and those who cannot will not be harmed in any way. He spoke so that those who understood him could gain, and those who could not understand him had the joy of listening to a story.

For thousands of years we have had the joy of listening to these stories which are now with us as nothing more than mere stories. In the course of time, we have lost the keys with which we could unlock these treasures and decode their hidden meanings. These discussions I am having with you are meant to make available to you some of the lost keys, so that you decode the real meanings of these metaphors and symbols, myths and parables, and they are transformed into the realities of your lives. Whether or not these are their real meanings is not my concern, but if they help you uncover your minds and discover your reality, they will have served their purpose. Then they will prove to be a benediction, a bliss to you.