Question 8

QUESTIONER: A PART OF THE QUESTION STILL REMAINS UNANSWERED. IT IS ABOUT KRISHNA'S CONCH, PANCHJANYA, AND HIS WEAPON, CHAKRASUDARSHAN. AND WHAT ABOUT THE BHAGWAD'S DESCRIPTION OF MAHARAAS -- THE GREAT DANCE -- AS A CHILD'S PLAY WITH HIS SHADOWS?

Everything associated with Krishna has a symbolic meaning. Man has five senses, five doors through which he expresses himself and relates with the rest of the world. These are eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin. We know and experience everything through them, and it is through them we go out into the world and relate with it.

When the storyteller writes that Krishna blew his panchjanya on the battlefield of Mahabharat, it only means that he was totally present on the battlefield with all his five senses, nothing more. War is not an occupation for him; nothing is an occupation for him, so whatever he happens to be doing at the moment he does totally. As Kabir goes to the market with his total being to sell cloth, Krishna goes to the battlefield with his whole being. Through the panchjanya he announces his total presence on the battlefield. He is not there partially; in fact, he does nothing partially. Wherever he happens to be, he is there in his totality, with all his senses, with all his being.

Everyone taking part In the war of Mahabharat has his own conch, with a special name and quality of its own. It has its own special sound too. And every conch has a corresponding unity with the personality of the warrior who wears it. But Krishna's panchjanya is unique and incomparable. Except him, nobody is present there totally. And the irony is that he is the one person who is not going to take part in the fight. He is not committed to fight.

The truth is that only he who has no commitments can be total. If you are committed to anything, you are bound to be partial in your endeavor to fulfill it. You cannot stand totally behind your commitment; at least "you" will be left behind. Only the uncommitted can be total; he will be wholly in whatever he does. That is why Krishna alone is totally in the battlefield, although he is not going to take part in the fighting. And the panchjanya heralds his total presence there. He has really nothing to do with the war that is going to be fought on the Kurukshetrai he is neutral. He is not interested in victory or defeat he has no vested interest in either of the two sides of the war. And yet a moment comes and he enters the war with his own weapon, the sudarshan.

This sudarshan too has a great meaning symbolically. The people who wrote the epic of the Mahabharat worked very hard with words. Really, it is the words that constitute the heart of a great poem, and so words are very important. There are words in this epic that have taken centuries of hard work to bring to perfection. The word sudarshan is one such word. Sudarshan, a Sanskrit word, means that which is good looking, beautiful.

It is amazing that a weapon of death and destruction can be beautiful. Death is not supposed to be beautiful, but it becomes beautiful in the hands of a man like Krishna. That is the meaning of Krishna's weapon; it lends beauty even to death. The sudarshan is a very lethal, very destructive weapon, as destructive as the atom bomb. But we cannot give this name sudarshan to the atom bomb. But Krishna does the miracle; he turns death into a blessing. Even death is beautiful if it is in the hands of a Krishna. And by the same logic a flower ceases to be beautiful if it is in the hands of a Hitler. Beauty depends on the quality of the person who holds it. That is how at the hands of Krishna even death is blissful. And people on both sides of the Mahabharat know it; that is why they called his weapon by this beautiful name.

A moment comes when Krishna plunges into battle with a weapon in his hands. This is an expression of his spontaneity. Such a person lives in the moment; he lives moment to moment. He is not tied to the past, not even to the minute that has just passed. And such a person does not promise anything.

Jaspers, a great thinker, has defined man as an animal who makes promises. Some others have defined man as a thinking animal. But Krishna does not fit with Jaspers' definition of man; he simply does not promise. Gandhi may be one of those who fulfill Jaspers' definition of man. Krishna is one who lives in the moment; he accepts what every new moment brings with it. If it brings war, Krishna will accept war and go into it.

Only he who lives in freedom lives in the moment. And one who makes promises is bound by the past, and this past begins to impinge on his freedom and goes on diminishing it. Really, the past hangs heavy on his future; he is fettered by the past.

That is why a moment comes in the war of the Mahabharat when Krishna actually takes up arms and fights, although he has no desire to take part in the war. Those who want to understand Krishna find this event coming in their way again and again. They wonder why he actually takes part in the war. The reason is that such a person cannot be relied upon; he is simply unpredictible. He will live the way a new situation demands; he responds to every situation afresh. And you cannot ask him why he is so different today from what he was yesterday. He will tell you, "Yesterday is no more. Much water has gone down the Ganges. Today's Ganges is quite different from what it was yesterday. Right now I am what I am, and I don't know what I am going to be like tomorrow. I too will know it only when tomorrow comes."

Prediction about men like Krishna is not possible. The astrologer will accept defeat before them. The astrologer is concerned with the future; he predicts your tomorrow on the basis of what you are today. He can say what you are going to do tomorrow on the basis of what you are doing today, because you are bound by time. But astrology will utterly fail in the case of Krishna, because his tomorrow will not flow from his today. Nobody can say what he will do tomorrow, because he lives in the moment. Tomorrow's Krishna may have nothing to do with today's. Tomorrow's Krishna will be born tomorrow. There is no linear connection between the Krishnas of today and tomorrow.

This matter of living has to be understood in some depth. There are two kinds of life. One kind of life is sequential, chain-like, each link is joined with ar:other. It has a continuity. And the other is atomic, atom-like, every moment independent of another. It is not continuous. One who lives a life of continuity will find there is a link between his yesterday and his today; his today comes from his yesterday. His life is a continuation of his dead past his today springs from the ashes of his yesterday. So his knowledge is the product of his memory; it is just a bundle of memories. To say it metaphorically, his life's rose grows on his grave.

The other kind of life is utterly different. It is not continuous; it is atomic. Its today does not come from its yesterday; it is absolutely independent of the past. It springs exclusively from that which is the whole of today's existence. It has nothing to do with the chain of my memories of my yesterdays and their conditionings; it is absolutely untouched by the past. My being today is entirely based in the great existence that is here today, right now; it is existential. It arises from the existing moment, and its next moment will arise from the next existing moment, and so on and so forth.

Of course, there is a sequence in such a life too, but it is never continuous, contiguous. It is each moment's moment. And such a person lives in the moment and dies to the passing moment. He lives today and dies to it as soon as it is gone. Before he goes to bed at night he will die to the bygone day; he does not carry even a bit of it over. And when he wakes up tomorrow, he will live in the moment that will exist then. That is how he is always new and young. He is never old; he is ever young and fresh. And because his being springs from the whole of existence, it is divine.

This is the meaning of Bhagwan, the blessed one, the divine one. His being is atomic, existential, comes from what is, from reality. He has no past and no future, he has only a living present. That is why we call Krishna Bhagwan, a divine consciousness. It does not mean that there is a God sitting in some faraway heaven who has incarnated in the form of Krishna. Bhagwan only means the divine, the whole, one whose being springs from the whole.