WAR AND PEACE

A part of understanding life is to understand death. One can experience life, but one cannot experience death. This is what we commonly believe, but within life there is a fear of death,which every one feels. Where has this fear of death come from? Our Dharmik sastras say, “Death exists in life. With life existing simultaneously we start dying slowly, every day bringing us closer to death, we also come closer by one day to our new life." This is the beauty of life. It has hope in fear, and warning in growth or prosperity.  When we study beyond one life, we study this wonderful phenomena of opposites  existing in any situation or any thing.  

Being excited about life is one sided, and being in anxiety about life is also one sided. Excitement and anxiety are simultaneously co-existing. Similarly all opposite things co-exist simultaneously, this is the view of the Vedanta.

Similarly peace, is not independently possible. It is a bitter reality, peace cannot be pure, it can only be achieved by fighting for it, sounds ridiculous? We can see the history of the world. No one has achieved peace by peace, or by inaction, or silence.  Whatever peace we can have in this world was achieved by violence. This is the reality. The Mahabharata or The Ramayana explicitly remind us of this reality by their practical narration.

Krishna the supreme, shows us that if you are  vying for peace, the other party who will always exist, will try to take advantage of your peace. Yudhisthira took a vow to have peace with his uncle Dhrithrasthra and to avoid all conflict. Dhritharasthra took advantage of that vow and invited Yudhisthira for the gambling match. Yudhisthira after completing the exile asked for a bare minimum five villages, as kingdom  to administrate, Duryodhana refused. How can you allow such a thug to rule?  The mentality of Duryodhana is the mentality of war against peace, so how can peace ever exist?  Without confrontation peace will be non existent.  So Krishna asked Arjuna to help establish the order of nature, “balance.”  adharama means imbalance. 

Only war is brutal, only peace, is unreal, peace can exist after we  fight the brutal war, the judicious war,  the limited war.  In this way life will always go on.  Do we agree? 

Peace be for every one, but are  we ready for the battle?