Arjuna Vishaada Yoga
Chapter 1, Verse 2
sanjay uvaca
drishtva tu pāndavāneekam
vyoodham duryodhanstadā
āchaaryam upasangamaya
rājā vachanam abraveet
Sanjaya continued: Then the prince, Duryodhan, having seen the army of the Pandavas arrayed in battle order, approached his teacher, Dronacharya, and spoke these words:
In the translation, here is the word 'prince'; but in the Sanskrit verse, raajaa vachanam, 'raja' actually means king and refers to the king, Duryodhan. Why does Sanjaya refer to him as 'raja'? Because Duryodhan was a great man of state. His father, Dhritarashtra, was blind, so it was actually Duryodhan who was controlling the kingdom. His blind father, Dhritarashtra, represents the blind mind. What comes out of the blind mind is pride. Duryodhan represents this great pride that is born from the mind. When the mind is very active, one becomes proud, proud of many things: proud of knowledge, proud of what one has.
The army of the Pandavas was arrayed in a very special formation. Seeing this orderly formation, Duryodhan felt much nervousness and anxiety inside himself. Anxiety appears when one is proud. Even if pride appears very strong on the outside, in reality, it has a lot of weaknesses in it. Why does pride arise? Do you think it is out of strength? No! In reality, pride arises due to the weakness that one has inside. Even if somebody says, "Ah yes, I am very proud of this and I am very proud of that", you can feel that this pride is actually weakness. When pride arises, people think, "Yes, I am very confident!" No. It's the mind that perceives pride as being confidence. In reality, one is running away from something, from the opposite of pride, humility. When one is running away from humility, one only appears to be very grand and confident.
Seeing the army formation of the Pandavas, Duryodhan became anxious. When you start on the spiritual path, your pride sees all your good qualities, but then the mind becomes anxious. This pride tries to make you reason, tries to make you go sideways in a cunning way. That's why Duryodhan rushed to Dronacharya, the great teacher of both the Kauravas and the Pandavas.
Dronacharya represents attachment to the material. He represents the greed in man. Dronacharya also had good qualities. He was a great teacher of military science. Sometimes he would even advise Bhishma. He was the royal guru. But when the pride of Duryodhan saw the greed in Dronacharya, he said, "Let me go and feed his greed. Let me corrupt him. Let me change him. Let me excite him!" Actually, Dronacharya didn't want to fight, but he was bound by his duty. He could not quit his position and say, "No, I can't!" Being the guru, he had to be there to advise.
Duryodhan approached him and tried to poison his mind. Duryodhan only wanted to please himself. He knew that this great teacher had taught the Pandavas how to fight. Seeing how the Pandavas' army was arranged, he asked the teacher, "How can we use this army formation for our own purpose?" He didn't approach the teacher to say, "Oh teacher, look, your best friend's son is there, on the battlefield." He went there for his own personal gain. Dronacharya was the second commanding officer of the army and Bhishma was the first commanding officer. Duryodhan knew that Dronacharya would become the first commanding officer of the army after Bhishma. So he wanted to be on good terms with him. Duryodhan started to honour Dronacharya and praise him. He tried to impress Dronacharya with nice words.
Bhagavad Gita
