The Mahabharata has reached whole new levels of inaccessibility

Once upon a time, a man was being persecuted by the government for his religion. The religion wasn't Christianity; it involved animal sacrifice. His neighbors found this practice quite untoward and ugly, and they'd created a bunch of regulations designed to target his specific religious practices. Other kinds of animal killings were legal, but not the kind he did.

What made things complicated for this man was that, because of the animal sacrifices, he had certain powers that would enable him to strike back at his persecutors. At the very least, he could cause their children to sicken and die.

The shaman would never commit murder to further his own self-interest. Definitely not! But he did represent a community—the same people who attended his ceremonies and believed in the power of his rituals. If he gave up his home and moved away, his people would fall apart. Their sons would turn to drugs; their daughters would lose their virtue; their men would become thieves and deadbeats.

At the same time, the shaman was being beleaguered by notices, by appeals, by lawsuits, by a blizzard of requests to appear at far-flung courts, and his lawyers warned there was a very real chance this case could bankrupt him.

His main opponent was a very officious neighbor. And what the shaman understood was that in this particular case, his neighbor was wrong. And that right and wrong have some cosmic significance. Within the canons of this particular society, the United States, what the shaman was doing was actually protected by the highest court in the land.

If all of society had been arrayed against the shaman, no amount of magic could’ve helped him. But in this case, the opposition was really being driven by a single man. And if this neighbor's children were to fall sick, then the man's will would be sapped, and he’d no longer have the energy to attend public meetings and ceaselessly lobby elected officials.

But the shaman didn't particularly want to hurt his neighbor's children. The shaman was a master of certain ritual practices, but he was also a student of the higher philosophy of his religion. And he understood that at some essential level, everybody was the same. He and his neighbor were the same person. They shared the same godhead. The shaman understood that his own soul would be cycled through every possible incarnation before it reached the end, and that his own soul actually resided within the neighbor as well. That in some very real way, this whole drama was simply the shaman persecuting himself.

On the other hand, the shaman could also stop sacrificing animals. He understood that although in his religion these practices were allowable and even encouraged, they were not required. There wouldn't be a divine punishment if they stopped sacrificing, so long as they replaced the sacrifice with some symbolic equivalent. It would be difficult to convince the shaman’s neighbor that the sacrifices had truly stopped, but ultimately...it seemed doable. Even the shaman's lawyers seemed very frustrated that he hadn't actually stopped. The way this particular society worked was that you had the legal right to do many things, but polite people didn't necessarily exercise those rights if their neighbors objected. His lawyers wanted to preserve that legal right, but the actuality was distasteful.

The shaman didn't love sacrificing animals. The goats sprayed blood everywhere. His wife had to clean the blood. It smelled. Goats had very soft, limpid eyes—he saw himself in these goats. Maybe that made him a bad shaman, but he was an educated person—he'd gone to dental school. His father had taught him these practices, and the shaman had learned them and believed they were important and had power, but...it wasn't a power the shaman would've sought out on his own.

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Anyway, the shaman knew many true things about the cosmic order. But he didn't necessarily know where his own little community of immigrants to Berkeley, California, belonged in that order.

What he did know was that animal sacrifice had power. The shaman knew that. It was a living power that he possessed, which he'd learned from his father.

It wasn't an endless power, no. But there was no power that was endless. Even King Canute couldn't order to Ocean to flow out before it was time—knowing the limits of your power was a mark of wisdom.

In this particular case, the man had the power.

But if this thing was done—and the man did indeed plan to do it—then it needed to be done in the interests of his people. Engaging in a ritual to curse a man, to kill his children—that was no small thing! If it wasn't to be done simply for reasons of vanity and spite, then it needed to be done with some concrete aims in mind.

He wanted to destroy his neighbor, yes, but his broader purpose was to preserve the institution of these sacrifices as a public ritual. If he was going to curse this man, then it couldn't be done in a malign, dark, secret way. It needed to be public.

He started making phone calls to the seven other men who usually attended him in these ceremonies. They were all in favor of cursing his neighbor—who everyone hated—but none of them wanted to come with him to the neighbor's house to confront him one last time.

"What is the point of that?" said the oldest friend of the shaman's father. "The man will say we menaced him, threatened him with a gang of people."

"But that is what we are doing."

"And what is the benefit? If his son dies, and we threatened him beforehand, then we might be blamed."

"But we should be blamed! We would be to blame!"

"Yes, but they might think we poisoned the child. What if you end up arrested?"

"Then that would be good, no? I would be guilty of murder. If I am arrested, that would be good. That would be justice."

He realized that while these men claimed to believe in these sacrifices, they mostly undertook them for symbolic reasons, because it was a traditional practice, a traditional part of their culture.

They didn’t really understand, as he did, that this sacrifice would work. The boy would die.

And if he did this ritual, and the boy died, then the participants in the ritual would be sealed together like a criminal gang—they’d be a group of people who’d gotten into something dark, and treacherous, from which they couldn't emerge.

The shaman didn't care if he was arrested, so long he did what was correct. The shaman understood and believed that killing his neighbor's child in this instance was correct. But he couldn't really make his congregation understand that fact. That was the problem. They were happy to do the sacrifice, but they didn’t want its aim to be publicly known. That was wrong. That wouldn't work. Well, actually, it might work. The boy might actually die. But it wouldn't be good. It would degrade the spiritual power of their people.

The shaman realized what he'd already known, which is...a victory that's won through the wrong means is tainted. If he won because he'd killed his neighbor's son, then...who would want to participate in these rituals anymore?

What the shaman truly feared was that this living knowledge for which he was the steward—that this knowledge would die. He himself didn't have a son. He had only daughters. He'd like to be very feminist about this whole thing—he would definitely be willing at this point to teach a woman about these rituals and to risk God’s wrath, but in actual fact none of his daughters wanted to do it. None seemed to have any interest. He had polled them in various ways, and they didn't really want to. He could force them, but...they were girls, so it was already iffy. If you're going to force your kids to participate in something, then it should be something culturally sanctioned—if you're forcing them to engage in a heterodox practice, then that's quite impractical. It just won't achieve the desired aims.

However, amongst the children of his followers, some people were a bit curious. They weren't the best, honestly. They were oddballs. Goobers. Who wants to sacrifice animals and learn witchcraft these days? Weirdos!

Perhaps there was a deeper meaning in that, however. He'd need to learn. He'd need to start answering emails from these kids. Develop some kind of apprenticeship. It would be a lot of work. He didn't want to be too accessible! He didn't want some kid not taking this stuff seriously. Honestly better to let it die out than for it to be tainted. The world didn't need shamanism.

But, luckily, he actually believed in his own religion. He believed that goodness and truth had some spiritual power, and that truth would win out over evil.

He went to the trouble, and he found three people who were interested in this. And he brought them to the farm where they got the goats. And he taught them that this animal is part of us. Like, that's not hokey, woo-woo stuff. This animal is us. This goat is us. We are the same. It's very possible that someday you, your essence, your soul, will be inside this animal—perhaps this exact animal.

He taught them many other things. That we engage in all these ritual practices because they purify us. They increase our spiritual power. And with greater spiritual power, we're better able to achieve whatever is good. Our pursuits, to the extent that they are good, will be more likely to succeed if we ourselves are pure.

He wasn't sure whether they really understood. But they seemed interested, and they kept coming. He formed connections with them. One was pushy, kept wanting to preside over a ceremony himself. But...at least that pushiness was a sign of interest. The pushy one also seemed kinda swishy, gay, but the shaman didn’t talk about it. Thankfully the pushy one didn’t try to mention gay stuff around him.

Another kept asking, "How do you know this is true?"

The shaman said...I just know. Study the ancient texts, and you'll know too.

He knew that what he was doing, reaching out to kids, helping them, connecting with them—It was good. It was very difficult. Like, he had a job. He was fighting in court. He wasn't perfect. The kids sometimes got annoyed with him. What if these teenagers who he was tutoring—what if they started hating him? What if they rejected him? What if they came away thinking he was full of shit and they posted on the internet about how actually they’d been raised in a religion run by this terrible shaman who was exactly like those awful Christian youth pastors who tried to be woke and connect with you, but deep down...they really did believe in all that conservative stuff and had terrible patriarchal values.

He didn't want to argue all the time with kids! He just wanted them to understand what he understood about the nature of reality. So...he did try to set boundaries. If you don't want to be here, you don't have to be.

When the time came, only the swishy one was actually willing to participate in the sacrifice. It's a scary thing. It marks you as forever separate from other people. The shaman knew! He'd realized pretty early that his dad wasn't particularly comfortable around animals. Why would he be? The shaman's family didn't keep animals himself! They weren't farmers! For a suburban Berkley-ite to go out and acquire and handle and murder these animals was a deeply uncomfortable, unnatural process.

Even buying the animals was difficult. Because of the negative publicity surrounding his court case, he'd started having to travel further and further to even get the goats. His usual contacts nearby had started demurring.

But you know what? Seeing that there were youngsters involved? That really helped. These small farmers—who often were of Asian descent themselves, because that's the only people who would deal with the shaman—these people really accepted and respected the presence of youngsters, because they had their own difficulties getting kids to be interested in their own traditional practices. Anyway...this work the shaman was doing, this work was good. And the way he did it was good. And that goodness is ultimately the reason he prevailed in court.

His miserable neighbor moved away, thank God, and probably lost a little money because nobody wanted to live next to the animal sacrifice house. But guess what? The neighbor himself created that problem. This was Berkeley, many people here were raising livestock in their backyards, including goats. The shaman didn't do that! Ninety-nine percent of the time, his backyard was animal-free. If the neighbor hadn't publicized that something unusual was going on, nobody would've thought it was weird. The shaman encouraged his disciple’s father to make an offer, and guess what—they got a below-market house, and the shaman was actually a good neighbor, unlike many people in Berkeley.

So...justice won out in the end! And the shaman, thankfully, didn't have to kill any of the neighbor's kids.

Afterword

I continue to wake up at 5:30 AM in the morning to read the Mahabharata. I am reading the ninth volume of Bibek Debroy's unabridged translation—a book that I am extremely thankful exists. This book didn't exist twenty years ago! That is wild. Yes, the Mahabharata existed in various English translations, but there was only one unabridged translation, the Ganguly, which is a hundred years old. And it was reissued at some point in the 20th century by a press in India (I just purchased a copy of their first volume). This Ganguly translation also existed in various forms online.

But...this Debroy translation came out from Penguin. I bought it from Amazon, and it was delivered to me via the Kindle app. This book is well-formatted, with copious footnotes and is extremely accessible. If Bibek Debroy hadn't taken the time to translate this book and hadn’t used his political power to get it printed by a major press, I would not be reading it. Because of his efforts, the Mahabharata is much more accessible to educated Indians (his primary audience) than it was twenty years ago.

Anyway, while access to the text has increased, the content of the ninth volume of the Mahabharata is extremely inaccessible to the point where it almost seems silly to blog about it. Previously, it might’ve been inaccessible because it was tedious or long-winded. But now it’s inaccessible because the genre has changed entirely! You see somehow (and I am laughing as I write this) the Mahabharata has turned into something that really strongly resembles a philosophy text.

And unless you've read nine volumes of the Mahabharata, you cannot know how funny this is. But imagine if at the end of The Iliad, Achilles had asked, "Okay, what now?"

Remember, at the end of The Iliad, Achilles is still alive. He does not die in The Iliad. What if he'd turned to Nestor and said, "Okay. What now? What happens now?"

What would Nestor have said?

Within the world of The Iliad and the culture that created The Iliad, that kind of questioning is impossible. That questioning came later, with the Ionian philosophers.

But...what if someone at that point had decided to rewrite the entire Iliad and incorporate that kind of questioning? And now, two thousand years later—what if this was the only version of The Iliad that had survived? What then?

That's what the Mahabharata is! In this particular text, it makes complete sense for Yudhisthira, the prince who's become ruler of the known world, to start asking all these questions about the nature of reality and the ultimate aim of life.

Yudhisthira begins by asking Krishna, his friend who is also a God, for some of his wisdom. And Krishna says something like, "I will invest your uncle Bhishma with all my wisdom, and then you can ask Bhishma your questions." So they go and find Bhishma, who's lying on the battlefield, pierced with arrows, because he doesn't want to die until the auspicious day.

And Yudhisthira starts asking questions! I've gotten to the part about moksha, which is one possible aim that a human being can aspire to. With moksha, you achieve release from the cycle of rebirth. When you die, you're just gone, you don't need to be reborn anymore.

Anyway, to even talk about moksha necessarily involves a lot of questions about the cosmic order. When you talk about moksha, it suddenly becomes much more important to start defining your terms a bit.

The questioning here isn’t skeptical or atheistic. Yudhisthira believes in God. He has met Gods! He is friends with Krishna! He is not an atheist. He's gotten to this point because he believes already in dharma—the idea that the cosmic order rewards people who do what is right. His belief in dharma is exactly why he won this war and Duryodhana, his cousin, lost the war.

With regards to moksha, there's just a lot of questions that need to be answered so that Yudisthira can understand precisely what Bhishma is talking about. For instance, if Bhishma is saying you will find release, then the question becomes...What am I? What is the part of me that is reborn? What is the part of me that is freed?

Anyway, there is a lot of abstruse Sanskrit philosophy terminology in here. A lot of things I hadn't really heard of before. Much of the volume sounds like this:

The traits of the dharma of renunciation are that this leads to the eternal brahman, who is not manifest. Prajapati has spoken about the characteristics of the dharma of pravritti. From pravritti, one has to return again. Nivritti leads to the supreme objective. A supreme sage who is engaged in nivritti attains that supreme end.

Within the texts there are various definitions of pravritti, nivritti, tamas, rajas, adhyatma, and dozens upon dozens of other terms. It's kinda technical! The term 'manifest' is also the subject of a lot of discussion. What does it mean to be manifest versus unmanifest?

Now...am I going to remember all this stuff? No...but I am interested. I do generally believe in it: I just don't know how relevant it is to my own life. If I was going to try and explain Sanskrit cosmology to other people, I'd have to know it better. Right now, I would say that I understand Kant's Critique of Pure Reason a lot more than I understand the ninth volume of the Mahabharata, to be honest. But with Kant and with this, I think you, my readers, understand that I'm not an expert—I'm just someone who read a book (in both cases, a translation).

What's true of both Kant and of the Mahabharata is that...you can actually go and read it. Yeah, it's difficult, but you can see for yourself. Or at least...you can see something. Whether that's what is actually in the text in the original language is a matter of debate, but...you don't necessarily need to engage in that debate if you don't want to.

The further I get into the Mahabharata, the more I'm humbled by the task of posting on my blog about it. Reading the work is hard enough—trying to figure out how to present this work to the public is also difficult.

I often talk to Indian-American people here in the Bay Area who are, like me, put off by the caste system. Hinduism involves a set of religious practices that we ourselves have had varying exposure to. My parents are not religious. We didn't go to temple. But my grandmother is very religious. She definitely tried to get me interested in Hinduism—I was never particularly receptive. I don't necessarily regret that.

But I’m happy that this book exists, the Mahabharata, and I’m very thankful to be reading it.

In terms of my own religious beliefs, I am convinced that right and wrong have spiritual power. I believe the side that's correct will in the end defeat the side that’s incorrect. I myself might not actually witness that victory because in the meantime I might die. But I do think goodness has its own power. And this is something I believe much more deeply now than I did six months ago.

Maybe that feeling will be fleeting. I have no idea. But even if I stop believing in it, that doesn't mean it'll stop being true.

Further Reading

I’ve collected in order my series of posts on the Mahabharata, from oldest to newest. Oftentimes the posts are only very loosely related to the volume in question: I apologize for that. My readership grew a lot while I was writing these posts, and in the future I hope to have a cleaner approach to classic texts. I’d like to devote at least a couple paragraphs to describing the contents of each book I read, instead of launching immediately into analysis.

My older posts tended to make very broad, sweeping claims about Hinduism—I still stand by what I said, but I don’t know if I’d use that rhetorical approach in the future, since, fundamentally, it was an approach that was geared to a non-Indian reader, and this blog has now grown to have a pretty substantial Indian audience—an audience I hope to treat somewhat more respectfully than I have treated them in the past.

• Volumes 1 and 2

  • “Hinduism doesn’t exist”

  • “Hinduism is somewhat ugly”

  • “Hinduism is not monotheistic”

  • “The secular American university is worth keeping”

• Volumes 3 and 4

  • “The Mahabharata is a socio-historical process that's also an incredible text”

  • “The Gospel according to some guy’s wife”

  • “The Great Books are a source of power”

• Volume 5

  • “Sometimes the Great Books can be boring”

• Volumes 6 and 7

  • “Hinduism did not precede Buddhism”

  • “The Mahabharata is not boring”

• Volume 8

  • “The most important news you’ll hear about today” - This post, a sort of obituary for Bibek Debroy, attempts to contextualize the size of his achievement

  • “Hinduism might be true”

  • “Dharma isn’t assigned by society”