Parents, and the long shadow their wishes cast over their children.
Almost every catastrophe in the Mahabharata can be traced to a parent. Dhritarashtra cannot refuse his son. Gandhari blindfolds herself rather than see. Kunti abandons a child and keeps the secret for a lifetime. Shantanu's desire costs Bhishma everything.
The epic is unusually clear-eyed here: it does not present parents as villains, but as people whose love, unexamined, becomes the instrument of harm. What a parent wants for a child and what the child owes the world are not the same thing, and the gap between them drives much of the plot.
Terms you'll hear
- Pitr-rina
- The debt owed to one's forebears — a real obligation in dharmic thought, and one the epic keeps testing.
Background on the theme of this chapter, not a summary of this particular clip. Watch it for what Krishna actually says.
Transcript
English translation
The desires, the hopes, the ambitions, the anger, the enmity, the vengeance of those who came before — all of these become the inheritance of the generation to come. Parents wish to give their children all the happiness of the world, yet what they give is the wealth of their own wounds. They wish to give nectar (amrit), yet at the same time they fill the vessel with poison. Reflect: what have you given your children until this day? Love, surely, and knowledge, and wealth — but along with these, have you not also given them the prejudices (purva-graha) that fill the mind with impurity? Have you not handed them ready-made definitions of good and bad? The conflict of one person with another, of society with society, of nation with nation — are these not fashioned out of those very prejudices? Killing, death, bloodshed — are these not born of them? And so, along with birth, parents give their children the gift of death as well; along with the light of love, they give also the darkness of hatred. And darkness — whether of the mind and heart, or real — yields nothing but fear. Only fear. Reflect on it yourself.
हिन्दी — as spoken
पूर्वजों की इक्छा, आशा, महत्व कांच्छा, क्रोध, बैर, प्रतिशोध, यही सब आने वाली पीड़ी की दरोहर बनते हैं। माता पिता अपनी संतानों को देना तो चाहते हैं समस्त विश्व का सुख, पर देते हैं अपनी पीड़ाओं की संपत्ती। देना चाहते हैं अम्रित, पर साथ ही साथ विश्व का घड़ा भी भर देते हैं। आप विचार कीजिए, आपने अपनी संतानों को क्या दिया आज तक? अवश्य, प्रेम, ज्ञान, संपत्ती आदि दिये, पर क्या साथ ही साथ उनके मन को मैल से भर देने वाले पूर्फ्रेह नहीं दिये? अच्छे, बुरे की पूर्णिर्धारित व्याख्याएं नहीं दिये? व्यक्ति का व्यक्ति के साथ, समाजों का समाजों के साथ, राष्ट का राष्ट के साथ संघर्ष, क्या इनी पूर्व ग्रहों से निर्मित नहीं होते? हत्या, मृत्यू, रक्तपात, क्या इनी पूर्व ग्रहों से नहीं जनते? अर्थात माथा पिता अपनी संतानों को जन के साथ मृत्यू का दान भी देते हैं प्रेम के प्रकाश के साथ साथ घृणा का अंधकार भी देते हैं और अंधकार मन का, रुदे का हो या वास्तविक हो उससे केवल भय प्राप्त होता है केवल है स्वेम विचार की
Auto-transcribed from the audio; lightly imperfect on Sanskrit names and terms.
