“The truth is that a crisis and its remedy are born together, both for the person and for all creation.”
On the strength of dreams and forebodings we imagine the joys and sorrows of the future, and to remove the cause of some future sorrow we lay our plans today. But whether uprooting a coming crisis today brings us benefit or harm — this we never stop to ask. The truth is that a crisis and its remedy are born together, both for the person and for all creation.
Chapter 5 of 35 — 2 parts, 4 min in total.
Characters in the Mahabharata are undone less by enemies than by a single soft place in themselves. Yudhishthira cannot refuse a game of dice. Karna cannot refuse a friend who was kind to him once. Bhishma cannot break a vow he made as a young man to a father who never asked for it.
The epic treats these not as flaws to be sneered at but as the ordinary shape of a person. What it examines is the moment when the weakness meets a situation built to exploit it — and whether the person has done the work beforehand to recognise it.