“The more people's lives a person can sway, the more he can put a check upon the freedom of others, the more he feels himself to hold power.”
The craving for power grips everyone's heart. Every person surely tries to build a realm of his own — whether that realm be as vast as the Kuru kingdom or confined to his own household, he strives to gain power over it. But what is the true nature of power?
Chapter 16 of 35 — a single teaching, 2 min in total.
The Mahabharata is less a story with a moral than a very long argument about how to act. Its characters are given impossible situations and are judged not on the outcome but on the quality of their reasoning and the honesty of their motives.
Krishna's role throughout is the counsellor who refuses easy answers. He does not remove the difficulty; he changes what the person is able to bring to it.