CHENNAI: The six internal enemies, which are lust, anger, attachment, greed, pride and vanity, jealousy, along with likes and dislikes, represent the roots of ignorance in us. This is what binds us in attachment with our relatives, friends, possessions, our name and fame, power and position and so on.
Let us go back to an incident from the life of the Pandava brothers. As boys, they went to Guru Kripacharya’s ashram and the very first teaching passed on to them by their guru was Satyam vad krodham maakuroo, which means ‘Speak the truth and never get angry’.
The next day guru Kripacharya asked the Pandava brothers if they had learnt the lesson. All of them except Yudhishtira, the eldest, said they had remembered the lesson. Yudhishtira said, “Revered Gurudev, I have learnt only the first half of the lesson. The latter half I have not yet been able to learn!” So, the guru very patiently made him repeat the words, ‘Krodham maakuroo! Krodham maakuroo’.
But again on the following day, when the guru asked his students if they had remembered the teachings, Yudhishtira said he had not been able to grasp the second half of the lesson. Once again, the guru made him repeat the words ‘Krodham maakuroo! Krodham maakuroo’
This went on for a week. On the eight day, when Yudhishtira insisted that he had not yet learnt the later part of the teaching, the guru sternly questioned —“How can you be so naive? Your younger brothers learnt the lesson on the very first day. Why is it that you cannot remember two simple words, Krodham maakuroo?
Then Yudhishtira clasped his hands reverentially and said, “O Gurudev, I can say now that I have learnt the lesson!”
“How is it that a moment ago, you could not recall the words, and now you assert that you have learnt them?” asked the guru, greatly surprised.
Yudhishtira said, “The first half of the lesson was easy to remember, because I always speak the truth. The latter half — never yield to anger — I could not be sure if I had mastered, unless someone got angry at me, and in return, I remained calm. Today, I found that in the face of anger, I was unruffled and so I can truthfully say that I have remembered your teaching.”
That is how the Pandavas were imparted the wisdom to stay away from the six internal enemies, starting with anger, from a very young age by their guru Kripacharya. Similarly, we should also not be bound by attachment, greed and other internal enemies as well.
Imagine if we were in a situation where we knew who our spouse in our previous births were and if we were to meet them, we would automatically become attached to them again. That is why god removed this attachment of previous lives. God knew that we would be in a dilemma when we remembered the previous life. So, he said — “When you leave the body, you will remember your previous life even in pitru loka — the world of our ancestors. However, in bhuloka or mother earth, when we enter the womb of our mother, in the amniotic fluid equivalent to the milky ocean, we make resolutions or sankalpas that we will not commit the same mistakes we did in our previous lives.”
That is why it is said that the babies kick the mother in the womb. Then the baby turns in the womb. This symbolises the expression of regret of the soul in the womb for all the past sins it has committed.
Lord Shiva says, “The outer world is upside down. When we are born we enter from the divine world into the world of maya or illusion. When the new born baby’s brahmarandra or fontanel enters the world first, it is immediately veiled by maya. Therefore, the baby cries as soon as it is born. This is because the moment the baby is born and enveloped by maya, it forgets all the resolutions made in the mother’s womb. Each one of us has gone through this the moment we were born. Since then, until today, we have been giving too much importance to our external surroundings. We lead a life based on total ignorance or maya.
