Crisis Management: A Case Study of Arjuna’s Rescue, Relief and Rehabilitation by Sri Krishna
By T.N.Sethumadhavan September 2013
GENISIS OF A CRISIS
A crisis is a stressful event or unexpected situation that pops up in our daily life with a potential to hurt or destroy ultimate happiness. When unanticipated negative occurrences challenge our survival ability, we are psychologically thrown off balance. While a crisis may at times be anticipated, its magnitude and effect are always down-played.
Mind is the first factor in man to react to the sensory situations it perceives so easily every time. Its inevitable habit is to come out with lamenting and conflicting conclusions, unless intelligence, the higher faculty, intervenes in the process and starts imposing its competence for better understanding. The discordance between intelligence and mind, between wisdom and emotion, is the chronic ill of mankind, the society and individuals. This is the crisis we face everyday.
Mind’s misbehavior is generally left uncared for and its imbalance is allowed to prevail resulting in man’s wrong responses ruining his wisdom and thereby his welfare. The aim of crisis management is to make a man realize this grave inefficiency, inattention and imbalance and enable him to face the crisis in the most effective manner.
CRISIS MANAGEMENT
Crisis managementis the process by which an individual or an organization deals with a major event that threatens to harm himself or the organization, its stakeholders, or the general public. Since all crises have also a non-human angle it becomes imperative that a crisis is managed not only from a material understanding of its genesis but also with spiritual tools which involves laying a solid foundation or building a strong platform based on the disclosures of the eternal scriptures. This foundation or platform involves a mechanism, design, tactics or strategy to face and defeat any crisis.
During the crisis management process, it is important to identify types of crises which may be due to external or internal factors. Some of the external factors for any crisis are natural disasters, wars etc while internal factors are due to one’s own loss of vision i.e. imperfect evaluation of life situations. Successfully defusing a crisis requires an understanding of how to handle a crisis before they occur.
The different phases of crisis management are
1. The diagnosis of the impending trouble or the danger signals.
2. Choosing appropriate Turnaround Strategy.
3. Implementation of the change process and its monitoring.
Time is the essence of crisis management. If the crisis is not averted immediately when it is noticed, it’s likely it will become incurable and all pervasive. When a crisis strikes, seeking an outsider’s perspective is paramount. With such help smart leaders understand that in the midst of crisis, there is opportunity.
Arjuna, the great Mahabharata War veteran, was no exception to fall into the clutches of a major crisis in his career. His predicament and indecisiveness at a critical time in the battlefield was the cause for the exposition of the Universal Scripture, the Bhagavad Gita which lifted him from the morass of conflict of interest. He sought and received the guidance of an external source in the form of the Divine Teacher, Lord Sri Krishna and successfully got over the crisis he created for himself. Ultimately he became a highly successful warrior prince.
The cause for this transformation from crisis to achievement is the result of the reorientation of the thinking process generated in the mind of Arjuna by the teachings of Sri Krishna which popularly came to be called the Bhagavad Gita.
ARJUNA’S CRISIS
We are all so well aware of the story of the Mahabharata which hardly requires a recapitulation here. We shall therefore straightaway go to the point where Arjuna faces a severe emotional crisis in his life at the battlefield of Kurukshetra. The crisis faced by Arjuna was not only his personal matter but was posing a threat to human civilization and its values then existing and the ages to come.
The preparations for the epic war between Pandavas and Kauravas started. Both the sides mobilized their troops and took their respective positions in the battlefield at Kurukshetra, near modern day Delhi.
Sage Vyasa offered Dhritarashtra the power of sight which would enable him to see the events of war. Unable to see the inevitable massacre of his sons, the blind king desired to know the full details of the war. To fulfill Dhritarashtra's request Vyasa bestowed Sanjaya, the trusted minister of Dhritarashtra, with the divine intuitive vision by which he could know not only the incidents of the battlefield but also the ideas in the minds of the warriors.
After ten days of war, Bhishma, the commander of the Kaurava army was severely wounded and thrown off his chariot. When Sanjaya informed Dhritarashtra about this incident the blind king became very sad and asked him to narrate all the details of the war. The reporting of Sanjaya about the events of war including the dialogue between Sri Krishna and Arjuna at the battlefield is contained in the Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata wherein The Gita text finds place. The Gita opens with the question of the blind king to Sanjaya asking him what happened on the battlefield when the two armies faced each other in the battle formation.
Poised for battle, outstanding warriors in both the Kaurava and Pandava armies assemble at the battlefield. Bhagavan Sri Krishna was the charioteer of Arjuna, the mightiest of the Pandava brothers. Arjuna asked Sri Krishna to place their chariot between the two armies to enable him to have a look at all those with whom he had to fight. Arjuna surveys the armies. He finds his respected elders, teachers, friends and relatives in both the armies, all prepared to lay down their lives.
Although till that time he was in full fighting spirit, when he saw his teachers, elders, brothers, relatives and friends standing before him ready for the fight, his determination gave way to weakness of head and heart He gets disillusioned; falls into a state of utter despondency exhibiting symptoms of physical stress. He said “seeing these my kinsmen, O Krishna, arrayed, eager to fight, my limbs fail me and my mouth is parched; my body quivers and my hairs stand on end”. This sight overwhelms him into an emotional stupor in which he loses control over his body. His composure breaks down. He was overwhelmed by the vagaries of his own mind. A feeling of compassion took him over. His self-confidence deserted him.
He puts forward many pseudo intelligent and wise-looking excuses for not waging a war for which he enthusiastically prepared himself a little earlier. He prefers to live by begging or let himself be killed by remaining unarmed than take up arms against his people. He felt that to fight the war was sinful not sanctioned by religion and the consequences would mean indefinite damnation in hell. He was heading towards a total collapse of his entire personality. He lost his enthusiasm to fight and told Sri Krishna that he did not want to wage the battle against his seniors, relations and friends for the sake of a paltry kingdom. So saying he throws out his weapons declining to fight and sinks in his seat, confused, exhausted and grief-stricken.
When Arjuna conveyed his determination against waging the war Sri Krishna assumed the role of a crisis management consultant and gave him a good peace of advice enlightening him what he should do. Krishna questioned, disapproved and spurned the arguments put forward by Arjuna and analyzed the subject in all its relevance and dimensions.
This is the crisis situation presented to us at the start of the Bhagavad Gita which is not materially different from the situations we face in our daily lives particularly at work places. By the time we reach the end of the Gita, Arjuna the victim of compassion and self-pity is shown as a rejuvenated personality full of enthusiasm to do what was expected of him in the circumstances. That is how the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna became a philosophical dissertation to tackle the problems of day to day crisis situations.
CH2
ARJUNA’S DILEMMA
It is not that Arjuna was unwilling to do his duty as the Army General when he entered the battlefield. He was a picture of courage and self-confidence before the war. Afterwards, Arjuna’s mood suddenly changed. Why he turned his face against the war?
This paradoxical situation was due to the following reasons.
1. Arjuna was overpowered by an emotional upheaval. He saw in the huge armies his own people, (svajana) and was overcome with pity. The key word here is svajana, people who are one’s very own. His lament and depression are rooted in this feeling of svajanatva - one’s own-ness. Arjuna’s ego that strongly felt this attachment supported by possessiveness – own-ness or svajanatva- plunged him into the abyss of sorrow and delusion (shoka and moha).
2. All these feelings arising from the notion that ‘I am theirs and they are mine’ resulted in his discriminative faculty getting overpowered by grief and delusion. He went to the extent of preferring to lead a mendicant’s life which was a duty alien to him.
3. Arjuna thus faces the problem of conflict between emotion and intellect. He was victimized and weakened by the issues of ethics and morality.
4. The flow-chart of Arjuna syndrome is as follows:
Ignorance®confused understanding®feeling of I and Mine (ahamkara and mamakara) ®sorrow and delusion (shoka and moha)®overpowering of discriminative faculty® abandoning one’s own duty (svadharma), adopting alien duty (para dharma), in doing own duty craving for reward with egoism®accumulation of merit and demerit(dharma and adharma)®endless cycle of birth and death, entanglement in samsara, experiencing the desirable and the undesirable, pleasure and pain. (BG.Ch.1)
ARJUNA SEEKS HELP FROM KRISHNA
Lord Krishna, the earliest of the Peter Druckers, lifts the veil of predicament from Arjuna. He makes him view the happenings on the ground in their proper perspective to effectively handle them. Krishna, using His stress management technique, started advising him how to take care of his malady of regret, self-pity and indecision. He says that the origin of Arjuna’s disease is avidya or ignorance. He adduced a number of arguments why Arjuna should not abandon the war but fight it straight away with determination, impersonality and spiritual vision. The remedy prescribed by Krishna was Self-Knowledge (atma jnana). Atma jnana, the concept of ‘know-yourself’, is the source of strength, infinite power, eternal knowledge and wisdom.
Arjuna continues to be submerged in his state of dejection. He seeks refuge in Lord Krishna, imploring him to remove his intense grief. Arjuna’s crisis was more psychological than physical. He saw the heroes in the opposite army as his kith and kin and not as soldiers to be fought against for which he came to the battlefield. Krishna cleans up his thinking process by suggesting various truths so that Arjuna can be restored to his original state of a highly successful warrior prince.
Krishna strongly disapproved Arjuna’s stance. He condemned its demeaning and inopportune timing. He with all his strength, vigor, persuasive skill and stunning words censured Arjuna and was successful in awakening the latter’s dormant and temporarily malfunctioning intellect.
The thrust of Krishna’s advice was empowering Arjuna’s mind, an inner enrichment based on strength and stability drawn from spiritual enlightenment. In this process the focus is not on the physical body of man but on its indweller, the Soul. Arjuna has to find out what factors in his personality really act and perform.
The physical body consisting of sense organs (five organs of perception and five organs of action), mind and intellect are the three instruments which enable man to perceive, feel and think. They are the vehicles through which man undergoes the varied experiences of life. But what makes these three gadgets to act is the indweller, the Soul, which is not accessible through any of these equipments.
The processes of body, mind and intellect are merely the vagaries of the peripheral. The recognition of this fact is removing the ignorance, avidya, and realizing the fundamental truth. As action is true of the body, mind and intellect, so too is the actionlessness (non-action) of the Soul. The understanding of this fact is Spiritual Enlightenment. This was the goal to which Krishna was leading Arjuna. This is the strategy adopted by Krishna to manage and tear down the crisis in which Arjuna found himself.
KRISHNA’S COUNSELLING
On hearing Arjuna’s words of despondency, dismay and disappointment, Krishna responded by denouncing his attitude by using powerful language. He condemned that Arjuna’s grief just before the commencement of war was misplaced, erroneous and unbecoming of a warrior of his caliber and class. Wars had been there all along and everybody knew its consequences. The fighters’ personal feelings of sympathy, love or concern have no relevance in a war for a soldier who came prepared for the fight.
The Lord told Arjuna “There is nothing wrong in the situation; the fault lies in your own personality. The events by themselves are not good or bad. But they become so by the viewers’ perception, attitude and vision. In the act of seeing, the object seen is always inert. The seer, the subject, alone is sentient. Why blame the scene you are observing, Arjuna. Blame your own weakness and ignorance. Leave your unmanliness, the weakness of your heart, Arjuna, and rise up with determination to take up your bow and arrows and proceed to combat the opponents.”