neither pure good nor pure evil

When I was a child in junior high school I read the comic version of Hindu epic Mahabharata.

It was then when I started to understand that there is neither pure good, nor pure evil in this world.

In the epic, the good guys, Pandavas were sometimes told to have done some wrong-doings. Yudhisthira, the purest one of them, does have passion for gambling which bring misfortune for all his brothers and families. The bad guys, Kouravas did a good deeds such as return an honor to a humiliated kshatriya, Karna which later give them his loyalty to the death as a sign of gratitude.

The epic was so touching that even I was reading it as a comic in a my very young age, there were some episodes which I can remember until now.

One of them was the episode of Ekalavya. Below is a short version of it that I got from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drona):

Ekalavya is a young prince of the Nishadha tribes, who comes to Drona (note: which was a great guru and the teacher of Pandavas and Kouravas) for instruction. Drona rejects him on account of him not belonging to the Vedic religion, nor being an Indo-Aryan. Ekalavya is undeterred, and entering a forest, begins study and practice by himself, having fashioned a clay image of Drona and worshipping him. Solely by his determination, Ekalavya becomes a warrior of exceptional prowess, at par with the young Arjuna (note: the so-called best warrior of Pandavas and even the world). One day, a dog barks while he is focused upon practice, and without looking, the prince fires arrows that seal up the dog’s mouth. The Pandava princes see this dog running, and wonder who could have done such a feat. They see Ekalavya, who announces himself as a pupil of Drona.

Arjuna is worried that his position as the best warrior in the world might by usurped. Drona sees his worry, and visits Ekalavya with the princes. Ekalavya promptly worships Drona. Drona is angered by Ekalavya’s unscrupulous behavior, claiming to be Drona’s student despite his rejection. He is also worried that if Ekalavya maintained this level of skill, he would one day lead the Nishadas in battle against Indo-Aryan kings and threaten the Vedic religion. The more important and personal reason seems to have been his partiality towards Arjuna and his jealousy in finding out that a person from the lower caste could equal a Kshatriya. Drona asks Ekalavya for a dakshina, or a deed of thanks a student must give to his teacher upon the completion of his training. Drona asks for Ekalavya’s right thumb, which Ekalavya unhesitatingly cuts off and hands to Drona, despite knowing that this would irreparably hamper his archery skills.

Hmmh … sucks.

The story hurt me so and since then, I always discount my respect to Arjuna’s accomplishness.

Also then I realized that there is neither poor good, nor pure evil. There are always two sides of the coin.

As a friend of mine shouted in her Friendster: "Baik dan Buruk memiliki wajah yang sama; semuanya bergantung dari kapan keduanya melintas di dalam kehidupan seorang manusia" (Good and Evil have the same face; it will depend on when both of them came across somebody’s life) A good deed now can have a bad consequences later, a seemingly cruel act can result in a good things later. (Drona’s cruel act and Arjuna’s jealousy, however, have some good consequences later :().

There will always be a choice for us. It will depend on us whether to see it as a micro-situation or more on the helicopter (or satellite) view. And we will always have our consciousness helping us to decide.

There is neither pure good, nor pure evil in this world.

(previously posted in Friendster on December 14th, 2006)