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Monday Morning Greetings 2024 #29 – Betrayed!

July 15th, 2024

Betrayed! [1]

Last week I wrote about expediency, but it was beyond the scope of the entry to illustrate the concept with an example. A discussion of how one responds to betrayal would be an excellent way to broach the subject of how dharma can be brushed aside to serve one’s immediate personal feelings. There seems to be no deeper hurt and stronger impetus to strike back with vengeance than when one’s trust is violated. How to deal with being betrayed? I think the story of Vidura illustrates that best.

 

Vidura was renowned for his good counsel. When King Dhrtārastra, his elder brother, calls upon him, Vidura strongly advises him to instruct his son Duryodhana to return the legitimate share of the kingdom, which he had illegally usurped, to his cousin Yudhiṣṭhira. He outlines in detail the ruin it would bring upon the king if this was not done. Duryodhana overhears the conversation and immediately threatens his uncle:

 

“Who asked him to come here, the son of a kept mistress? He is so crooked that he spies in the interest of the enemy against those on whose support he has grown up. Toss him out of the palace immediately and leave him with only his breath.” (Bhāgavatam 3.1.15)

 

How painful! Not only was he thrown out of the palace in his twilight years without any possessions, by a kingdom that he served so humbly and selflessly his whole life, but he was also deeply insulted. What was especially painful was that the accusations against him were partially true. Although Vidura shared the same father with Dhrtārastra, his mother was not the queen, but a maidservant. Vidura thus dropped his bow at the door and immediately left “being pierced by arrows through the ears and afflicted to the core of his heart” (Bhāgavatam 3.1.16). Yes indeed he was hurt, but how he dealt with his betrayal was exemplary.

 

The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam describes his attitude: “He was not sorry, for he considered the acts of the external energy to be supreme.” (Bhāgavatam 3.1.16) In other words, although Duryodhana betrayed him, he understood that nothing moves without the sanction of God. He thus saw the same energy that was moving Duryodhana to offense and destruction was giving him a greater opportunity to fully engage in devotional service.

 

The lesson from Vidura is clear. When betrayed, don’t only look at māyā as God’s energy which is entangling the person who is hurting you. See it also as His illuminating energy moving the world for your enlightenment. If you focus on māyā externally in terms of its illusory effect on your perpetrator, your bitterness and victimhood will only increase. If you see, however, that the same māyā is acting internally in terms of helping you to grow, your bitterness will reduce and your consciousness will elevate. In his purport to this verse, Śrīla Prabhupāda describes how Vidura was able to properly observe the workings of God’s energy: “Māyā, the supreme energy of the Lord acted both internally and externally”.[2]

 

I was also reminded of Socrates in the matter of viewing betrayal in this way. After serving his country by virtue of his wisdom and example, the government turns on him. He is falsely accused and condemned to die. His only request is to address his judge and jury, the senate of Greece. He looks at them intently and delivers his message: “If you think you can harm me, you will not harm me, you will only harm yourself.” He thus sees his apparent betrayal in the same way as Vidura, that the worst harm to oneself is not what others do to you, but the actions one takes that distance oneself from one’s spiritual nature as a servant of God. So if you harm another with vengeance to satisfy your feeling of being wronged, it is actually the cause of your own ruin, but if you see the situation as God’s will, then it’s a blessing which brings you closer to Krishna.

 

“Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads and tails with salvation on the other side.” — Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

 

[1] This week is a new edit of a Monday Morning Greeting originally published June 24, 2019.

[2] There are also specific philosophical terms for this phenomenon. When māyā works to further one’s devotion it is called yogamāyā, the internal potency, and when it moves to further one’s material entanglement it is called mahamāyā, the external potency.

 

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