16.03: Searching for the villain can’t help us in finding the hero

The Bhagavad-gita (16.3) states that the unwillingness to find faults in others is a characteristic of the virtuous.

Generally, when things start going wrong in our life, our false ego goes into a default defensive, scheming to find a villain on whom to lay the blame for spoiling the dream plot of our life. However, this search for a villain puts us in a negative frame of mind, wherein we just can’t see the positive reality – and certainly not the ultimate positive reality: Krishna’s ultimate heroism and his unflinching love for us

Gita wisdom helps us redirect our search for the villain from without to within. It reveals how the sinister persuasions of our false ego have misled us into accepting the role of a villain who seeks to unscrupulously usurp the position of the ultimate hero, Krishna. The plot of the world is moving for his pleasure, not ours. But this doesn’t mean that we count for nothing, as our false ego often darkly mutters in its bid to stop us from joining Krishna’s plot. When we play our part in the plot for Krishna’s pleasure, we too have our moments of glory, as did Hanuman in service to Lord Rama in the Ramayana.

When we accept this bittersweet truth, then we realize that our life’s mission is not to discover and blame a villain without, but to discover and love the hero within our own hearts. To fulfill this mission, we need to locate and execute the villain within: our own false ego. When we succeed in this mission, then no external villain can ever spoil the plot of our eternal love-story with Krishna.