When we are told to accept the unchangeable does that include accepting our own misdeeds done under the influence of others?

Question, how much should we accept the things that are not in our control, especially when it is we who have made some terrible mistake, maybe someone else pushed us or triggered us or even doing something wrong, but we cannot blame that person alone, we are also responsible. And additionally, we feel some regret. So should we just accept that this has happened and move on? Three distinct aspects to this question.

First is the idea of accepting what is unchangeable. The second is our own actions. And third is others influence on us in those actions.

So generally, acceptance is primarily focused on what has happened to us or what others have done to us. It cannot be simplistically used for what has been done by us, we are much more responsible for that. So for example, if we get some disease and fall sick, or because of some medical mistake, we become sick, then at that time acceptance is necessary.

Within that, acceptance is easier when something has happened because of natural forces rather than human agents. So it is much easier for the Pandavas to accept, say something like the death of their father, than the attempt by Kauravas to burn them alive. Having said that, now what about when sufferings come upon us because of our own actions? So consider the example of Yudhishthir, gambling and losing everything, where he could say that he was instigated by Shakuni and Karna and Duryodhana and others, could also say that he was well-intentioned and he was obligated because as a Kshatriya he had to accept a challenge.

So generally when things are beyond our control and especially when things have happened to us and things have been done to us, but we don’t want to get into the business of taking revenge against that person and that person is no longer an active influence in our life, then it is important for us to let go of things, accept it and just move on with life. Life sometimes is hard and resentment makes it a hundred times harder. Now when it comes to things that we have done ourselves, so should Yudhishthir accept what he did? Well yes, there also acceptance is required because ultimately we have to live with ourselves and if we have a very hostile relationship with ourselves, where either we are beating ourselves down constantly for what we did or we are trying to justify what we did all the time.

Both ways would be a problem. So the second part is that, so here also we need to come to acceptance but the way we do it is by carefully analyzing what went wrong over there and what we can learn from it so that we don’t do something similar. So the amount of wrong that happened through Yudhishthir was devastating for him.

What the Mahabharata depicts is that a person who is especially conscious of wanting to do good, when that very person ends up doing not just bad but a catastrophic bad thing, how difficult it will be to accept. He was repeatedly asking sages in the forest, trying to make sense of what happened. So he did three broad things to ensure that a similar thing would not happen.

First at a practical level, he learned gambling. When we say gambling has got him into trouble, why learn gambling now? So he was not a gambling addict and that was not a fear for him but he wanted to prepare for the contingency that in future if he is challenged to a gambling match, Shakuni should not be able to do the same thing that was done to him. Then at a philosophical level or you could say at a more philosophical ethical level, he understood that just one principle like obedience to one’s elders is not the sole factor for decision-making.

So his elders had called him for a match and he said I should obey my elders. But later on Yudhishthir was told by Dhritarashtra that you are already a vanaprastha, why do you want to become a grhastha, just stay in the forest. And he was refused to offer his kingdom, he didn’t uncritically obey Dhritarashtra.

So one is we improve our practical skills that are required for dealing with the situation. Second is that we improve our value system. I say not so much value system whereas our decision-making apparatus or decision-making process.

And the third is that Yudhishthir, even when he was gambling, he was thinking that Arjuna is so dear to Krishna, Draupadi is so dear to Krishna, surely they will not be lost in a gambling match. So the hard-nosed reality of the world is that good intentions are no substitute for good intelligence. That while God protects, just because we are good and we have good intentions, that does not necessarily mean good things will happen to us if we are not taking ground-level actions.

So, that’s why in the war, he was always quite strategic and even when he was reluctant to send Abhimanyu inside and when Abhimanyu was sent inside, it was only with a proper plan that the Pandavas would follow him from behind. Of course, Jayadrath thwarted that plan. So the next day when Arjuna went inside, Yudhishthir also felt anxious and then he sent Satyaki and then he sent Bhima inside.

Arjuna was trying to get to Jayadrath on the 14th day. So the point is that he learned at a hard level that we have to, along with a devotional intention or a devotional consciousness, we also have to have practical strategic intelligence. So, it is the three learnings at a level of practical skill, at a level of sound decision making and at a level of balancing spiritual consciousness with sound material assessments.

Now, as far as the role of Shakuni is concerned, when that raises the question, did Yudhishthir blame Shakuni? Well, in his case, Shakuni is an enemy and letting oneself be manipulated by the enemy into gambling more and more. That was his mistake. But then somebody who is a friend or a well-wisher, or at least we think of them as friend and well-wisher and that person manipulates us, as happened when Simanthara manipulated Kaikeyi, then it’s a different situation.

And sometimes it may well happen that the other person may even be well-intentioned, but despite being well-intentioned, the advice that the person gives turns out to be harmful for us. It turns out that that advice gets us into more trouble. So, either way, we don’t want to simply pass the blame to the other person.

But what we need to learn is that ultimately it’s our decisions and whom we let ourselves be influenced by is something we need to become more watchful about. Like, is it that I let myself be… whose words am I listening to, whose opinions am I taking seriously, whose criticism I’m taking seriously. So if you become more self-aware, then we will be less likely to be influenced by others.

Now depending on what the other person’s motivation was in doing a particular thing, based on that we may decide whether we want to continue to have a relationship with that person or we just want to have nothing to do with that person thereafter. Thank you.