Not so the great men who have renounced all desire. Witness the great
trials to which, in the Mahabharata, Bhishma, Vidura, Yudhishthira and Karna were put.
We read in that epic how they solved their several difficulties. Their
solutions did not conform to a single moral pattern but reflected their several
individualities.
The conduct of each was the reaction of his personality and character
to the impact of circumstances.
Modern critics and expositors sometimes forget this underlying basic
factor and seek to weigh all in the same scales, which is quite wrong.
We may profit by the way in which, in the Ramayana, Dasaratha,
Kumbhakarna, Maricha, Bharata and Lakshmana reacted to the difficulties with which each of
them was faced.
Likewise, Balarama's neutrality in the Mahabharata war has a lesson.
Only two princes kept out of that war. One was Balarama and the other was Rukma, the ruler
of Bhojakata. The story of Rukma, whose younger sister Rukmini married Krishna, is told in
the next chapter.
* Another name for Balarama from the plough he wielded as his weapon
