Devotees are Naturally Non-violent
Question: How can a neophyte think about ahimsa when he reads the Mahābhārata with all the cruelty and the violence that it contains?
Answer: Well, you could say that it’s all this violence in the Mahābhārata, which is showing how futile such violence is. What happened? The result was: thousands, hundreds of thousands of people were killed. In a sense, you could say it’s exactly what Arjuna was predicting when he was saying, “I don’t want to fight.” He’s anticipating that society will be degraded:
adharmābhibhavāt kṛṣṇa
praduṣyanti kula-striyaḥ
strīṣu duṣṭāsu vārṣṇeya
jāyate varṇa-saṅkaraḥ
(Bg 1.40)
He was especially worried about varṇa-saṅkaraḥ, the mixing of the varnas. But in general, we can say that the Mahābhārata presents a picture of the futility of all violence. Writing on the Mahābhārata, one scholar said: “The mood that one gets in the Mahābhārata is that all these warriors, they are all very macho.” They want to show their masculinity. And it is also understood that the whole Mahābhārata depicts a culture coming to an end. A heroic culture. For example, Krishna says in the second chapter, “This is your big chance, Arjuna, to win glory.” This is the end of the Dvapara Yuga, and this heroic age is crumbling. And therefore, so many of the rules of war were broken in this war, on both sides. Therefore, in a sense, the Mahābhārata tells the story of the end of an age. It is quite a sad story, actually. The Ramayana is also quite sad. But they also are uplifting and illuminating.
Coming back to the issue of ahimsa, Srila Prabhupada says: “Ahimsa, this is a secondary principle; it’s not a primary principle.” He says, “devotees are naturally non-violent.” Arjuna is a pure devotee, so he is naturally non-violent. That is why he didn’t want to fight.
—From the lecture on Ahimsa as the Essence of Dharma, by H.H. Krishna Kshetra Swami, on September 17, 2025, in Prabhupadadesh, ISKCON Temple, Albettone, Italy. (Based on the book, Yoga and Animal Ethics, by Kennth R. Valpey, published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2025; legal open access: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-93361-5.)
On Time
Question: I would say that kala, time, is the deity of this time on the planet Earth.
Answer: Well, it’s one deity, yes.
Follow-up: In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, “I am time.”
Answer:
kālo ’smi loka-kṣaya-kṛt pravṛddho
lokān samāhartum iha pravṛttaḥ
ṛte ’pi tvāṁ na bhaviṣyanti sarve
ye ’vasthitāḥ praty-anīkeṣu yodhāḥ
(Bg. 11.32)
Kālo ’smi, “I am time,” yes. And we see how people worship time because we all have watches. I spent some time in Hong Kong, and many shops there sell watches. And some of these watch shops, they’re selling extremely expensive watches, 100,000 Euro watches. There is one devotee, a lady, who works in such a watch shop. She told us that if the shop sells three watches a month, then they’re doing very well. People are spending so much money on it. Because “kālo ’smi,” they feel like they control time.
—From the lecture on Ahimsa as the Essence of Dharma, by H.H. Krishna Kshetra Swami, on September 17, 2025, in Prabhupadadesh, ISKCON Temple, Albettone, Italy. (Based on the book, Yoga and Animal Ethics, by Kennth R. Valpey, published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2025; legal open access: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-93361-5.)