Talk:Arjuna/@comment-2001:E68:5447:528C:61F7:BBDC:103D:C1D0-20180215112247/@comment-28209103-20180222062109

that is black and white intepretation from pop culture re-invention of the story however some thing must be fixed first.. the guy who told Arjuna to shoot Karna is not Indra, it's Khrisna which is avatar of Vishnu. The reason why he urged so is literally because he said it was fine. In the first place Khrisna reminds Karna when he plead to obey the rule of battlefield that he let the people on Kurava side done bad stuff without stopping them, he even participate in killing Arjuna son dishonorably on the urging of his friend.. till the end Arjuna is a lost dude who're not sure that he should hit Karna or not... which is basically what Arjuna is all the time.. he often at lost of what he should do and ended up as Khrisna toy.

Objectively speaking Karna have single flaw which is his obsession with Arjuna because that one time where he's being put to shame during his youth by Arjuna. He wanted to take the title of supreme archer to himself. To that end he did several "bad" stuff or take several bad oath like lying to his great mentor Parashurama or rejecting that one snake that can lethal arjuna in one shot because it missed once..

Mahabharat is not just a story, it's a religious teaching and even now people are still debating bout what symbolism within,, one of the intepretation I mostly agreed is that broadly speaking Karna is representation of "Body" and Arjuna is the "Soul" the soul is weaker than body (broad example worldly pleasure is fun compared to astetic, doing bad thing is easier than the right thing, etc) but by going into hardship and by putting self closer to God one can overcome the body..

One aspect of that war is that midway the so-called rule are thrown out of the window and both party eventually said "screw the rule! I wanna win"  during the whole ordeal only Yudhistira managed to keep himself completely clean while the other broke one rule or other Karna not excluded.. It explore the so called "taijitu" in eastern philoshopy and justified the use of non-righteous means for the sake of dharma.

Well as someone who are fascinated by Nietzche Ubermensch before I even knew the dudes name, the life of Karna fascinate me as "someone who took rein of his own destiny" it is romantic IMO and even as a child it looks dazzling..similarly I for some reason hate  Arjuna way of being Khrisna or everyone "yes man" and his indecision of his action.