Asura: Tale Of The Vanquished

by Anand Neelakantan

“Anger is the lowest emotion. It clouds the intellect and can make you do foolish things. You become blind to reason and react only with your body, without thinking. This leads to failure in every sphere. Uproot this evil from your system.

The next base emotion is Pride. Arrogance stems from pride and kills clear thinking and vision. Pride makes you underestimate your foes and overestimate yourself.

Jealousy is a vile emotion, and mastering it is one of the most challenging tasks a human being has. Jealousy makes you pine for other...

Happiness and sadness are just two eternal truths like day and night. A man of superior intellect is never affected by these emotions. They are not base emotions at all but a reflection of our thoughts, a reaction to our perspective on things we see, hear and do.

Equanimity is not only desirable in a warrior, but a must. Without it, you are as good as dead in the battlefield.

Fear is not an emotion, it is a disease. It spreads from the leader to his followers and vice–versa. Nothing has killed more men in war than fear. What should a warrior fear? Death? But death is what everyone achieves ultimately. Is it wounds that you fear? What is more important? A pint of...

Nothing is more condemnable than selfishness. A man who thinks of himself alone is the m...

Love is a chain that ties you to the millstone of make-belief. A warrior should focus on victory and victory alone. That should be your only Dharma. Do your duty to your people, parents, wives, sisters, brothers and Gods, but never ever love them. Love makes you weak. Love has unseen bondages that take you into the abyss of failure at that crucial moment when victory and failure get balanced. Beware of love.

The only thing worth preserving is your mind. Your mind absorbs the knowledge you gain from your Gurus, your books and your life, and refines it to great wisdom. It is what you have to develop. Every living minute you have to strive to feed your mind with fresh and positive inputs. This will give clarity to your vision and immense power to your action. You will make fewer mistakes and also learn faster from them.

but I shall live like a man and die as one. I will never try to be a God. I will live exactly as my emotions tell me to. I do not want to be a model man for future generations to follow. My life begins with me and ends with me. But I will live my life to its full and die as a man should. So borrowing from your words, I shall be a man with ten faces – I am Dasamukha.”

I think it was the size of the dream and the willingness to act on it.

Ravana dreamt big and strove ruthlessly to achieve it. And he got all sorts of people working for him to achieve his ambition. He crushed many underfoot. He used fools like me as firewood for his burning ambition.

I have sinned, for I am not God, but a human being like you. I stand chastised for the wrongs I have committed. I stand humbled by the simple trust you have placed in my leadership. I pray to Shiva that he gives me strength to shoulder this heavy burden.

I was always a creature of passion. I had lived as Ravana and I would die as Ravana. I did not intend to become Rama, the perfect man and God. There was no dearth of gods in my country. It only lacked men.

If you were a man, you stood by your wife. Or you were a swine. There was nothing great about it.

I had powerful friends, but when the need arose, I was all alone. I thought my empire was built on steel, but when the shove came, I found out it had been built on nothing but straw. Whoever I had trusted betrayed me. I was so proud of my intelligence, so how I did I commit such fundamental mistakes in judging people?

I want to begin again, but life is too short for second chances. I had been given one chance and I had grabbed it with both hands. I had built up something great, but now, times had changed and everything was crumbling around me. I had no regrets. I had lived a full life.

The time had come to do my best. I knew I might fail, but I owed my people one last, grand failure. They were the o...

I knew that death would be the final halting point and there was nothing beyond. No atma, no heaven, no moksha, no hell, no God, no afterlife awaited me. I would vanish, earth to earth, water to water, air to air, fire to fire, and everything would stop. Yet, given a choice, I would have loved to come back again. Who would not?

The earth had its claim on every living body. Our life was loaned from the earth. A borrowed life. And at any time, earth could call back its loan.