Dicing for Draupadi

By Chris Laliberte

This paper will examine one of the most crucial episodes of the Mahabharata, the dicing game that results in the banishment of the Pandavas for thirteen years. Central to this examination will be the comparison of Hindu concepts of Karma and Dharma with depth psychological concepts of archetypal aspects of the psyche and the process of individuation.

To unpack the subtleties of what the narrative of the Mahabharata reveals about these concepts, it is first necessary to review them in brief. Karma at its most basic level is the concept that what happens to us in our lives is a direct result of how we have lived our lives up until now. Importantly for the western mind, the Hindu understanding of ‘up until now’ includes all of our previous lives. Karma is the total at the bottom of a kind of spiritual accounting ledger, which apparently is summed at the end of each lifetime. The total determines your role in society in your next life. As Joseph Campbell clearly illustrates in Myths of Light, “the individual” is a much different thing in Hindu thinking than it is in the west. Individual souls are all on a journey toward enlightenment or Moksha, which is the release from being born again as an physical, embodied soul distinct in consciousness (and hence in only an illusory way) from the unity of God/Vishnu. But this journey isn’t about discovering or integrating the unique aspects of divinity that we specifically express. The journey is about moving through stages of enlightenment that are ideal as concepts: these are the Hindu social strata, and the point isn’t to be ‘yourself,’ but to be as perfectly your position as you can be. (Campbell 60) This is the concept of Dharma, or Duty: your Karma accounting, upon your death, determines the role or position you will be born into in your next incarnation. All your actions in this present incarnation are dictated to you by the Dharma of that position. All is proscribed—the Hindu religious and philosophical traditions spell out in exact detail what your Dharma demands of you in any given situation. It is one’s responsibility to perform one’s duty, thus it is a choice for the conscious soul, and the choice can be made rightly or wrongly. The measure of the choice is Karma. The answer key used to make the measurement is Dharma.

Similarly, before approaching the Mahabharata itself, the Depth Psychological concepts to be employed require short review. The depth psychological approach holds the idea of the individual psyche much more centrally than does the Hindu. Life is still about individual souls moving towards enlightenment, called individuation, which is the unification of the contradictory aspects of the psyche into a state of “wholeness.” (Campbell 60) This process has a collective flavor, in that the elements that make up these individual psyches or souls are universal—all psyches share the same fundamental elements, called archetypes. However, it is much more strongly individualistic because each individual psyche is a unique arrangement of relationships between these archetypal elements. The elements exist in each soul in different degrees, more specifically in not just different but unique relationships and images. Thus there is no generic Dharma or duty for a western psyche, other than the classic mandate “Know Thyself,” for each soul will have its own unique set of images and relationships to reconcile in order to find unity.

The Mahabharata sheds equally insightful light on both of these conceptual frameworks, and they further reflect that light onto each other when held closely together in its glow. In examining the details of the challenge of the dice, three different versions of the Mahabharata will be compared. The version by William Buck seems to be to ‘furthest’ from the original, in that it is a highly compressed version written by an American. The second version, written by Swami Satyeswarananda Giri Babaji, is equally compressed and written by a well-respected Hindu religious guru. The third, by J.A.B. van Buitenen is a much more scholarly and complete translation of the original Hindu texts and resembles their original length—only Vols. 2 and 3, the Books of the Assembly Hall and the Forest, are utilized.

As we enter the story, we find ourselves at the moment when the two halves of the Kingly family have finally brought the fundamental conflict between them out into the open. Duryodhana, eldest of the Kurus, is tormented by the power and success accumulated by the five Pandavas (his cousins) living in their half of the kingdom. He cannot suffer that others in the same position of succession as he should achieve such high honor. He must acquire it all for himself, or kill himself. So he challenges Yudhisthira, the eldest of the Pandavas, to a game of dice—everything shall be at stake, the game to be played until one owns everything, including the other himself.

Symbolically, the antagonists all being the “sons” of the King Dhritarastra represents the psyche or soul in conflict with itself—ostensibly, this would be the struggle between the conscious Ego and the unconscious or shadow elements of the psyche struggling to control the Self that will result as the psyche individuates. The conflict is exacerbated by another important inner conflict: the King (a generation-removed symbol of the united psyche) is unable to choose which of his sons (and nephews whom he treats as sons) will succeed him—hence he is blind.

From a Hindu perspective, this distinction reflects the conflict between limited consciousness—Duryodhana, the all-human offspring of the humans Dhritarastra and Gandhari, represents the desire to stay in the realm of the illusion of “I,” as an individual human—and God consciousness, the Five Pandavas of Godly descent who represent connection to the fact that “I” is really Vishnu himself.

In his struggle to rule the entire kingdom, Duryodhana has allies. The first is Sakuni, who determines the strategy of the dice challenge, and who possesses the knowledge and skill to defeat the Pandavas at dice and win for Duryodhana all he wants. Sakuni is action—how to get what you want. But he has no consideration for the Karmic consequences involved in pursuing what you want. This is action without knowledge of Karma—powerful, but ultimately it cannot obtain for Duryodhana what he desires. This is the lesson of Karma and Dharma—pursuing what you desire is ultimately futile. In fact it is “the root of the destruction of the world” (van Buitenen 115)

Psychologically, Sakuni is a part of the unconscious that must be individuated into the Self. This power of action must be integrated under the direction of the greater awareness of the Self, and not allowed to be the servant of Duryodhana. This power is represented symbolically in the Mahabharata as the Secret of the Dice. This is clearly not simply a shrewd skill of cheating. It suggests a very important knowledge or perspective concerning chance. This power is described several times: “I shall take no risk,” says Sakuni of this strategy. He calls the dice “my bows and arrows.” (Van Buitenen 122). Sakuni is referred to as “he who knew the facts of dice.” (Van Buitenen 129).

And the results are clear. Yudhisthira, who Sakuni knows “is very fond of dice-play although he does not know how to play,” (Babaji 81) cannot stand against this knowledge of the dice. Indeed to him it seems like trickery: “You have won this play from me by confusing me with a trick!. . .Let us now play and grasp the dice a thousand times!” (Van Buitenen 129) This response is strikingly similar to a common dynamic in the martial arts. In competition to push your opponent off balance, when you play against another who is playing the game at a higher level than you are aware of, it often feels like either some accident happened—“Wait, I slipped” or “Hold on, I’m not ready”—or you got tricked somehow, like they must have cheated. But really, they’re just paying attention to something beyond your level of awareness, like how you are breathing or how our energy is moving in your body. You lose every time, no matter how hard you try.

And so it seems valuable to look and see if perhaps the secret to dice lies in learning to look at it at another level. Yudhisthira seems to be approaching the game of dice as if it’s just random chance—maybe he’ll win, and maybe he’ll lose. Indeed he objects to it on these very grounds: “Gaming is trickery, an evil: there is no baronial prowess in it, nor steady policy.” He can’t apply any of his Kshyatria skills; he has no way to be in control. Yet Sakuni is definitely playing on a different level: he knows how the dice will roll, he wins every single time. No chance, no uncertainty about how things will fall out, no “win some, lose some.”

When dicing is held as a metaphor, the Secret of the Dice takes on a whole new relevance. Sakuni himself suggests this when he says to Arjuna “You are like the tiny bird that picks meat from the lion’s mouth and tells others: do not gamble!” This is an accusation of hypocrisy. He is saying that, though not actually playing games, the Pandavas in how they are living their lives are gambling all the time. The tiny bird is constantly gambling its very life: “Will the lion chomp me this time, or let me clean its teeth?” The Pandavas are actually dicing their whole lives and don’t even know it: they live their lives like it’s a dice game: “I wonder what will happen?” Like it’s up to chance. Maybe it will be good, maybe it will be bad. Yet with Sakuni’s Secret of the Dice, life is totally different. There is no chance. “I risk nothing,” he says. He gets what he wants.

The problem comes when this power is given to Duryodhana, who has no regard for Dharma, for right action guided by duty. Without this, acting and achieving exactly what you want serves only to bind you to a Karmic consequence in your next life that will take away from you all you think you have gained by your action. And indeed, the results of Yudhisthira gambling “unarmed” against Sakuni’s secret knowledge are almost catastrophic.

The only thing that saves the psyche from total domination by the shadow unconscious is—Draupadi. Ultimately, she is the key to the Pandavas actually acquiring the Secret of the Dice, for by her presence, the ruin of enslavement to Duryodhana is averted, and the Pandavas are banished to the forest, where they encounter Vyasa who tells them the tale of Nala and Damayanti and eventually imparts to Yudhisthira the Secret of the Dice. (Buck 138)

So just who is this Draupadi, psychologically? As the one who marries or unifies the Five Pandavas, we might call her the quintessential element necessary for the individuation of the Self. It is often noted that the point of the dice game in the Mahabharata is this: Draupadi cannot be staked by one who has lost himself. Clearly, this is the surface reading of this game of dice, and an important one. But when asked this way—“Could he stake Draupadi if he had already lost himself”—it actually avoids any consideration of the unique nature of Draupadi herself. It could be any possession that was staked by one who had lost himself already. The question of deeper interest is: could Yudhisthira have staked Draupadi when still in possession of himself? The logical answer seems to be “yes,” but look: he didn’t. Which is somewhat unusual, since he staked everything else before staking himself. Why would he not stake Draupadi before himself, if he was truly intent on winning and was willing to stake everything in this effort?

Perhaps because it was not possible for the divine king to stake Draupadi in this kind of game. It is only when he has lost himself that it even becomes possible for Yudishthira to think (mistakenly) that he can stake Draupadi. In fact, he does so only at the suggestion of his new master. And look, when Draupadi appeals this staking, she prevails: it was not right, and in a sense she could not be staked. Importantly, the question isn’t directly answered by anyone in the Assembly Hall, which offers endless opportunities of interpretation and speculation. But the myth itself does indeed answer this question. As his first act as lord over the entire psyche, Duryodhana commands the Pandavas and Draupadi to disrobe. (Babaji 92) The Pandavas do so unquestioningly. Draupadi does not—and when Duryodhana’s brother attempts to forcibly disrobe her, it is literally impossible to do so: her cloths never diminish, no matter how many are removed. The answer is clear: it is in the nature of the universe that Draupadi cannot be lost, even when everyone thinks she has been staked and lost. The game of dice cannot rule her fate.

Draupadi in this regard is that aspect of our psyche that acts as a built-in counterbalance to that powerful unconscious shadow that would consume the whole of the psyche (the Kingdom) for its own ends. In his book Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung describes that aspect of the psyche that appears and connects the blossoming awareness of Self with the deeper and larger areas of the unconscious psyche as the anima (in the male psyche), and represents it as a female image. (Jung 187) Draupadi clearly reflects a very similar understanding of the psyche: by her very existence is the Self saved from complete assimilation into the illusion of limited consciousness of Self-as-I, separate from the unity of God.

In the Mahabharata, this ‘miraculous’ event of the unending robe allows all the aspects of the psyche to see that Draupadi, the anima, is truly Other-than-I, and thus that the Self must be larger than just Self-as-I. This is the opening for the Divine, as the unconscious or as God, to be saved, recognized, and restored (even if in the story it takes a banishment of thirteen years.) This recognition of Draupadi comes about because of this dicing game.

On the surface, it seems somewhat ridiculous to think that the five Pandavas born of the most powerful Gods and gifted with such great powers—the collected aspects of the Self as Divine—would be able to lose everything to the all-too-human Duryodhana. How could this be? We conceive of these beings as wondrous, powerful, divine—and look! In their palace in Indraprastha, they completely outshine Duryodhana. He is a mere mortal; they are Gods, capable of fantastic things. How could they so thoroughly lose themselves in a game of dice? How is it possible that Yudhisthira gets so morose and forlorn, seemingly hypnotized by the rolling of the dice as a mouse by the weaving of the cobra’s head before it strikes?

And yet, this situation, as a metaphor for our psychic lives, should not seem so unfamiliar to us. Are we not, in some part, a reflection of the Divine? And are we not, in some part, entirely human? And do we not all have that experience of being submerged entirely into that all-too-human Self as I, so that in our experience, we lose all sense of being part of anything else, anything divine, and are overwhelmed by it? Depression? Resignation?

But we are never entirely consumed by it, the Mahabharata tells us. Duryodhana may well defeat “I.” But if you have found Draupadi, the anima who marries the Five, that one little bit is never lost. That truly divine aspect can never be overwhelmed and controlled by Duryodhana, and when he tries, Draupadi can get you out of servitude. It will be at the price of being banished from the Kingdom for thirteen years (but take heart: “In the Veda [i.e. in mythic consciousness], one day and one night, if passed in discomfort, may count as equal to one year.” (Buck 138) Banishment spent in acceptance of this ignorance and in humble search for the Secret of the Dice gives you the opportunity you need to develop and grow and be able to win this battle that Duryodhana demands.

The power of the science of the dice in the Mahabharata is remarkably similar to another magical power that appears in Hindu mythology called the Act of Power, which Joseph Campbell explains in his book Myths of Light. Through an Act of Power, someone who has completely and unfailingly fulfilled their Dharma or duty (which has been assigned to them by their Karma) can achieve literally anything they can conceive of, simply by stating aloud: “If I have completely and unfailingly discharged my Dharma throughout all my life, then let such-and-such happen.” If it is indeed true that they have fulfilled their Dharma, than such-and-such must happen—that is the way of the universe. Thus rivers will flow upstream, whatever. (Campbell 111) This speaks powerfully to the notion that our choices, guided by our duty, truly create the world we experience. When we fully understand this, and take responsibility entirely for our choices (which we have been making all along) and thus our Karma, and embrace wholly our Dharma, we are powerfully the creators of our lives, and we can create anything in our lives.

Karma is always the way it is, regardless of whether we’re aware of it or not. Psychologically, this is equivalent to saying that our choices are what create our reality, our lives. When the center of consciousness (be that the “I,” the Ego, or the Pandavas) isn’t aware of this and is approaching life as a roll of the dice, the door is wide open for Duryodhana to be in control of life. Life is always turning out just as your choices create it, but if you don’t play the game with the knowledge of the dice, you must remember: Duryodhana is, and he will always win, unless you also possess the Secret of the Dice. Another way to look at this is to remember that “I” and Duryodhana are the same person—just different aspects of the psyche or soul—and realize that “You” (as the entire psyche) are always winning the game you are really playing.

In the Mahabharata this is described another way. Until Nala discovered the secret of dice, he lost everything in life. He was rolling the dice and losing, because he too was actually rolling with someone who knew the secret—and lo! It was a part of himself, his younger brother. But the reason he was driven to keep playing and losing was because he was possessed by the destroyer god Kali. (Buck 124) In Babaji’s version, he notes that “Duryodhana was incarnation of Kaliyuga,” which places this destroyer energy outside of Yudhisthira. Either way, invoking Kali is a metaphor for what happens when you approach life as a gamble and fail to recognize the laws of Karma and take responsibility for the consequences of your own choices. And indeed, what is needed to remedy this possession by Kali is the Secret of the Dice: “When Rituparna taught Vahuka [Nala] how to control dice, that knowledge drove Kali out from [his] body” (Buck 135). And thus armed, he was able to return to his brother, challenge him to dice, “And blessed be Nala, who won back his kingdom and his wealth with a single throw” (Buck 137)

While dicing in the Mahabharata seems to be clearly approached as a generation of a random event—in line with our modern attitude, to be sure—it should be noted that around the world, there seems to be a strong correlation between dicing and other games of chance and gambling, and the use of “dice” in some form for the purpose of divination, or determining the will of the gods. In the introduction to the his classic translation of The I Ching, or Book of Changes, both Richard Wilhelm and Carl Jung discuss how throwing coins to consult at random one of the poetic oracular pronouncements is not just consulting the Gods for a yes or no answer, it is literally creating an opening for the unconscious aspects of the psyche, or for the Divine, to enter into the awareness of the Self. Wilhelm understands this development in the use of the I Ching as a shift from taking an action that reveals what God has determined what life will be, to becoming God and determining it for oneself. (Wilhelm, liii)

In the same way, learning the Secret of the Dice in how we “roll our lives” is tantamount to becoming God. Which is a fair description of what the process of individuation is all about—coming to integrate into awareness those unconscious aspects of the psyche that are collective to the entire universe. It also summarizes nicely the idea of piercing the illusory veil of Maya and joining the God consciousness of Krishna/Vishnu, as Arjuna does before his victorious battle on the plain of Kurukshetra. Dharma and Karma are fully understood: this is not about making a choice to go into battle and kill his kin; it is about taking responsibility for the fact that this is the Karma of the choices already made, not just by him and his brothers, but by everyone there. Taking responsibility for the entirety of the psyche is individuation, God-consciousness. This is the heart of the Secret of the Dice found in the Mahabharata.

Works Cited

Babaji, Satyeswarananda Giri. The Mahabharata: Stories of the Great Epic. Vol. 1. San Diego: Sanskrit Classics, 1993.

Buck, William. Mahabharata. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.

Campbell, Joseph. Myths of Light. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2003

Jung, Carl. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Vintage Books/Random House, 1963.

Van Buitenen, J.A.B. The Mahabharata. Books 2 and 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.

Wilhelm, Richard. The I Ching, or Book of Changes. Princeton: Princeton University Press/Bollingen Foundation, 1977.

Posted by john at June 1, 2005 08:28 PM