Yes, if our success thrives on others miseries. Our success is mostly comparative in nature. A student gauges his success by seeing if he has scored more than his peers or not, we get dissatisfied with our jobs when we find that our colleagues are earning more than us. Thus caught up in the quagmire of comparison we hardly feel inner satisfaction and serenity.
We see that Duryodhana had everything in his life. Being the son of the king of Hastinapur his all demands were immediately met with. He soaked in the sights and sounds of material world. But still he never felt contented because he had developed immense hatred for the Pandavas. During the childhood, he tried to poison and kill Bhima. He conspired along with his cunning uncle Sakuni and greedy father Duryodhana to drive Pandavas out of Hastinapur and gave them Khandavaprastha. Khandavaprastha was nothing but jungle and forest; however the Pandavas under the direction of Krishna worked very hard to convert that barren land into Indraprastha. Seeing Pandavas ruling the flourishing kingdom of Indraprastha, Duryodhana’s hatred multiplied manifold. He again conspired with Sakuni and cheated Pandavas in the game of dice and forced them into 13 years of exile. During Pandavas exile Duryodhana usurped the kingdom of Indraprasta also. But in spite of all these he was always in misery. He remained in constant anxiety and always feared for his future.
The Pandavas never had any grudge towards Duryodhana. In fact Pandavas never ever tried to harm Duryodhana in spite of Duryodhana’s malicious campaign against them. Duryodhana’s greed, envy, hatred and jealously not only ruined his life but it sowed the seed of Mahabharata war in which millions of worthy kings and soldiers perished. How envy is dangerous can be easily understood by contemplating on Duryodhana’s plight.
Real success is achieved when our heart is cleansed of hatred and envy. The panacea for making the world a better place is by cultivating selfless love. In Bhagavad – Gita 16.3, Krishna vividly talks about the godly qualities which a person should strive for and one of them He mentions is adrohah: freedom from envy. So let us nurture our heart and allow the flowers of love to blossom within our heart whose fragrance will spread joy and happiness far and wide. Then we will not have envy for others but instead we will feel happy when we see others happy and we will feel pain when we see others in pain. That would be the true perfection of our live.
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