Greed of the Crown makes you a Villain.

I was watching the new television series 'Mahabharat' and I came across a beautiful exchange between Kunti and Vrushali (Karn's wife). I have no idea if original Mahabharat has this exchange or this is interpretation of the director. But this exchange does make this philosophy look good.

Karna - में विवश हु, क्युकी अब मैंने अपने मस्तक पे मुकुट धारण कर लिया है. मैं  इस मुकुट के बोझ से विवश हुँ. 

Vrushali - मुकुट धारण करने से तुम इतने विवश हो गए हो की धर्म जानते हुए भी अधर्म के पक्ष में हो.

Kunti - मुकुट पर कलंक मत लगने दो पुत्र कर्ण, मेरे पुत्र भी मुकुट धारण कर चुके हैं, मुकुट नहीं पुत्री मुकुट की लालसा व्यक्ति को बुरे कर्म करने पे विवश कर देती है.  (No it is not the crown that makes you do things that are not right, it is the greed of the crown that makes you do bad things.)

Everyone has a crown on their head, it could be your job, your relationships, your responsibility. These can bog you down from doing the right things or so we think. It is generally assumed that we have to do things because our job demands it. A manager can be rude to the employee because he is asked to. He hides behind the company policy, he  has targets to meet etc. He won't be rude to random guy on street. Parents hide behind parenting. Even social experiments show that regular people can be cajoled into killing others if they are provided the setup where somehow they can mortgage the responsibility of their actions to others. Even Nazi soldiers who were killing babies were not born evil, they were just following orders and duties which is another way of absolving yourself of your own actions. We are no better, at first opportunity we look to absolve ourselves of responsibility we hide behind the 'crown' and do the stuff easily that would have been uneasy.

In general just like Vrushali and Karna we all think that it is not me, it is my crown. We make 2 separate entities within ourselves that division of self creates division in heart and mind leading to unease. The moment we talk about our crown be it - your position at your job, family, society. As an engineer I need to...,, as a Dad / Mom I have to.... as a friend.... as a citizen... as a XYZ....  STOP. that is a trap. Check again, is it because of the crown you are going to do something which the basic you won't allow? Many people look completely different when at work (or when they are acting out one of their crowned responsibility) Vs when they are themselves. 

The position is seeming to make this happen but the fact is the greed or love of that position is making a person do bad things. Greed of staying the Dad, or a Friend, or Manager, or whatever, makes you do worse things than you will allow yourself to do.