Try having no ego, zero Attachment, and doing good

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http://swamishivapadananda.typepad.com

It is easy to advice people to have no ego, to give up attachment, and to do good all the time. The shaastras drive home these points over and over again, and we may even parrot these, but it is in the implementation that we stumble.

Ego
Ego manifests in all of us, sometimes in subtle ways, and sometimes in very ways apparent. We take credit all the time for bringing home a steady salary, for example, or for cracking an exam, but may only give up our ego and thank God when faced with a challenge - the news of a potential layoff, or a question we might have not expected in the exam. Without those sudden jolts, we may never have the opportunity to invoke or remember God.

After the Mahabharata war, both Dhritarashtra and Gandhari are so full of anger at their sons' death that Gandhari curses Krishna to see his own clan destroy itself, and Dhritarashtra wants to hug Bhima, the killer of his 100 sons (to crush him with his embrace, since he was endowed with the strength of a 10,000 elephants).  Even after the vishwaroopa darshana from Krishna in their very court before the war, their egos get the better of them. Dhritarashtra, of course, ends up hugging an iron statue believing it to be Bhima, which crumbles to pieces.

With Karna, ego made him build loyalty towards Duryodhana since he helped him in time of humiliation, by making him king of Anga. Ego pushes him to the extent of humiliating Draupadi during the gambling, just because it will make his benefactor happy.

Zero Attachment
Zero attachment to that which is material and transient is the key message of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. Assembled on the battlefield, Arjuna is unable see his kshatriya dharma; he forgets resolutions that he had made previously, including seconding Bhima's vow on his behalf in Duryodhana's court (after Draupadi vastraapaharana) that he will kill Karna. He forgets those innocents that want the good to fight and win against the evil. Krishna admonishes him to uphold his dharma, to fight evil, whether the opponents be his own cousins or unrelated. Worldly relations come and go, with souls migrating from one living form to another through the course of their lifecycle. Hence, attachment to someone's present form (cousin, uncle, etc.) causes one to break dharma.

Arjuna is finally convinced, and fights the war, although he relapses midway. When news of Abhimanyu's death in the chakravyuha reaches him, he breaks down. Evidently, letting go of attachment is very difficult even for the avatara of Indra.

Doing Good
The is no doubt Yudhishtira was a great upholder of dharma. However, there are occasions where he did not follow dharma. On the battlefield, when Krishna instructs him to lie to Drona about Ashwatthama's death, he hesitates. There is no greater dharma than following what Krishna says, but Yudhishtira holds another moral compass, likely ego-driven that tells him to follow his own instinct rather than Krishna's words.

In another episode described in the Varaha Purana (after the war), Vishnu himself visits Yudhishtira's palace at night as a poor brahmin asking for resources to conduct a yagna. Yudhishtira tells the poor brahmin to come the next morning since it was late. The poor brahmin then goes to Bhima, and Bhima immediately removes a gold ornament and hands it over to the brahmin. Bhima then goes to Yudhishtira and tells him (perhaps mockingly) that he is very happy that Yudhishtira has knowledge of his life in the future, which allows him to postpone a good task until the next morning. Yudhishtira is ashamed.

There are occasions in which our ego, or our own crooked sense of good interfere with our upholding of dharma (or what little of it we subscribe to). The only way to correct this to the extent possible is to attribute all our acts and abilities to God, rather than take credit for anything.