Morals in old stories.

Converting knowledge from the past to a modern context might be hard at times. Right now, I’m reading one book written in the 1600:s, and one that’s written in 1950 but with stories far older than that. What’s written can’t really be applied in my context, and therefore I want to interpret the core teachings and morals that the authors are trying to lead on.

In the latter book, called Mahabharata, there’s a story about a prince and a princess. The princess in insulted by the prince, or at least that’s how she’s interpreting it. It happens a couple of times, and the princess persuades people around her to fight the prince, without luck. The prince is the best fighter that the world has ever seen.

After years of trying to get her revenge, she seeks to the gods. She’s told that she’ll get her revenge in her next reincarnation, so she takes her own life to be born again. She’s born as a woman, and later turns in to a man, being able to fight the prince. He knows that she was born as a woman, and won’t fight her because of it. He dies and she gets her revenge.

The moral of the story is that the prince dies because of his principles. In my context, and most modern contexts, the whole fighting till death isn’t really applicable. But there’s still a moral: The prince has principles so fast that he will die rather than breaking them. One is to never harm a woman.

I don’t think that’s as common anymore, to have those morals so deeply embedded in us that we will die not to break them. But there might be value in finding out what boundaries we have, even if they’re highly unlikely to be broken. Would you kill someone? In what cases would you? If you’re a vegetarian, would you starve rather than eating meat?

What are the rules you’ve set up for yourself, and how far would you go to keep to them?