In plain words
Because I ate their food, because I ate food bound up with injustice, wrongdoing, bad conduct and Asatya, my blood too became impure. So by the influence of this blood my mind too became tainted. All this time, even knowing that what the Kauravas did was wrong, I could not give them the least word of good counsel. But by good fortune, because Arjuna loosed his arrows, the blood in my body has drained away these 56 days. Because all that blood has drained away, the pure blood that lay beneath is coming out. Now all the good feelings are coming forth. The reason they did not come all this time is nothing but that bad fault in the food. The tainted blood kept all of this pressed down. The fault of company changed my nature in that way.’ Recognising this, what did the foreigners say? ‘Tell me your company, I shall tell you what you are.’ As the people are with whom we keep company, so are the feelings that enter us. Bhīṣma was one vowed to Satya. For his father's sake he went on undergoing every hardship. He faced in every way the sorrows, troubles and hardships that stood in his way. Bhīṣma is the very one who bore them, pushed them aside and went forward. What was the reason such a fate came to a Bhīṣma like that? ‘Only because I ate this food tied to evil conduct did bad feelings go on growing in me. That is just why I could not teach that day the dharmas of today,’ he said.
Every teaching, teaching of this kind, begins in keeping with time, karma and duty, in keeping with the conditions of place and time. Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa used to be together in close companionship. Yet not once did Kṛṣṇa teach Arjuna the Bhagavad Gītā! But the time has to come. For anything at all we must win the favour of time. Time is most essential. ‘Kālakāla prasannānāṃ kālaḥ kiṃ kariṣyati’: only when we take time as our ideal in this way does time itself go on protecting us. ‘So I have waited this long for the right time,’ Bhīṣma said, and he went on teaching the assembly well the effect of his food and its conditions.