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STORIES · THE MAHĀBHĀRATA · Bhīṣma

The Bhagavad Gītā

Classical

The Gita begins with a blind king asking his reporter what is happening. Dhritarashtra asks Sanjaya what his sons and the Pandavas did after gathering on the sacred plain of Kurukshetra, and Sanjaya describes the scene. Duryodhana goes to his teacher Drona, looks over the Pandava army, and names its fighters one by one, then names his own. He judges his army, with Bhishma guarding it, to be not enough, and the Pandava force to be enough, and orders his commanders to protect Bhishma. Bhishma blows his conch with a lion's roar to cheer him up. At once conches, drums and horns sound everywhere. Krishna and Arjuna answer with their conches, and each Pandava leader blows his own named shell. The noise shakes the Kaurava ranks.

Then Arjuna asks Krishna to drive his chariot into the space between the armies so he can see the men who are eager to fight. Krishna does so, halting before Bhishma and Drona and the other kings, and tells Arjuna to look at the Kurus drawn up there. Arjuna sees fathers, grandfathers, teachers, uncles, sons and friends on both sides. Pity overwhelms him. His limbs weaken, his mouth dries, his body trembles and his hair stands on end. His bow slips from his hand, his skin burns, and his mind wanders. He sees bad signs. He tells Krishna he wants neither victory, nor kingdom, nor pleasure. Killing his own people would be sin, he argues, and destroy family traditions, and the ancestors would be left without their rites. He would rather be killed unarmed than fight. Sanjaya tells the blind king that Arjuna set down his bow and arrows and sat in his chariot, overcome with sorrow.

Krishna's first words are a rebuke, and then an argument. This weakness is unworthy of a noble man, he says, and Arjuna should get up. Arjuna answers that he cannot shoot arrows at men like Bhishma and Drona, and asks to be taught. Krishna begins with the self. One should not grieve for the dead or the living. The embodied soul passes through childhood, youth and old age and then takes another body. Whoever thinks the Self kills or is killed misunderstands it. Weapons, fire, water and wind cannot touch it, and, in the translation, "It is never born, nor doth it ever die." Birth and death cannot be avoided, so grieving is pointless. A warrior's duty is to fight a just war, and refusing would bring disgrace worse than death. And Arjuna should treat pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat alike. From here Krishna turns to the discipline of action without attachment to results.

Arjuna is confused: if knowledge is higher, why act? Krishna says there are two paths, knowledge and disciplined action, and that no one can stay idle even for a moment. The person who restrains the senses outwardly while dwelling on their objects is a pretender, and action is better than inaction. Sacrifice binds humans and gods in a cycle of giving, and the one who takes without giving back is a thief. Great people set the standard others follow, and Krishna himself acts, though he has nothing to gain, so that people will not abandon their duties. Arjuna asks what drives a person to sin against his will, and Krishna says desire and anger born of passion, which cover knowledge as smoke covers fire or dust a mirror. Master the senses first, he says, and then defeat desire.

The last section closes the dialogue. Arjuna asks about renunciation, and Krishna explains that giving up the fruits of action is different from giving up action, and that everything comes in three kinds, by goodness, passion and darkness. His final instruction is surrender: act with devotion, offer actions to him, and do not grieve. Then he asks whether Arjuna has listened carefully and whether his confusion is gone. Arjuna says it is. His memory of his true nature has returned, his doubts are settled, and the fog of delusion has lifted. He will act on Krishna's word. Sanjaya, who has heard all of it by Vyasa's grace, says he remembers it with wonder, and that wherever Krishna and Arjuna are, there will be prosperity and victory.

Told by Kṛṣṇa / Sañjaya → Arjuna

Who: Kṛṣṇa

Bound to

Sanatsujātīya twin

Arjuna and Duryodhana choose between Kṛṣṇa and his army origin

Kṛṣṇa in Hastināpura: Duryodhana's plot and the cosmic form mirror

The covenants of battle, Vyāsa's gift of sight, and Yuyutsu's change of sides origin

Where this comes from

See it on the tree · All stories

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