Book 1: The War Within

The first chapter¹ sets up the stage for the conflict. In the first verse (1:1), Dhritarashtra asks his right-hand man, Sanjay, to tell him what is happening on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Sanjay is blessed with the ability to livestream the events of any earthly location into his own head, and thus begins to narrate, to the best of his knowledge, the events of the battlefield. In this case, what the Gita sets up is essential: the symbolic value of examining the narrative set-up lies in the reminder that the Hindu tradition is, in this case, distinct and different from the Abrahamic tradition. The Gita certainly is Krishna’s word, and as such is revelation. But it is also somehow fallible, for the dialogue in which it is set up is relayed by a (fallible) human. Even though Sanjay manages to fade into the background, he does not completely disappear. That Krishna tells this to Arjuna is essential as well, because it is the categorical revelation that can be applied to one’s life if one chooses to do so and requires intellectual and moral effort. As far as revelation goes, it delves into the minutiae of the moment to provide general lessons.

The other interesting feature of the Bhagavad Gita is the format it uses: the dialogue. The dialogue is important in the history of philosophy because of Plato’s dialogues and the tradition that establishes. The dialogue is the mode of expression for Western philosophy and remained essential to its communication in different ways: Plato uses dialogues as a form of communication; Aristotle scholars have noted that Aristotle wrote dialogues as well for popular consumption;² David Hume and George Berkeley are two Enlightenment philosophers that commonly used the dialogue format to expound their views on multiple topics. Garcia da Orta’s Colloquies uses the dialogue form in his search for botanical truth, tipping his hat to a long tradition. The dialogue is important symbolically for it represents revelation subject to question: as we shall see, Arjun and Krishna engage in questions and counter-questions, and debate and discuss at length multiple topics of interest to both students of philosophy and theology.

While this chapter begins with a description of the battlefield through Sanjay’s speech (1:2–19), the major portion of this is dedicated to Arjun’s declaration of self-doubt when faced with the prospect of fighting his own family on the battlefield. He remarks, “We would become sinners by slaying these men, even though they are evil” (1:36). Arjun is having the same reaction that any other man would expect to have when faced with the prospect of killing his kinsmen: “fathers and grandfathers, teachers, uncles, and brothers, sons and grandsons, in-laws and friends” (1:26–27). It is not that Arjun does not recognise the evil and the nature of the sin and deceit they perpetrated against him, or of the false promises they made to him and to his brothers. Certainly, he acknowledges the brutal nature of war, replete with the death and destruction is entails. That is precisely why he does not want to fight, and this dislike and moral repugnance is exponentially amplified with the emotional and hierarchical connections he has with those who now oppose him. Arjun recognises his place in the hierarchy of people, rightly asserting that his elders and teachers are higher than him in this natural hierarchy and he does not think it to be appropriate to challenge them. Obedience, one can then infer, is a virtue, but with the same caveats that Aquinas would later prescribe in his Summa Theologica (quoted from the standard Dominican translation).

Augustine defines true peace as “the tranquillity of order” (xix.13) in the City of God. This is implicitly alluded to when Aquinas argues that “as one should act by one’s practical reason in doing other things, so also one should act in obeying superiors” (ST II–II, Q104, A1, ad. 1). The hierarchy is described as things higher than and lower than one’s place in the social and natural order, and because this sense of hierarchy is ordained by nature, it follows that “inferiors are obliged by the order of natural and divine law to obey their superiors” (ST II–II, Q104, A1). If there is to be peace, the natural order of things must receive both respect and obedience. Arjun recognises the threat his actions could have to the greater order of things, and he is careful and conscious of trying to make any changes to it that could inadvertently wreak havoc.

Why hierarchy is important for Arjun is obvious: man is inherently a social being. Man’s social nature is a key preoccupation for Arjun, whose sense of obedience to order directly stems from concern for the objects of man’s existence. He remarks to Krishna, “When a family declines, ancient traditions are destroyed. With them are lost the spiritual foundations for life, and the family loses its sense of unity” (1:40). The family is where custom and tradition reside, and it is the unit of propagation. The use of the word “ancient” here belies the belief in the timelessness of custom and tradition, which are instrumental to the faith — even today, many Hindu practices tend to vary extremely between families of any old prominence — and of social life and politics. Lanni notes that “customary law may have enjoyed more respect than positive law in ancient Greece.”³ In the same way, customary law here would have had more to do with the manner in which members of a family or a clan behaved, and enjoyed the same recognition of supremacy as written and formally promulgated principles. Arjun’s fear of breaking cosmic order by waging war against members of his family stems from his obedience to these unwritten laws and motivated in part by the fear that these ancient customs and traditions may cease to exist if there is war. He is even willing to completely abandon his rightful claim to recovery — remember that the war he is waging here is a war of last resort — if only to preserve this sense of family.

The family, according to Arjun, forms “the spiritual foundations for life” (1:40). Arjun recognises the importance of the family for actualising one’s potential for spirituality. The family, in all its glory, is directed to dharma and to rightful conduct and knowledge, through which one walks down the path to spiritual existence. If, for Aristotle, the role of the polis was to orient itself to the common good and assist in its actualisation, on a similar level the household was responsible for the spiritual achievement of its members. Knowledge — both practical and theoretical — was supposed to be passed from older generations to newer ones, and the final goal seems to be twofold: darshan, philosophical inquiry, and dharma, ethical action. At the microscopic level, the basic unit of organisation of human life is the family, and to be a good person necessitates a certain sense of filial piety and obedience. Both ethical action and philosophical enquiry are made easier and more attainable when one is within a community that supports and encourages it: philosophising and debate are sustained by the presence of a community oriented to it, and it is easier to act ethically when ethical action is recognised as one of the nomos of the community. Within the family, this is attainable and possible, and from this line it can be inferred that it is essential for members of the family, particularly the elders, to have sufficient knowledge and understanding of what darshan and dharma entail so that this, too, can be propagated for time immemorial. Arjun confirms this view when he notes that “those whose family dharma has been destroyed dwell in hell” (1:44).

Why does Arjun turn to Krishna, and not to his own conscience? Krishna here is symbolic of the divine, which acts as a check on what one can derive from one’s conscience. Here, Arjun finds his own conscience and reason failing him for it focuses on the possibility of pain and suffering without recognising that dukkha is an intrinsic part of the world. The world around us is full of pain and suffering, but that does not mean that we forsake our duty. Here, Arjun’s duty is not just to his immediate family and brothers, but also to those he ruled over: he must protect the common weal, not himself. He is worried about moral injury to himself, but his actions must have the sense of critical distance from his sense of self and as a ruler and warrior, must fight in the interest of the common good: that is what all government is oriented toward, as the Philosopher tells us in his Politics. Arjun knows that by prolonging the battle and not acting swiftly, he permits those who are “overpowered by greed and see no evil” (1:38) to rule over those who have entrusted him to rule. The divine reminds the human of its fallibility and points out the way forward.

Book 2: Self-Realisation

It is here that Arjun tells Krishna, “My will is paralysed, and I am utterly confused. Tell me which is the better path for me. Let me be your disciple. I have fallen at your feet; give me instruction” (2:7). The human — righteous or not, human nonetheless — has chosen of his free will to accept divine guidance only when his conscience has failed him. Arjun asks Krishna for help because he is humble, and while his conscience tells him that he should not fight this war, he knows better — and otherwise. It is this sense of doubt and a desire to know and do what is right that pushes Arjun to seek knowledge and illumination. A professor began a class once with the pronouncement that “all learning begins with suffering.” With Arjun, this, too, is the case — he is inflicted with the pain of self-doubt and knows that he must act in a particular manner, even though there is a part of him that seems opposed to the course of action he is about to embark upon. Little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and Arjun acknowledges this, surrendering not in part but in his entirety to Krishna. He falls at Krishna’s feet not only because Krishna is the embodiment of the divine, of the ultimate reality, but also because Krishna is his teacher, and falling at his feet is a marker of fealty, obedience, and most important respect. Arjun accepts Krishna to be prior to him in the cosmic hierarchy and follows the first step in recognising the duties and obligations he has: dharma and darshan.

What responsibilities does this pose unto Krishna? While Krishna as Arjun’s teacher certainly reserves the right to admonish him, the ideal guru would take it upon himself to show his pupil the light. Krishna, here, intends to show Arjun the path of righteous action, of dharma, in order to alleviate Arjun’s suffering. However, Arjun must willingly accept his teacher before all else. When the professor remarked that “all learning begins with suffering,” he forgot to add an essential caveat: there is no learning without surrender and consciousness of one’s ignorance. In his Apology, Plato’s Socrates remarks that the wisest man of all is the one who “has recognised that he’s truly worthless where wisdom’s concerned” (23a). The only thing we can know is how little we know — this is the crux of the contention that Arjun makes. Arjun is no simpleton, and he does not aspire to mirror Socrates. Instead, he recognises that the pursuit of knowledge can only begin when he prostrates before Krishna, doubtful of everything he knows except for the fact of his surrender to Krishna’s will. He is bewildered, and his innate sense of what is right and wrong is misleading him. With his, he signals his ignorance and the human capacity to exercise free will in one’s pursuit of dharma and darshan.

In the following verse, Arjun reveals his motive: “Even power over men and gods or the wealth of an empire seem empty” (2:8). Power is not an end in itself but a means to an end. However, its acquisition cannot be tainted with sinful acts or deceit, for one must not just be a virtuous ruler but also have received power in a rightful way. Power is meaningless if it is acquired in an improper manner, and one should not resort to unjust and sinful means to regain power unjustly usurped. For Arjun to recognise this is essential: even though Yudhishthira is moral and ethical nerve centre within the five Pandavas, even Arjun, the warrior, must inculcate and consciously call upon his sense of right and wrong, just and unjust, virtuous and sinful, to be a good ruler. There is no substitute for darshan and dharma, and in no scenario is it acceptable for good men to do bad things, even if the ends they pick are right and just. The wielding of sinful acts and thoughts can not lead to justice and righteousness. Arjun knows he must do the right thing: this is why he surrenders to Krishna’s knowledge and begs to be accepted as a disciple.

Krishna responds by admonishing Arjun while praising him for his sincerity (2:11). Age and death are irrelevant, for these are mere delusions (2:12–13) that must be avoided: the wise man knows better than to fall for appearances when he has access to the knowledge of reincarnation. The soul, Krishna points out, merely “attains another body” (2:13) when its mortal abode fulfils its logical end of death — all that lives must die in the same way that all that goes up must come down. The soul, we are led to understand, is prior to one’s physical body, and consequently one’s sense of self should not be preoccupied with the maya of one’s appearance but rather of true beauty, darshan, and dharma, all of which reside in the soul and are abstract entities worthy of contemplation and action. The good life is lived not in the flesh but in the mind, first and foremost.

What is the relationship of the wise man and the world around him? Krishna tells Arjun that “when the senses contact sense objects, a person experiences cold or heat, pleasure or pain. These experiences are fleeting …” (2:14). However, the wise are not affected by these changes (2:15), for their minds are oriented away from the triviality and the dukkha of the world around them, and they can escape this suffering through darshan and dharma. This does not seem to be any different from Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, where he reminds the Galatians to “walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). Sin resides in the flesh, in the temporal, where there is temptation and change, but what is good is eternally so and resides in the Spirit and the Ultimate Reality. On this point, Paul and the Bhagavad Gita do not disagree — there is a remarkable similarity in both traditions. True wisdom comes not from mastery of this world, but knowledge of the ethereal, the eternal, the world of forms: regardless of one’s philosophical allegiances, certainly, the wise man understands the unchanging, and then that which is always in flux will make sense to him, and he no longer will be tempted by the ephemeral illusion, but be in peace with the perennial. The insinuation is that that which changes is always studied in comparison to that which does not, which is why he who is truly wise will try first to get a knowledge of the eternal, the perpetual, and then evaluate the changing against it.

How, then, is the wise man to react to external stimuli? If sense objects contact the senses and cause sensation (2:14), then how is the wise man “unaffected by these changes” (2:15)? To simplify this, let us use the analogy of whether pain resides in the knife or in the body: according to Krishna, the knife is the sense object and the sense is of touch, while the change would be the sensation of pain. If the wise man does react to being cut ­­— the wise man would not cut himself, it is assumed — how should he react? The wise man, it seems, is not free from the experience of sensation, but is free from the change it causes because he is free from the shackles of the mayajaal and his “reality lies in the eternal” (2:16).⁴

Those transitory feelings Krishna advises Arjun to avoid are the result of living with the flesh instead of the spirit, of the body instead of in the mind. Arjun is afraid to go to war because of the pain he will cause, but this pain is transitory, and the sins of the Kauravas will follow them as lessons into the next life, when they shed this body and enter another. Krishna reminds Arjun, “there is neither slayer nor slain” (2:19), using this as a segue into the nature of ultimate reality, which is “unborn, eternal, immutable, immemorial” (2:20). The soul is never born, and it never dies (2:20): when it resides in a body it has taken a physical plant that it can shed at any time.

Life and death of the body are irrelevant ­— it is the life and the nourishment of one’s soul through intellectual and spiritual nourishment that is fundamental to the good life. Even the Philosopher cannot help but aver this in the Politics, where he notes that “thoughts with no object beyond themselves, and speculations and trains of reflections followed purely for their own sake, are far more deserving of the name of active” than the life of political action (Politics, vii.3, 1325^b14): the best way of life, then, is the contemplative one for Aristotle, one which involves darshan as its keystone. This is not to say that one should eschew one’s responsibilities to the world outside, but rather re-affirms the centrality and essential nature of philosophical introspection, without which one cannot live a good life. “Goodness,” the Philosopher astutely remarks, “by itself is not enough: there must also be a capacity for being active in doing good” (Politics, vii.3, 1325^b7).

In the same way that Aristotle pushes both contemplation of the good and actions in support of the good, Krishna here is trying to get Arjun to think and act in the right manner, commiserate with his station in life. Krishna reminds Arjun of his duty, dharma, that he must enact at the risk of subverting it — “for a warrior, nothing is higher than a war against evil” (2:31), and fighting in a just war is the pathway to eternal liberation from samskara, the cycle of endless birth, death, and rebirth (2:32). However, if Arjun does not fulfil his duty, he is committing a sin like no other. “If you do not participate in this battle against evil,” Krishna prods Arjun, “you will incur sin, violating your dharma and your honour” (2:33). If “dishonour is worse than death” (2:34), then there is no excuse for Arjun to abdicate his position leading the Pandavas into battle. He must obey the law of ethical action before all else. His duties as a warrior are easily derived from reason but harder to follow. While acknowledging that death and suffering are bad, Krishna comforts Arjun with the knowledge that everything is transitory for the truly wise man and the Self cannot be harmed (2:26–30).

The righteous warrior, following his dharma, has no reason to fear the battlefield, for “death means the attainment of heaven; victory means the enjoyment of the earth” (2:37). If “pain and pleasure, profit and loss, victory and defeat” (2:38) are all transitory phases that make no difference to the wise man, who prefers and finds more profitable the pursuit of knowledge, then there is nothing to fear except the dereliction of one’s duty, which is one of the cornerstones of the good life. It is Arjun’s imperative to fight — that is his duty, and he must fulfil it. Arjun values social and familial cohesion, but above that is the tranquillity of the cosmic order, which must retain primary. If that which is good acts consciously to avoid its duty to vanquish evil, then the good is sinning against itself — the insinuation here being that if Arjun, who has the respect and admiration of Krishna, cannot act to defeat evil, how can he be good? By asserting that Arjun is good and that the good acts in its furtherance and against evil, Krishna reminds Arjun that it is his duty, first and foremost, to be the general that leads the legion of the good.

Having received his first philosophy lesson from Arjun on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, far removed from the comparably calm and colder environs of Hanover, New Hampshire, Krishna proceeds to reveal to him the knowledge of ethics, yoga,⁵ which he later defines as “skill in action” (2:50). What does this path entail? According to Krishna, the individual must resolve “deep within themselves to seek me alone” (2:41). At first sight, “me” here can seem to be Krishna, the divine. But this is not the entirety of its meaning. The exhortation to “seek me alone” (2:41) is, broadly put, the obligation one has to seek both darshan and dharma, for they are two sides of one coin: the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom. Without wisdom, man may encounter Brahman but be befuddled by it or not recognise it at all, for without wisdom revelation and reason are both useless, no better than a computer in the hands of an illiterate man. The pursuit of the divine, then, can be conflated here with the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, at least in its initial stages.

At this early stage, it seems as though the Gita and the Philosopher agree on the nature of the divine. The Philosopher posits in his discussion of the best way of life that the only way that one can reach the divine is through the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom. If this were not to be the case, the Philosopher pithily points out that “there would be something wrong with God himself and the whole of the universe” (Politics, vii.3, 1325^b14). Aristotle’s God, “is thought thinking himself” (. From this the nature of faith can be discerned: faith’s telos is the accumulation and use of knowledge and wisdom, of darshan and dharma, and of a mind singularly oriented to it. It is a gift that comes to some after many years of contemplation and philosophy, and to some it never does come at all.

However, this acquisition of knowledge and wisdom, too, must be done in a rightful manner. What is true knowledge and wisdom if not power over the self? As such, it is no different from the pursuit of earthly and political power. One cannot make a Faustian bargain — to consign one’s soul to evil in order to advance one’s ambitions, whether it is power or knowledge. The pursuit of that which is good is eternal, immutable, and unchanging, and the truly wise man should be able to follow the path of dharma in search of darshan and not stray from it. As with power of this realm, knowledge and wisdom are to be used for righteous and moral means, and not for the pursuit of one’s self-aggrandisement or ego or any modicum of self-interest: selfish desires that taint the purity of the pursuit of knowledge beyond redemption for this pursuit would be the fruit of the poisonous tree. One can even go so far as to say that knowledge which is the fruit of the poisonous tree is not really knowledge at all, but the deceptive appearance of it when it clearly does not exist.

Krishna continues with his philosophy lesson, remarking that “there are ignorant people who speak flowery words and take delight in the letter of the law, saying that there is nothing else” (2:42). It is not an attack on eloquence or rhetoric en toto but rather the use of speech to communicate that which is subversive to the cosmic order: while man has a certain degree of free will, as Aquinas too points out (ST I–II, Q19, AA. 5–6), but this does not guarantee that one always does what is right. This is similar in a way to the expulsion of the poets from the Ideal City in Plato’s Republic: Plato’s Socrates refers to the “purification” of the arts and mythology (399e) in the pursuit of making a city that is both virtuous and just. The expulsion of the poets from the Ideal City for not always imitating that which is desirable and just for the city is not an expulsion of all poets, but misleading ones; instead, the Ideal City would hire “one who would imitate the speech of a good person and make his stories fit the patterns we laid down” (398a–b).

A man who exploits “flowery words” and only revels in the “letter of the law” (2:42) deserves punishment. Furthermore, one can discern that if one is merely following the letter of the law and therefore engaging in “selfish desires” (2:43) instead of righteous action, then they are sinning against the law itself: Aquinas points out that “we ought to pay more attention to the lawmaker’s aim than to the very words of the law” (ST I–II, Q96, A6), claiming the supremacy of the spirit of the law over its mere letter. What Krishna does here is no different: the man who lives only by the letter of the law is a slave to it and needs it for existence in a civilised state, while the man who lives by the spirit of the law truly seeks to comprehend it and follows it not for “pleasure and power” (2:43) but for the “supreme goal” (2:44), which seems to be enlightenment and a connection with the Ultimate Reality.

What, then, is the right way to live? This is a question Krishna returns back to repeatedly and consistently, emphasising that knowledge itself is important, and so is its application to one’s life. The wise man is “established in eternal truth, self-controlled, without any sense of duality or the desire to acquire and hoard” (2:45). The emphasis on duality, however, is new, and while Krishna is supposed to be revealing the principles of Yoga and Samkhya, he rejects the dualism between consciousness and material reality that is characteristic of both schools of thought. To the wise man, the distinction between the two collapses completely, for he is one with the ultimate reality, the Brahman, which is the totality of the universe.