Bhagavad Gītā – Chapter 1 Notes

 

In Chapter 1 of the Bhagavad Gītā, the seer Sanjaya describes the scene on the battlefield for the benefit of the blind king Dritarashtra.  Sanjaya describes the scene in general, then focuses on Krishna and Arjuna.  Arjuna, filled with despair at the thought of having to fight his own kinsmen even though they are evil, throws down his bow and says he won’t fight.  He then turns to Krishna and asks for his advice.  

 

The remainder of the Bhagavad Gītā is essentially a wide-ranging dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, in which Krishna explains the importance of dharma and the different paths of yoga, and guides Arjuna towards making his own choice of worldly activity.  Krishna’s own dharma is to return regularly to earth as an avatar (i.e. god incarnate) whenever humanity seems to be heading in the wrong direction.

 

The orthodox Hindu viewpoint condones war for the warrior class: it’s their dharma to fight in a good cause, for good leaders.  This kind of war is in accord with God’s will.  But there is also a possible allegorical interpretation – war represents the cosmic struggle between good and evil.  In the Gītā Krishna is asking Arjuna to engage in a spiritual struggle against his lower self.  [See Easwaran, pp. 50-51]

 

Verses 40-43 stress the importance of family unity to the fabric of society.

 

Notes from Radhakrishnan’s commentary on BG (numbers are line numbers)

 

1   The quality of deciding what is right or dharma is special to man.  Hunger, sleep, fear and sex are common to men and animals.  What distinguishes men from animals is the knowledge of right and wrong.

 

The world is dharmakṣetra, the battleground for a moral struggle.  The decisive issue lies in the hearts of men where the battles are fought daily and hourly. …  The aim of the Gītā is not so much to teach a theory as to enforce practice, dharma.  We cannot separate in theory what is not separable in life.  The duties of civic and social life provide religion with its tasks and opportunities.  Dharma is what promotes wordly prosperity and spiritual freedom.  The Gītā does not teach a mysticism that concerns itself with man’s inner being alone.  Instead of rejecting the duties and relationships of life as an illusion, it accepts them as opportunities for the realization of spiritual freedom.  Life is offered to us that we may transfigure it completely.

 

14 Throughout the Hindu and the Buddhist literatures, the chariot stands for the psychophysical vehicle.  The steeds are the senses, the reins their controls, but the charioteer, the guide, is the spirit or real self, ātman.  Kṛṣṇa, the charioteer, is the Spirit in us.  (cp Katha Up III.3)

 

20 Suddenly, in a moment of self-analysis, Arjuna realises that the struggler means that the whole scheme of life, the great ideals of race and family, of law and order, of patriotism and reverence for the teacher, which he had loyally carried out till then, will have to be abandoned.

 

47 The distress of Arjuna is a dramatization of a perpetually recurring predicament.  Man, on the threshold of higher life, feels disappointed with the glamour of the world and yet illusions cling to him and he cherishes them.  … Before he wakes up to the world of spirit and accepts the obligations imposed by it, he has to fight the enemies of selfishness and stupidity, and overcome the dark ignorance of his self-centred ego.  Man cut off from spiritual nature has to be restored to it.  It is the evolution of the human soul that is portrayed here.