# The Bhagavad Gita by Vyasa - Blinkist What’s in it for me? Insights into an Indian epic. The Bhagavad Gita opens on a battlefield.  Two vast armies have assembled on the scorched plains of northern India. Generals blow conch shells to assemble their men, but the sound barely penetrates the din of crashing cymbals and thundering drums. Squinting soldiers hone their swords and adjust their armor under the fierce sun. Hungry jackals and crows gather on the sidelines for the feast that awaits.  As the battle is about to commence, one of the great warriors of his age, an archer called Arjuna, orders his charioteer to station their carriage between the two opposing armies. “I want,” he says, “to look at the men arrayed here so eager for war.”  But when he sees the opposing ranks of soldiers, Arjuna loses all appetite for battle. A wave of despair sweeps over him and he casts his famous bow to one side. It’s at this point that one of the most important dialogues in the religious and philosophical history of India – and the world – begins. It falls to Arjuna’s charioteer, Krishna, to persuade Arjuna to overcome his doubts.  Krishna, though, is no ordinary man – as an astonished Arjuna soon learns, he is an incarnation of the Supreme Lord. What he tells Arjuna goes to the heart of what it means to live and die – and the truth of the universe. It is for this reason that the work bears its famous title: it is nothing less than the song, or gita, of the lord, or bhagavan. The struggle for the kingdom of Bharata The battlefield that Arjuna surveys at the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita is called Kurukshetra, about a hundred miles north of today’s New Delhi. It is, in short, a real place. But its geography is secondary. As Gandhi put it in the twentieth century, Kurukshetra is located in every human soul, for it is there that the eternal battle of good and evil is fought.  That is indeed the more significant battlefield in the Bhagavad Gita, but we need some context before we get to that. Although it stands alone, the work recounts one episode of a larger story. That story is told in the 200,000-verse epic known as the Mahabharata, which recounts the civil war in the ancient kingdom of Bharata in today’s northern India.  It starts with the death of Bharata’s king. Two camps form around his potential successors. On one side is the king’s younger brother, Pandu; on the other, his older brother, Dhritarashtra, who assumes the throne despite his blindness – a condition Pandu’s supporters argue should disqualify him. In the ensuing struggle, the followers of Pandu, known as Pandavas, are exiled for thirteen years. When they return to stake their claim to the throne, war breaks out.  Both camps rush to assemble allies across India, and both court Krishna, the ruler of a kingdom with links to both sides. Krishna, an enlightened monarch who cherishes fairness, says he’ll serve the Pandavas personally, but send his armies to fight for their enemies. Vowing not to touch a weapon, he acts as the charioteer for his friend, Arjuna, the Pandavas’ greatest warrior.  Arjuna never doubted the righteousness of the Pandavas’ cause – until the day of the battle. After telling Krishna to steer the chariot into the no-man’s land between the two armies, he’s overcome by the momentousness of what lies ahead – the bloody conclusion to a fratricidal civil war. “Oh, what a crime we are about to commit,” he says, “from our desire to enjoy kingship, we are ready to kill our kinsmen.”  His taste for battle gone, he throws aside his bow and slumps into the chariot.  If the Pandavas are to triumph, they need Arjuna, so Krishna tries to persuade him to take up his arms again. He succeeds: when we take our leave of Arjuna at the end of the Bhagavad Gita, we see him joining the battle. But the hundreds of lines of verse spoken by Krishna before that add up to much more than an ad-hoc pep talk for a doubtful soldier. Krishna’s battlefield teachings What, Krishna asks, is the cause of Arjuna’s sudden distress? Arjuna’s mind is spinning and his body trembles, but he’s able to formulate an answer.   He identifies two causes. The first is psychological: he’s overcome by horror and grief at the impending loss of so many members of his family. What good, he asks, can come of a war in which brother slays brother? The second is moral: Arjuna doesn’t understand how to fulfill his duties. As a member of the Indian warrior class, it’s his duty to engage in battle. But he’s also obliged to protect his family. When this responsibility is forgotten, he says, society as a whole collapses. How, then, should he reconcile these competing obligations?  Krishna’s answer appeals to an idea that was well-known and widely accepted in ancient India. A learned person, he says, “does not grieve over those who are dead.” Why should he, given that he knows what all “learned” religious and philosophical schools teach – namely, that the dead do not cease to exist. Our essential spirits – our souls – exist before we are born and continue existing after we die. The human body, Krishna continues, is a temporary resting place for this soul. Just as we cast off one set of garments to put on fresh clothes, the soul dispenses with one body to enter a fresh one.  To truly grasp this idea, known as the transmigration of souls, is to solve Arjuna’s conundrum. If only the body dies in death, it follows that the warrior only extinguishes the bodies of the men he kills in battle – their souls remain untouched. If the war is just – and Krishna’s words make it clear that he thinks this war is just – Arjuna has no cause to grieve the deaths of those who will fall in the coming battle.  What about Arjuna’s conflicting duties? Krishna’s answer is concise: Arjuna’s duty as a male member of the warrior class to fight in righteous battle trumps his obligations to his family. It is the nature of this class, Krishna says, to engage in war; that is the overriding responsibility of its members. And it is better, Krishna concludes, to fulfill the duties that follow from our natures, even poorly, than it is “to perform the duty of someone else well.”  The dialogue between charioteer and warrior might have ended there, but Krishna is just getting started. Having spoken to Arjuna’s psychological and moral quandaries, he now proposes to explain how the warrior can cut away “the bondage of action.” The bondage of action What does Krishna mean by the “bondage of action?” To unpack this idea, we need to take a brief detour through ancient Indian thought.   Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism – the three great religious offshoots of this intellectual tradition – don’t see the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth in positive terms. Though it’s a form of immortality, it’s not an attractive one. Let’s break that down.   For these religions, the material world is illusory. The aim of existence is to achieve a form of consciousness that penetrates divine and eternal truths – truths transcending this world. But humans are desiring creatures. Desire motivates our actions; it causes us to organize our lives around the pursuit of fleeting and ultimately meaningless goals such as money and prestige, status and sex. Such desires, Krishna says, are “insatiable fires:” the more we feed them, the more they grow. Because we are never truly satisfied, we constantly seek out new objects of desire. The price of this never-ending cycle of wanting and not-getting is to remain trapped – and to suffer – in the world of illusions. This is what Krishna means by the “bondage of action.”  This problem compounds over time. Actions motivated by desire produce karma – a kind of grime that sticks to the soul, obscuring its natural clarity. The more our actions are motivated by desire, the more karma builds up. It’s this accumulation of karma that causes souls to be reborn again and again in the illusory world.  How, then, can we escape this cycle? The most common answer in these religious traditions is the renunciation of desire. That’s why, for example, the Buddha gave up his social position and wealth and retreated into the forest to meditate under a fig tree – and why many more followed him down the centuries. Abandoning the social world and devoting yourself to a wandering life of mental discipline and bodily austerity was seen as the surest path to enlightenment – that state of being Buddhists call nirvana and Hindus term moksha.  Krishna, however, doesn’t seek to convince Arjuna to become an ascetic monk. What he is instead proposing is a path that reconciles enlightenment and worldly action.  One can act, he says, without becoming a slave to desire; the key is to avoid attachment to the outcomes of actions. “Your obligation,” he tells Arjuna, “is to the action, and never to its fruits.” Focus only on your duties and disregard desired or feared outcomes, in other words, and the self – the seat of those enslaving desires – retreats. It is then that we become capable of selfless action – of doing what’s right, whatever the results. The path of devotion It’s no surprise that the relationship between humanity and divinity plays a prominent part in a work called the “Song of the Lord.” How, the Bhagavad Gita asks, can we relate to the divine? The answer it develops would go on to become a cornerstone of Hinduism and other Indian religions. It is contained in a single Sanskrit word: bhakti, which means “devotion.”  The path of devotion, Krishna tells Arjuna, is selfless: the devotee’s obligation is to the act of devotion, not its fruits. It is the action of, say, making a sacrifice to a god that is important, not the reward or favor one hopes to gain from that action. Of course, Krishna continues, devotion requires a worthy recipient. Over the course of the dialogue contained in the Bhagavad Gita, it becomes clear that Krishna is that worthy recipient.  The revelation of Krishna’s divinity begins when Krishna tells his unsuspecting friend that he has taught everything he is about to teach Arjuna many times before. Many eons ago, he says, he taught them to the Sun, the first man, and the first king of the solar dynasty. Arjuna, who only knows Krishna in his human form, is astonished. How, he asks, is that possible?  Krishna’s answer brings us back to a topic we explored earlier: reincarnation. Both Krishna and Arjuna have “gone through many births,” the former says, but Arjuna’s participation in the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth has always been unconscious – that is why he doesn’t recall his past lives. Krishna, by contrast, chooses to enter into this cycle. He can do this, we learn, because he is divine. Whenever there’s a decline in justice, he enters the human world in human form to “restore righteousness.” Put differently, Krishna is an avatar – a Sanskrit word meaning “to cross down” that refers to a manifestation of a deity in bodily form on Earth.  Krishna, however, isn’t merely divine – he is the Supreme Being. Behold me! he cries to Arjuna. “I support all creatures and bring them into existence.” Just as the wind goes everywhere yet remains within space, he adds, so all beings reside within him.  The question that arises as a result of Krishna’s self-revelation as the “imperishable Lord of All Beings” is this: How does one devote oneself to such a god? The discipline of devotion, Krishna answers, involves both action and knowledge. Any act, no matter how modest, can be an act of devotion. As before, it isn’t the action that’s important, but the mindset of the person performing it. If a person presents him with a flower, a leaf, or a glass of water with true devotion, Krishna says, he will accept their offering. This kind of devotion frees us from the bondage of action. Redirecting all action into devotional service, Krishna says, allows us to abandon our attachment to the fruits of our actions – in other words, it is through devotion that we attain selflessness. “If a person sees me in everything, and sees everything in me,” Krishna tells Arjuna, “I will not disappear from that person, nor will that one disappear from me.” The destroyer of worlds Krishna doesn’t only reveal his divinity to Arjuna in words – he also grants the doubtful warrior a terrifying vision of the Supreme Being’s all-encompassing power.  Arjuna sees Krishna as an infinite assemblage of arms and eyes, bellies and mouths, stretching out in all directions to fill the whole universe. Every god known in the Indian pantheon is contained within his body. Arjuna can’t bear this sight. “I quake in my innermost being,” he says, “and I cannot find firm ground or peace.” But the vision isn’t over. As Arjuna trembles, Krishna morphs into a world-destroying fire. It is a premonition of the battle to come.  Arjuna now sees all the sons and soldiers of Dhritarashtra and Pandu, the two leaders of the armies assembled on the plains of Kurukshetra, rushing headlong into Krishna’s infinite mouth. Some are crushed and broken by his sharp teeth; others are swept into the vast abyss. Arjuna thinks of how moths rush into blazing fires – that is how these men enter Krishna’s mouth.  Confused and horrified, Arjuna cries out: What kind of God is this? “I am Time,” says Krishna, “powerful destroyer of worlds, grown immense here to annihilate these men.” Krishna is absolute in two senses: he is the creator and the annihilator of all life. Here, at last, is the answer to Arjuna’s quandary. It is the Supreme Lord, not the contending armies of Dhritarashtra and Pandu, who will decide the outcome of the battle. It is his agency that counts. Rise up and gain fame, Krishna now commands Arjuna: go and conquer your enemies and rule a prosperous kingdom, he says, for they have “already been destroyed by me.”  Understanding that he is nothing but an instrument of divine will, Arjuna picks up his bow and resolves to fight. Everything has already been decided; all he can do is his duty. Final summary One of Hinduism’s most important texts centers on a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and the god Krishna, who serves as his charioteer. On the battlefield, Arjuna experiences a moral crisis about fighting in the war. Krishna imparts spiritual wisdom and guidance on duty, righteousness, and the nature of the self, ultimately revealing his divine form, and emphasizing the importance of selfless action and devotion.