The Bhagavad Gita

Summary

The Bhagavad Gita is a dialogue of seven hundred verses in eighteen chapters, forming part of the sixth book of the Mahabharata, the great Sanskrit epic of the war between two branches of a royal family, the Pandavas and the Kauravas. It is set on the battlefield of Kurukshetra at the moment before battle begins. The blind king Dhritarashtra, father of the Kauravas, asks his minister Sanjaya, who has been granted divine sight, to describe what is happening. Sanjaya relates the conversation between the Pandava prince Arjuna, the greatest archer of his age, and his charioteer Krishna, who is an incarnation of the god Vishnu. Arjuna asks Krishna to drive the chariot between the two armies, and seeing his teachers, uncles, cousins and friends arrayed against him, he is overwhelmed. His limbs fail, his mouth goes dry, his body trembles, his bow slips from his hand, and he declares he will not fight, preferring to die than to kill his kin. Krishna's reply is the Gita. He first argues that the self, the atman, is eternal: it is never born and never dies, so that the slayer and the slain are both deceived. He then argues that Arjuna must perform his duty, his dharma, as a warrior. From this starting point the teaching broadens into a synthesis of spiritual paths. Krishna teaches karma yoga, the discipline of action performed without attachment to its fruits; jnana yoga, the path of knowledge distinguishing the eternal self from the material body and the three qualities, or gunas, of nature: sattva (purity), rajas (passion) and tamas (inertia); the practice of meditation and moderation in eating and sleeping; and above all bhakti, loving devotion to God. In Chapter Eleven, at Arjuna's request, Krishna reveals his universal form, an overwhelming vision of all worlds and all beings, gods and armies flowing into his blazing mouths as rivers into the sea, and declares himself Time, the destroyer of worlds. Terrified, Arjuna begs him to resume his familiar form. The later chapters classify human qualities, foods, gifts and forms of worship by the three gunas and distinguish divine from demonic natures. In the final chapter Krishna summarizes the teaching, urging Arjuna to abandon all duties and take refuge in him alone. Arjuna declares his delusion destroyed and his doubts gone, and takes up his bow. Sanjaya concludes that wherever Krishna and Arjuna are, there will be victory and righteousness.

Plot or Argument

• Ch. 1: Arjuna's despondency

  Facing his kinsmen in battle, Arjuna is overcome with grief and physical collapse and refuses to fight.

• Ch. 2: the immortal self and duty

  Krishna teaches that the self is eternal and that Arjuna must fulfil his warrior's duty, introducing action without attachment.

• Ch. 3–5: action and renunciation

  Karma yoga: acting as an offering, without desire for results, is superior to inaction.

• Ch. 6: meditation

  The discipline of the mind, posture, moderation in food and sleep, and the yogi who sees the self in all beings.

• Ch. 7–10: knowledge and the divine

  Krishna describes his higher and lower natures and his manifestations in all excellent things.

• Ch. 11: the universal form

  Krishna reveals his cosmic form as all-devouring Time; Arjuna is terrified and awed.

• Ch. 12: devotion

  Bhakti, loving devotion, is the surest path; the qualities of the devotee dear to God.

• Ch. 13–17: the field, the gunas and their effects

  Distinction of body and knower; the three qualities of nature and how they shape character, food, worship and charity.

• Ch. 18: liberation through renunciation

  Summation: act according to one's nature without attachment, surrender to God; Arjuna resolves to fight.

Characters

• Arjuna, seeker

  Pandava prince and archer whose moral crisis on the battlefield prompts the dialogue.

• Krishna, teacher and God

  Arjuna's charioteer, revealed as the supreme deity, who teaches him the paths to liberation.

• Sanjaya, narrator

  Minister granted divine vision to report the battle to the blind king.

• Dhritarashtra, listener

  Blind Kaurava king who asks what is happening on the field.

Lessons

• Act without clinging to outcomes

  Krishna's central counsel is to perform one's duty fully while relinquishing attachment to results. The teaching addresses anxiety about outcomes as a source of paralysis.

  • Is it possible to act wholeheartedly without caring about results?
  • How does this differ from fatalism or indifference?
  • Where in modern life does attachment to outcomes cause suffering?

• Moral crisis as a beginning

  Arjuna's collapse is not dismissed; it opens the way to the whole teaching. The Gita treats doubt and despair as the occasion for wisdom.

  • Is Arjuna's refusal to fight a moral insight or a delusion?
  • Does Krishna answer Arjuna's ethical objection, or change the subject?

• The problem of violence

  The text has been read as a literal call to righteous war and, by Gandhi among others, as an allegory of inner struggle. Its interpretation remains contested.

  • How could Gandhi, an advocate of non-violence, take the Gita as his guide?
  • Can duty justify killing?

Context

The Gita synthesizes Vedic ritual, Upanishadic philosophy, Samkhya and Yoga thought, and the emerging theism of devotion to Vishnu-Krishna. It appears in the Bhishma Parva, the sixth book of the Mahabharata, and was composed at a time when Buddhism and Jainism were challenging Brahmanical religion.

Composition

Its date is uncertain; most scholars place it between the fifth and second centuries BCE, possibly with later additions. The great medieval commentators include Shankara (8th century) and Ramanuja (11th–12th century). Charles Wilkins published the first English translation in 1785.

Reception

The Gita became one of the most widely read Indian texts in the West, influencing Emerson and Thoreau, T. S. Eliot and Aldous Huxley. In India it was central to the thought of Tilak, Aurobindo and Gandhi. J. Robert Oppenheimer famously recalled a line from Chapter 11 after the first atomic test.

Comparisons

• meditations

  Both counsel acting dutifully in one's appointed role while accepting outcomes with equanimity; Marcus also wrote while waging war.

• the-iliad

  Two epics of kin and friends at war; Achilles' and Arjuna's refusals to fight lead to very different reflections on mortality and duty.

• siddhartha

  Hesse's novel draws on the same Indian tradition but has its hero seek liberation through experience rather than prescribed duty.

• the-bible

  Both scriptures contain dialogues between God and a troubled human (compare Job), and both have been read as guides for righteous action in war.

• the-arthashastra

  The kshatriya's duty is treated spiritually in the Gita and pragmatically in Kautilya's statecraft.

• phaedrus-and-letters-vii-and-viii

  The image of the senses as horses and the mind as charioteer, found in the Katha Upanishad that the Gita echoes, has a close counterpart in Plato's Phaedrus.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The frame: blind King Dhritarashtra asks Sanjaya, who has been granted divine sight, to tell him what is happening on the field of Kurukshetra. The whole dialogue reaches us as a report to a man who cannot see.
• Arjuna's collapse in Chapter 1, when he sees teachers, uncles, and cousins in the opposing army: his limbs fail, his mouth dries, his bow slips, and he sits down in the chariot.
• Krishna's first two answers in Chapter 2, one from the eternity of the self and one from Arjuna's duty as a warrior, and the teaching that follows on action without attachment to its fruits.
• The vision of the universal form in Chapter 11, where armies pour into Krishna's mouths like rivers into the sea and Krishna names himself Time, the destroyer of worlds.
• The last chapter's call to take refuge in Krishna alone, and Arjuna's final words that his delusion is gone and he will do as he is told.

Key terms and names

Kurukshetra

The plain where the Pandava and Kaurava armies meet in the Mahabharata war. The Gita takes place in the moment before the battle begins, between the two lines.

Dharma

Duty, right order, and the law proper to one's station. Krishna tells Arjuna that his own dharma as a kshatriya, a warrior, is to fight a righteous battle, and that it is better to do one's own duty imperfectly than another's well.

Atman

The self or spirit, which Krishna teaches in Chapter 2 is never born and never dies. Because it cannot be slain, he says, neither the one who kills nor the one killed truly understands.

Karma yoga

The discipline of action taught from Chapter 2 onward: doing one's work fully while giving up attachment to its results, and offering every act to God.

Bhakti

Loving devotion to God, presented in Chapter 12 and the final chapter as the surest path. Krishna promises that the devotee who takes refuge in him will be freed.

Gunas

The three qualities of nature: sattva (purity and light), rajas (passion and activity), and tamas (dullness and inertia). Chapters 14 and 17 classify foods, gifts, and kinds of worship by them.

Avatar

A descent of the divine into the world. In Chapter 4 Krishna says he comes forth age after age whenever righteousness declines, to protect the good and destroy the wicked.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What does Arjuna see when Krishna drives the chariot between the two armies, and what reasons does he give in Chapter 1 for refusing to fight?
2. Comprehension What are Krishna's two main arguments in Chapter 2 for why Arjuna should not grieve and should fight?
3. Comprehension What does Arjuna see in the universal form in Chapter 11, and why does he beg Krishna to return to his familiar appearance?
4. Interpretation Arjuna's objection is moral: killing kinsmen will destroy families and the law of the household. Does Krishna answer that objection, or move the question to a different level where it no longer applies?
5. Interpretation Krishna teaches that one should act without attachment to the fruits of action. Is this a cure for Arjuna's anguish, a recipe for indifference, or something else? Use Chapters 2 and 3.
6. Interpretation Why might the poem be told by Sanjaya to the blind king who began the war? What does this frame add to the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna?
7. Big Question Can a person do his duty without caring about results and still truly love the people his actions affect?

Faith Connections

• Isaiah 6:1-5 (Scripture)

  Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up and cries that he is undone, a man of unclean lips. Arjuna's terror before the universal form in Chapter 11 is a parallel encounter of a mortal with overwhelming divine glory, and the two scenes repay comparison in what each vision asks of the one who sees it.

• Philippians 2:5-8 (Scripture)

  Paul describes Christ emptying himself, taking the form of a servant, and becoming obedient unto death. The Gita's avatar descends age after age to restore righteousness and destroy the wicked, while Paul presents a single incarnation that ends in the cross, so the two texts sharpen each other's distinctive claims.

• Colossians 3:23-24 (Scripture)

  Paul tells servants to work heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that they serve Christ. Krishna's call in Chapter 9 to offer whatever one does to him shares the idea of work as an offering, though Paul promises an inheritance where Krishna asks for release from all desire of reward.

• Augustine, City of God XII.14 (Church Fathers)

  Augustine rejects the philosophers' doctrine of endlessly repeating cycles of time, arguing that Christ died once for sins and rose never to die again. The Gita's ages of decline and renewal, and its avatars who come forth age after age, offer the kind of cyclical vision Augustine answers.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The self is eternal and cannot be slain, so grief for the body's death rests on a misunderstanding. Every person has a duty fitted to his nature, and a warrior's duty is to fight a righteous battle. Action cannot be avoided, but bondage comes from attachment to the fruits of action, not from action itself. Therefore Arjuna should fight, doing his duty as an offering to God without desire or fear, and through such devotion he will find freedom.

Rhetorical device: simile. In Chapter 11 Arjuna describes the warriors of both armies rushing into Krishna's flaming mouths as rivers rush toward the sea and as moths fly into a blazing fire. The stacked comparisons make the vision both majestic and horrifying, turning the coming battle into a picture of all creatures drawn into Time.

Debate: Resolved: Krishna successfully answers Arjuna's moral objection to fighting his kinsmen.

Memory Work

Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never; Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams

Writing Prompts

Essay: Krishna's counsel to act without attachment to the fruits of action is the Gita's most famous teaching. Explain what it means using Chapters 2, 3, and 18, and argue whether it resolves Arjuna's crisis in Chapter 1 or leaves his deepest question unanswered.

Comparison with The Iliad: Arjuna sits down in his chariot and refuses to fight his kinsmen; Achilles withdraws from battle in anger and returns in grief for Patroclus. Compare why each hero refuses to fight, what brings him back, and what each epic suggests about duty, death, and the meaning of war.

Medical Lens

The Gita opens with one of the most vivid descriptions in ancient literature of an acute emotional crisis: Arjuna's limbs give way, his mouth is parched, his body trembles, his hair stands on end, his skin burns, and his mind reels. The whole text is then a 'talking cure' in which a counsellor reframes the sufferer's situation through metaphysics, duty and devotion. It has been discussed by psychiatrists, especially in India, as an ancient model of psychotherapy, though such readings are interpretive. Chapter 6 prescribes moderation in eating, sleeping and waking as a precondition of meditation, and Chapter 17 classifies foods by the three gunas in terms that overlap with Ayurvedic dietetics. The theophany of Chapter 11 is a classic account of an overwhelming visionary state. The insistence that the self does not die is a central text in the history of consolation for death and grief.

• Ch. 1.28–1.47

  Arjuna's physical and emotional collapse: trembling, dry mouth, burning skin, a reeling mind and refusal to fight.

  Neurosis AnxietyMelancholia DepressionMind BodyGrief
• Ch. 2.11–2.30

  Krishna's argument that the wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead, because the self is eternal.

  GriefDeath DyingPhilosophy AS Therapy
• Ch. 2.54–2.72

  Portrait of the person of steady wisdom, unmoved by pleasure and pain, who withdraws the senses as a tortoise draws in its limbs.

  Philosophy AS Therapy
• Ch. 6.16–6.17

  Yoga is not for one who eats or sleeps too much or too little; moderation in food, recreation, sleep and waking.

  Starvation NutritionSleep Insomnia
• Ch. 11

  The vision of Krishna's universal form, which leaves Arjuna terrified, bewildered and trembling.

  Altered States
• Ch. 17.7–17.10

  Foods classified as sattvic, rajasic and tamasic, with their effects on health, mood and vitality.

  Ancient MedicineStarvation Nutrition

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write a modern dialogue in which a burned-out clinician, like Arjuna, refuses to go on, and a mentor responds.

• Essay

  Compare the Gita's 'action without attachment' with the Stoic idea of focusing on what is in our power.

• Classroom

  Compare three translations of Chapter 2, verse 47, and discuss what is gained and lost in each.

Further Reading

• The Mahabharata, Vyasa (trans. various)

• The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography, Richard H. Davis

• The Upanishads, Anonymous (trans. Juan Mascaró)

• The Song Celestial, Edwin Arnold

  The public-domain verse translation of 1885.