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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Verified Quotes

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.

• Ch. 2.11–2.30

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

• 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.

• 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.

• Ch. 11

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

• Ch. 17.7–17.10

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