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Bhagavad-Gita
The Divine Song: Krishna’s Counsel at War
Manish Paliwal
Department of Mechanical Engineering
The College of New Jersey
Close Reading
Paliwal (TCNJ) Gita 1 / 35

The Divine Song

Bhagavad-Gita
What is it?
Part of the scriptural trinity of Sanatana Dharma (loosely translated
as Eternal Religion), commonly known as Hinduism.
Deals with metaphysical science
Answers two fundamental questions:
Who am I?
How can I lead a happy and peaceful life in this world of dualities?

The Plot
Timeline and Prime Characters
A king had two sons, Dhritarashtra and Pandu.
Dhritarashtra was born blind, therefore, Pandu inherited the kingdom.
Paadu had ﬁve sons (Paandavas).
Dhritarashtra had one hundred sons (Kauravas). Duryodhana was the
eldest of the Kauravas.
Pandu died and the Paandavas were young at the time.
Duryodhana (the eldest Kaurava) wanted the entire kingdom for
himself.
He unlawfully took possession of the entire kingdom of the Paandavas
and refused to give back even an acre of land without a war.
All mediation failed.

Arjuna’s dilemma
The big war of Mahabharata was thus inevitable!
Choice 1: Fight and kill his revered teachers, friends, relatives, and
many innocent warriors
Choice 2: Run away from the battleﬁeld in the name of peace and
nonviolence.

Krishna
To dispel Arjun’s dilemma, the Bhagavad Gita was spoken about 5000
years ago in the midst of the battleﬁeld.

The Gita begins
Double frame narration:
Narrated to the blind king,
father of Kauravas, by his
charioteer, Sanjaya, as an
eyewitness war report.
Sanjaya, tell me
what my sons and
the sons of Pandu
did when they met,
wanting to battle on
the ﬁeld of Kuru, on
the ﬁeld of sacred
duty? 1.1

Arjuna inspects the battlefield
Dejected, filled with strange pity, he said this:
Oh Krishna, I see my kinsmen gathered here, wanting war.
My limbs sink, my mouth is parched, my body trembles, the
hair bristles on my flesh.
The magic bow slips from my hand, my skin burns, I cannot
stand still, my mind reels. (1.28-30)

J. Robert Oppenheimer
American physicist and
director of the Manhattan
Project, learned Sanskrit in
1933 and read the Bhagavad
Gita in the original, citing it
later as one of the most
inﬂuential books to shape his
philosophy of life.

J. Robert Oppenheimer:
I have become Death, destroyer of the world

I shall NOT ﬁght!
1.47
Saying this in the time of war,
Arjuna slumped into the chariot
and laid down his bow and arrows,
his mind tormented by grief.
2.9
Arjuna told this to Krishna-
then saying,
”I shall not ﬁght,”
he fell silent.

Why wouldn’t wise lament for the living or for the dead?
2.11
While speaking learned words,
you are mourning for what is not worthy of grief.
Those who are wise
lament neither for the living nor for the dead.
2.13
Just as the embodied Self
enters childhood, youth, and old age,
so does it enters another body.
This does not confound a steadfast man.

2.22
As a man discards worn-out clothes
to put on new and diﬀerent ones,
so the embodied self discards its worn-out bodies
to take on the other new ones.
2.28
Creatures are unmanifest in origin,
manifest in the midst of life,
and unmanifest again in the end.
Since this is so, why do you lament?

Krishna reminds Arjuna his duty as a warrior.
2.38
Do thou ﬁght for the sake of ﬁghting,
without considering happiness or distress,
loss or gain, victory or defeat
and by so doing you shall never incur sin.

What is Karma Yoga?
Do not crave for the fruits of your actions; Detachment towards actions
and its fruits.
2.47
You have a right to perform your prescribed duty,
but you are not entitled to the fruits of action.
Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your
activities,
and never be attached to not doing your duty.
2.48
Perform your duty equipoised, O Arjuna,
abandoning all attachment
to success or failure.
Such equanimity is called yoga.

2.50
A man engaged in karma-yoga rids himself
of both good and bad actions even in this life.
Therefore strive for yoga,
which is the art of all work.

What are the signs of a self-realized person?
2.56
One who is not disturbed in mind even amidst the miseries
or elated when there is happiness,
and who is free from attachment, fear and anger,
is called a sage of steady mind.

What are the dangers of unrestrained senses?
2.62
Brooding about sensuous objects
makes attachment to them grow;
from attachment desire arises,
from desire anger is born
2.63
From anger comes confusion;
from confusion memory lapses;
from broken memory understanding is lost;
from loss of understanding, he is ruined

How to attain peace and happiness through sense control
and knowledge?
2.67
As a strong wind sweeps away
a boat on the water,
even one of the roaming senses on which the mind focuses
can carry away a man’s intelligence.
2.70
A person who is not disturbed by the incessant ﬂow of desires
that enter like rivers into the ocean, which is ever being ﬁlled
but is always still can alone achieve peace,
and not the man who strives to satisfy such desires.

Why should one selflessly serve others?
3.7
When he controls his senses
with his mind and engages in karma-yoga
(disciplined selfless action without attachment),
he is by far superior.
3.9
Actions imprisons the world
unless it is done as sacrifice
freed from attachment, Arjuna,
perform action as sacrifice.

3.16
One who fails to keep the wheel of creation in motion
by performing selﬂess service to others
Living only for the satisfaction of the senses
such a person lives in vain.

Would you take credit for your work?
3.27
Actions are all effected
by the qualities of nature
but deluded by individuality
the self thinks, “I am the doer.”
3.30
Surrender all your actions to God,
with full knowledge of the Self
without desires for profit, and possessiveness,
and free from mental grief, fight your battle.

What are the two stumbling blocks in the path of
perfection?
3.34
Attraction and hatred are poised
in the object of every sense experience;
a man must not fall prey
to these two brigands lurking into his path!

What makes a person commit evil?
3.37
It is lust only, Arjuna, arising
from the nature’s mode of passion
and later transformed into anger,
know it here as enemy, voracious and very evil.
3.38
As ﬁre is obscured by smoke
and a mirror by dirt,
as the embryo is veiled by its caul,
so is knowledge covered by lust.

3.39
Knowledge is obscured
by the wise man’s eternal enemy
which takes form of desire or lust
an insatiable ﬁre, Arjuna!
3.40
The senses, the mind, and intellect
are said to be the abode of lust;
with these it deludes a person
by veiling the Self-knowledge.

How to control lust?
Puriﬁed intellect steadies the mind which controls the actions.
3.43
Knowing the Self beyond senses, mind, and intelligence
steady the mind by puriﬁed spiritual intellect
and thus, by spiritual strength, - O’ Arjuna.
conquer this insatiable enemy known as lust.

Summary
Yoga of Action
Discharge your duties without the thought of fruit as a
selﬂess service. Perform your duty with equanimity towards
failure and success.
Yoga of Knowledge
Every being is forced to act by the qualities of nature. You
are not the “doer”. Lust, greed, and anger are the enemies as
they ruin the judgment. Conquer them!

Key concepts
Yoga: How to achieve union (yoga) with the Supreme Being?
Karma Yoga or the Path of Action
Jnana Yoga or the Path of Knowledge
Raja Yoga or the Path of Meditation
Bhakti Yoga or the Path of Devotion

Bhagavad-Gita
Five thousand years have passed ...
... and it has inﬂuenced millions and millions.

Aldous Huxley
“the most systematic
statement of spiritual
evolution.”
“its enduring value is to
all of humanity.”

A. Einstein
“When I read the
Bhagavad-Gita and reﬂect
about how God created this
universe everything else seems
so superﬂuous.”

Henry David Thoreau
“In the morning I bathe my
intellect in the stupendous and
cosmogonal philosophy of the
Bhagavad Gita in comparison
with which our modern world
and its literature seem puny
and trivial.”

Hermann Hesse
“the marvel of the
Bhagavad-Gita is its truly
beautiful revelation of life’s
wisdom”

Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I owed a magniﬁcent day to
the Bhagavad-Gita. It was as
if an empire spoke to us,
nothing small or unworthy, but
large, serene, consistent,the
voice of an old intelligence
which in another age and
climate had pondered and thus
disposed of the same questions
which exercise us.”

Mahatma Gandhi
“When doubts haunt me,
when disappointments stare
me in the face, and I see not
one ray of hope on the horizon,
I turn to Bhagavad-Gita and
ﬁnd a verse to comfort me;
and I immediately begin to
smile in the midst of
overwhelming sorrow. Those
who meditate on the Gita will
derive fresh joy and new
meanings from it every day.”

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