A careful reader of these thirty verses asks a question at the first turn. Arjuna speaks like a man who is reasoning: he counts the cost of victory, he weighs sin against gain, he quotes what he has heard from the elders. Yet he trembles, sits down and throws away his bow. Is he reasoning, or is he falling apart? And why does Lord Krishna, when he finally speaks, answer none of the reasons?

Both are true, and they come in a fixed order. The body gives way first (Gita 1.29–30). Then comes the loss of any wish to win (Gita 1.32–35). The reasons come after, and they are the form that the feeling takes when it looks for words (Gita 1.36–44). In the end the reasons turn on Arjuna himself (Gita 1.45) and the bow falls (Gita 1.47). Lord Krishna therefore speaks to the ground under the reasons. He names the sinking and tells Arjuna to rise (Gita 2.2–3). The turn comes when Arjuna stops arguing and asks to be taught (Gita 2.7).

Here the thirty verses are read one stretch at a time, with the finer points inside each stretch, then the places where the Gita returns to the same moments, the two ways the tradition hears Arjuna's compassion, the objections a careful reader raises, and the questions the verses leave to the rest of the Gita and to the tradition. The sight that opens the scene is read in Arjuna on the Field, and what Lord Krishna teaches next is read in The Imperishable Self.

Three speakers and one frame

Three voices carry the passage. Sanjaya, who tells the war to the blind king, speaks the opening line (Gita 1.28), the closing line of the chapter (Gita 1.47) and the lines that introduce each new speaker (Gita 2.1, Gita 2.9–10). Arjuna speaks through the first chapter (Gita 1.28–46) and again after the Lord's rebuke (Gita 2.4–8). Lord Krishna's first words are short (Gita 2.2–3), and his teaching proper begins after the smile (Gita 2.10).

Sanjaya frames Arjuna at both ends in nearly the same picture. At the start he is overcome with compassion and sunk in despondency. After Arjuna has put down his bow he is still the man whose eyes are filled with tears and whose mind is troubled (Gita 2.1). The wording of these verses is steady in the site's text and needs no choice between readings.

The thirty verses, one stretch at a time

The body gives way before any argument (1.28-30)

Sanjaya names the cause and the effect before Arjuna says a word: compassion has overcome him, and he is sinking. Arjuna then sees his kinsmen "eager to fight". He does not see victims. He sees people who have chosen this and are ready for it, and that makes his own unreadiness sharper.

Then comes the list, and it is a list of the body: the limbs give way, the mouth dries, the body trembles, the hair stands on end, the bow slips from his hand, the skin burns, he cannot stand, the mind seems to whirl. He says "I am not able to stand" before he offers a single reason. The Gita puts the body first, and does not call it shame.

The same body shakes again much later. At the sight of the cosmic form Arjuna trembles with folded hands and speaks in a faltering voice (Gita 11.35), and he says that his mind is shaken with fear (Gita 11.45). The signs are the same; the cause is different. In chapter 1 he trembles at the thought of harming those he loves, and in chapter 11 at the sight of what is greater than he is. Each time he stays and speaks.

Victory has lost its meaning (1.31-35)

He sees bad omens and no good in killing his own people (Gita 1.31). Then he gives up the three things a warrior fights for: victory, a kingdom, pleasure. He adds a fourth, life itself (Gita 1.32).

The reason is in the next verse. Kingdom, enjoyment and pleasure were wanted for the sake of certain people, and those very people stand in the field, ready to give up life and wealth (Gita 1.33). The purpose of the war has become its victims. This is a precise thought and not only a feeling: when the people for whom a thing is wanted are the people it must be taken from, the wish for the thing has no ground left. He lists them: teachers, fathers, sons, grandfathers, uncles, fathers-in-law, grandsons, brothers-in-law (Gita 1.34). He will not kill them even if they kill him, not for the three worlds, and so not for the earth (Gita 1.35).

The offer of the whole world appears again at the end of the passage, and there it is a sign of grief that cannot be answered. Arjuna says that no kingdom on earth and no lordship over the gods could drive away the grief that dries up his senses (Gita 2.8). In chapter 1 the offer is part of an argument. At the end (Gita 2.8) it has become a confession.

The reason from sin, and the word "aggressors" (1.36-37)

Arjuna calls the sons of Dhritarashtra "aggressors" and says that sin would cling to him all the same if he killed them (Gita 1.36). The word matters. The law-books of the tradition speak of a class of wrongdoers against whom force is allowed. Arjuna uses the word himself, and then argues past it. So his stand is not that of a man who does not know the rule. He knows it and holds that his case goes beyond it.

The next verse draws the conclusion in the form of a question: how could we be happy after killing our own kinsmen (Gita 1.37)? The word "happy" is the center of the argument. He is not asking what is allowed; he is asking what he would be able to live with. That is a different test from the legal one, and he knows it.

Seeing the harm, and what to do about it (1.38-39)

The other side, he says, is overpowered by greed and cannot see the evil of destroying a family or betraying friends (Gita 1.38). We can see it. Should we not turn away from the sin (Gita 1.39)?

The argument makes knowledge a reason to withdraw: because we see, we must step back. A careful reader can ask whether the same seeing might not call for action to protect what is at stake. Lord Krishna himself raises the concern for order in his own case. If he did not act, he says, these worlds would perish and he would be the cause of confusion (Gita 3.24). So the worry about the order of the world is real and the Gita shares it. What it answers differently is the remedy: act without the claim, and not step back. The fuller account is in the teaching that follows.

What Arjuna has heard about the family (1.40-44)

The next verses go through a chain of consequences. When a family is destroyed, its lasting customs perish and the family is overpowered by wrong (Gita 1.40). Disorder follows in the household and in the order of society as Arjuna was taught it (Gita 1.41). The ancestors fall when the offerings to them stop, and the family and its destroyers go to hell (Gita 1.42). The duties of the community and the family are lost (Gita 1.43).

The picture of society in these verses is the one Arjuna was brought up in. Lord Krishna does not take it up point by point. He answers on the ground beneath it: first the sinking (Gita 2.2–3), then who it is that is lost (Gita 2.11), and then duty (Gita 2.31–37). That order is not an evasion. A chain of consequences depends on how the first link is seen, and the Lord goes to the first link.

The last verse of this stretch gives away something small and important. Arjuna says, "we have heard by tradition" that those whose family customs are destroyed dwell in hell for an indefinite period (Gita 1.44). He has heard it. He has not seen it. The Gita knows the difference between hearing and knowing. It says of the self that one hears of it as a wonder and yet, even after hearing, does not understand it at all (Gita 2.29). Arjuna's strongest reasons are things he has heard.

The reasons turn on him (1.45-47)

"Alas, how strange," he says, that we have resolved to do a great wrong, out of greed for the pleasures of a kingdom (Gita 1.45). But he had said, thirteen verses before, that he did not desire a kingdom (Gita 1.32). The mind that gave up the prize now accuses itself of wanting it. A man who has lost his footing begins to blame himself for the very thing he denied, and the reasons no longer hold together.

Then comes the wish to stop altogether. He would rather the sons of Dhritarashtra kill him, unarmed and unresisting (Gita 1.46). It is the thought of a man who wants no part in anything. Whether anyone can truly stop acting is taken up later in Can We Simply Stop Acting?.

Sanjaya closes the chapter with a picture. Arjuna casts aside the bow with its arrows, sits down on the seat of the chariot, his mind agitated by grief (Gita 1.47). The picture is reversed at the end of the Gita, where he stands firm, with his doubts dispelled, and says he will act on the Lord's word (Gita 18.73).

Lord Krishna's first words name the sinking, not the love (2.1-3)

Sanjaya says again what he said at the start: the man is tearful and despondent (Gita 2.1). The same state, in nearly the same words, marks the end of the first act. Then the Lord speaks, and he does not argue.

He asks how this delusion has overtaken Arjuna at such a moment, and he makes three charges. It is practised by the ignoble, it does not lead to heaven, and it brings disgrace (Gita 2.2). Then the command: do not yield to this weakness; give up this petty weakness of the heart and arise (Gita 2.3). The rebuke is aimed at the sinking and at the delusion that goes with it. It is not aimed at Arjuna's love for his people. The Gita itself says what it thinks of such love: one who is friendly and compassionate to all, without hatred, is dear to the Lord (Gita 12.13), and compassion stands among the qualities of the divine nature (Gita 16.2).

The word "arise" returns at the turning points of the Gita. The Lord ends his first argument with it (Gita 2.37); he uses it again when he asks Arjuna to cut his doubt with knowledge and take up yoga (Gita 4.42); and he says it at the vision, when he tells Arjuna to rise and be an instrument (Gita 11.33). Each time it follows a teaching or a sight. Here it comes before any teaching, as a plain command to leave the seat of despair.

Reverence, blood-stained pleasure, and the first "I do not know" (2.4-6)

Arjuna answers. He restates his objection as a matter of reverence: how can he fight Bhishma and Drona with arrows, when they are worthy of his worship (Gita 2.4)? Better to live on alms than to enjoy pleasures stained with blood (Gita 2.5).

The next verse is the first plain admission of not knowing. "We do not know which is better for us: that we should conquer them or that they should conquer us" (Gita 2.6). Until now every verse of Arjuna's speech has been sure of its own conclusion. Here, for the first time, he says that he cannot tell. He adds that those whom he would have to kill are the ones after whom he would not wish to live. The tone has changed. The speech is no longer an accusation and has become a statement of where he stands.

The turn: two admissions and one request (2.7)

The verse holds three things. He names a fault in himself: his nature is overpowered by faint-hearted pity. He says that his mind is confused about what is right, a state the Gita calls delusion. And then he asks. He asks to be told decisively what is truly better for him. He gives the ground on which he asks: "I am your disciple, instruct me, who have taken refuge in you." That is the first act of taking refuge in the Gita.

Two points of meaning lie inside it. First, Arjuna asks for what is better, not for what is easier. A verse earlier he said that he did not know which was better (Gita 2.6); here he asks the one person who can say. Second, he does not ask as an equal asks a friend. He changes his place: until now he was the one who decided, and from here he is the one who is taught. The same words of refuge come back at the end of the Gita, where the Lord tells him to abandon all duties and take refuge in him alone (Gita 18.66).

The verse is also the first of a long line of questions. Later Arjuna says that the Lord's words seem to confuse his mind, and asks again to be told decisively the one way (Gita 3.2); he asks what drives a person to wrong even against his will (Gita 3.36); he asks which is better, renunciation of action or the yoga of action (Gita 5.1); and he asks what the person of steady wisdom is like (Gita 2.54). The method of asking, too, is spelled out by the Lord: learn through humility, sincere inquiry and service (Gita 4.34).

The Upanishadic tradition draws the same line between what is better and what is merely pleasant, and says the wise choose the better. Arjuna's request for "what is truly better" is made in that spirit.

Grief, a refusal, silence and a smile (2.8-10)

Nothing on earth can drive the grief away: not a kingdom without rival, not lordship over the gods (Gita 2.8). Then Sanjaya reports the last of Arjuna's words. He tells the Lord, "I shall not fight," and falls silent (Gita 2.9).

This is not a withdrawal of the request. It is the honest end of the speech. Arjuna has said what is wrong, has asked, and now says what he will do if he is left alone. He does not leave. He is still on the chariot, in the middle of the two armies.

In these two verses Sanjaya uses two names that carry meaning. Arjuna is called the conqueror of sleep, and the Lord is called the master of the senses. The one whose senses are drying up (Gita 2.8) is facing the master of the senses. Then, between the two armies, the Lord speaks to the grieving Arjuna "smiling, as it were" (Gita 2.10). The smile is not mockery. It is the calm of the teacher who has seen the whole of the matter, and it is the sign that the real teaching is about to begin.

Where the Gita comes back to these moments

Two ways the tradition hears Arjuna's compassion, and the smile

The commentators read Arjuna's compassion in two ways, and each is held with confidence. One stream holds that it is a real virtue that lacks the knowledge of the self, and that the teaching adds the knowledge. In this reading the compassion is not removed; it is steadied. The other holds that it is attachment to his own people wearing the dress of compassion, and that the teaching removes the attachment. Both agree on what Lord Krishna does: he does not tell Arjuna to feel less for his people, and he does not leave him where he is.

The smile of the Lord (Gita 2.10) is also heard in two ways. One stream hears the quiet amusement of a teacher who sees the whole and is not shaken by the scene. Another hears a smile that holds itself back, out of tenderness for a man in tears, and finds the weight in the words "as it were". In both readings the smile is a teacher's.

Objections a careful reader raises

Does the Gita call Arjuna tamasic, since despondency is a mark of the tamasic doer?

The Lord lists despondency among the marks of the tamasic doer (Gita 18.28) and of tamasic resolve (Gita 18.35), and the sinking in the first chapter (Gita 1.28–30) is of the same kind. The two streams of commentators answer differently. One holds that Arjuna's state is a mixture, with the restlessness of passion and the heaviness of ignorance both at work, and that the teaching lifts both. The other holds that the lists describe a settled disposition, and that Arjuna's sinking is a passing state in a man whose basic bent is toward knowledge, which his request (Gita 2.7) and his final word (Gita 18.73) show. Both agree on the mark that separates him from the doer of the eighteenth chapter (Gita 18.28): he does not stay. The sinking is put into words and turned into a question.

Isn't Arjuna right that killing one's own family is a great harm?

Yes, it is grievous, and the verses never call his grief false. What the Lord shows is that the grief and the decision rest on a mistaken picture of who is lost (Gita 2.11), and that for this man, at this hour, duty asks something else. That second point is made for Arjuna's situation only, and it is read in Duty, Honour and Fear and Merely an Instrument. Nothing in the passage gives a general rule about violence.

How can a confused mind argue so well?

Confusion is not the absence of reasons. Every reason Arjuna gives is true to what he was taught: about sin, about the family, about teachers. The trouble is that these reasons pull in two directions, and he admits it himself: "we do not know which is better" (Gita 2.6). The reasons are the form his feeling takes. They explain why he cannot move; they cannot tell him which way to go.

Why is Arjuna rebuked when compassion is praised?

The rebuke is for the sinking, not for the compassion. The Gita praises compassion for all beings (Gita 12.13) and counts it among the divine qualities (Gita 16.2). What the Lord names is the delusion and the petty weakness of the heart (Gita 2.2–3), and Arjuna himself calls his state a fault (Gita 2.7). The rebuke is short, and the teaching that follows is long and patient.

Doesn't "I shall not fight" cancel the request that came before it?

No. The request and the refusal belong together (Gita 2.7, Gita 2.9). After asking, Arjuna says honestly what he will do if left to himself, and then he waits (Gita 2.9). A man who says what he would do alone, and still asks, has not closed the door. He remains on the chariot (Gita 1.47).

Is despondency itself a kind of yoga?

The site names the first chapter "The Yoga of Arjuna's Despair". The despair is not the yoga; it is the door. What opens the path is what Arjuna does with it: he says what is wrong and he asks. The Lord's own words point the same way: he tells him to take up yoga and rise (Gita 4.42).

Questions the verses raise, answered from the Gita and the tradition

What turns a collapse into a question?

The verses show it: Arjuna admits that he does not know (Gita 2.6), and then asks to be taught (Gita 2.7). The Gita says how such asking is done: through humility, sincere inquiry and service (Gita 4.34), and it says where it ends, in taking refuge in the Lord alone (Gita 18.66). The tradition keeps the same pattern in the teaching of the Upanishads, where a seeker goes to a teacher with humility to learn.

Does the despondency come back?

Arjuna's questions come back, and so does his fear. He asks again in the third chapter (Gita 3.2, Gita 3.36) and the fifth (Gita 5.1), and at the vision he is shaken once more (Gita 11.45). The Gita's answer is that the mind is restless, but constant practice and detachment bring it under control (Gita 6.35). The tradition's picture is the patience of the teacher: the Lord does not end the teaching at the first answer. He goes on through the rest of the Gita, from the smile to the closing words (Gita 2.10, Gita 18.73).

What becomes of his love for his people?

It is not taken from him. The Gita praises the person who is friendly and compassionate to all, without hatred (Gita 12.13), and the highest yogi is the one who takes the pleasure and pain of others as his own (Gita 6.32). What changes is the ground of the love: it no longer rests on the idea that these people can be lost.

Why does he sit down on the chariot and not walk away?

He has asked the Lord to drive the chariot into the middle of the field (Gita 1.21), and when the bow falls he sits where he is (Gita 1.47). He stays near the one he will ask. The tradition draws the picture of the body as a chariot, with the intellect as the charioteer and the mind as the reins; the Upanishadic image fits the scene, where the one who holds the reins of Arjuna's life is the Lord.

What does taking refuge ask of him in practice?

It asks him to turn his mind to the Lord, to be devoted, to worship and to bow down (Gita 9.34), and in the end to abandon all other supports and to take refuge in him alone, with the promise "do not grieve" (Gita 18.66). It is the final form of what Arjuna begins with his request (Gita 2.7). Refuge in the final counsel is read in The Final Counsel.

The verses give the direction, which is to ask. The rest of the Gita gives the way: humility, practice and refuge. The tradition gives the pictures: the seeker and the teacher, the chariot and its charioteer.

What was consulted

The Gita's text and its verse data on the site were used for every quotation and every verse summary. No commentary was consulted. The statements about the law-books on aggressors, the meaning of the two names in the verses of the refusal, the two streams on Arjuna's compassion and on the smile, and the pictures from the Upanishads are given from general knowledge of the tradition and are marked for checking.

A simpler account of the same verses is in the simple reading, and a verse-by-verse reading with an example and a practice is in the detailed reading. The teaching that follows begins in The Imperishable Self.