The Bhagavad Gita begins with profound depth. The armies of the Pandavas and Kauravas are face to face on the battlefield, and the battle is just about to commence. Arjuna looks at the warriors on the Kaurava side and becomes perplexed. How can he fight his elders and teachers? His mind had been conditioned not to fight his own family members, not to strike elders, and to always respect his teachers. He feels quite heavy, drops his Gandiva, and feels like leaving the battlefield. 

Such a profound context. Krishna could have told him that it wasn’t time to think about all these things and that Arjuna had no option but to fight the battle. His brothers could have forced him to fight, but then it would have become an ordinary battle. Krishna never told Arjuna to hurry up to fight the battle. Krishna took up each and every doubt of Arjuna and addressed it then and there. Krishna has no target. He knows the result of battle matters less than resolving the conflict inside human beings, which is why the Bhagavad Gita has inspired people across generations, even those who know nothing about the Mahabharata. The battle of Kurukshetra would have helped the people of that time, but the Bhagavad Gita has guided millions. That’s the vision of a person like Krishna. 

Imagine Krishna in a hurry, asking Arjuna again and again to hurry up and fight the battle. It takes time and patience to understand one’s own conditioning and work on it. Because fear, responsibility, attachment, self-image, and belief systems are so integral to our personality, it’s almost impossible to see ourselves apart from them. Mostly, when we say, “I feel so”, this feeling comes from the depths of the unconscious conditioning, and that’s why it’s difficult to dissociate. When Arjun says that I can’t fight Bhishma, that’s coming from the years of being together with Bhishma. Now, just because Bhishma is fighting on the side of the Kauravas, how will Arjun dissociate? That means man is less important than purpose? If a child gets into bad company and isn’t ready to leave, will we just discard that child?

It’s not easy to get this realisation. Unless Arjuna dives deep into the meaning of “who am I”, he would have been convinced on the surface, under the pressure of his brothers, but his guilt would have travelled deeper, and he would have lived with that deep sense of guilt. Krishna could have shown Arjuna his Vishwaroop and connected him to the real “I”. Once Arjuna understood and realised the “I”, and this “I” being a part of Krishna, he could see his conditioning. Arjuna finds it hard to believe Krishna until Krishna shows his Vishwaroop. 

The problem, while being in this world, is that one has to operate with that ego, the identity one carries. These identities are reinforced every moment. The identity of being a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, an employee, a boss, and so on and on. Then we read the Bhagavad Gita and try to understand “Who we are”, but the very next moment, we operate with the same identity. The very next moment, we bargain with the shopkeeper for the best price, ask our children to compete, protect our self-interest, and defend ourselves in a court case. That’s what Krishna says to Arjuna. Having realised “Who am I”, Arjuna has to fight against the Kauravas. Why? For Dharma. But unless that realisation of “who am I” is quite deep, at an experiential level, the mind manipulates and justifies one’s actions by borrowing language from the Bhagavad Gita. But is the human mind ready to leave the domain of thought? Is it ready to address the most fundamental questions even on the battlefield, with no hurry to win the battle? Unless we examine these fundamental questions with that leisure and absolute sincerity, we never know whether the battle is a Dharmayuddha or a battle of ego to prove, to gain, or to achieve something.