As The Bhagavad Gita begins, two mighty armies face each other across the field of Kurukshetra, which is located to the north of modern-day Delhi. The Pandavas, led by Prince Arjuna, are about to wage war against their kin, the Kauravas, who have usurped the throne of Hastinapura.
Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita is conflicted because he doesn’t want to fight against his own family. He turns to his childhood friend and charioteer Krishna, who is actually an incarnation of the god Vishnu, for advice.
Arjuna and Sri Krishna
Prince Arjuna leads the Pandavas’ army. His chariot is driven by Sri Krishna, an incarnation of the god Vishnu, who has taken a mortal form in The Bhagavad Gita. Krishna has been Arjuna’s friend and advisor throughout his life, but he can’t fight this battle. Leading the army is Arjuna’s dharma—his duty and destiny. Krishna is only there to support him.
(Shortform note: “Sri,” sometimes spelled “Shri,” is a term of respect that doesn’t have a direct translation.)
As Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita sees that the fighting’s about to start, he asks Krishna to drive his chariot in between the two armies so that he can take a closer look at his enemies. When he sees the people in the Kauravas’ army, he recognizes many of them as his own family and friends.
Arjuna is overcome with despair. He tells Krishna that he doesn’t want to fight against his own family, and that his family fighting within itself will lead to chaos in the kingdom. He also says that there are great heroes and respected scholars on the other side, and Arjuna questions how he could ever live with himself if he killed them in battle. Arjuna says that it would be better to lay down his weapons and let the Kauravas kill him.
Krishna replies that, though Arjuna is speaking from the heart, he is also speaking from ignorance. Although physical bodies can be destroyed, a person’s essence will be reborn again and again, unchanged, through the process of reincarnation. Therefore, Arjuna wouldn’t be killing anybody, and there would be no reason to grieve for them.
Krishna compares reincarnation to the changes that a person goes through over a single lifetime, from childhood to adulthood to old age. You wouldn’t say that a person became someone else after growing up, and in the same sense, you shouldn’t think of someone who’s been reincarnated as becoming a different person.
Only the Eternal Is Real
Krishna explains that temporary things shouldn’t be considered real. Pain and pleasure, heat and cold, and even life and death are temporary. Similarly, the temporary bodies of the men Arjuna will fight against aren’t real; their true selves are eternal and immutable, and change bodies as a living person changes clothes. Knowing that, Krishna asks rhetorically, how can Arjuna kill or be killed by them?
People who understand the difference between the real and the illusory will remain calm in any situation, unaffected by either hard times or good times. Such people have taken a key step toward breaking the cycle of reincarnation.
Even if Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita can’t currently separate his ideas of the temporary bodies from the true souls that inhabit them, Krishna points out that death and rebirth happen to everyone. These men will die whether or not Arjuna kills them, and there’s no point in mourning the inevitable.
