The Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita is a section of the Mahabharata’s Bhishma Parva, chapters twenty-five to forty-two. Seven hundred shlokas in all, divided into eighteen chapters. The setting: two armies face each other on the field of Kurukshetra, minutes remain before war breaks out, and Arjuna, standing on a chariot, asks his charioteer Krishna whether he should fight or not. Everything else is the unfolding of that one question.

This manner of dialogue, question and answer between guru and disciple, is the old style of Upanishadic literature. Around the tenth to ninth century BCE, the voices of the Brihadaranyaka and the Chhandogya were bound in just this way. The Gita carries that tradition forward, and perhaps this is why Shankaracharya placed it, in the eighth century, in his “prasthana-trayi” (the triple foundation), alongside the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutras. The three are three entry gates to a single path of philosophy.

The text’s central teaching sentence now lives on like a proverb. Your right is to the action, never to the fruit. Drop the worry, do the work. The sutra comes from the forty-seventh shloka of the second chapter, and half the Gita’s weight rests on this one sentence. The rest of the text opens layer after layer of it, as knowledge, bhakti (devotion), meditation, surrender.

The story in brief

In the first chapter a man breaks. Two armies face each other on the field of Kurukshetra. Arjuna has his chariot halted in the middle, and sees before him his own uncles, teachers, brothers, and kin. His hands tremble, the bow drops. Arjuna says, I cannot fight. This is where the Gita begins. The chapter is even named for this state of mind, Arjuna Vishada Yoga.

In the next five chapters Krishna’s answer is a kind of gift of philosophical knowledge. The atman (self) is deathless, the body perishable. What you are killing is not the atman. And with this comes the sutra of karma yoga: your right is to the action, not to the fruit. Let go of worrying over the fruit and keep working. The forty-seventh shloka of the second chapter says this, and the remaining four chapters open the layers of this one sentence.

The middle portion, chapters seven through twelve, belongs to bhakti. Krishna describes his vibhutis, his glories, and introduces his cosmic form. In the eleventh chapter Arjuna is given the vision of the vishvarupa, an image that compelled J. Robert Oppenheimer to quote it after the Trinity test in 1945, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Arjuna trembles, and in that same moment Krishna calms him again.

The last six chapters return to knowledge. The analysis of the three gunas, the nature of Purushottama, the divine and the demonic endowments. And the final teaching sentence of all, the sixty-sixth shloka of the eighteenth chapter: leaving all dharmas, come to my refuge alone; I will free you from all sins, do not grieve. Here Arjuna’s doubt dissolves, the bow rises again, and the war begins.

A few starting questions from the reader

How many Upanishads are there, and how is the Gita tied to them. The traditional count is one hundred and eight, but the principal Upanishads number ten, the ones on which Shankaracharya wrote commentaries. They are the final portion of the Vedas, which is why they are also called “Vedanta”. The Gita’s philosophy stands on their soil, and many shlokas are direct restatements of Upanishadic sentences.

Which are the ten principal Upanishads. Ishavasya, Katha, Kena, Prashna, Mundaka, Mandukya, Taittiriya, Aitareya, Chhandogya, and Brihadaranyaka. Each has its own style. The Katha in the dramatic form of the Nachiketa-Yama dialogue, the Chhandogya full of stories, the Brihadaranyaka the most expansive and centered on Yajnavalkya.

Why read the Gita. The question is itself old, and every reader arrives with an answer of their own. One useful answer is that the Gita is a text that stays beside your decisions and lightens them, little by little. If one line rises up and settles in the mind, the shape of the day changes.

How much is there, in numbers. Eighteen chapters, seven hundred shlokas. On average thirty-nine shlokas per chapter, though the chapters range from twenty shlokas to seventy-eight. The whole text, read without stopping, about an hour.