Gita 13.02 Our field reflects our sphere of influence

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13.2 Here Krishna continues to speak or start speaking in response to Arjuna's question and Arjuna has asked six questions about and Krishna responds by answering first questions about then he will answer about and then he will come to Purusha.

He uses this revised flow in answering Arjuna's questions as after Prakriti and Purusha the overall conclusion flows naturally over there. So he builds up the subject from and then through Prakriti and Purusha he goes on to the eyes the vision that offers that vision that offers integrated understanding of these concepts and more importantly of reality as perceived by one who has internalized and assimilated these concepts. So he answers about Kshetra here Arjuna, this body is known as Kshetra.

That means that why if the body, the Kshetra is known as Kshetra why do we need another term? Why can it not be called Kshetra itself? Why call it a Kshetra? Actually in the parlance of this philosophical analysis the word Kshetra conveys a particular sense that is not conveyed by Kshetra. If we say field, a farmer has a field in which the farmer ploughs and gets harvest and then the farmer has allocated a particular area as that farmer's field. There will be other farmers who may have their own fields and those fields are also can also be productive but they are someone else's field.

So, the word Kshetra field conveys a sense of jurisdiction as well as limitation. Yes, you have control over this but then your control does not extend beyond this. Similarly, the body that we have is our Kshetra.

We have control over our body. We do not have control beyond the body. The control that we have over our body is all about how we can do certain things.

We do not have absolute control. We might just get a heart attack and we might die at any moment. At the same time, we do have some control over the body by which we are able to do certain things in our life.

We can speak, we can walk, depending on the kind of skills that the body has, we may be proficient at certain things. So, we have that Kshetra. So, an elephant has a giant Kshetra.

Its body itself is huge and it can have a substantial amount of influence on the body. And then further, there is also the concern about how things work, how things work in our life based on, there is also the destiny, Daiva. But the important thing in this particular analysis is that by the Daiva, by the destiny, different living beings in same species as well as different species have been given different areas of jurisdiction.

And within those varying areas of jurisdiction, we all can work towards purifying, we can all work towards getting a particular heed. Somebody has been given a particular land, then they can do various things with that land. Some people can use that land for harvesting a particular kind of crops.

Some people may use it to get a lot of crops, but then they may not use sustainable methods of agriculture and the land will become barren afterwards. Others may get a more modest kind of yield, but it may be more sustainable. Still others may just not till the land and thus we may not have anything more than weeds.

So, like that different people based on whatever body they have been given, they use that body for different purposes. Some of them use the body for growing internally. Some of them like Shariram Dharma Sadhanam it is said, that they use it to pursue Dharma.

Others feel Shariram Moksha Sadhanam, that it is not just Dharma, but ultimately Moksha. I want to live in this body so that I can just break free from this material shackle and attain liberation. And still others may choose to labor over pursuing sense gratification.

Karshati, Karshayantah, they may do Karshana, Anahasashtali, Dhyani, Prakriti, Sthani, Karshati, as Krishna will say later in the 15th chapter, that they may chase sense gratification in various ways and thus they may pander to the body, but remain dissatisfied and tormented by the body's various drives. Moving further in our life, so Krishna, moving further, etadyo vittitambrahu, one who knows all this, that is, kshetragya iti tadvidaham, so one who knows this. Now, Krishna is using slightly ambiguous language over here.

He is not specifying exactly who is it that knows this. He is stating that the one who knows this, that is the doer, that is the kshetragya. Now, who is it that knows? There is consciousness and consciousness is what is conscious.

Consciousness is what knows. The table exists, but the table doesn't know that it exists. There is someone in the body who is the knower of the body.

Krishna has talked about this, hinted towards this avinashita tadviddhi, sarvam idam tatam, that which pervades the body, that is consciousness, and that consciousness comes, radiates outwards from an entity. That entity is the knower. So here Krishna is referring to the soul as the knower of the body.

And it's interesting that Krishna refers to kshetragya as one who knows the body, not one who knows oneself. Yes, we are also meant to know oneself, no doubt. And Krishna will talk about knowledge in the next verse when he says, he'll say that actually knowledge means to know kshetra and kshetragya.

So, to know the body and know oneself. That is knowledge, he will say. But at this stage, the word kshetragya, the knower of the field.

So, some materialistic people may say that there is just the field and there is no knower at all. There is no existence beyond, there's nothing in existence beyond the body. But Krishna refutes that by saying that the word kshetragya actually is self-evident, knower of the field.

And Krishna's expansion of that word is a reiteration of that self-evident meaning. And he says that one who knows his body is the kshetragya. More about the kshetragya will be revealed.

There are two kshetragyas will be revealed in the next verse. Thank you.