Gita 01.26 When we can’t fight the circumstances that make us fight against our loved ones, we have to fight against our loved ones

Bhagavad Gita text 1.26 Bhagavad Gita text 1.26 when Arjuna has been taken between the two armies by Krishna as per Arjuna's desire thereafter now Arjuna is beholding the opposite side Krishna has done his bidding and has told him look oh Arjuna behold so here things become very complicated for Arjuna as he looks at all the army all the soldiers in both the sides especially he sees on the opposite side Sutra, Pashyat he is aware that there are many many soldiers including his loved ones on his own side that's understandable that's expected but there are also on the opposite side soldiers Titaan Partha what does he see? Pitranatha Pitamahan he sees people who are the generation of his father in the generation of his grandfather of the rank of his teachers Acharyan of the rank of his maternal uncles, brothers sons, grandsons friends and practically all genre of relationship that one may think of they are all present there for Arjuna and thus Arjuna is faced with a perplexing question what is he doing here? and why is he doing it? we are innately social creatures and we live as social creatures that means we have our loved ones and we love to reciprocate love with them in fact whatever joys we attain we share with our loved ones but when we have to fight with our loved ones only and huge numbers of them will end up dead then the question comes up why are we doing this? the turns that life brings us to can sometimes be devastatingly distressing cruel indeed is the duty of the warriors for they have to fight against their loved ones but supremely cruel at this point to Arjuna seemed his own duty because he had to fight not just against one or two not just one or two loved ones but hundreds and hundreds, thousands of people who were who were actually going to be victimized over there and many many of them were either his well wishers or well wishers of his well wishers so if somebody is an ill-wisher of ours ill-wisher of ours then we feel that it may be necessary to fight against them but somebody is our well-wisher but circumstantially they have been placed against us in a battle then though we don't want to but we have to fight against them and at that times we feel like fighting against the circumstances instead of against the enemies now let's look at the situation a little better now sometimes those who are who would normally naturally be friends, well-wishers even bosom friends sometimes they circumstantially become they end up becoming the worst of enemies or even if they don't become, circumstantially they are placed in opposite camps, they have to fight against each other so they have to go against the normal tenor of their relationship and fight and this is not at all easy therefore the only thing we could do in such a situation is remind ourselves, educate ourselves teach ourselves that these circumstances are unavoidable so sometimes we may try to fight against the circumstances to the best of our capacity to avoid fighting against our loved ones and the Pandavas had done that to a great extent they had petitioned for peace in the most accommodating of terms and had yet been rebuffed in the rudest of ways and therefore they had been left with no alternative except to fight so as long as the circumstances could be avoided they were trying to do all that they could to avoid the circumstances but the war itself now was inevitable and yet when Arjuna saw the brutal reality of the war once again he thought that the circumstances are themselves unacceptable and he thought that as we will see in the subsequent situation subsequent verses we think of not fighting the war at all so fighting to avoid the unavoidable is actually a waste of time, is a waste of energy but sometimes one has to get caught in a very difficult place as they say trapped between the sea and the devil both sides there are two great dangers and one doesn't know which side to choose at that time the best that they can do in that situation is move towards progressing and developing in their own particular dharmic duties so Arjuna's dharmic duty was to fight a war so that he could establish dharma but he faced a situation where he just couldn't fight he just felt that fighting was impossible for him and thus he found himself in an intractable dilemma so we will see here that Arjuna will become overwhelmed but the broad lesson for us is that we can try our best to fight the circumstances that make us fight against those who would normally those who we would normally never fight with but sometimes those circumstances are just not fightable they are not avoidable, they are not resistible and the circumstances leave us with no alternative so unpleasant courses of action can be avoided and should be avoided as much as possible but not more than that sometimes the call of duty, the call of dharma requires us to take unpleasant courses of action then letting our affection come in the way will lead us to adharma this was the dilemma facing Arjuna and the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita will gradually leave the dilemma for him thank you.