Gita 01.33 – The contrasting words of Arjuna and Duryodhana reveal their consciousness’ levels

Thank you they are situated here for the sake of fighting on this battlefield they are ready to give up even their life what to speak of their wealth and who are those people there are my teachers there are my people of my fatherly generation there are my two sons and there are also a grandfather so Arjuna is expressing grief at the impending fratricide heartbreaking grief and is thinking of ways an emergency way by which this grief this pain can be avoided and that is not fighting at all and he is describing what will be the prize of fighting that they are all situated here they are situated here ready to give up their life when the Kshatriyas would fight they knew that death was not the ultimate end that a Kshatriya would die heroically fighting in the battlefield would be rewarded in the heavens in future and they were not afraid of death, they were afraid of being dishonored of being labeled as cowards and so they would never flee they would not flee from the battlefield now the pranams now Duryodhana while assessing the two forces has said so he wanted to say that for my sake they are ready to give up their lives but he mistakenly used the past sense for my sake they have already given up their lives there is of course a slip of tongue on his part but our slips of tongue also are often revelatory through those slips we reveal what is actually present in our heart so Duryodhana was actually wanting to allure the commitment of his side they are even ready to give up their life for my sake not that they have given up their life but basically by choosing the side of wise choosing Duryodhana's side the many kings who had sided with him had basically signed their path with death truth will triumph illusion, misconception, hatred wise will be defeated now in the case of Duryodhana he said that they are fighting he intended to say that they are ready to give up their life for my sake and Arjuna is now analyzing, pondering, verbalizing who all will have to give up life and the list is sobering so few things destroy a dynasty as thoroughly as sudden shrinking of the dynasty either by death in war or by not begetting of heirs who can continue the dynasty and in this way the dynasty just stops and many kings in the past as is revealed in scriptures lament and fear greatly, dread deeply the possibility that the dynasty might end with them so of course here the concern is not so much for the end of the dynasty the concern is more for the fact that there is immense suffering and that suffering which awaits Arjuna if all his relatives are killed, all those whom he lives for are killed that he feels will be intolerable and yet there is no way out of that suffering because they are all here they are already here on the battle field ready to fight and ready to lay down their life so whereas Duryodhana was gleefully proclaiming that they are ready to lay down their life, Arjuna is actually painfully grieving that prospect he is thinking how can I fight against my loved ones, my respected ones my worshipable ones so actually the contrast between Duryodhana's stone and words on one side and Arjuna's stone and words on the other side actually gives also a glimpse of their mentality although you could say at one level because neither of them exhibits spiritual knowledge so both of them are ignorant about the same but then one can decide actually what is it that is of true value so Duryodhana is a heartless person who is concerned only about his gains whereas he is Arjuna is concerned about his loved ones now both may be spiritually ignorant at least from the speech they are making neither is talking about the soul but still Arjuna is exhibiting a higher level of concern for others than is Duryodhana and that higher level of concern will open his heart to the highest concern the concern of devotion then that will be brought in front of him so Arjuna is exhibiting the capacity to think long term and to evaluate things so that will be discussed in our future sessions but here the point is that Arjuna does not want this fight to death and therefore he decides he is giving this reasoning as an explanation for his decision of not fighting.