Gita 01.45 – Sound arguments from a fragmented perception are actually unsound

Thank you tanmey kshemitarambhavet Bhagavad Gita 1.45 here Arjuna is now giving his conclusion yad evam apratikaram yad evam apratikaram if I am not countering them a shastram and I am not only not fighting them but I don't even have the weapons to fight with them shastra pauniyaha and the opponents are having shastra weapons in their hands, weapons appraised dhartarastra rane hanyas the sons of dhartarastra kill me tanmey kshemitarambhavet I feel that will be better kshemitarambhavet surely that will lead to a better destination for me that will be a greater protection for me so Arjuna has talked prior to this about how the world is, world will become miserable if kulaksha happens if the whole dynasty is destroyed the leaders, the protectors of the dynasty are destroyed and not only that the previous generations they will fall from the higher lokas and the destroyers as well as the destroyed, more dynasties will suffer and ultimately the perpetrators of this will have to go to hell and suffer for a long time so there will be all round suffering and to avoid such a catastrophe Arjuna is ready to lose his own life because he is on the war field and he knows that on a war practically the two main options are either you kill or you be killed and he is saying that I am ready to die and yadimam apatikaram asastram shastrapanaya I know that Duryodhana's sons are not going to Duryodhana and his party are not going to have a change of heart so even if I don't fight it's not that they are going to stop fighting but still if they kill me at least my suffering will end over here I die and the suffering will end but if I kill them I will become the cause of the destruction of the whole dynasty and that will lead to far greater suffering so therefore kshemataram what will be better for me is to die without weaponless and unresisting nakshatriya actually is defined by the weapons he carries and by the fighting spirit he embodies so for the kshatriya to give up both to become apatikaram and asastram it is actually wholly uncharacteristic of a kshatriya and yet Arjuna is ready to do such a thing because his emotion driven reasoning has clouded his judgement although he is at one level making good arguments however those arguments are not the arguments that come from a holistic understanding of reality the arguments come from a fragmented perception where Arjuna sees himself as his body and he sees others as their body and he is thinking more in terms of material well being so now although Arjuna uses the word narakke nyatam vaso now that indicates that he accepts a future life because if life were just coming from the body then there will be no one to go to narak also but although Arjuna accepts the narak still the idea, his conceptions are largely material and that's why he is thinking in terms of material well being or material misery and here he is saying that because there will be so much misery if I fight therefore it is best that I don't fight and therefore he is saying that let me just put aside my kshatriya nature itself although Krishna will mention later that nature can never be changed Krishna talks about this in 18.59 and 16 and at several other places in the Gita also but here the point is Arjuna based on his calculations of gain and loss feels that dying dying here is preferable to killing and suffering in hell in the hereafter now it is understood in spiritual cultures that we all have to do an accounting of our karma post-mortem after our death so that's why the approach of death the awareness of one's mortality makes people more sober and more serious about spiritual life at the same time also on the other hand the attitude of Arjuna over here in saying that I will not fight is at one level laudable because he is for the sake of peace, for the sake of social order, ready to even sacrifice his own life but on another level the reasoning is lamentable, it is incomplete because he is not really considering the soul and he is not deeply considering the connection of the soul with God so it will take the instruction by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita subsequently for Arjuna's perception to become integrated rather than stay fragmented and for him to be able to come up with a proper understanding thereof so sound arguments coming from fragmented perception are unsound and the reasoning that Arjuna is making is in and of itself at one level sound, yes who will protect the dynasty if the dynasty is not protected what will happen to the women, what will happen to the progeny and what will be the destination of such a person who causes so much suffering in the world, all these are valid points but the real problem is that Arjuna is considering valid points from a platform that is not truly valid because welfare of society welfare of even the individual is determined not just by bodily welfare and to the soul, the soul is eternal and the Bhagavad Gita offers a drastic example of how the spiritual welfare may actually require something that in some cases seems against material welfare so actually it is not the establishment of righteous rulers will bring about material welfare also but at an immediate level and at a level of incomplete perception it may appear that seeking spiritual welfare actually Arjuna doesn't know at this stage or at least his arguments don't reveal that he knows that we are discussing at the level of the soul but still the point is that Krishna's instructions even if they seem initially to be disruptive to be disastrously disruptive as Arjuna is predicting over here actually they are supremely redemptive they restore things and they restore things to their best order and how that will happen that we cannot know necessarily initially because we are not omniscient like God and moreover just like a patient may not know exactly what the doctor is doing, why the doctor is say giving this injection or doing that surgery, cutting that part but the doctor knows so Arjuna despite his knowledge is not a spiritual expert and that's why his reasoning is coming out to be wrong but still his capacity for reasoning is good and Krishna will guide him towards the correct reasoning and with that correct reasoning when Arjuna comes to a conclusion he will become enlivened to fight the war with that conclusion.