Krishna Infers Arjunas Motivation- Gita Verses 12 Gita 2.1 – 2.3 

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
We’re delighted to be here with all of you today. And the first chapter of the Gita has 46 texts. And we ended with the 46 texts yesterday.
And the 46 texts basically ended with Arjuna putting aside his bow. So he has made his point. And to some extent, he has made his decision.
So he’s, in one sense, backed up his words with his actions that I won’t fight. That’s what essentially he’s saying. Now, chapter two is one of the longest chapters of the Bhagavad Gita.
The Gita itself has totally 18 chapters and 700 texts. So this has 72 texts. The only chapter that is longer is the 18th chapter, which has 78 texts.
In many ways, if you consider in the Bhagavad Gita, the chapter two and chapter 18 are like summary chapters. Suppose a good speaker might, suppose there’s a well-organized speaker. An organized speaker will initially state what is the topic they’re speaking about.
Then they’ll speak the topic. And at the end, they’ll say, this is the topic we spoke about today. So that’s how, to some extent, it is.
So the second and the 18 chapters, because they are summaries, they tend to be quite long also. Because they overview many of the complex and multilayered themes that are discussed in the Gita. So let’s begin with the, we’ll try to, we’ll begin with the first verse and we’ll see how far we can go.
In general, we try to go over two verses every day, sometimes more, sometimes less. So let’s begin with the first text. If we see, this is the first time Krishna is going to speak something which is at least one full word.
Krishna’s first words in the Bhagavad Gita were 1.25, which we just simply indicate to you. Look at, look, there are Bhishma and Arjuna. You wanted to see them? The first words in the conversational words are in the next two verses.
And after that, from 2.11 onward, it will be more of his philosophical or philosophical metaphysical words that will start. So in that sense, the Bhagavad Gita with the words of Krishna actually begins from here. But and there’s a significant teaching movement which comes up.
Why Krishna does not speak before 2.11? We’ll come to that. But the point I was making, this is the first time that Krishna is going to speak. And it’s describing what was Arjuna’s condition.
So there are tears and he’s depressed. So his mind is depressed and he’s overall lamenting of a terrible situation that he’s in. Now, these tears are significant in many ways because it indicates intense agony.
Warriors generally don’t show their emotions. They’re trained to hide their emotions. And when it is said tears, when earlier it was spoken, he says, my limbs are trembling and my hair are standing on end.
That is one thing. But now it’s said that tears are, his eyes are overflowing with tears. That means the pain is so much, the agony is so much that he’s not able to conceal it.
So it’s a very severe, severe case of emotional affliction for Arjuna. And that’s what is indicated by this first verse. Shri Bhagavan uvacha, utas tva kashmallamidam, vishamesam upasthitam, anarijushtam asvargyam, akirtikaram Arjuna.
At least in the first few verses over here, there are a lot of rhetorical statements being made. This is 2.2. From where has this emotion come from? That means it just shouldn’t be there. So when somebody asks, have you lost your mind or what were you thinking? Now, when they ask a question like that, that’s basically an Indic statement is saying that you are not thinking at all.
Or what had come up, it means this is not you. So where are these impurities, utas tva kashmallamidam, where are these impurities come upon you? Basically, he’s saying that what impurity is he referring to? It’s interesting, the reasoning that Krishna is giving over here. He’s not stating over here, what is the impurity? This impurity, it seems as if it’s almost self-evident.
But he will elaborate what that impurity is in the next verse. And he says impurity, you could say it’s weakness. He will mention that weakness.
But he says impurity in a key moment. It’s like when, as they say, tough people get going when tough times come up. So this is a tough time, this is a big moment.
Like a sports player prepares for the World Cup matches. And say it’s a World Cup final, this is the biggest time and this is the time when you have to be strong, you cannot be weak. And he’s talking about impurity in terms of that this will lead, it is unbecoming to you.
You are a great person, you are a hero, you are a warrior. So Arjun Krishna is speaking in terms of present, it is unbecoming for your character. And then when he talks about the future, he’s saying the future can be in this world and beyond this world.
So in the next world. So in this world, the kind of action that you are doing will bring infamy. You will be, in today’s world, you will be dissed and you will be mocked and you will be laughed at and you will be scorned.
So infamy. And also beyond this world, it will not lead you to heaven. It will not lead you to an elevated destination.
So in this way, Krishna is strongly telling Arjun, this is not the way you should be behaving. This is terrible if you behave like this. That’s the implication.
I think mocked is a much better word in today’s terms, infamy. Yeah. Yes.
Yeah. If we have people, people are multilevel. There is their motivation.
And then what we see is their action. Their underlying might be emotion. Emotion, motivation are not exactly the same thing.
But generally what happens is we look at people outside in. We look at their action that we can very easily see. This is very visible.
We can see action, what they’re doing. Their emotion is somewhat visible. Some people are poker face.
They don’t show any emotion at all. But most people, you see at least some emotion in their face. But when it comes to the motivation, it is hardly visible.
It’s not visible at all. It’s only what we can infer. So in one sense, we are moving from observation towards inference.
Now, what Krishna is doing is that if a warrior is about to fight a war and the warrior decides not to fight. What could be the reason for it? So Krishna is going towards. So from an action to motivation, there could be many different inferences that different people could arrive at.
Because inferences after all are matters of to some extent guesswork. It may be a reasonable or unreasonable guess, but still guess. So now there could be many different motivations.
So in one sense, Krishna is going towards the most probable motivation that Arjuna might have. That is what he said. He’s having a moment of weakness.
And that’s why I say don’t be weak like this. And Krishna will make this clearer in the next word. But the idea is that Krishna is in one sense playing the role of the world over here.
And Krishna will give Arjuna by this, by playing the role of the world. Krishna will give Arjuna an opportunity to emphatically take the discussion to a deeper level. When he emphatically rebuts, this is not my consideration.
In that way, Krishna helps take the entire discussion to a deeper level. So what is the obvious inference of somebody’s action? No, that’s not the obvious inference. That’s not the actual inference.
So what would be expected if it is not present? Krishna is saying that this is how the world will see it. And he makes it much more clear in the next verse. So technically there are two distinct words over here.
Partha and Trutha. So here it is the son of Trutha, that is Partha. So Arjuna’s name is Partha.
But here he is being referred to as son of Trutha. So anyway, so he is saying over here, do not give in to this impotence. So what is the, now impotence is a very strong word to use, especially for warriors who are generally considered embodiments of virility.
What he means is, what is the impotence over here? Impotence is basically cowardice. So he said, It does not behoove you. And why does it not behoove you? Therefore, he says that don’t give in to this weakness.
Don’t give in to small mindedness. Arrive and fight. So that is his focus over here when he is speaking.
He is not at all getting into at this stage a deeper level of discussion. It’s like a soldier who has to fight a war and suddenly gets up and says, I can’t fight this. It’s so brutal.
This is so terrible. I don’t want to do this. No, this is what your job requires.
This is what you signed for. You did that. In general, it is an unfortunate reality that sometimes violence is the only way to stop violence.
It is not the final way and it should not be the first way. But suppose there are terrorists going around shooting innocent people. We don’t want violence.
But if the police say, oh, you know, all these terrorists, these people who are rioting, they are just misinformed people. OK, whatever they may be misinformed, whatever it is, but they are doing violence and it has to be stopped. So it’s like a surgeon saying that.
I can’t stand the sight of blood. Oh, I’ll have to cut this tender, tender child. Sometimes there are surgeries to be done on small babies.
And I can’t cut this baby. Well, if that’s what is required, that’s what you signed for. So if somebody has that job, that’s what they’re prepared for their career throughout their career.
That’s what they are trained to do. That’s what they’re expected to do. And you don’t do that at that time.
So in one sense, it’s like when you said this does not be who you. This does not become you. This does not be who you.
So it’s this is not worthy of you. He’s saying this is a multiple levels. No, that’s his profession.
That’s what he’s signed for. That’s what his training. And then on top of that, that’s what his expectation.
So all three are related, but still they’re distinct. Somebody may somehow get the get into an army. That’s their profession.
But they never had training. And that’s why people have been conscripted into the army. But then, OK, that’s a different situation.
But here that’s his profession. That’s what he’s trained on for life. And it’s what people’s expectation is.
People are counting on him for that. He’s a key warrior. And you can’t let all these people down at this time.
It’s like suppose somebody sees. Now, OK, there are there’s a riot going on. And the riot has some members of my family.
Then what should I do at that time? Do I hit them with batons? Do I shoot at them with some stun guns to actually shoot them? Or because they’re my relatives, they I shouldn’t do that. So Krishna is saying that it’s your job. You have to do it.
And you’re not doing it. It will be seen as weakness. It will be seen as small mindedness.
It will be seen as cowardice. So basically, he says this before you. That means basically he says, don’t be cowardly.
That’s the essential point. And we’ll see when this particular statement is made, Arjuna responds with indignance. That’s not it at all.
But Krishna takes this whole tax so that that particular notion is categorically rejected. So sometimes as long as we have one particular conception of what is going on, we just don’t see anything else going on. So, for example, if a doctor is talking with a patient and the doctor comes to know that the patient is very poor, the patient can’t pay.
That’s one aspect of the discussion. The doctor says, I can’t do the surgery. Now you may say that, don’t you have any humanity just because you can’t be paid so you won’t do the surgery? But then the doctor says, no, that’s one information I got.
One information I got is that this person has got extremely high blood pressure. This person has got heart issues. Unless those issues are stabilized, we can’t do the surgery right now.
So when a doctor says no to surgery, there could be multiple reasons. So if one reason is no payment, and once you get it out of the way, then we can discuss, OK, the medical merits of the case. So if you say there’s too much risk over here or it’s not safe at this point, so we can get to that deeper level when the obvious level has been taken out of the discussion.
That has been clarified. So that’s what’s going to happen over here. So you’re going from a more external reason to a deeper reason.
So that he is helping Arjuna see how the world will see his actions, and then he will go deeper into it. In one sense, if you see, Arjuna makes many arguments in the first chapter, and Krishna will systematically address those arguments one by one. But sometimes it says that your actions are so loud that I can’t hear your words.
So that Arjuna may have advanced many arguments, but his actions seem to speak that. Oh, he’s just being a coward. So Krishna has to categorically get out of the way.
That’s what Krishna has done over here. So we summarize today. Basically, we discussed about how the first verse talks about Arjuna’s emotional affliction, an intense affliction that is in tears, and that was the continuation from the previous chapter.
And the second point was that Krishna is discussing with Arjuna at a probable inferential level, most probable inferential level, that you are not fighting because of cowardice. So generally, most people, when they see the action and from there, they can also see the emotion to some extent. But from the action emotion, they jump towards the motivation.
And in this case, the most obvious motivation that most people think about is that he’s scared. He’s being cowardly. He’s got an attack of nerves.
So if that’s the case, then Krishna is telling him that this is unbecoming for you. Cowardice is unbecoming, and it’s unbecoming because of multiple factors. It’s because that’s your job, that’s your profession, that’s your training, that’s what is the expectation.
And especially the expectation at this big moment. You can’t lose it at this time right now. So in this way, this particular verse takes, it comprises the first word that Arjuna has spoken in terms of full words.