When Krishna tells Arjuna that your nature will make you fight then where is free will?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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So when Krishna says that, even if you decide to not fight, still, you will be forced to fight by the modes. That is your nature.
The sabhav is that the Kshatriyas have to fight, we will have to fight. So what does that mean? Actually, yes, here, two things are there, that our sabhav will make us act, but, in what consciousness we act, at what level we act, that is something which is up to us. if we are, if we are, Arjuna as a Kshatriya will fight, but whether he will fight dharmically or he will fight adharmically, that will depend on his consciousness.
In that 18.59 and 16, when Krishna says that you will be forced to fight by your nature, Vishwacharya could have explained in his commentary over there, Arjuna, now there is a dharma yuddha for you, here you are saying you will not fight, but later on you think that you will live like a beggar, you will just live by getting arms from people, but you are a Kshatriya, if somebody refuses to give you arms you will become angry and you will take out your sword to fight with them. So that kind of attacking people who do not give you arms, that is adharmic, if you are a mendicant, you cannot do that. So that time when you do it, it will be Adharma.
So again, the point of the Bhagavad Gita is that we can’t give up our nature, so better use our nature to do our duty. If we give up our duty thinking that oh this is troublesome, why do all this, then our nature will make us do something similar, but then we will do it in adharmic way and that will cause us further bad karma. So yes, our endeavour is that not that we act according to our nature, we will anyway act according to our nature, but our endeavour is to act according to Dharma, according to our nature, act dharmically according to our nature, that requires endeavour.
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