Chapter 1, Arjuna's sorrow

In this episode

• The Gita opens on a battlefield, seen through Sanjaya's eyes.
• Arjuna sees his family and friends on both sides of the battle.
• Overcome with sorrow, Arjuna lays down his weapons.

Read along

Namaste, and welcome. This is the first episode of The Gita for everyday life. Eighteen chapters, eighteen episodes, one small step at a time.

If you have never read the Bhagavad Gita, that is fine. If you have read it many times, that is fine too. We will go slowly, in plain words, and we will keep one question for your own life at the end of each episode.

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The Gita is a conversation. It sits inside a much larger book, the Mahabharata. Two sides of one family, the Kauravas and the Pandavas, have quarrelled for years over a kingdom. Every effort to make peace has failed. Now both sides stand facing each other on a wide plain called **Kurukshetra**.

And the Gita does not open on that plain. It opens in a palace, far away.

The old king **Dhritarashtra** is blind. His sons lead one side. He cannot see what is happening, so he turns to his charioteer and counsellor, **Sanjaya**, who has been given the gift of seeing far-off things. The king asks, in effect, "Tell me. What are my people and the sons of my brother doing there?"

Everything we hear in the Gita, we hear through Sanjaya's eyes, answering a worried old man.

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Sanjaya describes the gathering. Famous names on both sides. Conches are blown, one after another, and the sound fills the sky. It feels like a moment that cannot be stopped.

Then **Arjuna**, the great archer of the Pandavas, turns to his charioteer. His charioteer is **Krishna**, his friend and cousin. Arjuna says, "Take my chariot into the middle, between the two sides. I want to see who I am facing."

Krishna does as he asks. He draws the chariot out into the open space, and simply tells him to look.

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And Arjuna looks.

He sees his grandfather, **Bhishma**, who held him as a child. He sees **Drona**, the teacher who taught him everything he knows. He sees uncles, cousins, sons and grandsons, fathers-in-law, old friends. On both sides. Wherever he turns his eyes, he finds a face he loves.

Something in him gives way. Here is how the Gita itself describes it.

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सीदन्ति मम गात्राणि मुखं च परिशुष्यति। वेपथुश्च शरीरे मे रोमहर्षश्च जायते॥

sīdanti mama gātrāṇi mukhaṃ ca pariśuṣyati | vepathuś ca śarīre me romaharṣaś ca jāyate ||

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In plain words, Arjuna says: my limbs are giving way, and my mouth is dry. My body is trembling, and the hair on my skin stands up.

This is not a coward speaking. This is the finest archer of his time, and his body has understood something before his mind has found the words. Grief arrives in the body first. Perhaps you have felt that too, in a hospital corridor, or at a door you did not want to open.

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His bow slips from his hand. He says, "Krishna, I do not want this. I do not want a kingdom, or victory, or comfort, if this is what it costs. What joy could there be, after harm to my own family?"

He gives reason after reason. He speaks of families, of what holds a household together, of what would be lost for the generations to come. Some of his reasons are wise. Some come from fear. All of them come from love, and from a deep confusion about what is right.

And at the end of the chapter, Sanjaya tells the king: Arjuna set down his bow and arrows and sat down in the chariot, his mind overcome with sorrow.

That is how chapter one ends. No answer. A good man, sitting down, unable to act.

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The tradition gives this chapter a surprising name: **Arjuna Vishada Yoga**, the yoga of Arjuna's sorrow. Yoga is a word for a path, a way of joining. Why would sorrow be called a path?

Here is one simple way to see it. Arjuna does not pretend. He does not push his feeling down and carry on. He stops, and he says honestly: I am lost. And because he says it, the conversation can begin. In the next chapter he will turn to Krishna not as a warrior to a driver, but as a student to a teacher, and ask for help.

The whole Gita, all seven hundred verses, grows out of that one honest moment. A teaching that begins with sorrow is a teaching for people like us, who do not always know what to do.

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So here is the question to keep with you today.

Is there a place in your life where you are standing between two things you love, and you cannot move? You do not need to solve it tonight. Arjuna did not. You only need to see it clearly, and perhaps, to say it out loud to someone you trust.

In the next episode, chapter two, Krishna begins to answer. And his first words may surprise you.

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This narration uses an AI voice. The chapter is retold from the Bhagavad Gita by the DharmikStudio team, and the verse is recited by a person.

Keep going

• Listen: Chapter 1, Arjuna's sorrow
• हिन्दी में पढ़ें
• All episodes of The Gita for everyday life