The Background of the Bhagavadgita-1.

04/08/2018
The Background of the Bhagavadgita-1


The first chapter tells about Arjuna Vishadham,
Begins with

Drutharashtra uvacha :

Dharmakshetre kurukshetre samavetha yuyutsavah,

maamakaah  paandavaas caiva kim akurvata sanjaya (Gita 1.1).

This is the first Slokam of the Bhagavadgita. It is a query raised by King Dhrutarashtra to his counsellor, Sanjaya: “When the Pandavas and the Kauravas were arrayed in the field for a battle, what actually happened? How did they get on among themselves?”

This world, this field of universal conflict, may also be considered as Dharmakshetra and Kurukshetra at the same time. The field of the Mahabharata war was the geographical location called Kurukshetra – a place of pilgrimage even now, which you can visit whenever you have time. It is also designated in this verse as Dharmakshetra because it is said that in this particular holy spot many yajnas or sacrifices were performed by rishis of yore; therefore, the place has the blessedness of being charged with the atmosphere of sanctity generated by sacrifices – yajnas performed even by gods themselves, as the tradition goes.

This world in which we are living is also, simultaneously, a Dharmakshetra and a Kurukshetra. Commentators on the Bhagavadgita referring to this particular verse make out that Kurukshetra may also mean ‘a field of activity, being busy’, and Dharmakshetra may mean ‘a field of righteousness’. This world – which is also a field of conflict in many a way, as I tried to point out in the previous discourse – is indeed busy with the process of the evolution of the created beings on Earth.

 Everything is busy; all are active. From the minutest particle of the mineral world right up to the human level, you will find everything is busy doing something. Even the galaxies and the systems above in the skies are not static entities. Everything moving in a state of flux is this world. Momentary is the appearance of anything, at any time.

As it is well said, you cannot touch the same water of the river in two consecutive seconds. The river flows. You are not now what you were a few minutes before; and in the future, a few minutes later, you shall not be what you are now. Everything is hurrying forward like the carriages of a railway train. So the world, this entire creation, is one of intense activity, movement, restlessness, transitoriness, fluxation, a hurrying onward.

It is also, at the same time, a field of virtue and goodness, of righteousness of the law. This activity of the world is not a haphazard movement in any direction whatsoever. It is a well-organised movement. It is a systematised activity, which means to say, it is conditioned by a law that is directing it. Though endless is the variety of activity that is going on everywhere in this world, this endlessness is rooted basically in a single orderliness. It is not that anything is going anywhere, in any direction whatsoever. There is a methodology in the universal activity. This method is the law, so-called.

To be continued ..