Arjuna is deeply attached to his family, esp Bhishma and Drona. He is very sad that he has been in a situation where he has to fight his close family members and his teachers. In life at times we are faced with situations where carrying out our duty means causing grief to our family members. Like if a student as to leave his home to go away to school. He knows going away will cause his parents to become sad but he has to do it. If he decided not to go to school in a distant town, than although he will be keeping his parents from getting sad but he will not be carrying out his duty, that is to study and acquire knowledge from whereve rhe can. Arjuna was faced with a situation even of greater significance. because here carrying out his duty meant that he would end up killing his own teachers and family members.
So what to do ?
So he surrenders to Krishna and says, i have come to you and you are the only one who can help me deal with this situation. My intellect is not helping me figure out what to do. I would rather beg than to fight because that would end up causing harm in so many ways.
Krishna knows Arjuna and Krishna is also a great psychologist. He is going to employ several strategies to try to tell Arjuna how to get over this attachment and do his duty. First point Krishna brings up is:
These people are going to die any way. they were not there until few years back and few years from now they won't be there any more. The life force in them, the Jiva, however has always been there and will always be there even after the pysical body is not there any more. He gives him a real life example that of how we change clothes. Just like we in day to day life change old dirty clothes for new ones, similarly Jiva discards old worn out body and assumes a new body. Itself Jiva is Forever, Eternal, Not affected by the forces of nature such as fire, water weapons etc.
But this did not really help Arjuna, so krishna put forth a different argument, the second point:
He said, so Arjuna, even if you believe that Jiva is perishable and the body is perishable, you see people dying around you. Can you stop that from happening ? You know you can not stop that from happening. Than why not accept the fact that everyone is going to die any way, than why grieve over this. It is eternal truth that every entity that takes birth WILL die and every entity that has not taken birth yet, will take birth in the future. and you can not do anything to change that. So why griev about it.
Arjuna still did not get it. so Krishna used third strategy that a worldly perosn would understand. He told him that you have a great reputation of an expert and the best archer on earth. People consider you one of the bravest fighter. If you abandon the battlefield people are going to call you coward. Can you live with that. They are going to call you AWOL. Absent without leave. People are going to badmouth you. Do you really want them to do that. Now look, if you died fighting, you will go to heaven and if are victorius than you will rule this kingdom.
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