Arjuna and Krishna
From the Bhagavad Gita, esp. ch. 1. I am not at all satisfied with this story, but because I believe it is crucially important for young people to become familiar with the story of the Bhagavad Gita, I have include this story anyway. Some day I'll get around to rewriting it....RSN.
This is the story of a conversation that took place thousands of years ago. It's all written down in a book called the Bhagavad Gita, which is one of the holy books of the Hindus.
Perhaps twenty years before this story begins, Dhritarashtra [Dri-tah-rahsh-trah], the great blind King of the Kurus, decided to give his kingdom to his nephew Yudhishthira [Yut-ish-tir-ah] instead of to Duryodhana [Dur-yo-tahn-ah], the eldest of his hundred sons; for he saw that his eldest son was wicked and selfish. But Duryodhana [Dur-yo-tahn-ah], this wicked eldest son, managed to cheat his cousin Yudhishthira [Yut-ish-tir-ah] out of being the king, and even exiled Yudhishthira [Yut-ish-tir-ah] for thirteen years.
As this story begins, it is the end of the thirteen year exile, and Yudhishthiraa [Yut-ish-tir-ah] has returned to gather together relatives who still feel loyal to him, to join his army. For his part, Duryodhana [Dur-yo-tahn-ah] has gotten together all their other relatives to join his army.
Picture the scene in your mind's eye, imagine what it looked like:
The two armies have taken up sides on either side of the Kuru field. The great heroes stand in their chariots behind their charioteers (a charioteer is someone who hold the reins of the horses that pulls the chariot). These heroes are all great archers, and they have their bows and their arrows at the ready. In addition to these heroes, many other heroes stand at the ready, armed with many different kinds of weapons, each of them skilled in war.
Among the warriors in chariots is Arjuna. His is a particularly large and fine chariot, pulled by magnificent white horses, driven by a skilled charioteer.
Both armies are a little restless as they gather on opposite sides of the field of battle. Suddenly, one of the warriors blows on a conch shell -- and if any of you have heard the sound a conch shell can make when someone who is really skilled plays it, you know that it can be a loud and even terrifying sound.
At the sound of that first blast from a conch shell, other warriors take out their conch shells and blow them. Other people beat on drums and cymbals, and blow on loud horns. In the Bhagavad Gita, it says that "the tumultuous sound, resounding through earth and sky, rent the hearts" of all the warriors.
Almost immediately, the first arrows began to fly. As the arrows begin to fly, Arjuna says to his charioteer, "Stop my chariot between the two armies so I can look at all these men standing eager for battle, these warriors I'm going to fight with."
His charioteer drives the chariot out in between the two armies. The war has not quite yet begun -- it's about to start, there's still a few people blowing on conch shells and beating on drums, there's a few arrows already in the air, but the two armies are still a good distance apart on opposite sides of this wide field. And at this moment, there is a little lull in the action, a sort of pause. You can feel that things are about to start to happen, but nothing has really happened quite yet.
Arjuna stands in his chariot out in the middle of the field (he's the only one out there). There he stands, all prepared to fight. He looks across the field, and he recognizes many of the people in the opposing army -- uncles, and great-uncles, and teachers, cousins, and friends of his. He sees people over there who are fathers of people in his army, and sons, and brothers, and friends and so on.
He is suddenly overcome with depression -- here are these people, friends and relatives of each other, who are about to try and kill each other! It just doesn't make sense to him.
He says to his charioteer, "My mouth is dry, my body is trembling, my mind is whirling. we're all about to do a bad thing. No good can come if I kill friends and relative. Maybe it would be better if I let the other side simply kill me, unresisting and unarmed...."
In that pause before the war begins, where everyone is just waiting for something to happen, Arjuna stops and tries to figure out what it is he should do next. Should he just throw down his weapons and let the other side kill him, or should he go forward and kill friends and relatives? He doesn't like either choice, and yet he knows he has to do something.
Waiting for the battle to begin, out there in the field between the two armies, Arjuna begins a conversation with his charioteer. As it happens, Arjuna's charioteer isn't just any charioteer, but is Krishna himself, who is the God of all Gods. Krishna tells Arjuna about God -- about the universe -- and about the best way for a person to act. Krishna says that if you want to be the best kind of person, you should respect teachers, wise people, and the gods; you should speak the truth and study religion; and you must attain peace of mind, "gentleness, silence, self-control, purity of being."
Krishna also reveals his true appearance to Arjuna. Though Krishna has taken on the appearance of a charioteer, in reality Krishna has many mouths and many eyes, is dressed in divine garments, covered with divine ointments, radiant and infinite. Arjuna is so amazed with the sight that his hair stands on end.
Arjuna asks lots of questions, and Krishna talks and talks and talks to Arjuna. Their long conversations, and the divine vision when Krishna reveals his true appearance to Arjuna, all take place after the conch shell gets blown for the first time, but before the battle starts. You would think that that is far too short a time for so much conversation to take place -- to say nothing of the divine vision! But the moment when you're betwixt and between things, doing nothing much but waiting for the next thing to happen, can seem like it takes forever.
How does the book turn out in the end? Does Arjuna fight or not? Well, if you want to know that, you're going to have to read the book yourself!
Licensed 2006 by Daniel Harper under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/). No commercial uses, attribution required, no derivative works.