Verse 2·7

कार्पण्यदोषोपहतस्वभावःपृच्छामि त्वा धर्मसम्मूढचेताः ।यच्छ्रेयः स्यान्निश्चितं ब्रूहि तन्मेशिष्यस्तेऽहं शाधि मां त्वां प्रपन्नम् ॥

kārpaṇyadoṣopahatasvabhāvaḥpṛcchāmi tvā dharmasammūḍhacetāḥyacchreyaḥ syānniścitaṁ brūhi tanmeśiṣyaste’haṁ śādhi māṁ tvāṁ prapannam

It is poorness of spirit that has smitten away from me my (true heroic) nature; my whole consciousness is bewildered in its view of right and wrong. I ask thee which may be the better—that tell me decisively. I take refuge as a disciple with thee; enlighten me.

Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy

AI translationAI-synthesised translation — not Sri Aurobindo’s text

His translation

URJOONA How shall I combat Bheeshma in the fight and Drona,O Madhusudan, how shall I smite with arrows those venerable heads? Better were it, not piercing these great and worshipped hearts to eat even a beggar’s bread on this our earth; I slay our earthly wealth & bliss when I slay these; bloodstained will be the joys I shall taste. Therefore we know not which of these is better, that we should be victors or that we should be vanquished; for they whom slaying we should have no heart to live, lo they face us in the foeman’s van, they are Dhritarashtrians. Pain and unwillingness have swept me from my natural self, my heart is bewildered as to right and wrong; thee then I question. Tell me what would surely be my good, for I am thy disciple; teach me, for in thee I have sought my refuge. I see not what shall banish from me the grief that parcheth up the senses, though I win on earth rich kingship without rival and empire over the very gods in heaven.

Essays on the Gita

The character of this inner crisis is therefore not the questioning of the thinker; it is not a recoil from the appearances of life and a turning of the eye inward in search of the truth of things, the real meaning of existence and a solution or an escape from the dark riddle of the world. It is the sensational, emotional and moral revolt of the man hitherto satisfied with action and its current standards who finds himself cast by them into a hideous chaos where they are in violent conflict with each other and with themselves1·40 and there is no moral standing-ground left, nothing to lay hold of and walk by, no dharma.^* That for the soul of action in the mental being is the worst possible crisis, failure and overthrow. The revolt itself is the most elemental and simple possible; sensationally, the elemental feeling of horror, pity and disgust; vitally, the loss of attraction and faith in the recognised and familiar objects of action and aims of life; emotionally, the recoil of the ordinary feelings of social man, affection, reverence, desire of a common happiness and satisfaction, from a stern duty outraging them all; morally, the elementary sense of sin and hell and rejection of2·5 “blood-stained enjoyments”; practically, the sense that the standards of action have led to a result which destroys the practical aims of action. But the whole upshot is that all-embracing inner bankruptcy which Arjuna expresses when he says that his whole conscious being,2·7 not the thought alone but heart and vital desires and all, are utterly bewildered and can find nowhere the dharma, nowhere any valid law of action. For this alone he takes refuge as a disciple with Krishna; give me, he practically asks, that which I have lost, a true law, a clear rule of action, a path by which I can again confidently walk. He does not ask for the secret of life or of the world, the meaning and purpose of it all, but for a dharma.

Arjuna in his reply to Krishna admits the rebuke even while he strives against and refuses the command. He is aware of his weakness and yet accepts subjection to it. It is poorness of spirit,2·7 he owns, that has smitten away from him his true heroic nature; his whole consciousness is bewildered in its view of right and wrong and he accepts the divine Friend as his teacher; but the emotional and intellectual props on which he had supported his sense of righteousness have been entirely cast down and he cannot accept a command which seems to appeal only to his old standpoint and gives him no new basis for action. He attempts still to justify his refusal of the work and puts forward in its support the claim of his nervous and sensational being which shrinks from the slaughter with its sequel of blood-stained enjoyments, the2·5 claim of his heart which recoils from the sorrow and emptiness of life that will follow his act, the claim of his customary moral notions which are appalled by the necessity of slaying his gurus, Bhishma and Drona, the claim of his reason which sees no good but only evil results of the terrible and violent work assigned to him. He is resolved that on the old basis of thought and motive he will not2·9 fight and he awaits in silence the answer to objections that seem to him unanswerable. It is these claims of Arjuna’s egoistic being that Krishna sets out first to destroy in order to make place for the higher law which shall transcend all egoistic motives of action.

Writings in Bengali

কার্পণ্যদোষোপহতস্বভাবঃ পৃচ্ছামি ত্বাং ধর্ম্মসংমূঢ়চেতাঃ।
যচ্ছ্রেয়ঃ স্যান্নিশ্চিতং ব্রূহি তন্মে শিষ্যস্তেঽহং শাধি মাং ত্বাং প্রপন্নম্॥৭॥

অর্জ্জুনের শিক্ষাপ্রার্থনা

শ্রীকৃষ্ণের উক্তির উদ্দেশ্য অর্জ্জুন বুঝিতে পারিলেন, তিনি রাজনীতিক আপত্তি উত্থাপন করিতে বিরত হইলেন, কিন্তু আর যে যে আপত্তি ছিল, তাহার কোন উত্তর না পাইয়া শ্রীকৃষ্ণের নিকট শিক্ষার্থে শরণাগত হইলেন। তিনি বলিলেন, “আমি স্বীকার করি আমি ক্ষত্রিয়, কৃপার বশবর্ত্তী হইয়া মহৎ কার্য্যে বিরত হওয়া আমার পক্ষে ক্লীবত্বসূচক, অকীর্ত্তিজনক, ধর্ম্মবিরুদ্ধ। কিন্তু মনও মানে না, প্রাণও মানে না। মন বলে, গুরুজন হত্যা মহাপাপ, নিজ সুখের জন্য গুরুজনকে হত্যা করিলে অধর্ম্মে পতিত হইয়া ধর্ম্ম, মোক্ষ, পরলোক, যাহা বাঞ্ছনীয়, সকলই যাইবে। কামনা তৃপ্ত হইবে, অর্থস্পৃহা তৃপ্ত হইবে, কিন্তু সে কয়দিন? অধর্ম্মলব্ধ ভোগ প্রাণত্যাগ পর্য্যন্ত স্থায়ী, তাহার পর অনির্ব্বচনীয় দুর্গতি হয়। আর যখন ভোগ করিবে, তখন সেই ভোগের মধ্যে গুরুজনের রক্তের

ভগবানের নিকট সম্পূর্ণভাবে শরণাগত হওয়া গীতোক্ত যোগের পন্থা। ইহাকে আত্মসমর্পণ বা আত্মনিবেদন বলে। যিনি ভগবানকে গুরু, প্রভু, সখা, পথপ্রদর্শক বলিয়া আর সকল ধর্ম্মকে জলাঞ্জলি দিতে প্রস্তুত, পাপ পুণ্য, কর্ত্তব্য অকর্ত্তব্য, ধর্ম্ম অধর্ম্ম, সত্য অসত্য, মঙ্গল অমঙ্গল বিচার না করিয়া নিজ জ্ঞান কর্ম্ম ও সাধনার সমস্ত ভাব শ্রীকৃষ্ণকে অর্পণ করেন, তিনিই গীতোক্ত যোগের অধিকারী। অর্জ্জুন শ্রীকৃষ্ণকে বলিলেন, তুমি যদি গুরুহত্যাও করিতে বল, ইহাকে ধর্ম্ম ও কর্ত্তব্যকর্ম্ম বলিয়া বুঝাইয়া দাও, আমি তাহাই করিব। এই গভীর শ্রদ্ধার বলে অর্জ্জুন সমসাময়িক সকল মহাপুরুষকে অতিক্রম করিয়া গীতোক্ত শিক্ষার শ্রেষ্ঠ পাত্র বলিয়া গৃহীত হইলেন।

The Arya — text not in the CWSA

* Gita II. 1–38.