THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER NUMBER 13
VERSE NUMBER 01
Kshetra Kshetrajna Vibhaga Yoga or The Yoga of the Discrimination of the Kshetra and the Kshetrajna
TEXT IN TRANSLITERATION:
sree bhagavaan uvaacha
idam sareeram kaunteya kshetram ity abhidhiyate
etad yo vetti tam praahuh kshetrajna iti tadvidah
SANSKRIT WORDS AND PHRASES AND THEIR MEANING IN ENGLISH:
sree bhagavaan uvaacha = Sri Bhagavan said:
idam = this: sareeram = body: kaunteya = O Kaunteya: kshetram = the field: iti = thus: abhidheeyat = is called: etat = this: yah = who: vetti = knows: tam = him: praahuh (they) call: kshetrajnah = the knower of the field: iti = thus: tadvidah = the knowers of that.
TEXT IN ENGLISH:
The Blessed Lord said:
This body, O Kaunteya, is called Kshetra, the field; he who knows it is called Kshetrajna by the sages.
COMMENTARY BY SRIMAT SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
The literal meaning of Kshetra is that which is protected from perishing. The body of beings is called Kshetra because it is saved from destruction to which it is prone. The word Kshetra also means the field. It becomes increasingly productive to the extent it is improved. But its fertility provides scope both for the corn and the weed to thrive in it. Similarly in the field of his body, man reaps the fruits of his good and bad karma. The body is, therefore, the dharma kshetra of the Jivatman. There is an intelligent principle that not only resides in the body but also cognizes and governs it. The sages designate that discerning principle as Kshetrajna.
SRIMAT SWAMI RAMAKRISHNA PARAMAHAMSA AS QUOTED BY SRIMAT SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
The human body may be compared to a pot. The mind, intellect and the senses are parallel to the water, rice and potato put into that pot placed on a hearth. Within a while, the pot gets heated and water boils the rice and potato. The contents then become too hot to be handled. This heat, however, belongs to the fire and not to the pot and its contents. Similarly, it is the Sakti of Brahman that enlivens the body, mind, intellect and the senses.
COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:
Prakrrti is unconscious activity and purusha is inactive consciousness. The body is called the field in which events happen; all growth, decline and death take place in it. The conscious principle, inactive and detached, which lies behind all active states as the witness, is the knower of the field. This is the familiar distinction between consciousness and the objects which that consciousness observes, Kshetrajna is the light of awareness, the knower of all objects. The witness is not the individual embodied mind but the cosmic consciousness for which the whole cosmos is the object. It is calm and eternal and does not need the use of the senses and the mind for its witnessing.
Kshetrajna is the supreme lord, not an object in the world. He is in all fields, differentiated by the limiting conditions, from Brahma, the creator, to a tuft of grass though he is himself devoid of all limitations and incapable of definition by categories. The immutable consciousness is spoken of as cognizer only figuratively (upachaaraat).
When we try to know the nature of the human soul, we may get to know it from above or from below, from the divine principle or the elemental nature. Man is a twofold, contradictory being, free and enslaved. He is godlike and has in him the signs of his fall, that is, descent into nature. As a fallen being, man is determined by the forces of prakriti. He appears to be actuated solely by elemental forces, sensual impulses, fear and anxiety. But man desires to get the better of his fallen nature. The man studied by objective sciences as biology, psychology and sociology is a natural being, is the product of the processes which take place in the world. But man, as a subject, has another origin. He is not a child of the world. He is not nature. He does not belong to the objective hierarchy of nature, as a subordinate part of it. Purusha or kshetrajna cannot be recognized as an object among other objects or as a substance. He can only be recognized as subject, in which is hidden the secret of existence, a complete universe in an individual form. He is not, therefore, a part of the world or of any other whole. As an empirical being he may be like a Leibnizian monad closed, shut up without doors or windows. As a subject, he enters into infinity and infinity enters into him. Kshetrajna is universal in an individually unrepeatable form. The human being is a union of the universal-particular. In his subjective aspects, he is not a part of a whole but is the potential whole. To actualize it, to accomplish the universality is the ideal of man. The subject fills itself with universal content—achieves unity in wholeness at the end of its journey. Man’s peculiarity is not the possession of the inward principle which impels the creative acquisition of a qualitative content of life. He has a unique quality, which is non-common. The ideal personality is unique and unrepeatable. Each person at the end of the road becomes a distinct, unrepeatable, unreplaceable being with a unique form.
COMMENTARY BY SRIMAT SWAMI SIVANANDA:
Kshetra literally means ‘field’. The body is so called because the fruits (harvest) of actions in the form of pleasure and pain are reaped in it as in a field. The physical, the mental and the causal bodies go to constitute the totality of the field. It is not the physical body alone that forms the field.
He who knows the field and he who beholds it as distinct from himself through knowledge is the knower of the field or matter.
Those who know them: The sages.
Comments by the blogger:
Mahatma Gandhi says, “Pandavas and Kauravas, that is, divine and demoniacal impulses, were fighting in this body, and God was watching the fight from a distance. Please do not believe that this is the history of a battle which took place on a little field near Hastinapur; the war is still going on. This is the verse we should keep in mind in order to understand the meaning of the phrase ‘dharmakshetra’.”
The Lord addresses Arjuna as Kaunteya which is significant; kaunteya means ‘O, son of Kunti’. This means that every man and woman born of a woman has this body, which is called as ‘kshetra’.
This is the first sloka or verse of Chapter 13 and the Lord means by the word ‘kshetra’ merely the human body. Sri Krishna wants to describe the difference from this body and the indweller of this body. This body is called a Kshetra and the knower of the body as Kshetrajna. Then the Lord describes in the subsequent Slokas or Verses that this word ‘kshetra’ must be taken to mean the body plus the entire universe.
By kshetrajna the Lord means, so far this sloka or verse is concerned, the knower of or one having the knowledge of the Kshetra. So these two, body and God make up jointly us, the human beings. We all have in us the Lord but we are at different degrees of understanding the indweller, the ‘kshetrajna’. According to Shankara who is also known as Adi Shankara, ‘kshetra’ stands for this body. Why? it saves the body from any injuries. But it is perishable. A paddy field gives us a rich harvest when the same is ploughed. Likewise, this body or Kshetra gives us the fruits of our Karma. And who knows this body from head to foot and has knowledge about this kshetra or body is called kshetragnan. According to Ramanujar, when the householder has the feelings like ‘I am a human being’ ‘I am fat’ ‘I am lean’ it is due to the confusion that the body and Atman are one and the same. But who knows the body as a state to the Atman because of the past Karma knows in reality what is meant by kshetra. When one sees a thing like a pot has the feeling ‘I am seeing the pot’ , it is understandable... the body and the Atman are different from each other...In the verse 15-10 (that is chapter 15 verse 10) it is stated that ‘Those who are confused about the truth do not discern the Atman which exits from the body with the Three Gunas.
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