ARJUNA'S VISHADA YOGA, AN INTRODUCTION

                                                           ARJUNA’S VISHADA YOGA

   Arjuna’s vishada yoga is the first chapter of the 18 discourses between Arjuna and Sri Krishna, and the question may be raised as to how one’s despondency could be called a yoga. Yoga as a term is used in many senses in the Gita itself, but, anyhow, how could one’s despondency become yoga. Yoga may be taken, generally, as the right kind of action, and how could  Arjuna’s despondency be called the right action. And right action is different from the righteous action, that’s a different matter. Could our despondency be called yoga? If not why Arjuna’s despondency itself is called a yoga. Because, the Bhagavat Gita is a yoga sastra. Everything sri Bhagavan speaks about is yoga. But Arjunan just expresses a desire to be taken to the place by Krishna who acts as his charioteer or driver of the car, so he could see the people who have come to give battle to him and his brothers, and when Sri Krishna does just that and drives the chariot to the vantage point where Arjuna could take a good look at the adversaries, then he becomes despondent; he says he could not kill his own kith and kin and so and so. But the relation of this first discourse by the minister of Yudhistra, the Kauravas’s blind king, namely, Sanjaya, is called itself a yoga! But how?

    To understand this, we must understand two important points: one, the despondency of Arjuna cannot be equated to the ones we go through in our worldly lives! Two, the despondency is expressed to the lord in the proper manner.

   Let us consider the first point; the despondency in Arjuna can never be gone through by any one. Arjuna is not asked to renounce the world and go to the forest. He has already done that even! Arjuna is not asked to give away all his wealth. Arjuna is called upon by the Lord to KILL  AND THAT TOO HIS OWN ACHARYAS AND KITH AND KIN! SUCH IS THE INTENSITY OF ARJUNA’S DESPONDENCY. HE IS A PEERLESS WARRIOR, BUT BECOMES DESPONDENT UNDER A GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCE. AND , WE HAVE NEVER EVER BEEN ASKED BY THE LORD TO KILL OUR OWN KITH AND KIN. THUS, ARJUNA’S DESPONDENCY IS THE ULTIMATE IN HUMAN EXPERIENCE.

   Number two, he, Arjuna, expresses such a despondence in such a prayerfully enriched form, and so only it become in itself a yoga.

    Thus Arjuna enters into a mental state no one has been called upon in the history of human lives, and he expresses his feelings and sentiments to his master, the Creator in such a way, that it becomes a yoga. So, if we put forth, in our daily prayer, our own despondencies in such a way as resorted to in the second chapter by Arjuna by surrendering himself at the Lord’s feet as his vassal , then our prayer too becomes a yoga. That is the right kind of action in devotion. Beseeching the Lord is an art developed by the Rig-vedic sages. And such a prayer is a yoga! Or right action!