Verse 1.31
na ca śreyo ’nupaśyāmi
hatvā sva-janam āhave
na kāṅkṣe vijayam kṛṣṇa
na ca rājyaṁ sukhāni ca
Translation
I do not see how any good can come from killing my own kinsmen in this
battle, nor can I, my dear Krishna, desire any subsequent victory, kingdom, or
happiness.
RG Purport: The great Arjuna here, is a representative of the common man, an average person who is enmeshed in material matters. Usually in the Indian and/or the Asian context, the religious overbear is exceedingly high. The concept of Papa and Punya namely sin and virtue occupies the mind of a common man all the time, especially if the person has some basic level of consciousness. The thought of slaughtering one’s own kith and kin overpowered Arjuna just at the outset of the first strike of war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. According to Arjuna his limited conception did not contain within itself, the possibility of having and ruling a kingdom that had its rudiments steeped in the dead bodies of blood relatives and friends. This was the height of absurdity for Arjuna.
In the material conception an average man conditioned by one’s own past lives and current upbringing is unable to see real value in many things which according to holy men of divine vision are things of utmost importance. A holy man especially, the enlightened man offers solutions which may appear to be ridiculous to a common man but maybe of immense value. The aspect of logic and rationality goes way beyond mundane conceptions and maybe revealed only to a person of incisive insight into the unknown and unpredictable. Lord Krishna is the representation of full blown enlightenment since He is the Supreme Lord Himself. He always had higher logic to offer in cases where Arjuna never saw any opportunity for progress. That is why one who takes up sadhana of the Ultimate, becomes eligible to receive that very insight of the Supreme Lord Himself and thus gets rewarded for one’s commitment to Love the Lord although a true devotee does not expect anything in return for one’s commitment to the purpose and love of the Lord. One needs to thus see the pitfalls of regular mundane life and take up the shelter of Guru and Gauranga so that the material conception is shattered and one very simply shoots into the regime of the unassailable.
Charan Pahari 