Bhagavadgita : Chapter 1: Arjuna Vishada Yoga

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I have been thinking about reading and understanding the meaning of Bhagavad-gita for a long time. I have this odd habit of preparing a schedule before doing something and most of the time, I will work on re-arranging the schedule.

With Quarantine WFH, I have decided to spend some of quality time praying to God. Yes, God is the only one who can show the light in the darkness. I planned to read Bhagavad-gita, Bhagavatam, Sai Satcharithra and many other books and collected some of them. I originally planned to read many other supporting books and watch Youtube videos about Bhagavad-gita from different prominent personalities, try to understand it from their perspective and then write/narrate essence from my a.k.a software engineer/women/daughter/wife/mother perspective, but could not. I had a conversation with a friend who read Bhagavad-gita everyday . She is reading every day, while I am simply discussing plans. Yet, I never had a chance to do any of these activities, as I was preoccupied. Actually I was lazing around.


Chapter 1: Arjuna Vishada Yoga

Finally, the day has come to read this book. With some difficulty I could read Sanskrit verses. I paid more attention on the meaning and understanding the character’s identities, (I know the basics, but researched further) and who is on the Pandava's side and who is on Kourava's side, etc.
I was excited while reading "Om Parthaya prathi boditham bhagawathaa narayanena” , as this is the most frequently heard phrase while listening to Ghantasala Telugu Bhagavadgita.
Though I spent 30 min on first chapter, I actually spent much more time sharing knowledge ( usually 1-way) with my husband by adding my own interpretation.
Summary from my perspective:
This chapter is all about Arjuna's reluctance and despair at the thought of killing his own relatives, which forms the basis of the subsequent conversation with his charioteer, the god Krishna.
Arjuna used logic to justify his quitting the battle.
“The root cause of all sorrow and suffering in this world is our inability to deal with conflict.”
Conflict is everywhere in our life. We have conflicts with our own thoughts and others thoughts.
We are always thinking, “Should I buy this dress or that dress” , “This color is very good but that design is nice”, to name a few.
Just like Arjuna – we run away from our conflicts, and use logic to justify our quitting to ourselves and to others.
Unless we know who we are, what God is, and what our connection to that God is, we will never be able to completely resolve all of our material and mental conflicts. This is the central theme of the first chapter.
So, instead of analyzing everything else and judging everybody else in the world, we should look “inside”. We should try to understand what we are and what we really want to do?

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