Doing what you don't want to do
Arjuna's refusal is the entire premise of the book.
- I know what I should do and I can't make myself do it.
- How do I act when every choice is bad?
- What if the right thing is going to hurt people?
Spirituality & Mindfulness
Talk to the Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita by Vyasa
- c. 200 BC
- Sanskrit
- Public domain
It opens with a man refusing to fight. Arjuna, a warrior, looks across the battlefield at the relatives and teachers he will have to kill, sits down in his chariot and says he would rather die than do this.
Everything that follows is a response to that refusal — seven hundred verses of dialogue with his charioteer, who is God, on duty, action, attachment and what a person is supposed to do when every available option is terrible.
That is why it survives outside Hinduism. Strip the battlefield and what remains is the most sustained treatment ever written of the moment you know what you have to do and cannot make yourself do it.
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What you can ask it
Work without attachment to results
A right to the action, not to its fruits.
- How do I stop obsessing over outcomes?
- I work hard and get no recognition.
- How do I care about my work without being destroyed by failure?
Duty and what's yours to do
Better your own work done badly than another's done well.
- Am I living someone else's life?
- How do I know what my actual duty is?
- Should I be doing what I'm good at or what I want?
Doubt, despair and getting up
He is on the floor of a chariot when the book begins.
- I'm paralysed and can't move in any direction.
- How do I keep going when I've lost conviction?
- Does any of this matter?
Talk to this book
Message the consciousness of Bhagavad Gita
Ask Vyasa's Bhagavad Gita a question and hear it answer in its own voice — no uploads, no summaries.
- I know what I should do and I can't make myself do it.
- How do I stop obsessing over outcomes?
- Am I living someone else's life?
What Bhagavad Gita actually is
The Bhagavad Gita — the Song of the Lord — is a seven-hundred-verse dialogue forming part of the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, probably composed between the fifth and second centuries BC.
Its speakers are Arjuna, a warrior paralysed by the prospect of a war against his own kin, and Krishna, his charioteer, revealed through the dialogue as an incarnation of the divine.
Its central teaching is nishkama karma — action without attachment to its results. You have a right to the work, Krishna tells him, but not to its fruits. Duty is performed because it is yours to perform, not because of what it will yield. Around this sit the paths of knowledge, devotion and action, presented as different routes to the same place. Gandhi called it his dictionary of daily reference.
In its words
Passages
Let right deeds be thy motive, not the fruit which comes from them.
Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never.
Do thine allotted task! Work is more excellent than idleness.
Better thine own work is, though done with fault, than doing others' work, ev'n excellently.
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Message the consciousness of Bhagavad Gita
Ask Vyasa's Bhagavad Gita a question and hear it answer in its own voice — no uploads, no summaries.
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