ABSTRACT
This chapter works with the struggles of the warrior Arjuna to face the most difficult battle of his life, while trying to understand what his lifelong friend Krishna is trying to explain to him. What Arjuna faces on dharma-kshetre (the field—kshetre—of dharma—duty, specifically duty to support the world-ordering principles) is a choice between whole-heartedly participating in a war which may destroy the world he has always known—and will surely result in the deaths of many whom he has loved—and refusing, initially, to fight, only to be drawn by his very nature as a kshatriya (loosely translated as “warrior”) to join in the battle after it is too late to save honor, loved ones, or dharma itself. What follows Arjuna’s agonizing doubts is perhaps the most staggering revelation of, and invitation to, transcendence in all of the world’s literature: Arjuna’s lifelong friend Krishna, the once-boyish herdsman and sexual trickster, now seemingly a minor chief of the Yadava clan, reveals himself to be an avatar of the transcendent Vishnu, the sleeping god whose dream is the universe. The dialog between the warrior and the god strips away the veils of temporal appearance and lays bare the connection each individual life has to the eternal source of all things.
