Bhagavad Gita Chapter 13: Kshetra Kshetrajna Vibhaga Yoga, Body and Soul

Chapter 13 opens the third part of the Gita, on knowledge. God begins with a simple image: the body is a field, kshetra, where the seeds of action are sown and their fruit reaped; the one who knows this field is the kshetrajna, the self. We are not the field but its knower.

(Some editions begin this chapter with a question of Arjuna, making 35 verses. The Gita Press text has 34, and that order is followed here.)

Verses 1 and 2: the field and its knower

"This body, son of Kunti, is called the field, and one who knows it is called the knower of the field by those who know. Know me also as the knower in all fields, Bharata. Knowledge of the field and its knower is, in my view, true knowledge."

Verses 3 to 6: what the field is made of

"Hear briefly what the field is, what it is like, what changes it undergoes and where it comes from, and who its knower is and what his powers are. The sages have sung of it in many ways, in the hymns of the Vedas and in the reasoned words of the Brahma Sutras."

The five great elements (earth, water, fire, air and space), ego, intellect, primal nature, the ten senses (five of knowledge and five of action), the mind, and the five objects of the senses (sound, touch, form, taste and smell); and desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, the aggregate of the body, consciousness and steadiness: this, in brief, is the field with its changes.

Verses 7 to 11: the marks of knowledge

God says that knowledge is not reading books but having these qualities in life:

• Humility, freedom from pretence, non-violence, forgiveness and straightforwardness.
• Service of the teacher, purity within and without, steadiness and self-control.
• Detachment from sense objects, absence of ego, and reflection on the pain and faults of birth, death, old age and disease.
• Non-attachment and freedom from clinging to children, spouse and home, and constant evenness in the face of the wanted and the unwanted.
• Unwavering devotion to me with single-minded yoga, a liking for quiet and pure places, and no taste for the crowd.
• Constancy in knowledge of the self and seeing the goal of true knowledge, the Supreme.

"This is called knowledge; whatever is contrary to it is ignorance (13.11)."

Verses 12 to 18: the Supreme to be known

"I will tell you what is to be known, knowing which one gains immortality: the beginningless supreme Brahman, said to be neither being nor non-being. Its hands and feet are everywhere, its eyes, heads and mouths everywhere, its ears everywhere; it exists pervading all. It shines through the functions of all the senses yet is free of all senses; unattached, it sustains all; free of the gunas, it experiences them."

It is outside and inside all beings, the moving and the unmoving; too subtle to be known, it is far away and very near. Undivided, it seems divided among beings; it sustains, devours and creates them. It is the light of all lights, beyond darkness; it is knowledge, the known and the goal of knowledge, seated in the hearts of all. "Thus the field, knowledge and the knowable have been told in brief; knowing this, my devotee attains my being."

Verses 19 to 23: nature and the Person

Know that both nature and the Person are beginningless; changes and gunas arise from nature. Nature is said to be the cause of the body and the senses; the Person is said to be the cause of the experience of pleasure and pain. The Person, dwelling in nature, experiences the gunas born of nature, and attachment to the gunas causes birth in good and bad wombs.

The Supreme Person in this body is called the witness, the one who permits, the sustainer, the experiencer, the great Lord and the supreme Self. One who knows the Person and nature with its gunas in this way is not born again, however they may live.

Verses 24 and 25: many paths

Some see the Self in the self by meditation, others by the path of knowledge, others by the yoga of action. Others, not knowing this themselves, worship having heard it from others; devoted to what they hear, they too cross beyond death.

Verses 26 to 30: one God in all

Whatever is born, moving or unmoving, arises from the union of the field and its knower. One who sees the Supreme Lord dwelling equally in all beings, the imperishable within the perishable, truly sees (13.27). Seeing the Lord equally present everywhere, one does not harm the self by the self, and so reaches the highest goal. One who sees that all actions are done by nature alone and that the self is not the doer truly sees. When one sees the varied existence of beings resting in the One and spreading out from it, one attains Brahman.

Verses 31 to 34: the untouched self

Being beginningless and beyond the gunas, this imperishable Supreme Self, though dwelling in the body, neither acts nor is tainted. As all-pervading space, being subtle, is not tainted, so the self dwelling in every body is not tainted.

"As the one sun lights up this whole world, so the knower of the field lights up the whole field, Bharata (13.33)." Those who see with the eye of wisdom the difference between the field and its knower, and the way to freedom from nature, reach the Supreme (13.34).

What this chapter teaches

• We are not the body but its knower; the body is an instrument, not the master.
• The proof of knowledge is not a degree but character: humility, simplicity, forgiveness, service and balance.
• One God dwells in all; one who sees this cannot harm anyone.
• As space is in everything yet stained by nothing, the self within stays pure in every situation.