Bhagavad Gita Chapter 1: The Yoga of Arjuna's Dejection

The Gita opens in the middle of a war about to happen. On the field of Kurukshetra, Arjuna asks Krishna to draw his chariot between the two armies — and what he sees there undoes him: fathers, grandfathers, teachers, uncles, brothers, sons, and friends arrayed on both sides (1.26). His limbs tremble, his mouth dries, his bow Gandiva slips from his hand (1.28–29). He tells Krishna he sees no good in killing his own kinsmen and wants neither victory, nor kingdom, nor pleasures won at that price (1.31).

The chapter is Arjuna's case against action: killing family destroys the family's dharma, and with it the social order itself (1.39–42); better to be slain unarmed than to fight (1.45). He casts aside bow and arrows and sinks onto the chariot seat, his mind overwhelmed with grief (1.46). Nothing is resolved here — and that is the point. The entire teaching that follows is Krishna's answer to this collapse, which is why the tradition calls Arjuna's despair itself a yoga: the crisis that makes the teaching possible.