Hub

Arjuna, Our Mirror

Arjuna's road is ours: shock, freezing, arguing, asking for help, learning, doubting again and acting. The whole journey of the Gita in one view.

In brief

Arjuna's road has seven steps, and any person in a crisis walks the same road.
The turn comes when Arjuna stops arguing and asks as a student (2.7).
In the end the decision is Arjuna's own, after reflection (18.63, 18.73).

When a heavy blow lands, it can feel as if we are the only ones to have fallen apart like this. The Gita shows that Arjuna fell apart in the same way: his hands shook, his mouth went dry and he said he would not fight (Gita 1.28–29). Then he asked as a student (Gita 2.7), learned, and in the end chose to act (Gita 18.73).

This hub opens no new verse. It sets Arjuna's whole journey out in seven steps so that we can find our own step. It is the eighth and last stop on the path Arjuna's Journey, after Delusion Gone: I Will Act. The first confusion is in Arjuna's Despondency, the call to be an instrument in Merely an Instrument, and the Lord's last counsel in The Final Counsel.

It can be read in two ways: a simple reading and a detailed reading. The main point is the same in both: there is a way through, it begins with asking, and it ends in a choice of our own.