Chapter 13 of 18
क्षेत्रक्षेत्रज्ञविभागयोग Kṣetra Kṣetrajña Vibhāga Yoga The Field and Its Knower
35 verses
There is a field and there is what knows the field, and nearly every confusion in the book comes from mistaking one for the other.
Arjuna opens chapter 13 the way he opened chapter 8, by stopping the teaching to ask what the words mean — six of them, in three pairs. The answer is the book's most careful piece of machinery.
There is a field, which is the body, and a knower of the field. The list of what belongs to the field is longer than anyone expects: the elements, but also mind, understanding, the sense of self, desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, even awareness. Everything you would ordinarily point at and call yourself is on the far side of the line.
Then the chapter reaches its actual subject and stops being orderly. For five verses the knower is described almost entirely by contradiction — far away and also near, undivided and standing as if divided, without senses and appearing through all of them — because any description precise enough to be useful would place it, and it cannot be placed.
All of that abstraction lands, near the end, on a claim about how to look at other people, and then on a reason for it that is easy to read past: seeing it, one does not harm oneself by oneself.
प्रकृतिं पुरुषं चैव क्षेत्रं क्षेत्रज्ञमेव च
एतद्वेदितुमिच्छामि ज्ञानं ज्ञेयं च केशव
prakṛitiṁ puruṣhaṁ chaiva kṣhetraṁ kṣhetra-jñam eva cha
etad veditum ichchhāmi jñānaṁ jñeyaṁ cha keśhava
Nature and the person, the field and the knower of the field, knowledge and what is to be known — these I wish to understand, Krishna.
Arjuna asks for six definitions, and gets a chapter.
Nature and the person, the field and its knower, knowledge and what is to be known — three pairs.
He is doing what he did at the start of chapter 8: stopping the teaching to ask what the words mean. By this point in the book it has become his characteristic move, and it is the reason the Gita has any vocabulary at all.
Word by wordarjunaḥ uvācha — Arjun said · prakṛitim — material nature · puruṣham — the enjoyer · cha — and · eva — indeed · kṣhetram — the field of activities · kṣhetra-jñam — the knower of the field · eva — even · cha — also · etat — this · veditum — to know · ichchhāmi — I wish · jñānam — knowledge · jñeyam — the goal of knowledge · cha — and · keśhava — Krishna, the killer of the demon named Keshi
This verse is absent from the Śaṅkara recension, which Gītā Press follows — Śaṅkara wrote no commentary on it. Editions that omit it count 700 verses; those that include it, as Rāmānuja does, count 701. We include it.
Chapter 13 · The Field and Its Knower · ← → to move, d for depth
All 35 verses
The Blessed One said
- 13.2 इदं शरीरं कौन्तेय क्षेत्रमित्यभिधीयते The body is the field
- 13.3 क्षेत्रज्ञं चापि मां विद्धि सर्वक्षेत्रेषु भारत The knower in every field
- 13.4 तत्क्षेत्रं यच्च यादृक् च यद्विकारि यतश्च यत् What will be covered
- 13.5 ऋषिभिर्बहुधा गीतं छन्दोभिर्विविधैः पृथक् Others have sung this
- 13.6 महाभूतान्यहङ्कारो बुद्धिरव्यक्तमेव च The field, itemised
- 13.7 इच्छा द्वेषः सुखं दुःखं सङ्घातश्चेतनाधृतिः And its changes
- 13.8 अमानित्वमदम्भित्वमहिंसा क्षान्तिरार्जवम् Knowledge begins with humility
- 13.9 इन्द्रियार्थेषु वैराग्यमनहङ्कार एव च Seeing the trouble clearly
- 13.10 असक्ितरनभिष्वङ्गः पुत्रदारगृहादिषु Not clinging to the household
- 13.11 मयि चानन्ययोगेन भक्ितरव्यभिचारिणी A liking for solitary places
- 13.12 अध्यात्मज्ञाननित्यत्वं तत्त्वज्ञानार्थदर्शनम् What knowledge is for
- 13.13 ज्ञेयं यत्तत्प्रवक्ष्यामि यज्ज्ञात्वाऽमृतमश्नुते Neither existent nor not
- 13.14 सर्वतः पाणिपादं तत्सर्वतोऽक्षिशिरोमुखम् Hands and eyes everywhere
- 13.15 सर्वेन्द्रियगुणाभासं सर्वेन्द्रियविवर्जितम् Without senses, and sensing
- 13.16 बहिरन्तश्च भूतानामचरं चरमेव च Far away and also near
- 13.17 अविभक्तं च भूतेषु विभक्तमिव च स्थितम् Undivided, standing as if divided
- 13.18 ज्योतिषामपि तज्ज्योतिस्तमसः परमुच्यते The light of lights
- 13.19 इति क्षेत्रं तथा ज्ञानं ज्ञेयं चोक्तं समासतः So it has been told
- 13.20 प्रकृतिं पुरुषं चैव विद्ध्यनादी उभावपि Both without beginning
- 13.21 कार्यकारणकर्तृत्वे हेतुः प्रकृतिरुच्यते Which one does, which one feels
- 13.22 पुरुषः प्रकृतिस्थो हि भुङ्क्ते प्रकृतिजान्गुणान् Attachment is what places you
- 13.23 उपद्रष्टाऽनुमन्ता च भर्ता भोक्ता महेश्वरः Witness, permitter, lord
- 13.24 य एवं वेत्ति पुरुषं प्रकृतिं च गुणैःसह However they live
- 13.25 ध्यानेनात्मनि पश्यन्ति केचिदात्मानमात्मना Three ways of seeing
- 13.26 अन्ये त्वेवमजानन्तः श्रुत्वाऽन्येभ्य उपासते And those who only heard
- 13.27 यावत्सञ्जायते किञ्चित्सत्त्वं स्थावरजङ्गमम् Everything comes from the joining
- 13.28 समं सर्वेषु भूतेषु तिष्ठन्तं परमेश्वरम् Undying among the dying
- 13.29 समं पश्यन्हि सर्वत्र समवस्थितमीश्वरम् One does not harm oneself
- 13.30 प्रकृत्यैव च कर्माणि क्रियमाणानि सर्वशः Nature acts, the self does not
- 13.31 यदा भूतपृथग्भावमेकस्थमनुपश्यति Spread out from one
- 13.32 अनादित्वान्निर्गुणत्वात्परमात्मायमव्ययः Seated in the body, unstained
- 13.33 यथा सर्वगतं सौक्ष्म्यादाकाशं नोपलिप्यते Space is not tainted
- 13.34 यथा प्रकाशयत्येकः कृत्स्नं लोकमिमं रविः One sun lights the world
- 13.35 क्षेत्रक्षेत्रज्ञयोरेवमन्तरं ज्ञानचक्षुषा Seeing the difference
Where this sits
Chapter 13 against the whole of it: who is speaking, verse by verse, and how much of the book this chapter is.
The argument so far
- Chapter 1 Arjuna's nerve fails on the field, and the question that opens the book is not a spiritual one but a practical one he cannot answer.
- Chapter 2 The first answer is that Arjuna is not the body he is afraid of losing, and that grief for what cannot die is grief misplaced.
- Chapter 3 Withdrawing from action is not available to anyone alive; what is available is acting without gripping the result.
- Chapter 4 Action, knowledge and Krishna himself all have a deeper structure than they appear to, and knowing it is what makes action free.
- Chapter 5 What has to be renounced is attachment rather than activity — the leaf in water, unwetted.
- Chapter 6 The mind is trained the way anything is trained, by returning to the practice on the days it does not work.
- Chapter 7 Behind both matter and awareness there is one reality, and everything else is a thread strung on it.
- Chapter 8 Everything that appears is temporary; the work of yoga is to train attention toward the one thing that is not.
- Chapter 9 The highest knowledge turns out to ask for the simplest thing: what is offered matters less than the attention it is offered with.
- Chapter 10 Wherever something is most fully itself, the Divine is most visible in it — a list of glories given because the whole cannot be listed.
- Chapter 11 Arjuna asks to see it and cannot bear what he sees, which is the book's reply to anyone who wants the vision rather than the practice.
- Chapter 12 Devotion is offered as the reachable path, and the chapter is careful to say that a lesser version of it, honestly done, still counts.