Arjuna grants that greed has blinded the other side, then quietly claims his own sight is clear.
He names the Kauravas' fault with total confidence: greed has overrun their minds, and they cannot see what is wrong with what they are about to do. But the verse also sets a claim about his own side's clarity, a claim this whole page invites you to weigh rather than simply accept.
Even though these men, their minds overrun by greed, see no wrong in destroying a family and no sin in betraying friends, why should not we, who do see this clearly, decide to turn back from such a crime?
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Arjuna has grieved over his kinsmen and questioned what good could come from killing them. Now he turns to explain why the other side presses on regardless: greed has closed their eyes to the wrong they are about to do. He sets that diagnosis against a claim about his own side, that they, unlike the Kauravas, see the coming evil with full clarity.
The teaching
The verse names one cause for the Kauravas' blindness, and it is exact: lobha, greed, the swelling craving that always wants more, wealth, land, honour, power, and will not rest with what it already holds. Under that craving their power of discernment has failed so completely that they cannot see the fault in destroying their own family or the sin in betraying friends who stand toward them in real bonds of trust. Arjuna claims the opposite for his own side: where they are blind, he says, we see. Two distinct evils are named as visible to that clearer sight, the ruin of the family and the treachery toward friends, and the unspoken argument, which the very next verse will complete, is that seeing a wrong plainly is not a neutral fact but an obligation. To see clearly and still act as though blind is worse, on this reasoning, than never having seen at all. But the verse leaves something quietly unexamined, and it is worth sitting with rather than rushing past: Arjuna is extremely confident about the shape of his own sight in the very moment he is naming someone else's blindness. That confidence, comparative and self-assured, is exactly the kind of claim this whole chapter will go on to test rather than simply grant.
The doubt that rises
Is Arjuna's sight actually clear, or is it narrowed by an attachment of its own, one he has not yet named to himself? Does clearly seeing a wrong truly create an obligation to act, the way this verse assumes? And what should we make of the fact that so little classical commentary survives for this particular line, that three of the five voices gathered here are effectively silent here?
Where the paths divide
Read as the opening of a reasoned scriptural case, since Shankara left nothing here.
No comment from Shankara survives for this verse. What stands under the Advaita heading is Madhusudana's later argument: he treats this verse as Arjuna's own anticipation of the strongest objection against him, that scripture itself seems to command a summoned kshatriya to fight. His answer is precise. A bare command does not by itself make an act dharma, or the Shyena rite, performed to harm an enemy, would count as righteous simply for being described in scripture. Only an act whose fruit is unmixed with calamity deserves that name, and this war's fruit, steeped in the sin of slaying kin, fails that test regardless of the summons.
Read as part of a wider passage, not a fresh comment on this line.
Ramanuja folds this verse into his treatment of 1.26 through 1.47 as one continuous passage, with his full remark given at its opening. There, Arjuna's reasoning through this entire stretch, this specific claim about greed and clear sight included, is read as the visible working of a great-souled, supremely compassionate man, not a mind clouded by mere attachment awaiting correction.
Read as a complete gap in the source material.
Madhva's Gita commentary does not address chapter one at all, beginning only at verse 2.11. There is no Dvaita reading of this verse's claim about greed-blindness and clear moral sight in his own words, and nothing here should be read as filling that gap on his behalf.
Read as an extension from his stated remark three verses earlier.
Abhinavagupta's comment is folded into his treatment of 1.35 through 1.44, given fully at 1.35: sin itself is named the true doer in the slaying of assailants, a failure to see, through greed and its kin, the fault in destroying one's own family. Extended forward, the greed that blinds the Kauravas here reads as exactly that same contracted seeing, though this is a labeled extension of his stated words, not fresh composition for this line.
Read as the one brief line that survives, and nothing more.
What remains attributed to Sridhara here is short: these men, their minds overcome by greed, do not see the fault. It confirms the plain sense of the verse and ventures no argument beyond it. Read beside his wider treatment of this passage, which favors a mind purified of grasping as common ground for both knowledge and devotion, this bare gloss can be taken to point the same direction, though the extension is offered lightly, since no fuller comment survives.
Read as the mechanism the verse displays on its own terms.
Set the scriptural debate to one side and notice what Arjuna's own claim does: it treats seeing a wrong clearly, where another side is blind to it, as creating an obligation that blindness does not. That is a real and defensible distinction. But the verse also, without quite meaning to, raises the question of whether Arjuna's own sight is as unclouded as he is claiming it to be in this very moment.
All the readings that survive agree that greed is what blinds the Kauravas here. They do not agree, because most of them do not address it at all, on what follows from Arjuna's parallel claim to clear sight. Is his confidence warranted, a genuine moral clarity the rest of the Gita will vindicate? Or is it itself a kind of blindness wearing the mask of insight, the very thing the coming chapters will spend eighteen books gently dismantling? This page does not decide that question, and neither, for three of its five voices, does the surviving commentary.
A question to carry
When you are most certain that someone else cannot see a wrong you see clearly, what would it take for you to notice if your own sight has quietly narrowed too?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
Carry your convictions, but carry them lightly enough to look at them again. What you are sure you see clearly today may be the very thing worth the longest, most honest second look.
Each school is voiced from the commentators named above. Their full words, every translation, and where the schools agree and differ wait in the reading desk just below. Open the commentary desk.
Having grieved over his kinsmen and questioned the worth of the war, Arjuna now diagnoses why the other side presses on regardless, greed has closed their eyes, and sets that blindness against what he claims is his own side's clear sight, the argument he will complete in the very next verse.
Where they agreethe convergence
Across schools and centuries the commentators come to the same ground. These are the points they share, and the voices that hold each one.
You grant the other side one plain fault: their minds are so overrun by greed, by wanting still more, that they cannot see the wrong in what they are about to do.
Across Bhakti, AdvaitaŚrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śrīdhara and Madhusūdana’s words
Arjuna concedes something plain about the other side before turning his gaze back to himself: the Kauravas' minds are overrun by greed, a swelling craving for wealth, land, and power that says of whatever it holds, let still more keep coming. Under that craving their discernment has failed entirely, so they cannot see the fault in what they are about to do.
You then set against that blindness a claim about your own side, that you see clearly two evils, the ruin of the family and the betrayal of friends, evils they cannot perceive at all.
Across Bhakti, AdvaitaŚrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śrīdhara and Madhusūdana’s words
The verse states a moral asymmetry as its whole point. The Kauravas are blind to the wrong; Arjuna's side, by contrast, claims to see it with full clarity. Two distinct evils are named as visible to that clearer sight: the fault of destroying one's own family, and the sin of betraying friends.
Where the fuller argument survives, it is exact rather than sentimental: a bare command to fight does not make the act right, only its fruit can settle that, and this fruit is steeped in sin.
Across AdvaitaMadhusūdanaIn Madhusūdana’s words
Where the surviving sources speak to this line's argument at all, they do not read it as sentiment dressed up as principle. Madhusudana in particular treats it as the opening move of a careful case: seeing a wrong plainly is not the same as merely feeling reluctant, and the verse is building toward a reasoned claim, completed in the next verse, that clear sight obliges withdrawal.
Three of the five voices gathered here fall silent on this very line, folding it into wider passages or not yet having begun their commentary, and that silence is left standing rather than filled.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Kashmir Śaiva, DvaitaRāmānuja · Abhinavagupta · MadhvaIn Rāmānuja, Abhinavagupta, and 1 others’ words
Three of the five voices gathered here are effectively silent on this specific line. Ramanuja and Abhinavagupta fold it into wider passages commented on at 1.26 and 1.35 respectively, and Madhva's commentary has not yet begun. Their absence is itself worth noting rather than papering over: chapter one draws far less sustained classical attention, verse by verse, than the teaching that follows from chapter two onward.
The question the verse quietly opens and does not close is whether your own clear sight can be trusted simply because you are certain of it, or whether it deserves the same scrutiny you apply to theirs.
Across Bhakti, Advaita, Kashmir ŚaivaŚrīdhara · Madhusūdana · AbhinavaguptaIn Śrīdhara, Madhusūdana, and 1 others’ words
Underneath the verse's specific claims about greed and clear sight lies a single mechanism the commentators converge on wherever they do speak: the very same field of action looks completely different depending on whether the mind surveying it is narrowed by wanting or not. Greed narrows the Kauravas' seeing to the kingdom alone; its absence, on Arjuna's claim, is what lets his own side see the fault at all.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Ramanuja's comment on this verse is folded into his treatment of 1.26 through 1.47 as one passage, given fully at 1.26: Arjuna's reasoning here, this specific claim about greed and clear sight included, is read as the visible working of a great-souled, supremely compassionate man, not a mind clouded by mere attachment awaiting correction. No fresh Vishishtadvaita argument survives that addresses this line's own terms.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva's commentary does not address chapter one at all, beginning only at verse 2.11. There is no Dvaita reading of this verse's claim about greed-blindness and clear moral sight in his own words, and any extension of his teaching on dependence and fitness to this line would be speculative, offered here only as a flagged possibility rather than his actual position.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta's comment is folded into his treatment of 1.35 through 1.44, given fully at 1.35: sin itself is named the true doer in the slaying of assailants, a failure to see, through greed and its kin, the fault in destroying one's own family. Extended forward to this verse, the greed that blinds the Kauravas here reads as exactly the contracted seeing he names as sin's own mechanism, though this is a labeled extension of his stated words, not fresh composition for this line.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Set apart from the scriptural debate Madhusudana himself builds, a modern-facing reading can notice the mechanism Arjuna's claim displays on its own terms: seeing a wrong clearly and still doing it is treated here as morally worse than not seeing it at all, since sight itself is what creates the obligation to act on it. The verse quietly raises a question it does not yet answer: is Arjuna's own sight as clear as he claims, or is he, too, seeing selectively?
A few questions to carry
These ask for understanding, not recall; each answer is settled by the commentary itself.
For a second sitting
Carry this with youwhat stays
Notice, for a moment, what you consider obvious about someone else's blindness. It is easy to say of another person, their greed has closed their eyes, without asking whether some want of your own has narrowed your own sight in a different direction. This verse names one kind of blindness with total confidence. Sit with the possibility that confidence itself deserves a second look, not to excuse what is genuinely wrong, but to keep your own seeing honest while you name it.
Before you trust your own certainty about someone else's blindness, hold it a moment longer than feels comfortable, and ask what you yourself might not yet be seeing.
Read deeper
Everything a full study holds, folded below.
Word by word
All the commentary, woven together
The commentary, woven together
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
rjuna concedes something plain about the other side before turning his gaze back to himself: the Kauravas' minds are overrun by greed, a swelling craving for wealth, land, and power that says of whatever it holds, let still more keep coming. Under that craving their discernment has failed entirely, so they cannot see the fault in what they are about to do.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The verse states a moral asymmetry as its whole point. The Kauravas are blind to the wrong; Arjuna's side, by contrast, claims to see it with full clarity. Two distinct evils are named as visible to that clearer sight: the fault of destroying one's own family, and the sin of betraying friends.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Where the surviving sources speak to this line's argument at all, they do not read it as sentiment dressed up as principle. Madhusudana in particular treats it as the opening move of a careful case: seeing a wrong plainly is not the same as merely feeling reluctant, and the verse is building toward a reasoned claim, completed in the next verse, that clear sight obliges withdrawal.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Three of the five voices gathered here are effectively silent on this specific line. Ramanuja and Abhinavagupta fold it into wider passages commented on at 1.26 and 1.35 respectively, and Madhva's commentary has not yet begun. Their absence is itself worth noting rather than papering over: chapter one draws far less sustained classical attention, verse by verse, than the teaching that follows from chapter two onward.
Rāmānujācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Madhvācārya
Underneath the verse's specific claims about greed and clear sight lies a single mechanism the commentators converge on wherever they do speak: the very same field of action looks completely different depending on whether the mind surveying it is narrowed by wanting or not. Greed narrows the Kauravas' seeing to the kingdom alone; its absence, on Arjuna's claim, is what lets his own side see the fault at all.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
No comment from Shankara survives for this verse; his extant commentary does not treat chapter one at all. What stands under the Advaita heading is Madhusudana's later, fuller argument: he raises the objection that smriti texts make battle obligatory for a summoned kshatriya, then answers it, a bare injunction does not by itself make an act into dharma, or even the Shyena rite, performed to harm an enemy, would count as righteous simply because scripture describes it. Only an action whose fruit is unmixed with calamity deserves the name dharma, and this war's fruit is steeped in the sin of slaying kin, so it falls outside dharma despite the summons.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja's comment on this verse is folded into his treatment of 1.26 through 1.47 as one passage, given fully at 1.26: Arjuna's reasoning here, this specific claim about greed and clear sight included, is read as the visible working of a great-souled, supremely compassionate man, not a mind clouded by mere attachment awaiting correction. No fresh Vishishtadvaita argument survives that addresses this line's own terms.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva's commentary does not address chapter one at all, beginning only at verse 2.11. There is no Dvaita reading of this verse's claim about greed-blindness and clear moral sight in his own words, and any extension of his teaching on dependence and fitness to this line would be speculative, offered here only as a flagged possibility rather than his actual position.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's comment is folded into his treatment of 1.35 through 1.44, given fully at 1.35: sin itself is named the true doer in the slaying of assailants, a failure to see, through greed and its kin, the fault in destroying one's own family. Extended forward to this verse, the greed that blinds the Kauravas here reads as exactly the contracted seeing he names as sin's own mechanism, though this is a labeled extension of his stated words, not fresh composition for this line.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
What survives from Sridhara here is a brief confirming line: these men, their minds overcome by greed, do not see the fault. It affirms the plain sense without further argument. Read alongside his wider register in this passage, which treats a mind purified of grasping as the common ground knowledge and devotion both grow from, this bare gloss can be taken to point the same direction, though the extension should be held lightly since no fuller treatment survives.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Set apart from the scriptural debate Madhusudana himself builds, a modern-facing reading can notice the mechanism Arjuna's claim displays on its own terms: seeing a wrong clearly and still doing it is treated here as morally worse than not seeing it at all, since sight itself is what creates the obligation to act on it. The verse quietly raises a question it does not yet answer: is Arjuna's own sight as clear as he claims, or is he, too, seeing selectively?
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If seeing a wrong clearly is what obliges me to act against it, how do I know my own sight is clear, and not just clearer than the other person's?
The verse itself does not claim infallible sight, only comparative sight: the Kauravas' minds are overrun by greed in a way Arjuna's, in this moment, claims not to be. That is a real distinction, but it is worth noticing that it is exactly the distinction, and exactly the confidence, the verse asks you to examine rather than simply accept.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Where the fuller argument survives, as it does in Madhusudana's reading, the test offered is not a feeling of certainty but a criterion you can check against the fruit: does this action's actual outcome carry calamity, or only pure good? That test can be applied to your own reasoning as readily as to another's, which is some protection against mistaking mere conviction for clear sight.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Where the sources are silent, as they are here for three of the five voices gathered, the honest answer is that this chapter does not yet resolve the question. It only opens it. Whether Arjuna's own clarity holds up, or conceals an attachment of its own, is exactly what the rest of the Gita goes on to test.
Rāmānujācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Contemplation
Notice, for a moment, what you consider obvious about someone else's blindness. It is easy to say of another person, their greed has closed their eyes, without asking whether some want of your own has narrowed your own sight in a different direction. This verse names one kind of blindness with total confidence. Sit with the possibility that confidence itself deserves a second look, not to excuse what is genuinely wrong, but to keep your own seeing honest while you name it.
Sit with this · sonnet-5-authored
All the translations and commentary
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, open a tradition in the doorways below, or add a voice by name above.
Also hear this verse, tradition by tradition.