Chapter 13
Ksetra Ksetrajna Vibhaaga Yoga
Yoga through Distinguishing the Field and the Knower of the Field · 35 verses
This chapter is traditionally called Kshetra-Kshetrajna-Vibhaga Yoga, the yoga of telling apart the field and the knower of the field. Arjuna asks to be taught six things, and Krishna answers.
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The body is the field (kshetra); the conscious one who knows the body is the field-knower (kshetrajna). Krishna first lists what makes up the field: the body, the senses, the mind, the intellect, even the sense of I, all set on the side of what is known. He then names a long set of qualities, such as humility, non-harming, and steadiness, and calls them knowledge (jnana), the path that prepares the seeker. Next he describes the Knowable (jneya), the supreme Brahman present in every being, neither far nor near, undivided yet seeming many. He turns to prakriti (Nature, the material side) and purusha (the conscious self), both beginningless: Nature does the acting, the self only seems to act. The chapter closes by saying that whoever sees the field and the field-knower as different, by the eye of knowledge, reaches the supreme. The schools agree on this discrimination but read the field-knower and the goal differently. Advaita Vedanta, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, Shuddhadvaita, and Bhakti each part on whether the self finally merges in the one or stays a real soul held by a personal Lord.
- 1Arjuna asks to be shown, not merely told, the difference between the field and the one who knows it.
- 2The body is named a field; the one who knows it is named its knower.
- 3Know me too as the knower within every field; that discernment alone is knowledge.
- 4Before the teaching, the plan: what to ask of the field, and what to ask of its knower.
- 5Nothing here is new: this truth has already been sung, and sung well, before Krishna speaks a word of it.
- 6The field named piece by piece, and the knower left, deliberately, off the list.
- 7The inner states you call 'mine' are placed on the field, not the self, and with them the inventory closes.
- 8Nine marks begin the list Krishna calls knowledge: not the seeing itself, but what clears the way to it.
- 9Look honestly at what a body costs, and the grip it holds on you quietly loosens.
- 10Release the fondness, and further, release the fusion that makes another's fortune feel like your own.
- 11One undivided love stands first among the marks of knowledge, guarded by quiet and a careful choice of company.
- 12The last two marks are named, and the whole list is sealed: this is knowledge, its opposite is ignorance.
- 13What is to be known cannot be called existent or non-existent, and knowing it is the deathless itself.
- 14Hands and eyes on every side answer the fear that the knowable is nothing at all.
- 15It lights every sense yet owns none; it bears all things yet clings to nothing.
- 16What you seek is not elsewhere. It is outside you, inside you, and it is only your seeing that calls it far.
- 17One undivided reality stands as if divided among all beings, bearing, devouring, and bringing them forth.
- 18The light by which you see anything at all is already seated in your own heart.
- 19The whole teaching, gathered and handed to whoever has handed over the self.
- 20Nature and the self are both beginningless; all change belongs to Nature, never to you.
- 21Nature does the producing; you do the experiencing, and the two are not the same thing.
- 22Seated in nature by its own mistaken claim, the self tastes what nature yields, and the tasting held as its own carries it from birth to birth.
- 23Six names, one presence: watching your body from a place your body cannot touch.
- 24Know the self and Nature truly, and no way of living can undo your freedom.
- 25Different doors, the same room: meditation, discrimination, and action all open onto the one Self.
- 26You do not need to reason your way to the Self; trusting what you have truly heard is enough to cross.
- 27Whatever comes to be, moving or still, is born from the meeting of the field and the one who knows it.
- 28One presence stands the same in every being, undying even as they perish.
- 29The Self that sees itself the same in all stops doing itself the one harm ignorance commits.
- 30All the doing is Nature's; the Self that watches does nothing at all.
- 31See the many resting in the one, and spreading out from it alone, and you become Brahman.
- 32It sits in the body and does nothing at all; that is exactly why nothing can stain it.
- 33Space fills every place and is dirtied by none of them; the Self fills the body the same way.
- 34As one sun lights the whole world, one Self lights up every body from within.
- 35Know the field apart from its knower, and know how nature releases its hold: this alone is said to carry you home.