Arjuna answers Krishna's rebuke by restating his grief in the language of dharma.
He is not asking to be taught. He is telling Krishna, again, why he cannot lift his bow against the two men he was raised to revere.
Arjuna said: Madhusudana, slayer of foes, how can I answer you with arrows on this field, aimed at Bhishma and at Drona? Both of them deserve my worship, not my violence.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just named your collapse unmanliness, unworthy of the man you claim to be. You do not take that in. You answer instead from inside the grief you already had, and you tell him plainly what you cannot do.
The teaching
Look at who stands across the field from you. Bhishma, the eldest of your house, who held you before you could stand. Drona, the teacher who placed the bow itself into your hands and taught you every skill you now possess. To such men reverence is owed, not violence; flowers, not arrows. You reason that if even a sharp word against the venerable would already be wrong, then a killing stroke against them must be wrong beyond question, and that the harm of such an act would fall back on the one who commits it. You call Krishna slayer of foes in the same breath that you refuse to use that very skill against men you will not call your foes. Whether that naming is a pointed rebuke or only grief loosening your grip on your own words, it marks the moment your feeling first reaches for the vocabulary of principle. Nothing has yet been taught you that could answer this. You are reasoning entirely from what grief already has in hand: debt, love, and the plain cost of the act in front of you.
The doubt that rises
Is this refusal a genuine scruple of reverence, owed honestly to a teacher and a grandsire? Or is it grief and attachment, dressed for the occasion in the language of dharma? You cannot yet tell the two apart, and neither, honestly, can we.
Where the paths divide
Read as the floor the teaching must lift you from.
This speech is not yet ready to be corrected line by line, because nothing has been given you to correct it with. No teaching on the Self that no weapon can reach has been spoken. What you feel here is real, and it is exactly what the coming instruction on the imperishable will need to answer, not argue away.
Read as three feelings tangled into one.
Affection for those who raised you, pity at their coming deaths, and a real fear of incurring sin by killing the venerable, all three are knotted together in what you feel, and you mistake the knot for the whole of your duty. But duty, rightly seen, is owed first to the Lord who commands, and only then to persons, however dear, who stand within his field.
Read as a missing scale of worth.
You measure Bhishma and Drona only by what they have personally given you, blood and gratitude, and on that scale their claim seems absolute. But there is a truer scale, nearness to the Lord and each being's own fitness, that family sentiment alone cannot supply, and you do not yet have it in view.
Read as a conceit already exposed.
You dress a collapse already named unmanliness in the language of principle. You cling to one required shape of the act and one desired fruit, not seeing that every action carries some such shape. The proof that something other than clear dharma speaks in you: you cannot even say whether you want victory or defeat, since even winning looks to you like ruin.
Read as genuine devotion, not yet reconciled.
Your worship of teacher and grandsire is not a mask over cowardice; it is real, and it should not be stripped from you as an error. What is missing is not the reverence itself but its reconciliation with the duty still to come, which will ask you to fight and, in some way not yet shown, to go on revering.
Read as attachment claiming the standing of principle.
You do not simply grieve; you argue that this war itself lacks the nature of righteousness, building a full case for why fighting these two men is nowhere sanctioned. This is the precise moment felt attachment converts itself into the vocabulary of dharma, and it is exactly this conversion the coming teaching will have to undo before it can rebuild your understanding rightly.
All six readings hear the same protest and take it seriously rather than dismissing it outright. They part on how much of it is true reverence and how much is grief wearing reverence's language, and on this verse alone, that question is left standing, unresolved, exactly as Arjuna leaves it.
A question to carry
When you have refused to do something and called your refusal principle, has anyone ever asked you, gently, how much of it was love and how much was fear? What did you find when you looked?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
May your reverence for what deserves reverence never be despised as weakness, and may you be given, in time, the seeing that lets you carry it without being undone by it.
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.
Krishna has just called Arjuna's collapse unmanliness; here, in his first full reply, Arjuna sets out exactly who stands opposite him and why that fact alone should end the argument.
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.
The word how is a protest restating Arjuna's own settled view, not a request to be instructed.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Kashmir Śaiva, Bhakti, AdvaitaRāmānuja · Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Rāmānuja, Abhinavagupta, and 2 others’ words
This is Arjuna's answer to Krishna's rebuke, and every reading agrees that it is not really an answer. Krishna had just named his collapse unmanliness; Arjuna does not take that in, he restates his own position. The word how carries a protest, not a request for teaching. He has decided, before any doctrine is offered him, that this fight is simply not something he can do.
Bhishma and Drona are named worthy of worship, owed flowers and reverence rather than arrows.
Across Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, AdvaitaRāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Rāmānuja, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
The center of the protest is who stands across the field: Bhishma, the eldest of the house, and Drona, the teacher who placed the very bow in Arjuna's hands. Both are named worthy of worship, owed flowers and reverence, not arrows. To turn a teacher's own gift back against the teacher feels to Arjuna like the deepest possible betrayal, worse than any ordinary killing.
If even a harsh word to such elders would be wrong, a killing stroke is judged incomparably worse.
Across Advaita, BhaktiMadhusūdana · ŚrīdharaIn Madhusūdana and Śrīdhara’s words
Several readings sharpen this into a lesser-to-greater argument: if even a harsh word against such venerable men would already be improper, then a killing stroke is incomparably worse, and the harm of such an act is thought to return upon the one who commits it. The verbal offense is already forbidden, so the greater offense needs no separate proof.
The doubled address to Krishna is read either as pointed irony or as grief unsettling his own speech.
Across Bhakti, AdvaitaŚrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śrīdhara and Madhusūdana’s words
The double address, slayer of Madhu and slayer of foes, draws comment from more than one direction. Read one way it is quiet irony: the very title names the skill Krishna is asking Arjuna to turn against men Arjuna insists are not his foes. Read another way it is simply grief loosening a man's grip on the order of his own words. Both readings are held open rather than settled.
Nothing has yet been taught him; his grief reasons only from blood, gratitude, and visible cost.
Across Advaita, Dvaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Kashmir ŚaivaŚaṅkara · Madhva · Rāmānuja · AbhinavaguptaIn Śaṅkara, Madhva, and 2 others’ words
Underneath the reasoning, every reading recognizes that Arjuna's speech has not yet been given anything to answer it. No teaching on the Self, on duty, or on the nature of the act has been offered him yet. His grief has only itself to reason from, so it reasons from grief's own materials: bonds of blood, gratitude, and the visible cost to those he loves.
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 names the distress precisely as three feelings knotted together: affection for those who raised him, pity at their coming deaths, and a real fear of incurring sin by killing men owed reverence. Bhishma and Drona are pujarha, worthy of worship, and Arjuna's case rests on the plain wrongness of turning a teacher's own gift back upon him; the deeper flaw is mistaking well-founded feeling for the whole of duty, when duty is owed first to the Lord who commands.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
Madhva likewise reserves his continuous gloss for a later verse, but reads the shape of the error in advance: Arjuna measures Bhishma and Drona only by personal ties of blood and gratitude, not yet knowing that true rank is fixed by nearness to Hari and by each being's own fitness, a scale family sentiment cannot supply. Reverence for elders is real, but it is finally owed through the Lord's purpose, not as a private debt that can override it.
Shaiva, in their fuller words
Abhinavagupta reads Krishna's prior rebuke as already exposing a conceit, and this verse as Arjuna dressing that same collapse in the language of principle. He fixes on one required form of the act and one desired fruit, unaware that no action is ever free of some such contingent shape; the tell is that he cannot say whether he wants victory or defeat, since even winning looks to him like ruin. That incoherence, not settled dharma, is what actually speaks here.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara hears Arjuna correcting Krishna's charge of cowardice: not weakness, he insists, but the impropriety of the act itself, since even speech against such men would be improper, let alone arrows. Sridhara catches a quiet irony in the address slayer of foes, naming exactly the skill refused; but he reads the devotion beneath the protest as genuine, not an error to be stripped away, only not yet reconciled with the duty still to come.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Madhusudana takes the claim at full strength rather than reducing it to grief: Arjuna argues this war lacks the very character of righteousness, building a lesser-to-greater case that fighting elders is nowhere enjoined and cannot be excused as merely not-forbidden, since even a harsh word to a teacher already bears evil fruit. This is the exact moment felt attachment is converted into the vocabulary of dharma, a conversion the coming teaching must undo before it can rebuild it rightly.
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
Before judging Arjuna's argument, sit with what he is actually looking at: the hands that taught him and the lap that once held him, now standing in front of his bow. Notice how naturally reverence recoils from becoming violence. That recoil is not weakness to be argued away before it is even understood. Only once it is fully felt does it become possible to ask what, within it, is true devotion and what is grief speaking in devotion's borrowed voice.
May you learn to hold your own reverence honestly, neither despising it as weakness nor mistaking it, unexamined, for the whole of what is right.
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
his is Arjuna's answer to Krishna's rebuke, and every reading agrees that it is not really an answer. Krishna had just named his collapse unmanliness; Arjuna does not take that in, he restates his own position. The word how carries a protest, not a request for teaching. He has decided, before any doctrine is offered him, that this fight is simply not something he can do.
Rāmānujācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The center of the protest is who stands across the field: Bhishma, the eldest of the house, and Drona, the teacher who placed the very bow in Arjuna's hands. Both are named worthy of worship, owed flowers and reverence, not arrows. To turn a teacher's own gift back against the teacher feels to Arjuna like the deepest possible betrayal, worse than any ordinary killing.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Several readings sharpen this into a lesser-to-greater argument: if even a harsh word against such venerable men would already be improper, then a killing stroke is incomparably worse, and the harm of such an act is thought to return upon the one who commits it. The verbal offense is already forbidden, so the greater offense needs no separate proof.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī
The double address, slayer of Madhu and slayer of foes, draws comment from more than one direction. Read one way it is quiet irony: the very title names the skill Krishna is asking Arjuna to turn against men Arjuna insists are not his foes. Read another way it is simply grief loosening a man's grip on the order of his own words. Both readings are held open rather than settled.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Underneath the reasoning, every reading recognizes that Arjuna's speech has not yet been given anything to answer it. No teaching on the Self, on duty, or on the nature of the act has been offered him yet. His grief has only itself to reason from, so it reasons from grief's own materials: bonds of blood, gratitude, and the visible cost to those he loves.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhvācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara declines to gloss this verse directly, since his continuous commentary opens six verses later, but the placement is itself telling: he treats Arjuna's protest as the unexamined floor from which the teaching on the imperishable Self must lift him, not as a position requiring point-by-point correction. What is missing here, on this reading, is simply the knowledge that will let Arjuna hold his reverence without collapsing under it.
Śaṅkarācārya
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja names the distress precisely as three feelings knotted together: affection for those who raised him, pity at their coming deaths, and a real fear of incurring sin by killing men owed reverence. Bhishma and Drona are pujarha, worthy of worship, and Arjuna's case rests on the plain wrongness of turning a teacher's own gift back upon him; the deeper flaw is mistaking well-founded feeling for the whole of duty, when duty is owed first to the Lord who commands.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
Madhva likewise reserves his continuous gloss for a later verse, but reads the shape of the error in advance: Arjuna measures Bhishma and Drona only by personal ties of blood and gratitude, not yet knowing that true rank is fixed by nearness to Hari and by each being's own fitness, a scale family sentiment cannot supply. Reverence for elders is real, but it is finally owed through the Lord's purpose, not as a private debt that can override it.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta reads Krishna's prior rebuke as already exposing a conceit, and this verse as Arjuna dressing that same collapse in the language of principle. He fixes on one required form of the act and one desired fruit, unaware that no action is ever free of some such contingent shape; the tell is that he cannot say whether he wants victory or defeat, since even winning looks to him like ruin. That incoherence, not settled dharma, is what actually speaks here.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara hears Arjuna correcting Krishna's charge of cowardice: not weakness, he insists, but the impropriety of the act itself, since even speech against such men would be improper, let alone arrows. Sridhara catches a quiet irony in the address slayer of foes, naming exactly the skill refused; but he reads the devotion beneath the protest as genuine, not an error to be stripped away, only not yet reconciled with the duty still to come.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Madhusudana takes the claim at full strength rather than reducing it to grief: Arjuna argues this war lacks the very character of righteousness, building a lesser-to-greater case that fighting elders is nowhere enjoined and cannot be excused as merely not-forbidden, since even a harsh word to a teacher already bears evil fruit. This is the exact moment felt attachment is converted into the vocabulary of dharma, a conversion the coming teaching must undo before it can rebuild it rightly.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
Is Arjuna right to let reverence for his elders override the call to fight, or is he dressing up grief and attachment as a principled stand?
His reverence is not invented. The tradition genuinely holds that dishonoring a teacher or an elder is grave, and the reasoning from a lesser wrong to a greater one is sound on its own terms. Arjuna is not fabricating an excuse; he feels the real weight that his own upbringing assigned to these two men.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Rāmānujācārya
Yet the same speech carries its own tell. A man reasoning from settled principle does not also find victory itself unbearable, and Arjuna cannot say whether he wants to win or lose. That self-contradiction suggests something other than clear-eyed dharma is doing the deciding here.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
The honest answer is that both are present and tangled together, and this verse does not attempt to pull them apart. It only states the protest in full. Untangling reverence from attachment is exactly the work the teaching that follows has to do, not something Arjuna can resolve by himself in this moment.
Madhvācārya · Rāmānujācārya
Contemplation
Before judging Arjuna's argument, sit with what he is actually looking at: the hands that taught him and the lap that once held him, now standing in front of his bow. Notice how naturally reverence recoils from becoming violence. That recoil is not weakness to be argued away before it is even understood. Only once it is fully felt does it become possible to ask what, within it, is true devotion and what is grief speaking in devotion's borrowed voice.
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.