Shri Krishna and the Bhagavad Gita at Kurukshetra

Kurukshetra

The Bhagavad Gita is part of the Mahabharata. It opens with two armies drawn up at Kurukshetra and the archer Arjuna refusing to fight, because the men facing him are his teachers and his family. His charioteer is Shri Krishna. What follows is a conversation of seven hundred verses in eighteen chapters.

Krishna answers Arjuna in stages. He speaks first of the self that is not killed when the body is killed, then of karma yoga, the discipline of acting without clinging to the result, then of devotion and of knowledge. In the eleventh chapter Arjuna asks to see what Krishna really is, and is given the vision of the Vishvarupa, the universal form in which all beings and all time are contained. He is overwhelmed and asks Krishna to return to the form he knows.

In this account the one who awakens is Arjuna, and the teacher is Bhagwan himself. That is why the Gita sits at the start of this year's theme: it treats enlightenment as something that has to be lived out in action.

The Gita names the purpose of that action as lokasangraha, holding the world together. Its most quoted verse says a person has a right to the work and no claim on its fruits. Readers as different as Adi Shankaracharya, Sri Aurobindo and Mahatma Gandhi built their lives around it.

What it gave the world

Action without attachment to its results, done for the welfare of all.

At a glance

Text

The Bhagavad Gita: 700 verses in 18 chapters, within the Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata

Place

Kurukshetra, in present day Haryana

The vision

Chapter 11, the Vishvarupa Darshana

Terms used

jnana, bhakti, karma yoga, lokasangraha

Why it is part of Enlightenment Day 2026

The theme of the 2026 conference is celebrating enlightening experiences, and the question it puts to every speaker is how enlightenment connects with an awakening of consciousness that brings good to the world. This account is one of eight the day starts from. The conference is online on Saturday 10 October 2026.

The teacher named here is a subject of the day's talks. Naming them does not mean that they, or any institution that carries their work, take part in or endorse the event.