Dedicated to my most beloved and revered spiritual masters, HDG AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada and HG Gauranga Sundar Gurudevji
If we read the first chapter of Bhagavad Gita, we can see how Arjuna is giving more importance to religious principles and trying to avoid the fight. Generally, in the battle we always have an enemy party to fight, but in the case of Arjuna the scenario was completely different. Lets see the whole scenario from the scratch.
Bhagavad Gita 1.21-22
arjuna uvācasenayor ubhayor madhyerathaṁ sthāpaya me ’cyutayāvad etān nirīkṣe ’haṁyoddhu-kāmān avasthitān
kair mayā saha yoddhavyamasmin raṇa-samudyame
Translation
Arjuna said: O infallible one, please draw my chariot between the two armies so that I may see who is present here, who is desirous of fighting, and with whom I must contend in this great battle attempt.
Bhagavad-Gita 1.26
tatrāpaśyat sthitān pārthaḥpitṝn atha pitāmahānācāryān mātulān bhrātṝnputrān pautrān sakhīṁs tathāśvaśurān suhṛdaś caivasenayor ubhayor api
Translation
There Arjuna could see, within the midst of the armies of both parties, his fathers, grandfathers, teachers, maternal uncles, brothers, sons, grandsons, friends, and also his fathers-in-law and well-wishers- all present there.
So, Arjuna in the opponent party is having his kinsmen to fight! Seeing them, Arjuna filled full of compassion and started talking about religious principles. I do not see how any good can come from killing my own kinsmen in this battle, nor can I, my dear Kṛṣṇa, desire any subsequent victory, kingdom or happiness. [BG 1.31] Sin will overcome us if we slay such aggressors. Therefore it is not proper for us to kill the sons of Dhṛtarāṣṭra and our friends. What should we gain, O Kṛṣṇa, husband of the goddess of fortune, and how could we be happy by killing our own kinsmen? [BG 1.36]
Srila Prabhupada is explaining in his purport; conditioned souls are attached with the bodily relations. They do not see anything further than that. Under delusion, they even forget that the cause of the material happiness is also Krishna. And for a Kshatriya, it is his duty to fight, but here Arjuna is seeming to have forgotten even the moral codes of a kshatriya and declining to fight. By speaking such words, Arjuna is posing himself as a very learned person, but he is inflicted with karpana-dosa (miserly weakness) that arise from the bodily relations. Arjuna was intelligent enough to understand that his cause of suffering is due to his attachment towards his kinsmen and he is acting like a foolish person who thinks that he can save his family from death. Therefore, later in the subsequent chapter we can see Arjuna surrendering himself as a student before Krishna in BG 2.7 (sisyas t’ham sadhi mam tvam prapannam). As soon as Arjuna is surrendering himself as a disciple of Krishna, Krishna at once taking the position of a teacher chastising Arjuna by calling him a fool in BG 2.11 (aśocyān anvaśocas tvaṁprajñā-vādāṁś ca bhāṣase)
Arjuna was posing himself as a very learned man but here The Supreme Personality of Godhead is instructing that, those who are wise lament neither for the living nor the dead. This means that Arjuna’s whole lamentation was on the bodily concept but those who are actually learned does not lament for any stage of body- be it living or dead. Because soul is eternal. The soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind. [BG 2.23] As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change. [BG 2.12].
Therefore, Arjuna’s lamentation holds no value because it was all on the bodily platform. Srila Prabhupada explains in BG 2.11, that more than religious principles is the knowledge of the matter, spirit and the controller of both, that is the knowledge of the Supreme. Which means soul is more important than the body. Above all, religion means words of Krishna, instructions or orders given by Krishna. That time in the battlefield, Krishna’s instruction to Arjuna was to fight. As a Kshatriya and also as a disciple of Krishna, Arjuna’s first duty waiting in the battlefield was to fight and finish all with the demonic mentality or who was in support with it. It is said that two kinds of men, namely the kshatriya who dies directly in front of the battlefield under Krishna’s personal orders and the person in the renounced order of life who is absolutely devoted to spiritual culture, are eligible to enter into the sun-globe. So there was no sin on the part of Arjuna as He has to simply carry out the orders of Krishna.
By the Servant of Srila Prabhupada, Radharani Devi Dasi