Arjuna faces a dilemma over what he has to do because he does not know whether he should continue fighting or follow his instincts and give up the whole battle. Even though, he is a experienced fighter he does not know whether he should follow his personal instincts and fight or just give up because of the demands of the Sanatana Dharma that cautions fighting against loved ones, especially family members. However, he has to decide and in this case, the Karma yoga is used by Krishna helps him. The Karma yoga poses that man has to be selfless in everything he or she does and this means that one has a duty to serve the divine in all manners no matter what the situation occur. He has to give up his feelings and perform his divine duty. This means that Arjuna has to follow his own personal Dharma and accept his duty to serve the divine by fighting the war to the end (Stone, 2009).
Arjuna pleads with Krishna to help him make a decision because he is torn between duty and family. Krishna, in the role of a teacher, helps him to make the decision by guiding him into the battlefield. Arjuna meltdown on the battlefield; Krishna goes ahead to ridicule him and shame because of his weak and means which is not as per teachings of the Karma yoga since it demands from person to serve his divine no matter the situation. The Karma yoga demands to be selfless in ones duty to serve the divine and this is exactly what Krishna is implying by ridiculing Arjuna that he was just weak and mean. He has to fight for his honor and this means that he will have to put aside his selfish nature and go on with the fight and win (Turlington, 2002).
The teachings of the Karma yoga demands total commitment to a service and this means that Arjuna had to fight all forces in order to make sure that he fights against evil and upholds the truth. Krishna states this by telling him that he had to fight against evil and he cannot give up his personal Dharma because he thinks there are some defects in what he is doing. He did not have a right to change his duty therefore, he had to fight and fulfill his duty. His commitment to his personal Dharma was one of the ways in which he would make sure that the defects he was seeing would end. Then, Krishna goes ahead and tries to convince Arjuna by means of metaphysics of life where he believes that a person’s body is like a vessel of evil and is immortal, moreover it just shifts from one person to another. His arguments can be seen in the Karma yoga teachings where the duty to do a right thing does not bring any harm to the doer. This is what Krishna is trying to put across in his argument because Arjuna will be neither the slayer, nor the slain by fighting with his relatives (Freke, 2001). He will just be doing his duty to keep the morality of people and fight against evil. Then after all, bodies of his relatives would shift into another person because, the one dwelling in that body is immortal. He claims that everyone has been in existence, just that the body’s shift from one dwelling to another, but the soul shifts from one boy to the other.
The Karma yoga teaches us to detach ourselves from our action and this is what Krishna uses to persuade Arjuna in order to take up his responsibility to fight and fulfill his duty. He tells him that he has to act selflessly and fight against the war. Karma yoga supports selfless actions; by thinking about his family and what effects of the war will impose on him, thus, he becomes selfish and attaching his personal interests to his duty to fight for the right. The detachments of personal feelings and judgment guide him to perform duty to the divine and control their mind by practicing it regularly in order to help them achieve an inner peace.
Karma yoga focuses on how one can achieve divine love by fulfilling his duty. Further, Krishna takes path as he tries to make Arjuna understand his duty to the divine and not the duty for his relatives. He tells Arjuna that he should love and worship and in return, he would take care and guide him in all his ways. By fighting the war, Krishna believes that Arjuna will fulfill his duty to the yoga, which provides that a person have to work for the divine by performing his duty through selfless actions, which in turn makes things right and create a loving union (Turlington, 2002).
Krishna uses different approaches when he tries to convince Arjuna to take up his personal Dharma and fight against his relatives. This is the same as the teachings of the Karma yoga, which provides that a person have a duty to accept his or her destiny as it is and not think about the outcomes. This requires actions that adapt no wrong doings to those who are on the right path. However, those who are doing evil deeds have to be destroyed and this what Krishna uses to convince Arjuna to make a choice of fighting against relatives despite his dilemma on whether he should follow his path or not.
