Verse 18.17🔗

Avery dangerous statement! Kṛṣṇa goes to the extreme. No master except Kṛṣṇa can make such a courageous statement. Kṛṣṇa makes a bold statement here. One who is not motivated by ego, whose intelligence is not based on attachment, though he may kill many men in this world, he does not kill, nor is he bound by his actions. Of course, one who has reached that level of completion does not think of killing. As long as we have the idea of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, we attack or kill. When we exclude, we kill. On the other hand, when we surrender, we learn to include everything. One thing we need to understand.

We kill others only when we feel insecure. We do not need courage to make war. We only need cowardice. Only cowards go to war. They are afraid for themselves and kill others. To kill others, we do not need courage. We simply need cowardice. The person who is courageous never kills others. He is established in non-violence. Only cowards continuously try to hurt others. A courageous person does not try to hurt others. That is the reason Kṛṣṇa makes this bold statement—one who is not entangled in ego, even if he kills, does not kill. Kṛṣṇa emphasizes here: May you be liberated from entanglement. May you liberate yourself from ego, yasya nāhaṅkṛto bhāvo.

He does not ask Arjuna to kill. One problem is that people give their own meaning to words. They have their own delusive cognition. Mokṣa Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Drop Everything And Surrender 1279 A small story: Once there was a little boy in a Zen monastery training to be a monk. One day, when he was cleaning his master’s room he accidentally broke his master’s favorite teacup. He wanted to confess to his master about the teacup, but was scared that he would punish him. He approached the Master and asked him, ‘Master, isn’t it true that everything that was born has to die someday?’ The master replied, ‘Yes.’ The boy then showed him the fragments of the broken cup and said, ‘It was time for your teacup to die.’

Do not give your own meaning to what Kṛṣṇa has said! He is asking you to be liberated from ego. He is asking you to be complete with your root patterns. The person who has realized that he is part of a whole will not kill even if he kills. Grasp the proper meaning of this. Kṛṣṇa asks you to experience the truth about yourself. He does not ask you to kill people. Recognize the correct meaning. Kṛṣṇa inspires you to realize the truth of your natural space of completion, not to kill. Understand, only if you start living completion, you will understand the quality of life. I tell you, when there is incompletion, your life is stolen away from you!

When the completion happens in you, you regain your life! Kṛṣṇa asks you to complete yourself from your delusory cognition of ego. He does not ask you to go around killing people. Understand the truth behind the words. Only a Master like Kṛṣṇa can make such a courageous statement. Kṛṣṇa uses killing as an extreme example to make Arjuna think. The focus is on non-attachment arising out of egolessness, which is the space of completion. You need to know, completion done to be in the space of completion transforms your personality, transforms your being, heals the intense, constant, agitāted violence you carry towards you and others. When one no longer feels the need to survive, anything that one does is without attachment and without expectation.

When a person is in that state, he is truly in completion with Existence. If such a person destroys, it is similar to the destruction caused by Nature, which happens at a different frequency and understanding level as I explained earlier. Kṛṣṇa makes this statement to drive the point home to Arjuna that it is his responsibility to stand up and fight instead of running away from the battlefield. Components Of Action