Chapter 1 · Verse 32·Spoken by Arjuna
न काङ्क्षे विजयं कृष्ण न च राज्यं सुखानि च। किं नो राज्येन गोविन्द किं भोगैर्जीवितेन वा
na kāṅkṣhe vijayaṁ kṛiṣhṇa na cha rājyaṁ sukhāni cha kiṁ no rājyena govinda kiṁ bhogair jīvitena vā
I do not desire victory, Krishna, nor kingdom, nor pleasures. What use is a kingdom to us, or enjoyments, or even life?
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
Audio from the Gītā Supersite, IIT Kanpur
Synthesis · a glossed leaf
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
rjuna flatly renounces the three things a victorious war would win him. He says he does not crave victory (vijaya), nor the kingdom (rajya) that victory would hand him, nor the pleasures (sukha, here the enjoyments such a kingdom makes possible). The commentators read this as a plain, direct refusal: not a bargaining position but a settled state of mind in which the longing for these prizes is simply absent. Several note that he is rejecting exactly the goods that everyone normally wants, which is what makes the refusal striking.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
The verse answers an unspoken objection. Someone might say: even if no unseen, otherworldly merit comes from this war, surely the visible, this-worldly gains, victory, kingdom, and pleasure, are worth fighting for. Arjuna's reply cuts under that objection by denying the very desire that would make the means worthwhile. Madhusudana puts the logic sharply: longing for a fruit is what drives a person to take up the means to it, so with the longing gone, engaging in the means, war, is as pointless as cooking for someone who has no wish to eat.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri
Arjuna then disarms the obvious counter-argument that even a dispassionate person should still act for the sake of his own people. The commentators point out that the kingdom and its pleasures are wanted only for the sake of one's kinsmen, the very people they would be shared with. But those same kinsmen are standing here ready for battle, having already given up their lives and their wealth. So the prize loses its whole point: there is no one left to enjoy it for. As Madhusudana frames it, this effort is neither for one's own sake nor for the sake of one's people. Ramsukhdas drives the same point home: kingdom and pleasures exist for the family, but if the family is dead, who will enjoy them, and what remains is not happiness but only more anxiety and grief.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Bhāskara · Swami Ramsukhdas
Because the prizes have lost all value for him, Arjuna extends the refusal to life itself: of what use is kingdom, or enjoyment, or even living (jivita)? The commentators take this seriously as the depth of his despair. Ramsukhdas explains that victory, kingdom, and pleasure can give happiness only when there is desire (kamana), liking, and weight given to them within; with that inner desire absent, even a vast kingdom and lovely pleasures can give him nothing, and after slaying his kinsmen he has no wish to go on living. Jnaneshwari voices the same extremity: let the kingdom go to the dogs, he is ready to suffer any calamity, even the loss of his own life, rather than win happiness by destroying his own people.
Braided from 6 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
This reading hears a hidden message in the very name Arjuna chooses, 'Govinda'. The word 'go' is taken to mean the senses, and Krishna as their inner presider and master. By calling him Govinda, Arjuna is in effect saying: you yourself, ever present as the one who governs the senses, already know my dispassion toward every worldly fruit. The name is thus read as a quiet appeal to Krishna's intimate knowledge of Arjuna's heart, not merely a formal address.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Advaita Vedānta
This reading frames the renounced prizes as actual obstacles to devotion. Drawing on the teaching that worldly fruits stand in the way of one whose mind is fixed on the Lord, it presents kingdom, victory, and the rest as impediments to bhakti that the Lord graciously removes from his devotees, even taking away their wealth as a favor. It also reads 'Govinda' through the duty of protecting one's kin: the name is one earned by guarding the cattle and the people, a name of the world's teacher, so by using it Arjuna both praises Krishna and points to the kinsmen-protection that makes the war unthinkable.
Dhanapati Sūri
Bhakti
This reading dwells at length on the warmth and obligation of family. It expands Arjuna's refusal into a flood of feeling: people have sons precisely so the family may flourish, not be slaughtered; one should do good to one's kin, share with them whatever one gains, and spend one's very life in their cause. It singles out Bhishma and Drona as elders who have placed Arjuna under a debt of gratitude, and insists that even to speak harm to such people, who are as dear as his own life, would be nothing less than sin. Here the verse is read less as a philosophical argument and more as the cry of a loving heart recoiling from violence against its own.
Sant Jñāneśvar
A Seeker Asks
Is Arjuna's refusal of victory and kingdom genuine spiritual detachment, or is it grief and attachment to his kinsmen dressed up as renunciation?
The supplied commentaries do not resolve this in Arjuna's favor; if anything they let both readings stand together, which is part of why the verse is so honest. On one side, the language is the language of real dispassion: he says he simply does not crave victory, kingdom, or pleasure, and the commentators take this as a settled absence of longing, not a pose.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Ramsukhdas
On the other side, his own reasoning gives the detachment away as conditional. The prizes are worthless to him only because the people he would share them with are about to die; kingdom and pleasures, as several commentators stress, exist for the sake of the family, so their value collapses the moment the family is threatened. That is attachment reasoning, not the freedom from all wanting that the Gita will later teach.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Bhāskara · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar
The most faithful answer, then, is that this is grief wearing the clothes of renunciation, and the verse is the starting point of the whole dialogue precisely for that reason. Arjuna has discovered that the usual prizes cannot console him, which is real and important, but he has not yet found the ground on which one acts without being driven by desire at all. The richest commentaries here read his cry less as a finished philosophy and more as the honest collapse of a loving heart, the very condition Krishna's teaching will go on to meet.
Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
Sit for a moment with Ramsukhdas's clear test. He says that victory, kingdom, and pleasure can give happiness only when there is desire (kamana) for them inside you, when there is liking, when you give them weight. Where that inner wanting is absent, even the greatest prize gives nothing. So the question to carry away is not 'how do I get more,' but 'where am I placing the weight of my wanting.' Notice, too, his sober warning: the things we chase for the sake of those we love can, once won at the wrong cost, hand us not happiness but only more anxiety and sorrow. The lesson is to look honestly at why you want what you want, and for whom, before you pay for it.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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