Chapter 11 · Verse 2·Spoken by Arjuna
भवाप्ययौ हि भूतानां श्रुतौ विस्तरशो मया। त्वत्तः कमलपत्राक्ष माहात्म्यमपि चाव्ययम्
bhavāpyayau hi bhūtānāṁ śhrutau vistaraśho mayā tvattaḥ kamala-patrākṣha māhātmyam api chāvyayam
I have heard from you, in detail, how beings arise and pass away. I have heard too of your imperishable greatness.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
Audio from the Gītā Supersite, IIT Kanpur
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machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
rjuna is reporting back to Krishna what he has already learned, and he names two things specifically. First, he says he has heard the bhava and apyaya of beings, that is, their coming-into-being and their passing-away, their creation (srshti) and dissolution (pralaya). Second, he has heard of Krishna's mahatmya, his greatness, which is avyaya, imperishable and undecaying. So the verse is Arjuna taking inventory: he is showing the teacher that the teaching has landed.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Arjuna stresses that he has heard this not in brief but vistarashah, at length and in full detail, and more than once. Several commentators trace exactly where: this teaching ran through the earlier chapters, especially from the seventh chapter onward, in lines such as 'I am the origin and the dissolution of the entire world' and 'I am the source of all; from Me all proceeds.' Arjuna is in effect stacking up the very utterances of those earlier chapters, quoting back what the Lord said, to show how thoroughly it has been received.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas · Dhanapati Sūri
The point of naming the rising and dissolving of beings is not the bare fact that things are born and die. The deeper point Arjuna has absorbed is that every being comes from Krishna alone, abides only in him, and is reabsorbed only into him. In plain words, everything is the Lord alone; he is the sole cause of the world. This is why Arjuna's own confusion, the 'I am the doer' delusion, has fallen away.
Braided from 6 commentators
Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Vallabhācārya · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
The greatness Arjuna has heard is specifically a greatness that stays untouched. Krishna creates the whole world, causes beings to perform good and evil action, and dispenses the many fruits of bondage and liberation, and yet through all of this he remains avikara, free of any change, unattached, even-minded, and indifferent, with no fault of inequality or cruelty. This is what avyaya, imperishable, means here: his lordship is inexhaustible and his nature suffers no modification even as he does everything. Arjuna cites lines like 'By Me all this is pervaded' and 'Nor do those actions bind Me' as what taught him this.
Braided from 6 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya
The address kamala-patra-aksha, lotus-petal-eyed, is more than decoration. Arjuna calls Krishna by the loveliness of his eyes, long and reddish at the corners like lotus petals, and several commentators read this as Arjuna's love overflowing: an excess of beauty is named out of an excess of affection. The vocative opens a warm, intimate register precisely at the moment Arjuna is about to make his great request, the longing to see the form for himself.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīla Baladeva · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Puruṣottama
Divergence
Viśiṣṭādvaita
On this reading the beings whose origin and dissolution Arjuna has heard are 'all beings other than you,' and Krishna is the supreme Self distinct from them. The imperishable greatness named here is unpacked as Krishna's owning of all conscious and unconscious things, his being the highest by his host of auspicious qualities such as knowledge and power, his being the support of all, and his being the one who sets every activity going, down to the very blinking of an eye. The greatness is thus a real lordship over a real, dependent world of selves and matter, not a greatness that dissolves the distinction between the Lord and beings.
Rāmānujācārya
Advaita Vedānta
Here the greatness is read as Krishna's state as the great Self, the imperishable Brahman, his nature as the Self of all (sarva-atma-bhava), both conditioned and unconditioned. The same verse is also tied to scriptural exegesis: the teaching from the seventh through the tenth chapter is taken as determining the meaning of the word 'tat' (the 'that' of 'tat tvam asi'), so Arjuna's hearing is the establishing of the meaning of the great sentence, the purification of the 'that-word.'
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Śuddhādvaita
On this reading the verse is the second instalment of a single, continuing prayer. The greatness heard is given a protective coloring: it is the unfading greatness of standing, of protection, of safeguarding beings even after their destruction, and the very hearing of the cosmic round is itself the lifting of the heat of ignorance. The whole greatness is understood as belonging to Krishna's vibhuti-form, and the lotus-petal-eyed Lord is the one whose mere glance removes the inner heat; what an earlier verse named as the gain of the teaching of the inner Self, this one names as the gain of the teaching of greatness, and together they ready the heart for the request to see.
Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya
Bhakti
The devotional voices dwell on the affective movement of the verse. One expansive reading pictures Krishna as having searched the whole domain of illusory Prakriti to reveal the innermost Purusha, blotting out the illusion that blocked Arjuna's vision and resting his soul in the bliss of Brahman, so that this very assurance kindles a fresh yearning he cannot, like a fish shy of water or a child shy of the breast, hold back. One modern devotional gloss also reads kamala-patra, lotus-petal, as standing for knowledge of the Self, so that the lotus-eyed one is he who is reached by Self-knowledge.
Sant Jñāneśvar · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda
A Seeker Asks
If Krishna does everything, creates beings and even moves them to good and evil deeds, how can he remain wholly untouched, with no fault of inequality or cruelty?
The verse itself answers by the very word it uses for Krishna's greatness: avyaya, imperishable and unchanging. The greatness Arjuna has heard is precisely a greatness that stays untouched while doing everything. Krishna creates the world, moves beings to good and evil action, and hands out the many fruits of bondage and liberation, and yet he remains avikara, free of change, unattached, and even-minded throughout.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīla Viśvanātha
So there is no inequality or cruelty in him, even though the creation he makes is unequal, because the modification belongs to the world and not to its maker. Arjuna cites the very lines that taught him this, that all this is pervaded by the Lord and yet 'those actions do not bind Me.' The doing and the staying-untouched are not in tension; they are exactly what his imperishable greatness means.
Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Rāmānujācārya
Contemplation
Notice what Arjuna is actually doing here: he is taking inventory of what he has received. The point of hearing about the rising and dissolving of beings is not to collect the abstract fact that things come and go. It is to let one truth land all the way down, that every being arises only from the Lord, abides only in him, and returns only into him. When that truth is really held in view, as Arjuna holds it here by recalling line after line he has been taught, the grip of 'I am the doer' begins to loosen on its own. So you can take this verse as a quiet practice: gather up what you have already heard and let it settle, until the simple recognition stays with you that everything is the Lord alone.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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