Chapter 11 · Verse 29·Spoken by Arjuna
यथा प्रदीप्तं ज्वलनं पतङ्गा विशन्ति नाशाय समृद्धवेगाः। तथैव नाशाय विशन्ति लोका स्तवापि वक्त्राणि समृद्धवेगाः
yathā pradīptaṁ jvalanaṁ pataṅgā viśhanti nāśhāya samṛiddha-vegāḥ tathaiva nāśhāya viśhanti lokās tavāpi vaktrāṇi samṛiddha-vegāḥ
As moths rush headlong into a blazing fire to their destruction, so these creatures rush into your mouths to their destruction.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
rjuna gives a second image to describe the warriors rushing to their death inside the cosmic form's blazing mouths. The Sanskrit names moths (patanga), small winged insects, flying into a blazing fire (pradiptam jvalanam) at full speed, only to be destroyed. Arjuna says the worlds rush into the Lord's mouths in exactly the same way: at high speed (samriddha-vega), straight to their destruction (nashaya). The plain sense, affirmed across the commentators, is that creatures are pouring into a devouring flame and being annihilated.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīla Baladeva
This verse is read as the second of a pair, deliberately set against the river image of the previous verse. There, the river-torrents flowed into the sea by a current that simply carried them, an unwilled, compelled motion. Here the moth-figure shows the opposite: the moth flies into the fire by its own movement, drawn on by its own speed. Many commentators draw the contrast sharply. The river illustrates the entering that is compelled and not openly seen as destruction, while the moth illustrates the entering that the doomed ones rush into themselves. Together the two images tell the whole story of beings going into the time-form, both swept and self-propelled.
Braided from 6 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Ānandagiri
The destruction here is total and self-driven. The worlds named are concrete: Duryodhana and the other kings, all of them, helpless yet rushing on. The moth does not stumble into the flame; it flies in with mounting speed, drunk on its own momentum, and is wiped out completely. Whatever enters is erased, name and all, as water vanishes on red-hot iron. The point is not merely that beings die but that they hurl themselves toward their own annihilation at full velocity.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Sant Jñāneśvar · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Modern
This voice reads the moth's speed as a moral picture of the human craving for worldly enjoyment. The moths, living in green grass on a dark monsoon night, see a blazing fire and are infatuated, thinking a beautiful light has come that will dispel their darkness and bring them gain, so they rush at it. Even those whose wings are singed and who lie twitching still long for that fire, and if someone puts the fire out, they grieve as though robbed of a great prize. The swollen samsaric momentum (samriddha-vega) is then explained as the mind forever running after enjoyments and hoarding them. Duryodhana and the other kings, driven by that same craving, rush like moths into the time-wheel mouths, toward downfall through the eighty-four lakh births and the hells. The teaching turned to the reader: people run day and night after worldly pleasure, ease, honor and respect, and in chasing them they suffer insult, slander, loss and inner burning while their very lifespan drains away, yet they keep longing for the perishable.
Swami Ramsukhdas
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators stress that this verse and the previous one form a single passage with one grammatical construction, and that the doubling of images is purposeful. The moth-figure is read as showing that the destruction comes from the very appetite of the time-form, and equally that the rushing is from the side of the doomed themselves. The moths are described as drunk with the speed-pride of their own wings, so the emphasis falls on the self-caused, prideful momentum that carries beings into the fire that swallows them.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
This voice expands the bare simile into a vivid scene. The men are like swarms of moths falling into the blazing valleys of burning mountains, and whatever enters those mouths is wiped out of existence along with its very name, like water dropped on red-hot iron. The stress is on the completeness of the erasure: not just death, but the total dissolution of identity and name.
Sant Jñāneśvar
A Seeker Asks
Are these warriors choosing their own doom, or are they helplessly driven into it?
The verse holds both at once, and that is its force. The moth flies into the fire by its own movement, at its own mounting speed, not merely swept along like the river-torrents of the previous image. In that sense the doom is self-driven: the rushing comes from the side of the doomed themselves.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya
Yet the same commentators call this rushing helpless. The moth is drunk on the speed-pride of its own wings; the craving that propels it is itself a kind of bondage, a swollen momentum the mind cannot stop. So the warriors are not free in any liberating sense; they are carried by an appetite they did not master, straight into the appetite of the time-form that devours them. Choice and compulsion are not opposites here: the choosing is exactly what makes the compulsion total.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Swami Ramsukhdas · Vallabhācārya
Contemplation
Watch where your own speed is carrying you. The moth is not pushed into the fire; it flies in, sure that the bright thing ahead will dispel its darkness and bring it gain. That is the human condition too. We run day and night after enjoyment, ease, honor and respect, and in the chasing we collect insult, slander, loss and a constant inner burning, while the very lifespan we are spending drains quietly away. The hardest part of the picture is that even the singed moth still longs for the flame, and grieves if the fire is put out. So the practice is simple and severe: notice the longing itself, the swollen momentum of a mind forever reaching for the perishable, and ask whether the bright thing ahead is truly light, or the mouth that swallows name and all.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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