The verse and its meaning · Bhagavad Gita · Chapter 13 · Nature and the Witness

Field and Knower Joined

Bhagavad Gita 13.27

यावत्सञ्जायते किञ्चित्सत्त्वं स्थावरजङ्गमम्।क्षेत्रक्षेत्रज्ञसंयोगात्तद्विद्धि भरतर्षभ

Meaning · English

Whatever being comes into existence, moving or unmoving, know it, best of the Bharatas, as born from the joining of the field and the knower of the field.

Three words carry the verse. Kshetra means field: the ground that is worked on, which in this chapter stands for the body, senses and mind, everything that is acted upon and changes. Kshetrajna means knower of the field: kshetra plus jna, knowing. It is the one who is aware of all that. Sanyoga means joining, a yoking together. Sattva here simply means a being, a living thing, and not the quality of goodness it means elsewhere in the Gita. Krishna tells Arjuna that whatever comes into being, whether it walks and flies or stays rooted like a tree, comes from these two joined. The field alone is only material. The knower alone has nothing to look at. A living thing is the two together. He gives this as the thing to know, and the verses before it speak of different ways of seeing the self. This one says what there is to be seen. It asks Arjuna to look at every creature, including the people across the battlefield, as both a body that arises and passes and the awareness that watches it. Shankara reads the joining as a mistaken overlay of one on the other, not a real contact. Ramanuja reads both as real and as belonging to God. Madhva reads them as truly distinct, both dependent on God's will.

A house with no one in it is only walls, a roof and furniture. A resident with no house is only a person standing in the rain. A lit window on a dark street means the two are together. The house is the field, the one living in it is the knower, and every living thing is a home with someone in it.

1. Today, pick one living thing you pass: a neighbour, a stray dog, a tree on your street. 2. Look at it for half a minute and name two things: what you can see and touch, and what in it is aware or alive. 3. At the next meal, notice the same of your own body. Hands, hunger and breath are one thing; the one noticing them is another. 4. At night, recall one person you were short with and say to yourself that they were both of these too.

A father stands in a hospital room at dawn, holding his newborn daughter. He feels her weight, her warmth, the small rise of her breathing, her sudden hunger. Then her eyes open and seem to take in the window light, and he knows someone is looking out of that small body. The verse gives him a way to hold both at once. The weight, warmth and hunger belong to the field, and the one who looks out is the knower. Krishna's teaching is that she is neither alone, and neither one is left out of what she is. Step by step, this would change how he stands there. He would not reduce her to a body that needs feeding, and he would not think of her only as a mind to be shaped. He would see a being made of the two joined, and the same would be true of the nurse, the neighbour and himself. Ordinary experience bears out some of this: we treat a sleeping person and an awake one differently, though the body is the same. The verse does not promise that he will feel calm, or that she will be well. It does not replace the doctor in the room.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: Learning by Listening Alone · Bhagavad Gita 13.26
• Next: Deathless Within the Dying · Bhagavad Gita 13.28
• All of Bhagavad Gita · Ask Krishna about it

Sacred Sargam

The sacred texts with their meaning, read aloud, with Ask Krishna, a Panchang and bhajans. Free, on the web and as an app. Open Sacred Sargam