Skip to content
Chapter 13 · Verse 2
🪈 Krishna speaks
Illustration for Chapter 13, Verse 2

इदं शरीरं कौन्तेय क्षेत्रमित्यभिधीयते। एतद्यो वेत्ति तं प्राहुः क्षेत्रज्ञ इति तद्विदः॥

idaṁ śarīraṁ kaunteya kṣetramityabhidhīyate | etadyo vetti taṁ prāhuḥ kṣetrajña iti tadvidaḥ ||

Word by Word 13 words
इदम्
idam this

this

शरीरम्
śṝ to wear away, to perish

the body

कौन्तेय
kuntī Kunti a son of

O son of Kunti, Arjuna

क्षेत्रम्
kṣi to dwell, to abide

the field

इति
iti thus

thus, so

अभिधीयते
abhi towards dhā to call, to name

is called, is named

एतत्
etad this

this

यः
yad who

the one who

वेत्ति
vid to know

knows

तम्
tad him

him

प्राहुः
pra forth ah to say

they call, they declare

क्षेत्रज्ञः
kṣetra the field jñā to know

the knower of the field

तद्विदः
tad that vid to know

those who know that, the wise

begins to answer. "This body, , is called the field. And the one who knows this body — the one who is aware of it from the inside — the wise call him the knower of the field." So your body is like a field, and the real you is the farmer who knows that field.

कथा

Hari Uncle's Field

An original story

Just past the edge of Puri, where the lanes turned to dirt tracks and the smell of the sea gave way to the smell of mud and green growing things, there was a paddy field. And in it, most mornings, stood Hari Uncle.

Dadu took Aarav there the very next day.

The field was a wide square of glittering water and brilliant green shoots, bordered by little walls of packed earth. Hari Uncle was rolling up his dhoti, about to wade in. He was a broad, sunburnt man with a laugh like a drum.

"Aarav has a question," Dadu announced, settling onto the low mud wall. "About fields."

Hari Uncle straightened up, delighted. "Then he has come to the right man! Ask, ask."

Aarav looked at the shimmering green. "Is this field always the same?"

"Ha! Never the same two days running." Hari Uncle swept his arm across it. "In the dry months it is cracked brown earth, hard as stone. Then the rains come and it is a lake. Then I plough it, and it is black mud. Then I plant, and look — green needles poking up. Soon it will be tall as your waist, then golden, then cut and bare again. Round and round, season after season. This field is *always* changing, little one."

Dadu caught Aarav's eye and gave the smallest nod.

"And you, Hari Uncle?" Aarav asked slowly. "Do *you* change with it?"

Hari Uncle laughed his drum-laugh. "Me? I get older, sure. But I am the same Hari who planted this field thirty years ago. I *know* this field. I know its wet corner and its dry corner, I know where the snakes hide and where the rice grows best. The field changes and changes — but I am the one who *watches* it change. I am the knower of this field."

Aarav went very still.

Dadu spoke quietly. "This is exactly what told , child. Your body is a field. It is born small, it grows, it gets hungry and full, tired and rested, sick and well — always changing, just like Hari Uncle's paddy. And inside, there is *you* — the one who knows the field, who watches it change from morning to night. Krishna calls that one the *knower of the field*."

Aarav looked down at his own arms — his field — and then, somehow, at the quiet someone looking out through his eyes.

"So I'm not the field," he whispered. "I'm the farmer."

Hari Uncle clapped him on the shoulder with a muddy hand and roared with laughter. "Now *that*," he said, "is good knowing."

चिन्तनम्

If your body is the field, what does it feel like to be the one who knows the field — the farmer watching it from the inside?