Arjuna's stand

6. Some people think that the Gita should be taken to begin from the Second Chapter. If the actual teaching commences in the eleventh sloka of the Second Chapter, why not start from there? Someone even told me, "God has said that He manifests himself in 'a' among the letters of Nagari alphabet. Here the sloka 'asochyaananyasochastvam' begins spontaneously with the letter 'a'. So we should take that as the beginning."  

Apart from this argument, in many ways it would be quite right to take this as the beginning. All the same the introductory portion preceding this does have a value of its own. Without this preliminary narrative we cannot properly understand where exactly Arjuna stands and what the Gita is intended to teach. 

7. Some say that Gita was spoken in order to remove Arjuna's weakness and make him enter the battle. In their views the Gita not only teaches karma-yoga, the way of action, but also yuddha-yoga, the way of conflict. But a little thinking will show us how defective this argument is. Eighteen divisions of warriors were ready for battle.
Are we to suppose that, by making Arjuna listen to the whole of the Gita, the Lord made him worthy of the army? It was Arjuna who quailed, not the army. Was the army then more worthy than Arjuna?

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