धृतराष्ट्र उवाच
धर्मक्षेत्रे कुरुक्षेत्रे समवेता युयुत्सवः।
मामकाः पाण्डवाश्चैव किमकुर्वत सञ्जय।।1.1।।
Dhṛtarāṣṭra said: O Sanjaya, what did my sons and the sons of Pandu do when they assembled on the sacred field of Kurukshetra, eager for battle?
Osho’s Commentary
The Gita begins… ah, but where does it begin? Not on a battlefield, but in the dark heart of a blind man. Dhritarashtra is blind, my friend, but only his eyes are blind. The desire within, the craving to see the spectacle of war, burns brighter than ever. He asks, “What did my sons and the sons of Pandu do?” See the division in his very first words: “my sons,” and then, “the sons of Pandu.” The poison of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ is the very first utterance. And he calls the battlefield Dharmakshetra, a field of righteousness. What a beautiful lie the mind tells itself! It is a field of slaughter, a stage for the dance of death, but he cloaks it in the holy word ‘dharma’. Man’s hypocrisy is infinite. More blood has been spilled in the name of God and religion than for any other cause. The inner beast does not disappear just because you are standing on holy ground; it simply learns to wear holy robes. All great inquiry is born of a blind man’s longing to see. All religion exists because of this blindness. And to whom does this blind king ask? To Sanjaya, the one who can see from afar. You may call it clairvoyance, a psychic power. It is a small thing, a trick of nature. Do not mistake it for enlightenment. It is a small window, but the man looking through it may still be in a prison. So the song begins. A blind king’s thirst for violence, for news of his sons’ victory, spoken through a man with a strange gift of sight. This is the stage. And upon this stage, the greatest drama of consciousness is about to unfold.