Sanskrit
मदनुग्रहाय परमं गुह्यमध्यात्मसंज्ञितम् । यत्त्वयोक्तं वचस्तेन मोहोऽयं विगतो मम ॥
madanugrahāya paramaṃ guhyam adhyātmasaṃjñitam yat tvayoktaṃ vacas tena moho'yaṃ vigato mama
Translation
This word of the supreme Secret concerning the Self, Thou hast spoken out of compassion; by this my delusion is taken away.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Arjuna opens by crediting chapter 10’s teaching on the divine manifestations with clearing his delusion (moha) — the same word used for his paralysis back in chapter 1. It’s worth flagging as an early, partial close: he says the confusion is gone here, in verse 1 of 18 chapters, and yet within a few verses he’ll be reduced to open terror by the very vision he’s about to request. Removing intellectual doubt and surviving direct confrontation with what that doubt was actually pointing at turn out to be two different things. The moha Arjuna says is lifted is the same word for his chapter-1 collapse (BG 1.30); BG 18.73 will use it once more, at the very end. Intellectual clarity has arrived early — and the vision he is about to request will nearly undo it again.
Study deeper
Word by word
- madanugrahāya paramaṃ guhyamमदनुग्रहाय परमं गुह्यं
- the supreme secret, for my grace (mat-anugrahāya + paramam + guhyam)
- adhyātmasaṃjñitamअध्यात्मसंज्ञितं
- concerning the Self (adhyātma-saṃjñitam)
- yat tvayoktaṃ vacas tenaयत् त्वयोक्तं वचस् तेन
- the word you have spoken — by that (yat + tvayā + uktam + vacaḥ + tena)
- moho'yaṃ vigato mamaमोहोऽयं विगतो मम
- this delusion of mine is gone (mohaḥ + ayam + vigataḥ + mama)
Commentary
Site Commentary
Arjuna announces closure — “this delusion is gone” — in the very first line of a chapter that is about to open, not conclude, his crisis. The text places a completion statement at a structural beginning, which is easy to misread as irony but is doing something more useful: it distinguishes intellectual resolution from the harder trial that resolution invites. Understanding an argument and having stood in front of what the argument was about turn out to be two separate thresholds, crossed here in the wrong order.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
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Lessons
Personal
- When you feel a question is finally settled in your mind, treat that as the start of a harder test, not the finish line — real certainty gets tested by encounter, not by argument, and the test often arrives right after you declare yourself sure.
Professional
- When your team calls a design decision 'resolved' after a good discussion, don't assume the harder part — living with the tradeoff under real load — is behind you; intellectual agreement is the doorway into the test, not the end of it.
Family & Social
- If you tell someone a conflict is 'resolved' right after a conversation that clarified things, stay alert — clarity about what's true and steadiness when it's actually in front of you again are two different achievements, and the second one hasn't been tested yet.
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