Sanskrit
इच्छा द्वेषः सुखं दुःखं सङ्घातश्चेतना धृतिः । एतत्क्षेत्रं समासेन सविकारमुदाहृतम् ॥
icchā dveṣaḥ sukhaṃ duḥkhaṃ saṅghātaś cetanā dhṛtiḥ etat kṣetraṃ samāsena savikāram udāhṛtam
Translation
Desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, combination, intelligence, firmness; these, briefly described, constitute the Field and its modifications.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The list closes with psychological rather than physical items: desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, the aggregate (the body as a bound-together whole), consciousness (cetana, awareness as a function of the organism — not to be confused with the kshetrajna that observes it), and firmness. Grouping felt states alongside physical elements is the real point: emotion and sensation are just as much objects within the field as matter is, which is what makes verse 30’s later claim — that the Self merely watches all of this rather than performing any of it — coherent rather than counterintuitive. The list closes with felt states — desire, aversion, pleasure, pain — grouped alongside physical elements. That is the real point: emotion and sensation are just as much objects within the field as matter is, which is what makes BG 13.30’s “the Self merely watches” coherent. (Note cetanā here is awareness as a function of the organism — not the kṣetrajña that observes it.)
Study deeper
Word by word
- icchā dveṣaḥ sukhaṃ duḥkhaṃइच्छा द्वेषः सुखं दुःखं
- desire, aversion, pleasure, pain (icchā + dveṣaḥ + sukham + duḥkham)
- saṅghātaś cetanā dhṛtiḥसङ्घातश् चेतना धृतिः
- the aggregate [body], sentience, firmness (saṅghātaḥ + cetanā + dhṛtiḥ)
- etat kṣetraṃ samāsenaएतत् क्षेत्रं समासेन
- this field, in brief (etat + kṣetram + samāsena)
- savikāram udāhṛtamसविकारं उदाहृतं
- has been described, with its modifications (sa-vikāram + udāhṛtam)
Commentary
Site Commentary
Notice where sanghata — the body as a bound-together whole — sits in this list: not opening it as a physical foundation for what follows, but planted in the middle, between desire/aversion and consciousness/firmness, as if it were just one more felt item rather than the container for all the others. The list’s real claim is structural: from the knower’s vantage there’s no seam between body and feeling worth marking — they’re one continuous field, named in one breath.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- Stop treating your physical state and your emotional state as if they belonged to different categories requiring separate rulebooks — a tense body and an anxious mind are one continuous field, and addressing one without the other usually leaves the mechanism untouched.
Professional
- When diagnosing a struggling team, resist treating the process problems and the morale problems as separate diagnoses needing separate fixes — they usually sit in one continuous field, and a process fix that ignores morale, or vice versa, rarely holds.
Family & Social
- When tension keeps surfacing in a relationship, check whether it's actually rooted in something physical — exhaustion, illness, poor sleep — before treating it as purely relational; body and feeling sit in one field, not two separate ledgers.
Ask yourself
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