Lord Krishna
Divine TeacherThe Supreme Lord, the charioteer and divine guide of Arjuna. Krishna delivers the eternal wisdom of the Gita, revealing the nature of the soul, duty, and the path to liberation.
Speaking: Chapter 10, Verse 42
Verse 42
Hard VerseThe Yoga of Divine Glories
But what need is there, Arjuna, for all this detailed knowledge? With a single fragment of Myself I pervade and support this entire universe.
Context & Meaning
The magnificent closing of Chapter 10. After forty verses of divine catalogue, Krishna waves it all aside with a single, breathtaking statement: what use is all this detail? Know only this — with a single fragment of Myself, I pervade and sustain the entire universe. The immensity of the catalogue was itself just a hint at something even more immense. The whole of creation is held by just one portion of the Divine.
Scholar Commentaries
2 commentaries · Public domainRamanujacharya
VishishtadvaitaEkāṃśena — with a single portion. The entire cosmos — with all its galaxies, all its sages and gods and beings, all its beauty and suffering — is held in one fragment of the Supreme. What then is the Supreme in its totality? This question cannot be answered. It can only be surrendered to.
Adi Shankaracharya
AdvaitaThe final verse of the chapter is the entire teaching compressed to its essence: the Absolute sustains all by its partial expression. The infinite totality of Brahman is not deployed in creation — creation uses only a fraction of it. The rest remains, full and untouched, beyond all manifestation.