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 13, Verse 6
Verse 6
Hard VerseThe Yoga of the Field and the Knower of the Field
The five great elements, false ego, intelligence, the unmanifested, the ten senses, the mind, and the five sense objects—
Context & Meaning
Krishna begins enumerating the components of the field — the body and everything associated with it. The five great elements (earth, water, fire, air, space), the false ego (ahaṅkāra — the misidentification with the body), intelligence (buddhi — the faculty of discrimination), the unmanifest primordial nature (avyakta), the ten sense organs (five of perception, five of action), the mind, and the five sense objects (sound, touch, form, taste, smell). Together these twenty-four elements constitute what the Sankhya system calls Prakriti — the entire domain of matter.
Scholar Commentaries
1 commentary · Public domainRamanujacharya
VishishtadvaitaThis is the Sankhya enumeration of the constituents of material existence. The critical insight is that ahaṅkāra — the ego — is itself listed as part of the field, not as the knower. The sense of "I am this body" is itself material, itself an object of awareness. The true knower stands behind even the ego.