Duty to Family

Of all of the lessons in the reading from the Bhagavad-Gita, the author cared most about one's duty to family. As the warriors are riding into battle, they stopped and talked about how they could not see how they could kill their own family. The soldiers spoke about how family was the sourse of their happiness. A person acts with what will make them happy, regardless of their differences of point of view and values. To these people, their duty to their country is obviously very important to them, even more so than their duty to their religion as they rode into battle on their holy day. The value of their duty to country is even less important to them though, than their duty to family as shown when the soldiers stop and try to get the opponents to stop their attack and turn back as they are "cousins." While they may not be cousins in the modern sense of the word, in the time period that the Bhagavad-Gita was written they may have been considered cousins and therefore they found them to be as important as actual family. The story is written in such a way that it is easy to tell what is important to the author and to the people of the time. The most important things to these people seem to go in the order of family, country, and religion. Since the importance of family directly relates to happiness and thus the key to a person's actions, it is the most important thing to the author of the Bhagavad-Gita.