Respect
This topic needs an honest caveat up front: respect never becomes a sustained subject in the Gita the way faith, action, or devotion do. What’s here is real but incidental — three moments where reverence toward another person does clear, specific work in the text, not a dedicated teaching built around it.
The objection respect creates
BG 2.4 is Arjuna’s first substantive objection to Krishna: “how… shall I attack Bhishma and Drona with arrows in battle, they who are worthy of reverence?” Respect here isn’t functioning as a virtue that resolves cleanly — it’s the very thing making the fight unbearable to him. The Gita doesn’t pretend respect and duty always point the same direction.
Respect as a posture, not just a feeling
BG 2.7 marks the turn where Arjuna stops arguing: “I am thy disciple, suppliant to Thee; teach me.” This is respect expressed as an explicit stance — placing himself as a learner relative to Krishna — rather than a sentiment he simply reports feeling.
Codified as a bodily discipline
BG 17.14 lists “worship given to the Gods, to the twice-born, to the teachers and to the wise” alongside purity, straightforwardness, and non-harm, naming the whole cluster “austerity of the body.” Respect here is treated as a practiced discipline on the same footing as physical restraint, not a feeling that either happens to be present or doesn’t.
Relevant Shlokas
How, O Madhusûdana, shall I attack Bhîshma and Drona with arrows in battle, they who are worthy of reverence, O slayer of foes?
My heart is weighed down with the vice of faintness; my mind is confused as to duty. I ask thee which may be the better—that tell me decisively. I am thy disciple, suppliant to Thee; teach me.
Worship given to the Gods, to the twice-born, to the teachers and to the wise, purity, straightforwardness, continence and harmlessness, are called the austerity of the body.
Practical Lessons
- 2.4 shows respect functioning as a genuine obstacle, not a virtue that resolves cleanly — Arjuna's reverence for Bhishma and Drona is exactly what makes fighting them unbearable to him. The Gita doesn't pretend respect and duty always point the same direction.
- 2.7's 'I am thy disciple' is respect expressed as posture, not sentiment — Arjuna stops arguing and explicitly places himself in a learner's position relative to Krishna. Respect toward a teacher, in this reading, is a stance you take, not just an emotion you report having.
- 17.14 puts reverence toward gods, elders, teachers, and the wise in the same list as purity and non-harm, and calls the whole list 'austerity of the body' — treating outward respect as a discipline practiced on the same footing as physical restraint, not a feeling you either happen to have or don't.
- This stays thinner territory than most of the Gita's major themes. What exists is consistent but incidental: respect shows up as friction (2.4), as posture (2.7), and as codified practice (17.14) — not as its own developed doctrine.
Related Topics
Humility
Humility (amanitva) opens the Gita's own list of what constitutes wisdom — not self-deprecation, but freedom from pretension that the text treats as a precondition for everything that follows it.
Core Human Emotions & Spiritual InsightsDharma
Better one's own duty, imperfectly done, than another's duty done well — the Gita's most repeated claim about svadharma, made twice, sixteen chapters apart.
Philosophical & Spiritual Concepts