The Yoga of Arjuna's Despondency
Chapter one does almost nothing that a first chapter is supposed to do. Both armies are drawn up. The conches are blown. And then, instead of the battle, one man asks to be driven into the middle so that he can look at what he is about to do, and looking at it, he comes apart in public.
He does not come apart because he is weak. He comes apart because he has seen clearly, for the first time, and what he has seen has taken the ground out from under every rule he had. He is the man of action, and every man of action has one morning like this waiting for him somewhere.
Then comes the title, and the title is the whole argument. अर्जुनविषादयोग. विषाद is the sinking, the going down, the state in which nothing will hold you up. And the word joined to it is योग. His collapse is not the thing standing in the way of the path. It is counted as the first stage of it.
There is no other book that begins like this, and there is no other book that would be any use to a man reading it on the second morning.