In the Baghavad Gita, the central sacred book of the Mahabharata, Krishna teaches the lesson of dharma, the heart and soul of Hindu belief.  Krishna teaches the warrior Arjuna that the ultimate battle is not about land and riches and worldly power.  The crucial struggle is the one between law and greed, detachment and egotism, action and illusion--and the ultimate conflict is the one between the human soul and worldly attachments.

The Baghavad Gita

Book VI of the Mahabharata is written as a dialogue between the warrior Prince Arjuna and his friend and charioteer, Krishna, who is also an earthly incarnation of the god Vishnu.

Krishna and Arjuna are poised for battle at Kurukshetra - the field of the Kurus, and are waiting for Arjuna as leader of the Panavas, to blow the conch and begin the great war between his side of the family, the Panavas, and their cousins the Kauravas. The two armies stand on the field of battle opposing each other, and, on seeing many of his friends and kinsmen among those lined up on the other side, Prince Arjuna hesitates and says he cannot fight.  He considers whether it would not be better to throw down his arms and allow himself to be killed by his opponents rather than to kill his friends, family, teachers. He is recalled to his sense of duty as a warrior by Krishna, who points out to him that the higher way is through dharma, performance of duty without attachment to worldly things, without greed for riches or power, without any selfish concern for personal triumph or gain, but only out of a sense of his role in the cosmic order.

"Krishna refused to bear arms in the great war between the Kauravas and the Panavas but offered a choice of his personal attendance to one side and the loan of his army to the other. The Panavas chose the former, and Krishna thus served as charioteer for Arjuna.    On his return to Dvaraka, a brawl broke out one day among the Yadava chiefs in which Krishna's brother and son were slain. As the god sat in the forest lamenting, a huntsman, mistaking him for a deer, shot him in his one vulnerable spot, the heel, killing him." (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

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