The body is your field of activity; your karma determines your spiritual destination through how you cultivate it.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Bhagavad-gītā 13.35 — June 6, 1974, Geneva 740606BG-GENEVA [51:05 Minutes] Bg-13.35_740606BG-GENEVA Nitāi: [leads chanting of verse, etc.] [devotees repeat] kṣetra-kṣetrajñayor evam antaraṁ jñāna-cakṣuṣā bhūta-prakṛti-mokṣaṁ ca ye vidur yānti te param [Bg. 13.35] [break] [02:30] Translation: "One who knowingly sees this difference between the body and the owner of the body and can understand the process of liberation from this bondage also attains to the supreme goal." Prabhupāda: In the beginning of this chapter, Arjuna inquired, prakṛtiṁ puruṣaṁ caiva kṣetraṁ kṣetra-jñam eva ca etad veditum icchāmi jñānaṁ jñeyaṁ ca keśava [Bg. 13.1] Yesterday evening, those gentlemen who came from Protestant Church? Yogeśvara: Yes.
Prabhupāda: So they're talking about what is knowledge. Yes. This is very good question, "What is knowledge?" So Arjuna wanted to know this knowledge from Kṛṣṇa. Knowledge means to understand this body and the soul.
Kṣetra kṣetra-jña. Kṣetra means this body, and kṣetra-jña means the owner of the body. Just like if you study your body... "What is this?" Just we ask any child.
Sometimes we play with the child. We ask, "What is this?" He'll say, "My hand" or "My head." So even the child can say that the hand is different from him. We also say, "This is my hand," "This is my leg," "This is my head." We never say, "I head" or "I hand." No. "My hand." It is very simple thing. So Kṛṣṇa, being asked by Arjuna, He's giving the knowledge that this body is called kṣetra.
Kṣetra means field of activities. Just like in agricultural land, you get a piece of land, and you produce your own food grain, or as you like. The government gives you a piece of land, and you have to pay a little tax, and you can grow your food grains as you like. Similarly, as we wanted, Kṛṣṇa has given us this body.
Now we can work with this body as we like. If you want, you can utilize this body for higher elevation, or you can utilize this body for your nonsense purpose and go to hell. That is your choice. Just like somebody is using this body, undergoing austerities, penance, according to the spiritual, regulative life, and one man is using this body only for sense gratification, drinking and sex. So it is my choice, to utilize this body as I like, and I also reap the result.
The same example: You are given a field, a piece of land. You can grow twice, thrice in a year very nice foodstuff, sometimes pulses, sometimes paddy, sometimes the mustard seed. Any land... In India, we have seen that a cultivator produces three, four kind of food grains in a year.