He is called a steady mystic.
{55}
In unhappiness, his mind unworried,
In happiness, his longings gone,
His passion, fear, and anger vanished,
Vision steady: He is called a sage.
{56}
Unattached on all sides, neither
Celebrating what he gets nor hating it,
This or that, lucky or unlucky:
His mysticism stands fast.
{57}
When he draws the senses
In from what they’re sensing,
All together, just like tortoise limbs,
His mysticism stands fast.
{58}
Things of the senses turn off
The one who fasts inside the body,
But not their flavor. Even flavor,
Once he sees the Highest, turns him off.
{59}
Even a striver, son of Kunti,
Even a perceptive man—
The senses, riled, carry
Off his mind by force!
{60}
Arresting all of them,
Yoked, with me his zenith,
Let him sit, his senses checked.
His mysticism stands fast.
{61}
When a person contemplates things,
An attachment to them takes birth.
Attachment gives birth to desire.
From desire, rage is born.
{62}
From anger comes delusion,
From delusion, a wandering memory,
From a wandering memory, loss of the intellect,
And from the loss of intellect the loss of you.
{63}
Unyoked from hate and passion,
Moving senses past things,
Self-restrained, the governed atman
Approaches serenity.
{64}
From serenity is born
The surcease of all sorrows.
Serenity of thought at once
Stabilizes intellect.
{65}
No intellect, in one who isn’t yoked.
No yoking, no development.
Someone undeveloped cannot be at peace.
For someone not at peace, what happiness?
{66}
When the roving senses
Overrule the mind, they carry
Off its mystic knowing
Like a windboat over water.
{67}
Someone who draws his senses
Back from what they sense on all sides—
Great-armed Arjuna,
His mysticism stands fast.
{68}
In what is night to all the species,
A man restrained will stay awake.
When other species stay awake,
That is night for the sage who sees.
{69}
Filling up but motionless, the ocean
Stands there while the waters enter:
When desires enter him, he gains in peace,
Unlike a lover of desires.
{70}
A man who moves on,
Forsaking all desires, free of lust,
No “me” and “mine,” and no self-seeking:
He goes on to peace.
{71}
This state: Brahman. Once he attains it,
Partha, he is not deluded.
Fixed inside it even when his time ends,
He reaches, in Brahman, extinction.
{72}
SESSION 3
Karma
Arjuna points out that even though Krishna has extolled an intellectual steady state, he is goading Arjuna to violent action. Krishna explains that everyone has to act in some way. You can do nothing, but you cannot not do. Even inaction is a kind of action and bears a karmic charge.
Here Krishna introduces the notion of sacrifice. He draws an implicit parallel between the Vedic sacrifice—the most sacred set of actions possible—and everyday actions in the conflict-ridden world. The latter can be identical with the former.
Sacrifice implies reciprocity between human beings and Gods. This mutual fostering, Krishna explains, in turn fosters social order.
Krishna sets up an analogy between himself and Arjuna. Just as Krishna sustains the universe, Arjuna must sustain a dharmic society. To do this, both of them must act. Yet these actions must be carried out with detachment, and with the focus on the task itself. Krishna encourages Arjuna to see action as something that his atman isn’t even doing: Actions are performed by the gunas, which belong to “nature”—in a sense, it’s just Arjuna’s physical nature doing these things, not his immortal atman.
Krishna adds a few words about the importance of following this doctrine. He also insists that everyone should know his or her own dharma and act accordingly.
Arjuna asks what drives people to do evil actions. Krishna speaks of desire and anger, and how they can obscure the understanding. He finishes with a martial metaphor, exhorting Arjuna to combat and kill desire.
Arjuna said,
If you think intellect
Better than action, Krishna,
Why would you yoke me
To this horrific action?
{1}
With muddled talk
You seem to confuse my intellect.
Tell me for sure by which one
I can attain the highest good.
{2}
The Blessed Lord said,
Long ago in this world
I proclaimed a dual dedication:
Knowledge yoga, for the Samkhyas;
Active yoga, for the yogis.
{3}
Not by shirking actions does a man
Enjoy a state beyond all karma,
Nor by mere renunciation
Does he reach perfection.
{4}
No one for an instant ever really
Stands there doing nothing.
Gunas, born of nature, make
Everyone do things, even if unwilling.
{5}
Some deluded self who quells
His powers of action, sitting while
His mind remembers what he’s sensed—
He’s called a hypocrite.
{6}
When he quells his senses with his mind,
Arjuna, and undertakes
An active yoga with his powers of action,
Unattached, he is supreme.
{7}
You must do the proper action.
Action is much better than inaction.
Your body couldn’t even manage
Its ongoing functions if it didn’t act.
{8}
This world is bound by karma save
For works whose aim is sacrifice.
With that aim, son of Kunti, carry out
Your action, from attachments freed.
{9}
Issuing sacrifices and mankind together,
The Father of Mankind once said,
“May you proliferate with this.
May this be the cow that fulfills your desires.
{10}
By this may you foster the Gods,
And may the Gods foster you.
Fostering each other,
You will attain the highest good.”
{11}
Fostered by the sac
rifice, the Gods will
Surely grant the feast you wish for.
Whoever feasts but doesn’t offer
Back these gifts is just a thief.
{12}
Eating what remains of sacrifices,
Saints are freed of all their guilt.
The wicked, cooking for their
Own sake, feast on sin.
{13}
Creatures come to be through food.
The Rain God is the source of food.
The Rain God comes to be through sacrifice.
Of sacrifice, the source is action.
{14}
The source of action is Brahman;
Brahman arises from the indestructible.
That’s how sacrifice establishes forever
Brahman pervading all.
{15}
Whoever doesn’t turn the wheel
That started turning here—
In malice and in sensuality,
Arjuna, he lives in vain.
{16}
Should a man be self-
Delighting, self-
Satisfied, and self-content,
He finds no need to act.
{17}
Neither action nor inaction
Has a purpose for him here,
And nor does he depend on any
Being for a purpose.
{18}
So, unattached forever,
Do the work that must be done.
A man who does his work while
Unattached attains the highest.
{19}
Consider: Janaka and others
Gained, through works alone, perfection.
If only so the world can hold
Together, you should work.
{20}
What the best of men does,
That the rest of men do.
The standard he sets,
People follow.
{21}
In three worlds, there is not one thing
I need to do, nor anything
I haven’t won I have to win,
But I move into action anyway.
{22}
If I never moved myself to work—
And tirelessly, Partha—
Human beings everywhere
Would follow in my tracks.
{23}
These worlds would drop off
If I didn’t do my work,
And I would make a muddle.
I would kill off species.
{24}
While the unwise work from their attachment
To action, Arjuna, a sage
Should work without attachment,
Longing to hold the world together.
{25}
A sage should not disrupt the minds
Of those unknowingly attached to action.
Conscientious, yoked, he should
Encourage them in all their actions.
{26}
Actions everywhere are done
By nature’s gunas, yet the self,
Deluded egoist, imagines
“I’m the one who does them.”
{27}
But one who knows the truth that
Gunas and actions both partake of
Thinks, “The gunas act on gunas.”
Arjuna, he doesn’t get attached.
{28}
Fools the gunas have deluded
Get attached to what the gunas do.
They do not know the whole, but knowers
Of the whole should not unsettle them.
{29}
Renouncing all your works in me,
Your metaself in mind,
Freed of fantasies, no sense of “mine,”
Your fever broken, fight.
{30}
Human beings who practice
My doctrine constantly,
Full of faith and never sneering—
They, too, are freed from karma.
{31}
But those who sneer at this,
Not practicing my doctrine,
All their knowledge muddled—know them
To be lost and mindless.
{32}
Each one strives according to
His nature, even men of knowledge.
Beings follow nature:
What use repressing it?
{33}
In everything the senses sense
Passion and hatred reside,
Both of them, waylayers:
You mustn’t go into their territory.
{34}
Better your own dharma, botched,
Than someone else’s dharma practiced well.
Better death in your own dharma!
Another’s dharma carries danger.
{35}
Arjuna said,
Then what drives a man—
Even when he doesn’t wish it,
Krishna—to commit a sin
As if yoked to it by force?
{36}
The Blessed Lord said,
This desire, this anger—
Their source, the Power guna,
Great its appetite and great its evil.
Know this for the enemy it is.
{37}
As smoke envelops fire,
As dust envelops a mirror,
As amnion envelops embryo,
So this envelops that.
{38}
The knowledge of the knower
Is enveloped by this eternal enemy
Whose body is desire, Arjuna,
A fire hard to fill.
{39}
Its base, they say, is in the senses,
Mind, and intellect. With these
It dupes this atman in the body,
Enveloping its knowledge.
{40}
So subdue the senses first,
Bull of the Bharatas,
And then go kill this sinful
Destroyer of knowledge and judgment.
{41}
They say the senses are the height—
But higher than the senses is the mind,
And even higher than the mind is intellect.
What’s higher than the intellect is this.
{42}
So, learning what’s beyond all learning,
Supporting yourself by your self,
Kill with your mighty arms the foe, so
Hard to charge, whose body is desire.
{43}
SESSION 4
Renounce Through Knowledge
Krishna details the lineage of his wisdom, tracing it back to an ancient God of sunrise. Arjuna is baffled by this. Gradually, Krishna has started singing from a divine perspective—but Arjuna reverts to thinking of Krishna as a friend of the same age. So he asks how this is possible.
Krishna explains reincarnation and how, from time to time, he takes birth to reestablish dharma. People can transcend rebirth by understanding him.
Freedom from death and rebirth means freedom from karma; freedom from karma involves understanding the nature of action (see Session 3). So Arjuna should do his work on earth to maintain dharma, just as his forebears did (and just as Krishna, having taken birth, is doing).
Krishna describes the ideal man of action, with a focus on his detachment, and how he “accrues no guilt
.” Such a yogi’s work in the world takes on the nature of sacrifice—an offering to the Gods. Krishna dwells on the different kinds of sacrifice.
He goes on to praise yogic knowledge and how it dissolves karma. The yogi’s “actions are through yoga / Renounced.”
Again he ends with a martial metaphor, urging Arjuna to use this knowledge as a sword to cut out his self-doubt.
The Blessed Lord said,
This imperishable yoga
I proclaimed to Vivasvat;
Vivasvat explained it to Manu;
Manu told it to Ishkvaku.
{1}
Each one got it from another,
And so the royal seers knew this.
After a long time here, this yoga,
Arjuna, was lost.
{2}
That ancient yoga
I proclaim to you today
Since you’re my friend, devoted to me.
This really is the highest mystery.
{3}
Arjuna said,
Your birth was afterward,
The birth of Vivasvat, earlier….
How should I understand this?
You proclaimed it at the start?
{4}
The Blessed Lord said,
Many are my bygone
Births—and yours, too,
Arjuna. I know them all,
But you don’t know them.
{5}
Birthless though my deathless self is,
Lord of beings though I am,
I stand above my own nature
And come to be through my own maya.
{6}
From time to time, when dharma
Drops exhausted, Arjuna,
And when adharma is insurgent:
It’s then that I create myself.
{7}
To protect the righteous,
Godsong Page 5
