To destroy wrongdoers,
With a mission to establish dharma,
I come to be in era after era.
{8}
When one who knows my birth and works
In their divine reality
Lets his body go, he does not come
To be reborn. He comes to me.
{9}
Their passion, fear, and anger vanished,
Filled with me, with me their refuge,
By austerity and knowledge purified,
Many have gone on to become me.
{10}
In whatever way they shelter
In me, I reward them.
People everywhere,
Partha, follow in my tracks.
{11}
Expecting actions to succeed,
They sacrifice here, to the Gods,
And swiftly in the human world
Their actions come to be successful.
{12}
I created four castes that
Apportion works and gunas.
Though I am their maker,
Be aware I do not do things.
{13}
No karma smears me.
No fruit of action tempts me.
Actions do not bind whoever
Understands me this way.
{14}
Knowing this, your forebears,
Seeking freedom, did their work.
Now you, too—do your work
Just as your forebears in the past did!
{15}
“What is action? What is inaction?”
About this, even poets are deluded.
I will explain to you what action is,
And knowing it will free you from misfortune.
{16}
What action is you have to understand;
You also have to understand wrong action;
Inaction, too, you have to understand.
The way of karma is impenetrable.
{17}
In action perceiving inaction,
And in inaction, action,
A human being is wise
And yoked. The work he does is whole.
{18}
Someone whose every endeavor excludes
Desire and calculation, karma
Burned up in the fire of knowledge—
Wise men call him learned.
{19}
Giving up attachment to the fruits of action,
Ever contented, independent,
Even when he goes ahead with action,
He isn’t doing anything at all.
{20}
Without vain hopes, his thought and self
Restrained, acquisitiveness given up,
He accrues no guilt, performing
Actions only with his body.
{21}
Content with what he gets by chance,
Beyond both opposites, his envy gone,
The same in both success and failure,
Even when he acts, he isn’t bound.
{22}
For the unattached and free
Who fix their minds in knowledge,
Action, working toward
Sacrifice, dissolves entirely.
{23}
The offering is Brahman. Brahman
Pours out Brahman into the fire of Brahman.
He can attain Brahman
By meditating on the workings of Brahman.
{24}
Some yogis carry out
Their sacrifices to a God
While others sacrifice the sacrifice
Itself into the fire of Brahman.
{25}
Others pour their senses, hearing first,
Into the fires of restraint.
Others pour what they perceive, sounds first,
Into the fires of the senses.
{26}
Still others offer all the actions
Of their senses and their breath
Into the fire of yogic self-
Restraint, which knowledge kindles.
{27}
Some offer things while others offer
Austerity or offer yoga.
Disciplined seekers, making keen vows,
Study on their own and offer knowledge.
{28}
Some offer, into the breath out, the breath in;
Others, into the breath in, the breath out.
They check the goings, out and in, of breaths,
Intent on extending the breath….
{29}
Still others who restrain their diet
Offer, into the breath in, the breath in.
All of them know what sacrifice is.
Sacrifice destroys what stains them.
{30}
Eating the nectar-sweet remains of sacrifice,
They go on to Brahman, the everlasting.
As for those who do not sacrifice, if this world
Isn’t theirs, how can the other be?
{31}
So many kinds of sacrifices
Spread before Brahman’s mouth:
Know them all as born of action.
Knowing this will set you free.
{32}
Better than the sacrifice of things:
The knowledge sacrifice.
All works without exception
Consummate in wisdom.
{33}
Know that if you bow low,
Ask questions, and serve them,
Knowers who can see reality
Will direct you toward knowledge.
{34}
Son of Pandu, once you know this,
You won’t go back to these delusions.
All creatures you will see
Within yourself and then in me.
{35}
Even if you were the most
Sinful of any sinner,
In the boat of knowledge
You would cross beyond transgression.
{36}
As a kindled fire
Makes ashes out of kindling,
So the fire of knowledge
Makes ashes out of every action.
{37}
You can find no purifier here
That’s quite like knowledge:
Someone who perfects himself through yoga
Finds it in the atman, given time.
{38}
With that his highest aim, senses restrained,
His faithfulness gains knowledge.
Knowledge gained, he goes
In no time to the highest peace.
{39}
The ignorant and faithless
Skeptic perishes.
Not this world, not the one beyond,
No happiness for any skeptic!
{40}
A man whose actions are through yoga
Renounced, whose knowledge has cut out
His doubt, who’s self-possessed:
No actions bind him, Arjuna.
{41}
So, with the sword of knowledge,
Cut out this self-doubt! It is born
Of ignorance and lodges in your heart.
Resort to yoga, Arjuna! Stand up!
{42}
SESSION 5
Renounce Through Works
/> Arjuna voices, again, his confusion over Krishna’s contradictions—specifically what Krishna means by actions renounced in yoga. Is Arjuna supposed to “do” yoga, or renounce action?
Krishna favors action over renunciation, though he concedes that both have their benefits. He refers to the Samkhya school of thought as an example of the way of renunciation—but he insists that what he teaches doesn’t conflict with that teaching. Yoga is a way of acting and renouncing action at the same time. The yogi pulls this off by renouncing the fruits of action. He escapes all karmic consequences while continuing to do the hard work of dharma in the world.
Krishna speaks of how the world looks from this enlightened perspective. Once the yogi attains extinction in Brahman, he sees all things and people as fundamentally equal because they are fundamentally the same. That is nirvana, a state of bliss and peace, and Krishna describes it at length.
Arjuna said,
Renouncing action. Yoga.
You praise one, then the other,
Krishna. Of the two, which one
Is better? Tell me definitely.
{1}
The Blessed Lord said,
Both renunciation and an active
Yoga work the greatest good,
But of the two, an active yoga
Is better than renouncing action.
{2}
Know that an eternal renunciant
Is one who neither hates nor covets,
Neutral toward things opposed.
Blithely he gets free of bondage.
{3}
“Samkhya and yoga are separate!” So
The childish proclaim, but not the scholars.
Rightly rooted in even one,
You find the fruit of both.
{4}
The place that followers of Samkhya
Get to, yogis also reach.
Samkhya and yoga are one.
To see this is to see true.
{5}
Renunciation, if devoid of yoga,
Is painful to attain.
Yoked to yoga, any wise man
Reaches Brahman in no time.
{6}
Yoked to yoga, ego purged,
Ego vanquished, senses vanquished,
His self becomes the self of every being.
Even when he acts, it doesn’t smear him.
{7}
“I’m not doing anything”—so thinks
A yogi who’s aware of what is real
Whether he’s seeing, hearing, touching, smelling,
Eating, walking, sleeping, breathing,
{8}
Talking, defecating, grasping,
Opening the eyes, closing the eyes…
“The senses orbit what they sense.”
That is his conviction.
{9}
Placing his actions in Brahman,
Giving attachment up, he does his work,
And he is smeared no more by sin
Than is a lotus-leaf by water.
{10}
With body, mind, and intellect,
Or even only with the senses,
The yogis, giving up attachments,
Purify themselves by doing works.
{11}
A yoked man, letting fruits of action go,
Attains the ultimate peace,
But unyoked, acting on his lusts,
He clings to fruit, in bondage.
{12}
Renouncing all acts with the mind,
Sitting happily, the one inside
The body rules that nine-gated City
And neither acts nor actuates.
{13}
Neither activity nor actions
Does the Lord create in people, nor the link
Between the action and its fruit:
It’s personality that spurs them.
{14}
The Omnipresent doesn’t take on
Anybody’s sins or good deeds.
Ignorance, deluding people,
Covers up their knowledge.
{15}
For some, though, knowledge can destroy
Their ignorance about themselves.
Their knowledge, like the sun,
Illuminates the Highest.
{16}
Their intellects on that, on that their atmans,
Their basis that, and that their highest goal,
They go on to a point of no rebirth.
Knowledge shakes off evils.
{17}
A wise and cultured Brahmin,
A cow, an elephant,
A dog, a man who cooks dog:
Scholars see them all the same.
{18}
Here on earth, those minds abiding
In equality will beat rebirth. Because
Brahman is faultlessly egalitarian,
It’s in Brahman that they abide.
{19}
You shouldn’t rejoice to get what you prize
Or shudder to get what you don’t.
With steady intellect and no delusions,
A knower of Brahman abides within Brahman.
{20}
Atman detached from what he touches,
Finding joy within himself,
Brahman and atman yoked through yoga,
He gains a joy that cannot be destroyed.
{21}
Arjuna, pleasures born of touch
Are really wombs of pain.
They start and end. A sage
Does not delight in them.
{22}
If a man not free yet of his body
Can withstand the shocks
That come of lust and anger here,
He is a yoked, a happy man.
{23}
His happiness within, his ease
Within, and hence his light within,
This yogi goes up to extinction
In Brahman, becomes Brahman.
{24}
Seers, self-restrained, attain
Extinction in Brahman,
Their sins depleted, doubts cut out,
Rejoicing in the good of all.
{25}
For seekers who know themselves—
Uncoupled from their rage and lust,
Restrained in thought—extinction
In Brahman lies close.
{26}
External stimuli shut out,
Focus kept between the eyebrows,
Inhalation, exhalation
Moving, balanced, in the nostrils,
{27}
Senses, mind, and intellect controlled,
Desire, fear, and anger gone,
A hermit headed high for freedom
Frees himself forever.
{28}
Knowing me—the one who eats
What sacrifices heat, Great Lord
Of all the world, a friend to every
Species—he will go in peace.
{29}
SESSION 6
Concentrate
Krishna continues with an extended portrait of the man of action who has renounced the fruits of action. This includes psychological traits, like equanimity and self-restraint, as well as practical details of how he sets up a place for meditation. The end of yoga is an insight into the unity of all beings, divine, human, and nonhuman.
Arjuna, skeptical about this portrait, po
ints out how fickle the mind is, but Krishna insists that state is possible, however difficult.
Granted that it is difficult, what happens to someone who tries yoga, makes some progress, but ultimately fails to reach Brahman? Krishna assures Arjuna that, in yoga, no work is lost. The process takes many births, and each well-lived life wins a rebirth that makes it easy to resume the quest.
The Blessed Lord said,
Whoever does the work that’s to be done
Without relying on the fruit of it
Is a renunciant and yogi, not
Someone without a fire or a rite.
{1}
What they call renunciation—know that
To be yoga, son of Pandu.
Without renouncing his ambition,
No one becomes a yogi.
{2}
For a sage aspiring to ascend in yoga,
It’s said the method is the work.
For the one who has ascended yoga,
It’s said the method is serenity.
{3}
When he clings no more
To sensual things or actions,
His ambitions all renounced, then
It’s said he has ascended yoga.
{4}
You should uplift the self by the self.
You should not abase yourself.
Only the self is the self’s friend,
The self alone the self’s enemy.
{5}
The friend of the self is the self of one
Whose self is vanquished by the self;
For one whose self is not, the self,
Inimical, behaves like any enemy.
{6}
Self-vanquished, pacified,
The highest self will stay composed
In cold and heat and pleasure and pain
As well as honor and dishonor.
Godsong Page 6
