Godsong
Page 7
{7}
Full of knowledge and discernment,
Standing on a peak, his senses vanquished,
Yoked: That’s how a yogi’s said to be,
A clod, a rock, and gold the same to him.
{8}
He is distinguished by fair-mindedness
To benefactors, friends, and foes,
To those who sit apart, or stand in the middle,
Haters and family members, saints and sinners.
{9}
The yogi always ought to yoke
Himself while staying reticent,
Alone, restrained in mind and self,
Without ambitions or possessions.
{10}
Setting up a firm seat
In a clean place for himself,
Not too high and not too low, with cloth,
Antelope hide, and kusha grass on top:
{11}
There, sitting on that seat
And single-mindedly restraining
Thoughts and senses, yoked
In yoga, he should purify himself,
{12}
Holding torso, head, and neck upright,
Motionless, steady,
Staring at the tip of his own nose,
Not looking in any direction.
{13}
Pacified, his fear gone, yoked and steadfast
In the vow to seek Brahman,
His mind controlled and thinking of me,
He should sit with me his zenith.
{14}
Yoking himself this way forever,
The yogi with a quelled mind
Goes on to peace, the highest extinction.
He stands at one with me.
{15}
Never eating too much,
Never eating absolutely nothing,
Not habitually oversleeping, not
Staying awake, either: That is yoga.
{16}
Yoga kills the pain of any body
Disciplined in diet and diversion,
Disciplined when doing work,
Disciplined in sleep and wake.
{17}
When he settles in the atman
With his thoughts in check,
Free of longings, free of all desires:
That, they say, is when he’s “yoked.”
{18}
The way a lamp that stands in no wind doesn’t flicker:
That’s a memorable simile about
The yogi with his thoughts controlled,
Yoked to the yoga of the self.
{19}
When his thought is curbed,
Checked by yogic service,
The self that sees itself
Fulfills itself.
{20}
Transcendent happiness,
Grasped by the intellect, transcends
The senses. One who knows it
Stands, unwaveringly, in reality,
{21}
And once he gains it, he imagines
No other greater gain than that.
It stabilizes him. Not even
Heavy sorrow shakes him.
{22}
Let it be known: What we call yoga
Unyokes you from the yoke of pain.
Yoga should be practiced confidently
By a mind that isn’t downcast.
{23}
Letting go, without exception,
Desires born of motives,
Over the rabble of his senses
His mind’s control complete,
{24}
Bit by bit he should withdraw,
Intellect in a steady grip, his mind
Made up to stand fast with the atman.
He should not think of anything at all.
{25}
Wherever it may wander off
(This skittery, unsteady mind!)
From there he ought to draw it back
And lead it to the master atman.
{26}
The sinless yogi with a peaceful
Mind, his passions pacified,
Arriving at the highest
Happiness becomes Brahman.
{27}
Always yoked this way,
The yogi, all his sins gone,
Touches Brahman with ease
And gains transcendent bliss.
{28}
The self in every creature,
Every creature in the self:
The atman yoked in yoga
Sees identity at all times.
{29}
Whoever sees me everywhere
And sees, in me, the all—
I’m not lost to him,
And he’s not lost to me.
{30}
A yogi who abides in oneness
Worships me abiding in all beings.
However else his way of life
May be, he lives in me.
{31}
The yogi who sees all identities,
Their happiness, their suffering,
As metaphorically his own
Is thought to be the highest.
{32}
Arjuna said,
This yoga you profess
To be an equilibrium—Krishna,
I don’t see a steady state for this
Because of fickleness.
{33}
The mind is really fickle, Krishna—
Riotous, strong, stubborn!
I think its restraint is as hard
To achieve as the wind’s.
{34}
The Blessed Lord said,
No doubt the restless mind
Is hard to hold back,
But practice and dispassion
Can hold it, Arjuna.
{35}
For someone with no self-control,
Yoga, I believe, is hard to gain,
But still, it’s possible for self-will
To attain by means of striving.
{36}
Arjuna said,
If an unruly mind arrives at faith,
But having strayed from yoga
Hasn’t come to yogic consummation,
Which way does he go, Krishna?
{37}
Doesn’t he fall from both worlds,
Effaced like a cloud? Lost,
Krishna, with no solid footing,
Confused on the path of Brahman?
{38}
You can efface this doubt of mine
Completely, Krishna.
No one but you steps forward
To efface this doubt.
{39}
The Blessed Lord said,
Partha, he is lost
Neither here nor there above.
No one who does good work, son,
Has to walk a hard road.
{40}
After reaching the worlds of the virtuous
And dwelling there for endless years,
A lapsed yogi is born again
In a pious and prosperous home.
{41}
Or else he may be born into
A family of learned yogis.
A birth of this kind in the world
Is even harder to attain,
{42}
For there h
e gains the gathered
Wisdom of his prior bodies.
He strives from there once more
For consummation, son of Kuru.
{43}
Prior progress bears him onward,
Even against his will.
Even the wish to know of yoga
Goes beyond the word Brahman.
{44}
With perseverance, mind in check,
A yogi wholly cleansed of guilt
And over many births perfected
Goes on to the highest goal.
{45}
The yogi goes beyond ascetics.
The learned, too, he’s thought to go beyond.
The yogi goes beyond the actors in a rite.
So be a yogi, Arjuna!
{46}
Of all these yogis, one
Whose inmost self has come to me
And worships me with full faith—
He’s the most united with me.
{47}
SESSION 7
Know and Discern
Krishna shares how to know him in his entirety, both his lower nature and his higher nature. His lower nature encompasses both physical “nature” and an individual’s psychological “nature.” His higher nature is spiritual and cosmic, and he gives examples of how he is the essential, defining element of things. While he originates the gunas, he stays independent of them.
Krishna expresses how dear his “knower” is to him. Yet he does not despise or exclude people who worship other Gods in other ways, and he rewards them according to their due.
People, as soon as they are born, grow susceptible to delusions about reality, for example, the delusion that the world is rife with opposite qualities (instead of its all being Brahman). After warning Arjuna about these delusions, Krishna assures him that people who strive to know him will come to know him whole.
The Blessed Lord said,
Mind fixed on me, with me your refuge,
Yoked in yoga, Partha,
You can know me whole,
Without a doubt. Now listen how.
{1}
Knowledge with discernment—
I’ll tell you both and leave out nothing.
Once you know them, there is nothing
Further to be known here.
{2}
Humans, thousands of them….Hardly
Anybody strives toward perfection.
Even among perfected strivers,
Hardly anybody really knows me.
{3}
Earth, water, fire, wind,
Air, mind, intellect,
And sense of self: These
Divide my nature eight ways.
{4}
But these are lower. Know my highest
Nature to be different, great-armed
Arjuna. It’s the living spirit
That undergirds the universe.
{5}
Understand this
Womb of every being.
The universe entire
I originate and I dissolve.
{6}
There is nothing else
That’s higher than me, Arjuna.
All this is strung on me
Like pearls on a thread.
{7}
I am the flavor in water, Arjuna.
I am the shining forth of sun and moon.
I am the Aum that hums in every Veda,
The sound in the air, the manhood in men.
{8}
I am the sacred fragrance in the earth.
I am the brilliance in the flame,
The life in every species.
I am the rigor of ascetics.
{9}
Know me, Partha, for the everlasting
Seed of every species.
The wisdom of the wise is me,
The brilliance of the brilliant, me,
{10}
The strength of strong men, also me,
Of lust and passion free. In every
Species, Bull of the Bharatas,
I’m the lust that doesn’t contravene the dharma.
{11}
The Pure, the Powerful, the Dark:
Be aware these ways
Of being come from me,
But I’m not in them. They’re in me.
{12}
These three ways of being,
Gunas, braid the whole world—
Which, deluded, does not recognize
I am above them, and above decay.
{13}
This maya of mine is divine.
Made of gunas, it is hard to go beyond.
Only people who resort
To me transcend this maya.
{14}
Fools and criminals, the basest
Men, do not take refuge in me.
Their knowledge carried off by maya,
They resort to a demonic way of being.
{15}
Four kinds of beneficent men
Worship me, Arjuna:
The sufferer, the questioner,
The driven seeker, and the knower.
{16}
Of these, a knower—always yoked,
Exclusively devoted—is the best.
To a knower, I am very
Dear, and he is dear to me.
{17}
All these may well be exalted; still,
I think of the knower as myself.
His atman yoked, he’s fixed
On me alone, the highest path.
{18}
At the end of many births,
The knower shelters in me.
“Vasudeva is all”—so thinks this
Hard-to-find mahatma.
{19}
Ravished of knowledge by this or that
Desire, some take refuge with other Gods.
They resort to this or that religious rule,
Ruled by their own natures.
{20}
Whatever form someone’s
Devotion wishes to revere,
To each for each I grant
A faith that does not waver.
{21}
Yoked to his faith and wishing
To propitiate that,
From that he gets his wishes—
Granted, in fact, by me.
{22}
For the small-minded, though,
Fruition is fleeting.
Worshippers of Gods go on to Gods,
But devotees of me will come to me.
{23}
The unwise think of me as fallen
From unmanifest to manifest,
Not knowing how my higher being
Is undying, unsurpassed.
{24}
Enveloped by my yogic magic,
I do not shine for all.
This deluded world can’t recognize me
As unborn, undying.
{25}
I know the passed on,
And the passing,
And beings yet to be,
But not a one knows me.
{26}
Since yearning and aversion surge,
Because dualities delude,
All beings fall into delusion,
Arjuna, at birth.
{27}
People whose works are pure,
Whose sins are at an end,
Freed of duality’s delusion
Worship me with solid vows.
{28}
Strivers who depend on me
For freedom from old age and death
Know Brahman completely
And metaself and karma whole.
{29}
They know me, the metabeing, me,
The metagod and metasacrifice.
Yoked in thought, they know me even
At the hour of their passing.
{30}
SESSION 8
Brahman the Imperishable
Krishna has just used some specific theological terms, and Arjuna asks him what they mean, as well as how to know him at the time of death.
Krishna offers a brief definition of each term, then speaks of how the last thoughts of a human being are crucial in determining how he is reborn—or whether he is reborn at all, since it is possible to enter Brahman after death. Krishna speaks of how to die like that.
Most beings are reborn, however. This holds true of both the individual and the collective: One creature’s repeated births and deaths have an analogy in all creation’s repeated geneses and dissolutions. Krishna redefines Day and Night on a cosmic scale to illustrate this kindred cyclicity.
Only a yogi can choose whether he will be reborn or not, and Krishna describes the two paths between which the yogi gets to choose.
Arjuna said,
What’s this Brahman? What’s metaself?
What’s action? Highest Man,
How would you describe the metabeing?
The metagod—what do they say that is?
{1}
Who or what in this body
Is the metasacrifice, Krishna?
And how, at the time of passing on,
Is the quelled atman to know you?
{2}
The Blessed Lord said,
Brahman is the highest indestructibility.