The Mahabharata is literature at its greatest – in fact, it has been called a literature in itself, comparable in its breadth and depth and characterization to the whole of Greek literature or Shakespeare. (Location 87)
I felt I knew the setting of the Gita much more intimately than I could ever know this peaceful field. The battlefield is a perfect backdrop, but the Gita’s subject is the war within, the struggle for self-mastery that every human being must wage if he or she is to emerge from life victorious. (Location 104)
Historians surmise that like the Iliad, the Mahabharata might well be based on actual events, culminating in a war that took place somewhere around 1000 B.C. – close, that is, to the very dawn of recorded Indian history. (Location 108)
Only five hundred years or so before this, by generally accepted guess, Aryan tribes originally from the area between the Caspian Sea and the Hindu Kush mountains had migrated into the Indian subcontinent, bringing the prototype of the Sanskrit language and countless elements of belief and culture that have been part of the Hindu tradition ever since. The oldest part of the most ancient of Hindu scriptures, the Rig Veda, dates from this period – about 1500 B.C., if not earlier. (Location 111)
Yet the wellspring of Indian religious faith, I believe, can be traced to a much earlier epoch. When the Aryans entered the Indian subcontinent through the mountains of the Hindu Kush, they encountered a civilization on the banks of the Indus river that archeologists date back as far as 3000 B.C. Roughly contemporaneous with the pyramid-builders on the Nile, these Indus-dwellers achieved a comparable level of technology. (Location 114)
But most remarkable, images of Shiva as Yogeshvara, the Lord of Yoga, suggest that meditation was practiced in a civilization which flourished a millennium before the Vedas were committed to an oral tradition. (Location 120)
With this introspective tool the inspired rishis (literally “seers”) of ancient India analyzed their awareness of human experience to see if there was anything in it that was absolute. Their findings can be summarized in three statements which Aldous Huxley, following Leibnitz, has called the Perennial Philosophy because they appear in every age and civilization: (1) there is an infinite, changeless reality beneath the world of change; (2) this same reality lies at the core of every human personality; (3) the purpose of life is to discover this reality experientially: that is, to realize God while here on earth. These principles and the interior experiments for realizing them were taught systematically in “forest academies” or ashrams – a tradition which continues unbroken after some three thousand years. (Location 126)
The discoveries of brahmavidya were systematically committed to memory (and eventually to writing) in the Upanishads, visionary documents that are the earliest and purest statement of the Perennial Philosophy. (Location 132)
Tradition calls them shruti: literally “heard,” as opposed to learned; (Location 135)
By convention, only the Vedas (including their Upanishads) are considered shruti, based on direct knowledge of God. (Location 136)
To those who take this dramatic setting as part of the spiritual instruction and get entangled in the question of the Gita justifying war, Gandhi had a practical answer: just base your life on the Gita sincerely and systematically and see if you find killing or even hurting others compatible with its teachings. (Location 157)
The very heart of the Gita’s message is to see the Lord in every creature and act accordingly, (Location 160)
the struggle the Gita is concerned with is the struggle for self-mastery. It was Vyasa’s genius to take the whole great Mahabharata epic and see it as metaphor for the perennial war between the forces of light and the forces of darkness in every human heart. Arjuna and Krishna are then no longer merely characters in a literary masterpiece. Arjuna becomes Everyman, asking the Lord himself, Sri Krishna, the perennial questions about life and death – not as a philosopher, but as the quintessential man of action. Thus read, the Gita is not an external dialogue but an internal one: between the ordinary human personality, full of questions about the meaning of life, and our deepest Self, which is divine. (Location 169)
There is, in fact, no other way to read the Gita and grasp it as spiritual instruction. If I could offer only one key to understanding this divine dialogue, it would be to remember that it takes place in the depths of consciousness and that Krishna is not some external being, human or superhuman, but the spark of divinity that lies at the core of the human personality. This is not literary or philosophical conjecture; Krishna says as much to Arjuna over and over: “I am the Self in the heart of every creature, Arjuna, and the beginning, middle, and end of their existence” (10:20). (Location 174)
the non-Hindu faces a third obstacle: the multiplicity of names used for aspects of God. From the earliest times, Hinduism has proclaimed one God while accommodating worship of him (or her, for to millions God is the Divine Mother) in many different names. “Truth is one,” says a famous verse of the Rig Veda; “people call it by various names.” (Location 184)
the Gita – in fact, virtually everywhere in Hindu myth and scripture – we also encounter “the gods” in the plural. These are the devas, deities which seem to have come in with the Aryans and which have recognizable counterparts in other Aryan-influenced cultures: Indra, god of war and storm; Varuna, god of waters and a moral overseer; Agni, god of fire, the Hermes-like intermediary between heaven and earth; and so on. The Gita refers to the devas as being worshipped by those who want to propitiate natural and supernatural powers, in much the same way that ancestors were worshipped. In modern terms, they can best be understood as personifying the forces of nature. (Location 190)
The Upanishads are not systematic philosophy; they are more like ecstatic slide shows of mystical experience – vivid, disjointed, stamped with the power of direct personal encounter with the divine. (Location 197)
the Upanishads agree on their central ideas: Brahman, the Godhead; Atman, the divine core of personality; dharma, the law that expresses and maintains the unity of creation; karma, the web of cause and effect; samsara, the cycle of birth and death; moksha, the spiritual liberation that is life’s supreme goal. Even while ancient India was making (Location 201)
In examining our knowledge of ourselves, the sages made a similar discovery. Instead of a single coherent personality, they found layer on layer of components – senses, emotions, will, intellect, ego – each in flux. (Location 215)
Change is the nature of the mind. The sages observed this flow of thoughts and sensations and asked, “Then where am I?” The parts do not add up to a whole; they just flow (Location 218)
by. Like physical phenomena, the mind is a field of forces, no more the seat of intelligence than radiation or gravity is. Just as the world dissolves into a sea of energy, the mind dissolves into a river of impressions and thoughts, a flow of fragmentary data that do not hold together. (Location 219)
In profound meditation, they found, when consciousness is so acutely focused that it is utterly withdrawn from the body and mind, it enters a kind of singularity in which the sense of a separate ego disappears. In this state, the supreme climax of meditation, the seers discovered a core of consciousness beyond time and change. They called it simply Atman, the Self. (Location 225)
I have described the discovery of Atman and Brahman – God immanent and God transcendent – as separate, but there is no real distinction. In the climax of meditation, the sages discovered unity: the same indivisible reality without and within. It was advaita, “not two.” (Location 228)
Nor is it different from person to person. The Self is one, the same in every creature. (Location 231)
What is it that makes undivided reality appear to be a world of separate, transient objects? What makes each of us believe that we are the body rather than our own Self? The sages answered with a story still told after thousands of years. Imagine, they said, a man dreaming that he is being attacked by a tiger. His pulse will race, his fists will clench, his forehead will be wet with the dew of fear – all just as if the attack were real. (Location 241)
The Upanishads delineate three ordinary states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep. Each is real, but each has a higher order of reality. For beyond these three, the Upanishads say, is the unitive state, called simply “the fourth”: turiya. Entering this state is similar to waking up out of dream sleep: the individual passes from a lower level of reality to a higher one. The sages called the dream of waking life – the dream of separate, merely physical existence – by a suggestive name, maya. (Location 248)
Later philosophers explained maya in surprisingly contemporary terms. The mind, they said, observes the so-called outside world and sees its own structure. It reports that the world consists of a multiplicity of separate objects in a framework of time, space, and causality because these are the conditions of perception. (Location 254)
Nowhere has this “mysterious Eastern notion” been formulated more succinctly than in the epigram of Ruysbroeck: “We behold what we are, and we are what we behold.” When we look at unity through the instruments of the mind, we see diversity; when the mind is transcended, we enter a higher mode of knowing – turiya, the fourth state of consciousness – in which duality disappears. (Location 259)
The world of the senses is real, but it must be known for what it is: unity appearing as multiplicity. (Location 265)
Those who disidentify themselves with the conditions of perception in maya wake up into a higher mode of knowing in which the unity of life is apprehended directly. The disciplines for achieving this are called yoga, as is the state of union: the word comes from the root yuj, to yoke or bind together. (Location 266)
The “experience” itself (properly speaking, it is beyond experience) is called samadhi. And the state attained is moksha or nirvana, both of which signify going beyond the conditioning of maya – time, space, and causality. (Location 268)
The word dharma means many things, but its underlying sense is “that which supports,” from the root dhri, to support, hold up, or bear. Generally, dharma implies support from within: the essence of a thing, its virtue, that which makes it what it is. (Location 282)
An old story illumines this meaning with the highest ideal of Hinduism. A sage, seated beside the Ganges, notices a scorpion that has fallen into the water. He reaches down and rescues it, only to be stung. Some time later he looks down and sees the scorpion thrashing about in the water again. Once more he reaches down to rescue it, and once more he is stung. A bystander, observing all this, exclaims, “Holy one, why do you keep doing that? Don’t you see that the wretched creature will only sting you in return?” “Of course,” the sage replied. “It is the dharma of a scorpion to sting. But it is the dharma of a human being to save.” On a larger scale, dharma means the essential order of things, an integrity and harmony in the universe and the affairs of life that cannot be disturbed without courting chaos. Thus it means rightness, justice, goodness, purpose rather than chance. (Location 284)
Underlying this idea is the oneness of life: the Upanishadic discovery that all things are interconnected because at its deepest level creation is indivisible. This oneness bestows a basic balance on the whole of nature such that any disturbance in one place has to send ripples everywhere, as a perfect bubble, touched lightly in one place, trembles all over until balance is restored. (Location 291)
There is an ancient Sanskrit epigram, Ahimsa paramo dharma: the highest dharma is ahimsa, nonviolence, universal love for all living creatures; for every kind of violence is a violation of dharma, the fundamental law of the unity of life. Thus every act or thought has (Location 298)
Literally, the Sanskrit karma means something that is done. Often it can be translated as deed or action. The law of karma states simply that every event is both a cause and an effect. Every act has consequences of a similar kind, which in turn have further consequences and so on; and every act, every karma, is also the consequence of some previous karma. (Location 304)
This refers not only to physical action but to mental activity as well. (Location 307)
Given appropriate conditions to develop further, thoughts breed actions of the same kind, as a seed can grow only into one particular kind of tree. (Location 309)
The law of karma states unequivocally that though we cannot see the connections, we can be sure that everything that happens to us, good and bad, originated once in something we did or thought. We ourselves are responsible for what happens to us, whether or not we can understand how. It follows that we can change what happens to us by changing ourselves; we can take our destiny into our own hands. (Location 312)
Indian philosophy compares a thought to a seed: very tiny, but it can grow into a huge, deep-rooted, wide-spreading tree. (Location 317)
it is much more illuminating to consider karma an educative force whose purpose is to teach the individual to act in harmony with dharma – not to pursue selfish interests at the expense of others, but to contribute to life and consider the welfare of the whole. (Location 321)
We take a body again, the sages say, to come back to just the conditions where our desires and karma can be fulfilled. The Self-realized person, however, has no karma to work out, no personal desires; at the time of death he or she is absorbed into the Lord: (Location 340)
In trying to describe their discoveries, the Upanishadic seers developed a specialized vocabulary. Their terms were later elaborated by mystics who were also brilliant philosophers – Kapila, Shankara, and others, the ancient Indian counterparts of authorities like Augustine and Aquinas in the West. The most useful part of this vocabulary comes from Sankhya, the philosophical system whose practical counterpart is the school of meditation called Yoga. Both are traditionally traced to one towering authority, Kapila, and have much in common with Buddhist philosophy. An ancient saying celebrates their practicality: “There is no theory like Sankhya, no practice like Yoga.” (Location 347)
Sankhya provides a precise vocabulary for describing the workings of the mind, and the Gita draws on that vocabulary freely. (Location 353)
Sankhya philosophy posits two separate categories: Purusha, spirit, and prakriti, everything else. This is not the Western mind-matter distinction. Prakriti is the field of what can be known objectively, the field of phenomena, the world of whatever has “name and form”: that is, not only of matter and energy but also of the mind. As physics postulates a unified field from which all phenomena can be derived, Sankhya describes a field that includes mental phenomena as well. Mind, energy, and matter all belong to a field of forces. Purusha, pure spirit, is the knower of this field of phenomena, and belongs to a wholly different order of reality. Only Purusha is conscious – or, rather, Purusha is consciousness itself. What we call “mind” is only an internal instrument that Purusha uses, just as the body is its external instrument. For practical purposes – at least as far as the Gita is concerned – Purusha may be regarded as a synonym for Atman. Purusha is the Self, beyond all change, the same in every creature. (Location 354)
Sankhya’s way of looking at the mind is very different from our usual physical orientation, and therefore impossible to absorb without reflection. Sankhya’s hallmark is (Location 367)
Behind all these categories lies a powerful, practical assumption: Sankhya is not trying to describe physical reality; it is analyzing consciousness, knowledge, for the sole purpose of unraveling the human being’s true identity. So it does not begin with the material universe as something different and separate from the mind that perceives it. It does not talk about sense objects outside us and senses within and then try to get the two together. It begins with one world of experience. Sense objects and senses are not separate; they are two aspects of the same event. Mind, energy, and matter are a continuum, and the universe is not described as it might be in itself, but as it presents itself to the human mind. (Location 378)
Sankhya would say that this mango I appreciated so much does not exist in the world outside – at least, not with the qualities I ascribed to it. The mango-in-itself, for example, is not red and orange; these are categories of a nervous system that can deal only with a narrow range of radiant energy. My dog Bogart would not see a luscious red and orange mango. He would see some gray mass with no distinguishing features, much less interesting to him than a piece of buttered toast. But my mind takes in messages from five senses and fits them into a precise mango-form in consciousness, and that form – nothing outside – is what I experience. Not that there is no “real” mango! But what I experience, the objects of my sense perception and my “knowing,” are in consciousness, nowhere else. (Location 387)
we never really encounter the world; all we experience is our own nervous system. (Location 393)
The objects we see are shaped by the way we see. So senses and sense objects “make sense” only together: each is incomplete without the other. (Location 405)
The sensory attraction of pleasure is just an interaction between inert elements of similar stuff, very much like a magnetic pull between two objects. We are not involved. When I look at a fresh, ripe mango, it is natural for my senses to respond; that is their nature. But I should be able to stand aside and watch this interaction with detachment, the way people stand and watch while movers unload a van. In that way I can enjoy what my senses report without ever having to act compulsively on their likes and dislikes. (Location 412)
If one idea is central to yoga psychology, it is that thoughts are real and have real, tangible consequences, as we saw in the discussion of karma. Sankhya describes thoughts as packets of potential energy, which grow more and more solid when favorable conditions are present and obstacles are removed. They become desires, then habits, then ways of living with physical consequences. Those consequences may look no more like thoughts than an oak tree looks like an acorn, but the Gita says they are just as intimately related. Just as a seed can grow into only one kind of tree, thoughts can produce effects only of the same nature. Kindness to others, to take just one example, favors a nervous system that is kind to itself. (Location 417)
Sankhya describes prakriti as a field of forces called gunas – a concept that gets a good deal of attention in the Gita. According to Sankhya, the evolution of primordial prakriti into mind and matter begins when the equilibrium of prakriti is disturbed. (Location 424)
These are the gunas. Every state of matter and mind is a combination of these three: tamas, inertia, rajas, activity, and sattva, harmony or equilibrium. These are only rough translations, for the gunas have no equivalent in any other philosophy I know. (Location 428)
These are very imprecise parallels, but they convey an important point about the gunas: all three are states of energy, and each can be converted into the others. (Location 434)
There is no choice in tamas, no awareness; this is complete ignorance of the unity of life, ignorance of any other need than one’s own basic urges. (Location 442)
Rajas is what we ordinarily mean by mind, the incessant stream of thought that races along, desiring, worrying, resenting, scheming, competing, frustrating and getting frustrated. Rajas is power released, but uncontrolled and egocentric. Sattva, finally, is the so-called higher mind – detached, unruffled, self-controlled. This is not a state of repressive regulation, but the natural harmony that comes with unity of purpose, character, and desire. Negative states of mind do still come up, prompted by (Location 444)
Because personality is a process, the human being is constantly remaking himself or herself. Left to itself, the mind goes on repeating the same old habitual patterns of personality. By training the mind, however, anyone can learn to step in and change old ways of thinking; that is the central principle of yoga: (Location 459)
As the traditional chapter titles put it, the Gita is brahmavidyayam yogashastra, a textbook on the supreme science of yoga. But yoga is a word with many meanings – as many, perhaps, as there are paths to Self-realization. What kind of yoga does the Gita teach? (Location 479)
The common answer is that it presents three yogas or even four – the four main paths of Hindu mysticism. In jnana yoga, the yoga of knowledge, aspirants use their will and discrimination to disidentify themselves from the body, mind, and senses until they know they are nothing but the Self. The followers of bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion, achieve the same goal by identifying themselves completely with the Lord in love; by and large, this is the path taken by most of the mystics of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In karma yoga, the yoga of selfless action, the aspirants dissolve their identification with body and mind by identifying with the whole of life, forgetting the finite self in the service of others. And the followers of raja yoga, the yoga of meditation, discipline the mind and senses until the mind-process is suspended in a healing stillness and they merge in the Self. (Location 481)
The thread through Krishna’s teaching, the essence of the Gita, can be given in one word: renunciation. This is the common factor in the four yogas. It (Location 507)
this is not at all what the Gita means. It does not even enjoin material renunciation, although it certainly encourages simplicity. As always, its emphasis is on the mind. It teaches that we can become free by giving up not material things, but selfish attachments to material things – and, more important, to people. It asks us to renounce not the enjoyment of life, but the clinging to selfish enjoyment whatever it may cost others. It pleads, in a word, for the renunciation of selfishness in thought, word, and action – a theme that is common to all mystics, West and East alike. (Location 512)
Nishkama karma means literally work that is without kama, that is, without selfish desire. This word kama – indeed the whole idea of desire in Hindu and Buddhist psychology – is frequently misunderstood. These religions, it is sometimes held, teach an ideal of desireless action, a nirvana equated with the extinction of all desires. This drab view is far from the truth. Desire is the fuel of life; without desire nothing can be achieved, let alone so stupendous a feat as Self-realization. Kama is not desire; it is selfish desire. The Buddha calls it tanha,“ thirst”: the fierce, compulsive craving for personal satisfaction that demands to be slaked at any cost, whether to oneself or to others. Thus the concept also includes what Western mystics call self-will – the naked ego insisting on getting what it wants for its own gratification. The Gita teaches simply that this selfish craving is what makes a person feel separate from the rest of life. When it is extinguished – the literal meaning of nirvana – the mask of the transient, petty empirical ego falls, revealing our real Self. Work (Location 520)
This is a mental discipline, not just a physical one, and I want to repeat that to understand the Gita, it is important to look beneath the surface of its injunctions and see the mental state involved. Nishkama karma is not “good works” or philanthropic activity; work can benefit others and still carry a substantial measure of ego involvement. Such work is good, but it is not yoga. It may benefit others, but it will not necessarily benefit the doer. Everything depends on the state of mind. Action without selfish motive purifies the mind: the doer is less likely to be ego-driven later. The same action done with a selfish motive entangles a person further, precisely by strengthening that motive so it is more likely to prompt selfish action again. (Location 530)
This attitude frees us completely. Whatever comes – success or failure, praise or blame, victory or defeat – we can give our best with a clear, unruffled mind. Nothing can shake our courage or break our will; no setback can depress us or make us feel “burned out.” (Location 552)
Only the person who is utterly detached and utterly dedicated, Gandhi says, is free to enjoy life. Asked to sum up his life “in twenty-five words or less,” he replied, “I can do it in three!” and quoted the Isha Upanishad: “Renounce and enjoy.” (Location 554)
The whole point of the path of love is to transform motivation from “I, I, I” to “thou, thou, thou” – that is, to surrender selfish attachments by dissolving them in the desire to give. (Location 560)
This is the only kind of inaction the Gita recommends. It is action of the most tireless kind; the only thing inactive is the ego. To live without the daily sacrifice (yajna) of selfless service – to work just for oneself, or worse, to do nothing at all – is simply to be a thief (3:12). (Location 586)
Krishna wraps all this up in one famous verse: “Abandon all supports and look to me for protection. I shall purify you from the sins of the past; do not grieve” (18:66). Krishna is the Self; the words mean simply to cast aside external props and dependencies and rely on the Self alone, seeking strength nowhere but within. (Location 595)
Why does selfless action lead to Self-realization? It is not a matter of “good” action being divinely rewarded. Self-realization is not some kind of compensation for good deeds. We can understand the dynamics if we remember that the Gita’s emphasis is on the mind. Most human activity, good and bad, is tainted by ego-involvement. Such activity cannot purify consciousness, because it goes on generating new karma in the mind – in practical terms, we go on getting entangled in what we do. Selfless work purifies consciousness because when there is no trace of ego involvement, new karma is not produced; the mind is simply working out the karma it has already accumulated. Shankara illustrates this with the (Location 597)
This is not running away from life, as is so often claimed. It is running into life, open-handed, open-armed: “flying, running, and rejoicing,” says Thomas à Kempis, for “he is free and will not be bound,” never entangled in self-doubts, conflict, or vacillation. Far from being desireless – look at Gandhi, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa, St. Francis – the man or woman who realizes God has yoked all human passions to the overriding desire to give and love and serve; and in that unification we can see, not the extinction of personality, but its full blossoming. This (Location 632)
system” analogous to the body’s organ systems, that is one aspect of shraddha; he is referring to the power to heal or harm that is inherent in our ideas of ourselves. One person with a serious illness believes he has a contribution to make to the world and so he recovers; another believes his life is worthless and he dies: that is the power of shraddha. Similarly, self-image is part of shraddha. One person believes she will succeed in life and overcomes great obstacles; another, who believes she can do nothing, may be more gifted and face fewer difficulties but accomplish very little. (Location 653)
“Right shraddha,” according to the Gita, is faith in spiritual laws: in the unity of life, the presence of divinity in every person, the essentially spiritual nature of the human being. “Wrong shraddha” is not necessarily morally wrong, merely ignorant. It means believing that there is no more to life than physical existence, that the human being is only a biochemical entity, that happiness can be got by pursuing private interests and ignoring the rest of life. (Location 663)
Two forces pervade human life, the Gita says: the upward thrust of evolution and the downward pull of our evolutionary past. Ultimately, then, the Gita is not a book of commandments but a book of choices. It does mention sin, but mostly it talks about ignorance and its consequences. Krishna tells Arjuna about the Self, the forces of the mind, the relationship between thought and action, the law of karma, and then concludes, “Now, Arjuna, reflect on these words and then do as you choose” (18:63). The struggle is between two halves of human nature, and choices are posed every moment. Everyone who has accepted this challenge, I think, will testify that life offers no fiercer battle than this war within. We have no choice about the fighting; it is built into human nature. But we do have the choice of which side to fight on: (Location 676)
Thus the great scripture called Bhagavad Gita, the “Song of the Lord,” begins. Sri Krishna is Bhagavan, “the Lord,” the mysterious incarnation of Lord Vishnu, the aspect of God who fosters and preserves the universe against the forces constantly working to destroy and corrupt it. (Location 692)
To secure their claim to the throne, Arjuna and his brothers must fight not an alien army but their own cousins, who have held the kingdom for many years. Tragically, the forces against them include their own uncle, the blind king Dhritarashtra, and even the revered teachers and elders who guided Arjuna and his brothers when they were young. (Location 700)
The mystics’ point of view is more subtle. For them the battle is an allegory, a cosmic struggle between good and evil. Krishna has revealed himself on earth to reestablish righteousness, and he is asking Arjuna to engage in a spiritual struggle, not a worldly one. According to this interpretation, Arjuna is asked to fight not his kith and kin but his own lower self. Mahatma Gandhi, who based his daily life on the Gita from his twenties on, felt it would be impossible to live the kind of life taught in the Gita and still engage in violence. To argue that the Gita condones violence, he said, was to give importance only to its opening verses – its preface, so to speak – and ignore the scripture itself. (Location 737)
In the allegorical sense, Krishna is a symbol of the Atman, Arjuna’s deepest Self. (Location 827)
Krishna assures Arjuna that his basic nature is not subject to time and death; yet he reminds him that he cannot realize this truth if he cannot see beyond the dualities of life: pleasure and pain, success and failure, even heat and cold. (Location 830)
This chapter establishes the various definitions of yoga taught in the Gita. Here the word does not refer to the physical postures and exercises (hatha yoga) it connotes in the West; it refers primarily to disciplining the mind. “Yoga is evenness of mind”: detachment from the dualities of pain and pleasure, success and failure. Therefore “yoga is skill in action,” because this kind of detachment is required if one is to act in freedom, rather than merely react to events compelled by conditioning. Krishna is not trying to persuade Arjuna to lead a different kind of life and renounce the world as would a monk or recluse. He tells Arjuna that if he can establish himself in yoga – in unshakable equanimity, profound peace of mind – he will be more effective in the realm of action. His judgment will be better and his vision clear if he is not emotionally entangled in the outcome of what he does. (Location 836)
Such a one, Krishna says, does not identify with personal desires. These desires are on the surface of personality, and the Self is its very core. The Self-realized man or woman is not motivated by personal desires – in other words, by any desire for kama, personal satisfaction. (Location 850)
kama refers to any gratification of the ego or the senses that entangles us in the world of samsara, and thus draws us away from the core of our being, the Self. (Location 853)
Those established in Self-realization control their senses instead of letting their senses control them. (Location 855)
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the Gita does not recommend asceticism. It is more a matter of training the body, mind, and senses. (Location 861)
One believes he is the slayer, another believes he is the slain. Both are ignorant; there is neither slayer nor slain. 20 You were never born; you will never die. You have never changed; you can never change. Unborn, eternal, immutable, immemorial, you do not die when the body dies. 21 Realizing that which is indestructible, eternal, unborn, and unchanging, how can you slay or cause another to slay? (Location 899)
The Self cannot be pierced by weapons or burned by fire; water cannot wet it, nor can the wind dry it. 24 The Self cannot be pierced or burned, made wet or dry. It is everlasting and infinite, standing on the motionless foundations of eternity. 25 The Self is unmanifested, beyond all thought, beyond all change. (Location 905)
if you do not participate in this battle against evil, you will incur sin, violating your dharma and your honor. (Location 919)
Death means the attainment of heaven; victory means the enjoyment of the earth. Therefore rise up, Arjuna, resolved to fight! 38 Having made yourself alike in pain and pleasure, profit and loss, victory and defeat, engage in this great battle and you will be freed from sin. (Location 925)
Those who follow this path, resolving deep within themselves to seek me alone, attain singleness of purpose. For those who lack resolution, the decisions of life are many-branched and endless. (Location 931)
Just as a reservoir is of little use when the whole countryside is flooded, scriptures are of little use to the illumined man or woman, who sees the Lord everywhere. (Location 941)
You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself – without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For yoga is perfect evenness of mind. (Location 943)
They live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them, who have renounced every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart. 56 Neither agitated by grief nor hankering after pleasure, they live free from lust and fear and anger. Established in meditation, they are truly wise. 57 Fettered no more by selfish attachments, they are neither elated by good fortune nor depressed by bad. Such are the seers. 58 Even as a tortoise draws in its limbs, the wise can draw in their senses at will. 59 Aspirants abstain from sense pleasures, but they still crave for them. These cravings all disappear when they see the highest goal. 60 Even of those who tread the path, the stormy senses can sweep off the mind. 61 They live in wisdom who subdue their senses and keep their minds ever absorbed in me. 62 When you keep thinking about sense objects, attachment comes. Attachment breeds desire, the lust of possession that burns to anger. 63 Anger clouds the judgment; you can no longer learn from past mistakes. Lost is the power to choose between what is wise and what is unwise, and your life is utter waste. 64 But when you move amidst the world of sense, free from attachment and aversion alike, 65 there comes the peace in which all sorrows end, and you live in the wisdom of the Self. (Location 959)
Krishna replies that there is no way Arjuna can avoid the obligation of selfless action, or karma yoga. Arjuna must act selflessly, out of a sense of duty. He must work not for his own sake, but for the welfare of all. Krishna points out that this is a basic law underlying all creation. Each being must do its part in the grand scheme of things, and there is no way to avoid this obligation (Location 992)
Here the Gita refers to the doctrine of karma, one of the basic teachings in all Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. Karma literally means deed or action; what is sometimes called the “law of karma” refers to an underlying law of cause and effect that is seen to permeate all existence. The idea is that every action leads to a reasonable result – and, consequently, that everything that happens can be traced to something done in the past. (Location 995)
the belief that we reap what we sow. (Location 1001)
In chapter 3 Krishna begins to tell Arjuna the way out of this maze of cause and effect. It is not to avoid work, especially the duties required by his station in life, but to perform those duties without selfish attachment to their “fruit,” or outcome. (Location 1006)
Having a good deal of self-knowledge, Arjuna senses this danger. He asks Krishna a fundamental question: What power binds us to our selfish ways? Even if we wish to act rightly, so often we do the wrong thing. What power moves us? Krishna replies that anger and selfish desire are our greatest enemies. They are the destructive powers that can compel us to wander away from our purpose, to end up in self-delusion and despair. (Location 1019)
In Sankhya, the phenomenal world of mind and matter is described as having three basic qualities or gunas: sattva– goodness, light, purity; rajas– passion, activity, energy; and tamas– darkness, ignorance, inertia. According to Sankhya, spiritual evolution progresses from tamas to rajas to sattva, and final liberation takes the soul beyond the three gunas altogether. (Location 1024)
Arjuna must realize that his true nature, the Atman, is above entanglement in the gunas. The gunas act and react upon one another, but Arjuna’s inner being is not affected. (Location 1029)
Every selfless act, Arjuna, is born from Brahman, the eternal, infinite Godhead. Brahman is present in every act of service. (Location 1061)
Strive constantly to serve the welfare of the world; by devotion to selfless work one attains the supreme goal of life. (Location 1067)
Perform all work carefully, guided by compassion. (Location 1077)
All actions are performed by the gunas of prakriti. Deluded by identification with the ego, a person thinks, “I am the doer.” 28 But the illumined man or woman understands the domain of the gunas and is not attached. Such people know that the gunas interact with each other; they do not claim to be the doer. (Location 1079)
Performing all actions for my sake, completely absorbed in the Self, and without expectations, fight! – but stay free from the fever of the ego. (Location 1084)
The senses have been conditioned by attraction to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant. Do not be ruled by them; they are obstacles in your path. (Location 1090)
It is better to strive in one’s own dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another. Nothing is ever lost in following one’s own dharma, but competition in another’s dharma breeds fear and insecurity. (Location 1092)
Selfish desire is found in the senses, mind, and intellect, misleading them and burying the understanding in delusion. 41 Fight with all your strength, Arjuna! Controlling your senses, conquer your enemy, the destroyer of knowledge and realization. (Location 1102)
Avatara literally means descent: Vishnu is believed to descend and incarnate himself on earth from age to age to reestablish divine law (dharma). (Location 1121)
Vishnu has a special relationship with all beings: he personifies the aspect of God who so loves the world that he comes into it to reestablish the purity and happiness of the Golden Age. (Location 1124)
This mystic aspect of Krishna’s being dominates the Gita. In the Mahabharata, Krishna is a princely ally who is wise and daring in his support of his friend Arjuna. But the author of the Gita is not concerned with this Krishna; he turns his attention to the mystery of Krishna’s divine nature as an aspect of Vishnu. In this sense Krishna is the inner Self in all beings. His name comes from the Sanskrit root krish, “to draw to oneself, to attract.” He is the “attractive one,” the “Lord of loving attraction.” By another etymology, the word Krishna means “the dark one.” The author of the Gita sees revealed in him the ultimate Godhead, the supreme being. But this reality is often veiled, and then Krishna is seen as an ordinary human being – or, rather, as an exceptionally gifted man, but not as God. (Location 1128)
Many of Krishna’s words make most sense when we realize that when he speaks of himself, he is often not describing a transcendental reality so much as trying to tell Arjuna about the Self in every human being. When (Location 1134)
The next section deals with the various kinds of yajna – worship or offering – that may be performed by spiritual aspirants of differing temperaments. (Location 1141)
The offering may be as obvious as worldly goods, or as subtle as knowledge or meditation: in any case it requires a measure of self-sacrifice. Yajna is a basic action, necessary to life, and those who do not perform some kind of selfless service find no home in this world or the next. (Location 1144)
The final verses of chapter 4 introduce a new principle. In the last chapter, Krishna mentioned the path of spiritual wisdom as an alternative to the path of action or karma yoga. Now he reveals that wisdom is the goal of selfless action: knowing is the fruit of doing. The goal of all karma yoga or yajna is liberation and spiritual wisdom. The fire of spiritual awareness burns to ashes even a great heap of karma; thus true knowledge is the greatest purifier of the soul. (Location 1146)
Whenever dharma declines and the purpose of life is forgotten, I manifest myself on earth. 8 I am born in every age to protect the good, to destroy evil, and to reestablish dharma. (Location 1167)
Actions do not cling to me because I am not attached to their results. (Location 1177)
The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results; all his selfish desires have been consumed in the fire of knowledge. 20 The wise, ever satisfied, have abandoned all external supports. Their security is unaffected by the results of their action; even while acting, they really do nothing at all. 21 Free from expectations and from all sense of possession, with mind and body firmly controlled by the Self, they do not incur sin by the performance of physical action. (Location 1186)
They live in freedom who have gone beyond the dualities of life. Competing with no one, they are alike in success and failure and content with whatever comes to them. 23 They are free, without selfish attachments; their minds are fixed in knowledge. They perform all work in the spirit of service, and their karma is dissolved. (Location 1191)
The offering of wisdom is better than any material offering, Arjuna; for the goal of all work is spiritual wisdom. (Location 1210)
Even if you were the most sinful of sinners, Arjuna, you could cross beyond all sin by the raft of spiritual wisdom. (Location 1215)
As the heat of a fire reduces wood to ashes, the fire of knowledge burns to ashes all karma. 38 Nothing in this world purifies like spiritual wisdom. It is the perfection achieved in time through the path of yoga, the path which leads to the Self within. 39 Those who take wisdom as their highest goal, (Location 1216)
The general term for retiring from the world is sannyasa, “renunciation.” Traditionally, sannyasa meant renouncing all worldly ties and attachments. (Location 1228)
Though Krishna acknowledges here that this way of sannyasa can lead to the goal, he recommends the path of selfless action or selfless service as the better way. He contrasts the way of Sankhya – which in this context means knowledge of the Self in a general way – to the way of yoga, which here means the way of action. This term yoga presents difficulties in the Gita because it means different things at different times, and many definitions are given of this all-purpose term. But for several chapters the topic under discussion has been the active spiritual life, or karma yoga, and that is clearly what is meant in this context. Sankhya and yoga might also be translated as “theory and practice.” (Location 1236)
The last three verses of the chapter describe a state of profound meditation called samadhi. When meditation becomes very deep, breathing becomes slow, steady, and even, and the windows of the senses close to all outward sensations. Next the faculties of the mind quiet down, resting from their usually frantic activity; even the primal emotions of desire, fear, and anger subside. When all these sensory and emotional tides have ceased to flow, then the spirit is free, mukta – at least for the time being. It has entered the state called samadhi. (Location 1255)
Samadhi can come and go; generally it can be entered only in a long period of meditation and after many years of ardent endeavor. But one verse (5:28) adds the significant word sada, “always.” Once this state of deep concentration becomes established, the person lives in spiritual freedom, or moksha, permanently. This is extremely rare. Mystics of the West as well as the East have attained brief glimpses of unity, but very few can be said to have dwelt in it permanently, as if it were their natural habitat. In the West the most prominent figures are Meister Eckhart, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross, though there have been others. In the Hindu tradition there is a long line of saints and mystics who have tried to communicate something of the nature of this union with Reality or God, from the unknown recorders of the Upanishads through the Buddha, Shankara, and Meera, to Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharshi. (Location 1259)
The immature think that knowledge and action are different, but the wise see them as the same. (Location 1275)
Those who possess this wisdom have equal regard for all. They see the same Self in a spiritual aspirant and an outcaste, in an elephant, a cow, and a dog. 19 Such people have mastered life. With even mind they rest in Brahman, who is perfect and is everywhere the same. 20 They are not elated by good fortune nor depressed by bad. With mind established in Brahman, they are free from delusion. 21 Not dependent on any external support, they realize the joy of spiritual awareness. With consciousness unified through meditation, they live in abiding joy. (Location 1301)
Closing their eyes, steadying their breathing, and focusing their attention on the center of spiritual consciousness, 28 the wise master their senses, mind, and intellect through meditation. Self-realization is their only goal. Freed from selfish desire, fear, and anger, they live in freedom always. 29 Knowing me as the friend of all creatures, the Lord of the universe, the end of all offerings and all spiritual disciplines, they attain eternal peace. (Location 1314)
In the Gita, the word yogi often has a more modest definition: it can mean a person who does his or her job with detachment from the rewards (6:1), or it can be rendered as “one who has attained the goal of meditation.” For yogi literally means “one who is accomplished in yoga,” and yoga means “integration of the spirit.” In this sense, yoga means wholeness or the process of becoming whole at the deepest spiritual level. The word yoga is also often used as a synonym for raja yoga, the practice of meditation as taught by Patanjali; for meditation is the direct means of becoming integrated, united with one’s truest, deepest Self. Thus a yogi, among other things, is a person who is an adept at meditation. (Location 1328)
In climbing this mountain, willpower, self-help, intense personal effort, are absolute essentials. The literal translation of verse 5 is “one should lift oneself up by one’s Self” – a play on the word atman, which can mean the highest Self as well as self in the ordinary sense. One’s self is thus one’s friend or one’s own enemy. The “lower self,” as Western mystics sometimes call it, is self-will – will in the negative, selfish sense. An unruly will twisted toward self-aggrandizement is an enemy lurking right inside the fort, where it can do the most damage. But those who “have conquered themselves by themselves” have their truest friend in the Self. Only those who have genuine self-discipline, who are “self-conquered,” live in peace. (Location 1340)
How is this self-conquest to be made? Very simply, the Gita teaches that the mind must be made one-pointed through the practice of meditation. This is the basic technique. In the Gita we do not see the tendency for elaboration, for ritual and mystery, that we sometimes find in the Hindu tradition. (Location 1349)
Meditation is an internal discipline to make the mind one-pointed, absolutely concentrated. (Location 1354)
The Gita, however, recommends the middle path. Success in meditation, Krishna says, comes neither to those who eat or sleep too much nor to those who eat or sleep too little. The body should be neither overindulged nor treated harshly – the same recommendation the Buddha was to offer later, after many years of severe asceticism. (Location 1362)
Once it is at home in the depths of contemplation, the mind becomes steady, like an upright, unflickering flame in a windless place. In this deep meditation, and only there, can the human being find true fulfillment. Then “the still mind touches Brahman and enjoys bliss.” (Location 1367)
Krishna admits that the mind is terribly hard to train, but he maintains that it can be done through regular practice if one has detachment. (Location 1373)
he tells Arjuna that he must do it for himself, through hard work and detachment from private, personal motives. (Location 1374)
Affectionately, Krishna assures Arjuna that no attempt to improve his spiritual condition could possibly be a wasted effort. (Location 1380)
For aspirants who want to climb the mountain of spiritual awareness, the path is selfless work; for those who have ascended to yoga the path is stillness and peace. 4 When a person has freed himself from attachment to the results of work, and from desires for the enjoyment of sense objects, he ascends to the unitive (Location 1391)
Those who aspire to the state of yoga should seek the Self in inner solitude through meditation. With body and mind controlled they should constantly practice one-pointedness, free from expectations and attachment to material possessions. (Location 1404)
Select a clean spot, neither too high nor too low, and seat yourself firmly on a cloth, a deerskin, and kusha grass. 12 Then, once seated, strive to still your thoughts. Make your mind one-pointed in meditation, and your heart will be purified. 13 Hold your body, head, and neck firmly in a straight line, and keep your eyes from wandering. 14 With all fears dissolved in the peace of the Self and all desires dedicated to Brahman, controlling the mind and fixing it on me, sit in meditation with me as your only goal. 15 With senses and mind constantly controlled through meditation, united with the Self within, an aspirant attains nirvana, the state of abiding joy and peace in me. 16 Arjuna, those who (Location 1407)
When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place. 20 In the still mind, in the depths of meditation, the Self reveals itself. Beholding the Self by means of the Self, an aspirant knows the joy and peace of complete fulfillment. (Location 1418)
The practice of meditation frees one from all affliction. This is the path of yoga. Follow it with determination and sustained enthusiasm. 24 Renouncing wholeheartedly all selfish desires and expectations, use your will to control the senses. 25 Little by little, through patience and repeated effort, the mind will become stilled in the Self. (Location 1424)
It is true that the mind is restless and difficult to control. But it can be conquered, Arjuna, through regular practice and detachment. 36 Those who lack self-control will find it difficult to progress in meditation; but those who are self-controlled, striving earnestly through the right means, will attain the goal. (Location 1443)
In this context, however, jnana is the standard term for the highest kind of knowledge: not scholarship or book-learning but direct knowledge of God, spiritual wisdom. If we take jnana in this sense, we are not left with an obvious meaning for vijnana, a “more intense kind of jnana.” Ramakrishna takes vijnana to mean an intimate, practical familiarity with God, the ability to carry through in daily affairs with the more abstract understanding that is jnana. Ramakrishna says, “One who has merely heard of fire has ajnana, ignorance. One who has seen fire has jnana. But one who has actually built a fire and cooked on it has vijnana.” (Location 1471)
Though the word is not used in the Gita, the idea of the world as Krishna’s lila, his play, became a cherished theme of later Hinduism. Krishna, it is said, created the world in play: just as a child might desire to have companions to play with, Krishna desired companions, and made the world. Krishna participates in the game of life; his divine qualities shine through in the world wherever there is excellence of any kind. He is, he tells Arjuna, the essence of every created thing: the sapidity of water, the brightness of fire, the effort of the spiritual aspirant. This may be what is meant by the vijnana of our title – the mystic’s vision of the divine as present here and now is perhaps the real meaning of the term. (Location 1494)
Maya is also the outward look of things, the passing show that conceals immortal being. Maya can be both delightful and dangerous, alluring and yet treacherous. (Location 1504)
Moha, which means confusion or delusion, is something like dreaming while awake, “living in a dream.” The duality of attachment and aversion (love and hate) beguiles the mind into this moha-swoon right at birth (7:27). Knowing Krishna, and devotion to him, is the way beyond this delusion. Thus chapter 7 contrasts wisdom (jnana and vijnana) with the delusion (moha) of spiritual ignorance. (Location 1509)