The Bhagavad Gita
Page 9
The Blessed One spoke:
2. I consider them to be the best disciplined who focus their minds on me, who, constant in their discipline, worship me with the greatest faith.
3. But those who worship the imperishable, the unmanifest, which is beyond words, which is found everywhere and is inconceivable, sublime on the mountaintop, unmoving and firm,
4. who have gained complete control over the senses and equanimity toward all beings, rejoicing in the welfare of all beings, they also attain to me.
5. There is greater distress for those who have set their thoughts on the unmanifest, because it is difficult for those who are embodied to reach a goal that is itself unmanifest.
6. But those who surrender all of their actions to me and who are focused on me alone, who meditate on me with yoga, and worship me,
7. I will lift them up out of the ocean of the cycle of death and rebirth, Arjuna, once they have set their thoughts on me.
8. Keep your mind fixed on me. Make your intelligence enter into me. Thus you will come to dwell in me, without question.
9. But if you cannot concentrate your thoughts firmly on me, then, Arjuna, try to reach me through the diligent practice of yoga.
10. And if you are incapable of this sort of practice, then make it your goal to perform action for my sake. If you perform your ritual and social actions for my sake, you will find success!
11. And if you are unable to do even that, then simply resort to me in yoga. Renounce the fruit of all of your actions. Restrain yourself, and act!
12. For in fact wisdom is better than practice, and meditation is better than wisdom. Abandoning the fruit of action is better than meditation, for from this abandonment peace follows immediately.
13. Let there be no hatred in you. Offer friendship and compassion to all living things. Give up thoughts of “I” and “mine.” Accept both pleasure and sorrow alike, and endure all things with patience.
14. The yogin who is always content and self-restrained and firm in his resolve, and who directs his mind and his awareness upon me—he is my devotee, and he is dear to me.
15. The world does not tremble in fear before him, nor does he tremble in fear before the world. He has freed himself from the disturbances of joy or impatience or fear, and so he is dear to me.
16. He is indifferent to circumstance. He is pure and capable. He is a detached witness, untroubled by events. He does not initiate new engagements—he is my devotee, and he is dear to me.
17. He does not delight in things, nor does he loathe them. He knows neither anguish nor longing. Indifferent to good fortune and to bad fortune alike, he is a man of devotion, and he is dear to me.
18. In the presence of an enemy or a friend, he is impartial to both, just as he is in the presence of honor or dishonor, or heat or cold, or pleasure or sorrow. He is impartial and unattached.
19. A silent sage for whom blame and praise are the same, content with whatever happens, homeless but firm in his mind, he is a man of devotion, and he is dear to me.
20. In fact, all who worship this divine nectar of dharma that I have now declared to you, all who have placed their faith in this teaching, all such devotees for whom I am the supreme goal are dear to me—even more!
THIRTEEN
The Blessed One spoke:
1. Arjuna, this body of yours is known as the field, and one who knows it as such is called the knower of the field. This is what those who have studied this doctrine say.
2. And know also, Arjuna, that in all fields I alone am the knower of the field. Knowledge of both of these—the field and the knower of the field—is what I consider true knowledge.
3. Hear from me briefly what this field is, and what its features and variations are, and where it comes from, and who the knower of the field is, and what his powers are.
4. It has been sung in many ways by the ancient seers and in various meters and on many occasions, and in the words of the verses, the sūtras, on Brahman. It has been extensively argued and it has now become settled doctrine.
5. There are the gross elements, the ego-sense, consciousness, unmanifest nature, the eleven senses, and the five sense realms.
6. There are desire and loathing, pleasure and pain, the physical body, awareness, steadfastness: this is a brief description of the field and its manifestations.
7. Knowledge is said to consist in the absence of pride and deceit, of nonviolence and patience and upright honesty, of service to one’s teacher, purity, stability, and self-control,
8. dispassion with regard to sense objects, and the absence of an ego-sense. There should also be an accurate perception of the misfortunes that inevitably come with birth and death, and old age and disease and sorrow,
9. the absence of attachment or affection toward a son or a wife or a home, and all the rest; the constant practice of equanimity, whether events are wished for or not wished for,
10. and there should be undeviating devotion, along with yoga focused on me alone, a preference for solitary places, and a distaste for large crowds.
11. Finally, there should be constant attention to knowledge of the self, and a perception of the purpose of the knowledge of reality—all of this is called true knowledge. What differs from this is just ignorance.
12. I will now teach you what you should know. Once one knows this, one attains immortality. It is Brahman, supreme and without beginning. It is said to be neither being nor nonbeing.
13. Its hands and feet are everywhere, its eyes and heads and faces everywhere. Its ears are everywhere. It stands still, covering everything in the world.
14. It appears to have all of the sense qualities, and yet it does not have sense organs. It is detached, and yet it supports all things. It has no qualities,1 and yet it enjoys them all.
15. It is at once outside and inside all creatures. It moves and it does not move. It cannot be explained because it is too subtle. It is both far away and very near.
16. It is undivided and indivisible, and yet it appears to be divided among all beings. It is understood to be the support of all beings, and yet it devours them and brings them forth again.
17. It is the light of lights, and it is said to be beyond darkness. It is knowledge, and the object of knowledge, and the goal of knowledge. It is set firmly in the heart of all things.
18. Thus I have explained briefly the field, and knowledge of the field, and the goal of that knowledge. My devotee understands this and enters into my essence.
19. Material nature and the spirit of man2 are both without beginning—know this doctrine! And know also that their modifications and qualities, the guas, arise within the natural world.
20. Nature is said to be the cause of action insofar as actions have effects and instruments and agents. But insofar as there is experience of pleasure and pain, the cause of action is said to be the spirit in man.
21. For the human spirit dwells within nature and experiences the qualities that arise from nature. Its attachment to these qualities is the cause of birth in either good wombs or bad ones.
22. The great lord, also said to be the supreme soul, is also known as the human spirit when it dwells in the body: he is the one who experiences the world, and supports it, and observes it, and consents to it.
23. Whoever knows well the human spirit and nature, with its qualities—no matter what his present condition is—he is not reborn again.
24. By meditating on the self, some men see the self, by means of the self. Others do so by means of the practice, the yoga, of Sākhya reasoning, and still others by means of the yoga of action.
25. But others, not knowing these doctrines, nevertheless hear them from others and revere them. They take the traditional revelation of the Vedas as their guide, and so they too cross beyond death.
26. Any being that is born, whether inanimate or animate, is born from the union of the field and the knower of the field. Arjuna, you should know this doctrine!
27. Whoever is able to see in all bein
gs the supreme lord standing there, among those who are dying while he himself does not die—he sees things as they are!
28. For when he sees the lord dwelling everywhere, and everywhere the same, he himself does not harm the self in others. Thus he goes to the highest goal.
29. Whoever sees that all actions are performed everywhere by nature alone, and that the self is not the agent—he sees things as they are!
30. When he recognizes the oneness that dwells within the diversity of all beings, and that from this all beings disperse—then he unites with Brahman.
31. Because it has no beginning, because it has no real properties, this supreme self is eternal and unchanging. Arjuna, though it dwells in the body, it does not act, nor is it defiled by action.
32. Just as all-pervading space—so subtle!—is not defiled by the things that dwell in it, so the self that pervades the body is not defiled by it.
33. Arjuna, just as only one sun illuminates this entire world, so the lord of the field alone illuminates this entire field.
34. Those who know the difference between the field and the knower of the field, and who know, with the eye of knowledge, this doctrine concerning the liberation of all beings from nature—they go to the highest!
FOURTEEN
The Blessed One spoke:
1. I will now declare still more concerning this highest knowledge, the supreme among all doctrines. Knowing it, all of the holy men have gone from this world to highest perfection.
2. When they rely on this knowledge and have come to have the same virtues and duties that I have, when a world cycle arises they are not reborn, and they are not disturbed when one collapses.
3. The great Brahman is my womb. I plant my seed in it. The origin of all beings originates from this, Arjuna!
4. For the forms that originate within all of the wombs of the world, Arjuna, the great Brahman is their womb, and I am the Father who gives the seed.
5. Clarity, passion, dark inertia. These are the qualities1 that originate from nature. Arjuna, they bind the unchanging embodied self within a body.
6. Among these, clarity because it is untainted radiates light and good health. It binds one through attachment to pleasure, and through attachment to knowledge.
7. Passion is essentially desire. Know that it arises from attachment to craving. Arjuna, it binds the embodied soul through attachment to action.
8. And know that dark inertia is born of ignorance. It deludes all embodied souls. It binds the soul through carelessness, laziness, and sleep.
9. Clarity induces attachment to pleasure, and passion to action, Arjuna. But dark inertia obscures knowledge and induces attachment to carelessness.
10. Clarity increases by overcoming passion and dark inertia. Passion increases by overcoming clarity and dark inertia, and dark inertia increases by overcoming clarity and passion.
11. When the light that is knowledge appears in all of the gateways of the body, then one will know that clarity has increased.
12. Greed, strenuous effort, endless involvement in action, restlessness, longing—Arjuna, these arise when passion increases.
13. And, Arjuna, when dark inertia increases, then these things arise—obscurity, lack of effort, carelessness, and finally delusion.
14. If an embodied soul dies at a moment when clarity prevails, then he attains to the untainted worlds of those who know this highest truth.
15. But if one dies while in a state of passion, one is reborn among those who are attached to action. And if one dies while in a state of dark inertia, one is reborn in wombs of the deluded.
16. It is said that the fruit of an action that is done well consists of clarity and purity, and that the fruit of passion is suffering, and that the fruit of dark inertia is ignorance.
17. Wisdom is born from clarity, just as greed is born from passion, and carelessness and delusion are born from dark inertia.
18. Those who stand firm in clarity rise upward. Those who are passionate stand in the middle of things. Those who incline to dark inertia go downward, dwelling in the lowest conditions of nature.
19. When one becomes clear in one’s vision and recognizes that there is no agent other than the conditions of nature, the guas, and when one knows what is higher than any of these conditions, then one enters into my state.
20. When the embodied soul transcends these three conditions of nature that are the origins of the body, then he is freed from the sorrows that accompany birth and death and old age, and he attains immortality.
Arjuna spoke:
21. Lord, what are the signs that identify the man who has transcended these three conditions? How does he go about in the world? And how does he get beyond these three conditions?
The Blessed One spoke:
22. Arjuna, as for illumination and activity and even delusion—he does not experience aversion when they arise, nor does he experience longing when they disappear.
23. Sitting apart like a witness, he is not disturbed by the conditions of nature. He merely thinks to himself, “These conditions, these guas, unfold.” He stands firm. He is untroubled.
24. He stays within himself, indifferent to sorrow and pleasure. A clod of earth, a rock, a piece of gold—they are all the same to him! He is wise for whom a friend and a stranger are both alike, for whom blame and praise of himself are alike!
25. Indifferent to both honor and disgrace, impartial to allies and enemies alike, renouncing all intrigues, such a man is said to have transcended the conditions of nature.
26. The man who worships me with the undeviating yoga of devotion, and who has transcended these conditions of nature, is ready to become Brahman.
27. For I am the foundation of Brahman, of the immortal and the imperishable, and of the eternal law, dharma, and of absolute bliss!
FIFTEEN
The Blessed One spoke:
1. There is an eternal fig tree, with its roots above and its branches below, and they say that the Vedic hymns are its leaves. Whoever knows this tree indeed knows the Vedas.
2. First downward and then upward spread its branches. They are nourished by the conditions of nature. Its sprouts are the sense objects, and below are its roots, which extend down into the world of men, all bound up with their actions.
3. Its form cannot be perceived here as it really is—neither its end nor its beginning nor its foundation. This tree with its fully grown roots—one should cut it down with the strong ax of detachment!1
4. And then one should seek out that place where those have gone who do not return again, saying, “I resort to that primordial person from whom the ancient process of creation has flowed forth.”
5. To that eternal place go the undeluded, those who have neither pride nor confusion, who have overcome the harmful effects of attachment. They dwell constantly on what relates to the self. They extinguish desire. They free themselves from the dualities that are experienced as pleasure and pain.
6. Neither the sun nor the moon, nor fire, illuminates that place that they go to who do not return again. That place is my highest dwelling.
7. In the world of the living, one small portion of me becomes a living being. It remains eternal. It draws to itself the things of nature—the five sense organs and the mind.
8. When the lord takes on a body, or when he leaves one behind, he takes these things away with him when he goes, just as the wind carries fragrances away from their source.
9. Hearing and sight and touch and taste and smell—the lord governs these things and the mind as well. Indeed, he savors sense objects.
10. But the deluded do not recognize him as he leaves a body, or as he dwells in one, or as he experiences the body, engaged as it is in the conditions of nature. But those who have the eye of knowledge see him there!
11. Yogins who exert themselves see that he is present within themselves. But no matter how much they exert themselves, the thoughtless do not see him, because they have not yet perfected themselves.
12. The
radiance that belongs to the sun which illuminates the entire world, and that radiance that is in the moon and in fire—know that all this radiance is mine!
13. I penetrate the earth, and I sustain all beings with my power. And I nourish all the plants of the world. And I have become Soma, whose essence is nectar!
14. I am the fire that dwells in all men, and I dwell in the body of all that have breath. Joined together with the exhalations and the inhalations of the breath, I cook and digest the four kinds of food.
15. I have also entered into the heart of all beings. From me come memory and knowledge and the give-and-take of debate. I am the very thing in the Vedas that is worth knowing. I am the author of the Vedānta,2 and I am the knower of the Vedas.
16. There are two divine persons in the world. One is perishable and the other is imperishable. The perishable consists of all beings whatsoever. The imperishable is called what dwells on the mountaintop.
17. But there is another beside these two, the highest spirit, called the supreme self. He is the eternal lord who enters and supports the three worlds.
18. Since I transcend the perishable, and since I am higher than the imperishable, so in the world and in the Veda I am celebrated as the highest spirit.
19. Whoever without delusion thus knows me as the highest spirit knows everything! Arjuna, he worships me with his entire being.
20. Thus have I taught you this most secret doctrine. Blameless Arjuna, once one has become awakened to this doctrine, then one will have become awakened! And all that one has needed to do will have been done!
SIXTEEN
The Blessed One spoke:
1. Fearlessness, purity of character; steadfastness in the yoga of knowledge; gift-giving, self-control, and sacrifice; study of the Vedas and austerity and honesty;
2. nonviolence and truth and no anger; renunciation and peacefulness and no slander; compassion for all beings and no greed; gentleness and modesty and no fickleness;
3. radiance, patience, resolve, purity; no deception and no exaggerated pride—Arjuna, these are the qualities of a man who has been born into a divine destiny.