The Bhagavad Gita

by Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

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.

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. If they seem to embrace contradictions, that is because they do not try to smooth over the seams of these experiences.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

“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.

The Self-realized man or woman is not motivated by personal desires – in other words, by any desire for kama, personal satisfaction.

16 The impermanent has no reality; reality lies in the eternal. Those who have seen the boundary between these two have attained the end of all knowledge. 17 Realize that which pervades the universe and is indestructible; no power can affect this unchanging, imperishable reality.

19 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?

27 Death is inevitable for the living; birth is inevitable for the dead.

39 You have heard the intellectual explanation of Sankhya, Arjuna; now listen to the principles of yoga. By practicing these you can break through the bonds of karma. 40 On this path effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure. Even a little effort toward spiritual awareness will protect you from the greatest fear.

47 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. 48 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.

70 As rivers flow into the ocean but cannot make the vast ocean overflow, so flow the streams of the sense-world into the sea of peace that is the sage. But this is not so with the desirer of desires.

We cannot hope to escape karma by refraining from our duties: even to survive in the world, we must act.

35 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.

13 The distinctions of caste, guna, and karma have come from me. I am their cause, but I myself am changeless and beyond all action. 14 Actions do not cling to me because I am not attached to their results.

18 The wise see that there is action in the midst of inaction and inaction in the midst of action. Their consciousness is unified, and every act is done with complete awareness.

16 But ignorance is destroyed by knowledge of the Self within. The light of this knowledge shines like the sun, revealing the supreme Brahman.

Karma yoga, he says, is the path for those who wish to climb the mountain of Self-realization; for those who have reached the summit, the path is shama, the peace of contemplation. At the beginning of the spiritual life, great exertion is required; as the summit is approached, though the climb gets no easier, the dimension of contemplation or stillness is added. Many spiritual traditions, of course, use this image when speaking of the religious quest. The mountaintop is the place where the holy, like Moses, commune with God; and St. John of the Cross describes the path to union with God as climbing the mountain of Carmel.

5 Reshape yourself through the power of your will; never let yourself be degraded by self-will. The will is the only friend of the Self, and the will is the only enemy of the Self. 6 To those who have conquered themselves, the will is a friend. But it is the enemy of those who have not found the Self within them.

The word maya appears in the Rig Veda, the most ancient of the Vedas, and Purusha is a recurring theme in the Upanishads. The Gita is a halfway point between the spontaneous insights of the Upanishads and the later, highly formalized philosophical systems. In the Gita we find an organized presentation of these and other key concepts without a cumbersome technical explanation.

27 Delusion arises from the duality of attraction and aversion, Arjuna; every creature is deluded by these from birth. 28 But those who have freed themselves from all wrongdoing are firmly established in worship of me. Their actions are pure, and they are free from the delusion caused by the pairs of opposites.

To die during the period in which the sun is moving southward was considered inauspicious; dying during the period after the winter solstice, when the sun is moving back north, meant the soul might take the northern path which leads to immortality. In the Gita and the Upanishads, this “northern path” has come to signify that the soul has been released from karma and need not be reborn.

There is a state of being, however, that is higher than the perishable cosmos, which is not born and does not die the cosmic death. Here (8:20) it is called simply avyakta, the Unmanifest. This is the supreme goal of all living things, and it is Krishna’s home (8:21). Returning to this final resting place, the soul enters into immortal bliss and is not reborn. –D.M.

17 Those who understand the cosmic laws know that the Day of Brahma ends after a thousand yugas and the Night of Brahma ends after a thousand yugas. 18 When the day of Brahma dawns, forms are brought forth from the Unmanifest; when the night of Brahma comes, these forms merge in the Formless again. 19 This multitude of beings is created and destroyed again and again in the succeeding days and nights of Brahma. 20 But beyond this formless state there is another, unmanifested reality, which is eternal and is not dissolved when the cosmos is destroyed. 21 Those who realize life’s supreme goal know that I am unmanifested and unchanging. Having come home to me, they never return to separate existence.

26 These two paths, the light and the dark, are said to be eternal, leading some to liberation and others to rebirth. 27 Once you have known these two paths, Arjuna, you can never be deluded again. Attain this knowledge through perseverance in yoga. 28 There is merit in studying the scriptures, in selfless service, austerity, and giving, but the practice of meditation carries you beyond all these to the supreme abode of the highest Lord.

It makes the point that whatever a person deeply desires – whatever he or she worships – will eventually be attained, in some life or other. In particular, to have real, selfless love, regardless of the object, is to love Krishna, the ultimate good. This kind of love, called bhakti, is far more potent than observances and rituals – a point the Gita is slowly revealing.

No one who has genuine love and devotion can perish. The meaning here is taken to be “perish” in a spiritual sense, come to spiritual harm. The message of this chapter is simple. It contains no philosophy and only a little theology. The one message is: anyone who has real love, love for the Lord of Love who is in all creatures, will in the end attain the goal.

16 I am the ritual and the sacrifice; I am true medicine and the mantram. I am the offering and the fire which consumes it, and the one to whom it is offered.

20 Those who follow the rituals given in the Vedas, who offer sacrifices and take soma, free themselves from evil and attain the vast heaven of the gods, where they enjoy celestial pleasures. 21 When they have enjoyed these fully, their merit is exhausted and they return to this land of death. Thus observing Vedic rituals but caught in an endless chain of desires, they come and go.

27 Whatever you do, make it an offering to me – the food you eat, the sacrifices you make, the help you give, even your suffering.

11 Out of compassion I destroy the darkness of their ignorance. From within them I light the lamp of wisdom and dispel all darkness from their lives.

20 I am the true Self in the heart of every creature, Arjuna, and the beginning, middle, and end of their existence.

22 Among scriptures I am the Sama Veda, and among the lesser gods I am Indra. Among the senses I am the mind, and in living beings I am consciousness.

Samadhi is the word used by Patanjali in his classic work, the Yoga Sutras, to describe the final stage in meditation, in which the mind is completely concentrated and a superconscious mode of knowing comes into play. Patanjali speaks of many different kinds of samadhi, but for practical purposes we may speak of two: savikalpa and nirvikalpa. Arjuna’s vision begins with savikalpa samadhi, in which he sees God in a personal manifestation. Then, as he passes into nirvikalpa samadhi, Arjuna sees all forms disappearing into God, until only a supernatural fire consuming the entire phenomenal world is left.

13 There, within the body of the God of gods, Arjuna saw all the manifold forms of the universe united as one. 14 Filled with amazement, his hair standing on end in ecstasy, he bowed before the Lord with joined palms and spoke these words. ARJUNA 15 O Lord, I see within your body all the gods and every kind of living creature. I see Brahma, the Creator, seated on a lotus; I see the ancient sages and the celestial serpents. 16 I see infinite mouths and arms, stomachs and eyes, and you are embodied in every form. I see you everywhere, without beginning, middle, or end. You are the Lord of all creation, and the cosmos is your body.

The consummation of this knowledge was to know that the Self within was one with Brahman, the ultimate reality pervading all things. This was encapsulated in the statement Tat tvam asi, “You are that” – that imperishable being, that immortal Reality. Brahman, the nameless, formless Godhead, could be known only in the superconscious state.

Just as physics no longer regards matter and energy as essentially separate, the Gita would not regard matter and mind as separate; they are different aspects of prakriti, the underlying “stuff” of existence.

27 They alone see truly who see the Lord the same in every creature, who see the deathless in the hearts of all that die. 28 Seeing the same Lord everywhere, they do not harm themselves or others. Thus they attain the supreme goal.

3 Our faith conforms to our nature, Arjuna. Human nature is made of faith. A person is what his shraddha is.