More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The three gunas—sattva, or illumination and truth, rajas,
THE BLESSED LORD SAID: Although you mean well, Arjuna, your sorrow is sheer delusion. Wise men do not grieve for the dead or for the living. Never was there a time when I did not exist, or you, or these kings; nor will there come a time when we cease to be.
Nonbeing can never be; being can never not be.
THE BLESSED LORD SAID: When a man gives up all desires that emerge from the mind, and rests contented in the Self by the Self, he is called a man of firm wisdom. He whose mind is untroubled by any misfortune, whose craving for pleasures has disappeared, who is free from greed, fear, anger, who is unattached to all things, who neither grieves nor rejoices if good or if bad things happen — that man is a man of firm wisdom.
If a man keeps dwelling on sense-objects, attachment to them arises; from attachment, desire flares up; from desire, anger is born; from anger, confusion follows; from confusion, weakness of memory; weak memory—weak understanding; weak understanding — ruin.
In this world there are two main paths: the yoga of understanding, for contemplative men; and for men who are active, the yoga of action.
Though the unwise cling to their actions, watching for results, the wise are free of attachments, and act for the well-being of the whole world.
As a fire is obscured by smoke, as a mirror is covered by dust, as a fetus is wrapped in its membrane, so wisdom is obscured by desire. Wisdom is destroyed, Arjuna, by the constant enemy of the wise, which, flaring up as desire, blazes with insatiable flames. Desire dwells in the senses, the mind, and the understanding; in all these it obscures wisdom and perplexes the embodied Self. Therefore you must first control your senses, Arjuna; then destroy this evil that prevents you from ever knowing the truth.
Although I am unborn, deathless, the infinite Lord of all beings, through my own wondrous power I come into finite form. Whenever righteousness falters and chaos threatens to prevail, I take on a human body and manifest myself on earth. In order to protect the good, to destroy the doers of evil, to ensure the triumph of righteousness, in every age I am born. Whoever knows, profoundly, my divine presence on earth is not reborn when he leaves the body, but comes to me. Released from greed, fear, anger, absorbed in me and made pure by the practice of wisdom, many have attained my own state of
...more
wisdom is the final goal of every action, Arjuna.
He who performs his duty with no concern for results is the true man of yoga—not he who refrains from action. Know that right action itself is renunciation, Arjuna; in the yoga of action, you first renounce your own selfish will.
The Message of the Gita by Mohandas K. Gandhi
