Bhagavad Gita Chapter 2: The Yoga of Knowledge

Krishna looked down at the man sitting on the floor of the chariot, at the eyes swimming with tears, at the great bow lying where it had fallen. When he spoke, there was no comfort in it at all.

"From where has this stain come upon you at such an hour? It is not the way of a man who knows what is noble. It does not lead to heaven. It does not even bring you honor on earth. Do not give in to this unmanliness, Partha. It does not become you. Cast off this small weakness of heart and stand up, scorcher of foes."

Arjuna did not stand. "How shall I fight Bhishma and Drona with arrows, Krishna, when they are worthy of my worship? It would be better to live in this world on a beggar's bread than to kill these great-souled teachers. If I killed them, every pleasure I ever tasted afterward would be smeared with their blood.

"And I do not even know which is better, that we should conquer them or that they should conquer us. Those men standing there are the sons of Dhritarashtra, and if we killed them we would not wish to live. My own nature is struck down by the weakness of pity. My mind is confused about what is right. I ask you: tell me for certain what is better. I am your pupil. I have come to you for refuge. Teach me.

"For I do not see what would drive away this grief that dries up my senses, not if I won an unrivalled kingdom on earth, or lordship over the gods themselves."

Then, having said this, Arjuna said one thing more. "I will not fight." And he fell silent.

There, between the two armies, with the whole world waiting for a battle that had not begun, Krishna smiled a little, and began to speak to his despairing friend.

"You grieve for those who should not be grieved for," Krishna said, "and yet you speak the words of wisdom. The wise mourn neither for the living nor for the dead.

"There was never a time when I was not, nor you, nor these kings of men, and none of us shall ever cease to be hereafter. As the one who dwells in the body passes through childhood and youth and old age in this body, so he passes into another body. The steady man is not troubled by that.

"The touch of things upon the senses, son of Kunti, brings cold and heat, pleasure and pain. They come and they go. They do not last. Bear them. The man whom they do not disturb, who is the same in pain and in pleasure, that steady one is fit for deathlessness.

"What is unreal has no being; what is real never ceases to be. Those who have seen the truth have seen the end of both. Know that That by which all this is pervaded is indestructible. No one can bring about the destruction of the imperishable. It is only these bodies that come to an end. The dweller in the body is eternal, indestructible, without measure. Therefore fight, Bharata.

"He who thinks that this slays, and he who thinks that this is slain, neither of them understands. It does not slay, and it is not slain. It is not born, and it never dies. It has not come into being and will not cease to be. Unborn, everlasting, ancient, it is not killed when the body is killed.

"Weapons do not cut it. Fire does not burn it. Water does not wet it. Wind does not dry it. It cannot be cut or burned or wetted or dried. It is everlasting, present everywhere, unmoving, the same forever.

"As a man throws away worn-out clothes and puts on others that are new, so the one who dwells in the body throws away worn-out bodies and enters others that are new."

"And even if you think of it as constantly born and constantly dying," Krishna said, "even then, mighty-armed, you should not grieve. For the born, death is certain, and for the dead, birth is certain. Over a thing that cannot be avoided you should not mourn.

"Beings are unmanifest in their beginning, manifest in the middle, and unmanifest again at the end. What is there in this to lament? One man looks upon the Self as a wonder, another speaks of it as a wonder, another hears of it as a wonder, and even having heard, no one understands it at all. The dweller in the body of every man is forever beyond wounding. Therefore you should not grieve for any creature living.

"Look also at your own duty, and do not waver. For a kshatriya there is nothing better than a righteous war. Happy are the warriors, Partha, who find such a battle come to them unsought, an open door to heaven.

"But if you will not fight this righteous war, then, having thrown away your own duty and your good name, you will take sin upon yourself. Men will tell of your dishonor forever, and to one who has been honored, dishonor is worse than dying. The great warriors who thought highly of you will think you left the field in fear. Those who wish you ill will speak of your strength with contempt, and words like those are the heaviest of all sorrows.

"Killed, you will gain heaven. Victorious, you will enjoy the earth. Therefore stand up, son of Kunti, resolved to fight.

"Hold pleasure and pain to be the same, and gain and loss the same, and victory and defeat the same, and then gird yourself for the battle. So you shall take no sin upon you."

"What I have given you so far," Krishna said, "is the reckoning of Sankhya. Now hear the same thing as yoga, and armed with this understanding you will cut through the bondage of works.

"On this path no effort is ever wasted, and nothing is lost by beginning. Even a little of this way of living saves a man from great fear. Here the mind that has resolved is one and undivided. The thoughts of the irresolute are many-branched and endless.

"There are men who delight in the flowery words of the scriptures, who say there is nothing else, whose hearts are full of desire and who hold heaven to be the highest goal. They speak of many particular rites for the sake of power and enjoyment, and their minds, carried away by such talk, never settle in stillness. Rise above the three gunas, Arjuna. Be free of the pairs of opposites, free of the anxiety of getting and keeping, and possessed of your own Self. To the man who has known, all the scriptures are as useful as a well in a country flooded with water.

"You have a right to your action, and no right at all to the fruit of it. Do not let the fruit of action be your motive, and do not be attached to inaction either.

"Established in yoga, do your work, abandoning attachment, the same in success and in failure. That evenness of mind is what yoga means. Mere action is far below the yoga of the understanding, Dhananjaya. Take refuge in the understanding. Pitiable are those who work for a result.

"The man joined to the understanding leaves behind, even in this life, both good deeds and bad. Therefore give yourself to yoga; yoga is skill in action. The wise, joined to the understanding, give up the fruit born of their work, and freed from the bondage of birth they go to the region beyond all suffering. When your understanding has crossed the thicket of delusion, then you will grow indifferent to all that has been heard and all that is yet to be heard. When your understanding stands unmoved and still, no longer shaken by the scriptures, then you shall reach yoga."

Arjuna heard him, and something in the words caught at him, though he was still sitting where he had fallen. He asked the question of a man who wants to know whether such a person has ever actually existed.

"What is the mark of the man whose wisdom is steady, Keshava, of one who is settled in that stillness? How does such a man speak? How does he sit? How does he walk?"

The wise afterward would call that man sthitaprajna, the one of steady wisdom, and would say that Krishna's answer is the portrait of the finished yogin drawn in a handful of lines.

"When a man puts away all the desires that come into his mind, Partha," Krishna said, "and is content in the Self by the Self alone, then he is called steady in wisdom.

"He whose mind is not shaken in sorrow, who does not hunger after pleasure, from whom longing and fear and anger have gone, he is called a sage of settled mind. He who is without attachment anywhere, who neither rejoices when good comes to him nor recoils when evil comes, his wisdom is firmly set.

"And when he draws his senses away from the things of sense on every side, as a tortoise draws in its limbs, then his wisdom is firmly set.

"The objects turn away from a man who fasts from them, but the taste for them remains. Even the taste goes when he has seen the Highest. Yet the senses are violent, son of Kunti, and they carry away by force the mind even of a wise man who is striving. Let him hold them all in check and sit intent on Me. For the man whose senses are in his own hand, his wisdom is steady."

"See how a man is undone," Krishna said. "He broods on the things of sense, and out of that brooding attachment is born. From attachment comes desire, and from desire, anger. From anger comes bewilderment, and from bewilderment the loss of memory, and from the loss of memory the ruin of the understanding, and when the understanding is ruined, the man himself is lost.

"But he who moves among the objects of sense with his senses in hand, free of pulling and pushing, mastered by himself, comes to serenity. In that serenity all his sorrows are ended, for the understanding of the serene-hearted man is quickly established.

"There is no understanding for the man who is not harnessed, and no stillness for him, and for the man without stillness there is no peace, and for the man without peace, where is happiness? When the mind runs after the wandering senses, it carries away his wisdom as the wind carries away a ship upon the water. Therefore, mighty-armed, the man whose senses are drawn back on every side from the things of sense, his wisdom stands firm.

"What is night for all creatures is waking for the man who has learned to rule himself, and what is waking for all creatures is night for the sage who sees.

"The waters come pouring into the sea, and the sea is filled and never moves. So all desires come pouring into the man who has that peace, and he is not moved. Not so the man who runs after what he wants. He who has given up all longing, and walks free of craving and of the words mine and I, comes to peace.

"This is the state of Brahman, Partha. Reaching it, no man is deluded again. Standing in it even at the last hour, a man goes out into the peace of Brahman."

Between the two armies the horses shifted in their harness. Arjuna had not yet picked up his bow, but he was listening now with his whole attention, and this second chapter, which the tradition calls Sankhya Yoga, holds within it almost every seed the rest of the song would grow.