Arjuna said: O Krishna, you speak of renunciation of actions; at the same time, you advise their performance. Of these two, which is the better path? Please tell me for certain.
Salvation is found by both renunciation and performance of action. But of these two, the Yoga of works is better than renunciation of works.
O Mighty-armed (Arjuna), he is to be known as a constant sannyasi (renunciant), easily liberated from all entanglements, who has neither likes nor dislikes because he is unbound by the dualities (Nature’s pairs of opposites).
Not sages but children speak of differences between the path of wisdom (Sankhya) and the path of spiritual activity (Yoga). He who is truly established in either one receives the fruits of both.
The state attained by the wise (the jnana yogis who successfully follow the wisdom path of discrimination—Sankhya) is also attained by the doers (the karma yogis who succeed through the performance of the scientific methods of yoga). He has truth who beholds as one both wisdom and right action.
But renunciation, O Mighty-armed (Arjuna)! is difficult to achieve without God-uniting actions (yoga). By the practice of yoga, the muni (“he whose mind is absorbed in God”) quickly attains the Infinite.
No taint (karmic involvement) touches the sanctified man of action who is engaged in divine communion (yoga), who has conquered ego consciousness (by attaining soul perception), who is victorious over his senses, and who feels his self as the Self existing in all beings.
The cognizer of truth, united to God, automatically perceives, “I myself do nothing”—even though he sees, hears, touches, smells, eats, moves, sleeps, breathes, speaks, rejects, holds, opens or closes his eyes—realizing that it is the senses (activated by Nature) that work amid sense objects.
The cognizer of truth, united to God, automatically perceives, “I myself do nothing”—even though he sees, hears, touches, smells, eats, moves, sleeps, breathes, speaks, rejects, holds, opens or closes his eyes—realizing that it is the senses (activated by Nature) that work amid sense objects.
Like unto the lotus leaf that remains unsullied by water, the yogi who performs actions, forswearing attachment and surrendering his actions to the Infinite, remains unbound by entanglement in the senses.
For sanctification of the ego, yogis perform actions solely with (the instruments of action) the body, the mind, discrimination, or even the senses, forsaking attachment (disallowing ego involvement, with its attachments and desires).
The God-united yogi, abandoning attachment to fruits of actions, attains the peace unshakable (peace born of self-discipline). The man who is not united to God is ruled by desires; through such attachment he remains in bondage.
The embodied soul, controller of the senses, having mentally relinquished all activities, remains blissfully in the bodily city of nine gates—neither performing actions himself nor making others (the senses) perform actions.
The Lord God does not create in men the consciousness of being doers of actions, nor does He cause actions by them, nor does He entangle them with the fruits of actions. Delusive Cosmic Nature is the originator of all these.
The All-Pervading takes no account of anyone’s virtue or sin. Wisdom is eclipsed by cosmic delusion; mankind is thereby bewildered.
But in those who have banished ignorance by Self-knowledge, their wisdom, like the illuminating sun, makes manifest the Supreme Self.
Their thoughts immersed in That (Spirit), their souls one with Spirit, their sole allegiance and devotion given to Spirit, their beings purified from poisonous delusion by the antidote of wisdom—such men reach the state of nonreturn. Thinking on That, merged in That, established in That, solely devoted to That, they go whence there is no return, their sins dispelled by wisdom.
Self-realized sages behold with an equal eye a learned and humble Brahmin, a cow, an elephant, a dog, and an outcaste.
The relativities of existence (birth and death, pleasure and pain) have been overcome, even here in this world, by those of fixed equal-mindedness. Thereby are they enthroned in Spirit—verily, the taintless, the perfectly balanced Spirit.
The knower of Spirit, abiding in the Supreme Being, with unswerving discrimination, free from delusion, is thus neither jubilant at pleasant experiences nor downcast by unpleasant experiences.
Unattracted to the sensory world, the yogi experiences the ever new joy inherent in the Self. Engaged in divine union of the soul with Spirit, he attains bliss indestructible.
O Son of Kunti (Arjuna)! because sense pleasures spring from outward contacts, and have beginning and end (are ephemeral), they are begetters only of misery. No sage seeks happiness from them.
He is truly a yogi who, on this earth and up to the very time of death, is able to master every impulse of desire and wrath. He is a happy man!
Only that yogi who possesses the inner Bliss, who rests on the inner Foundation, who is one with the inner Light, becomes one with Spirit (after attaining freedom from karma connected with the physical, astral, and ideational bodies). He attains complete liberation in Spirit (even while living in the body).
With sins obliterated, doubts removed, senses subjugated, the rishis (sages), contributing to the welfare of mankind, attain emancipation in Spirit.
Renunciants who are desireless and wrathless, mind-controlled, and Self-realized, are completely free both in this world and in the beyond.
A muni—he who holds liberation as the sole object of life and therefore frees himself from longings, fears, and wrath—controls his senses, mind, and intelligence and removes their external contacts by (a technique of) making even, or neutralizing, the currents of prana and apana that manifest as inhalation and exhalation in the nostrils. He fixes his gaze at the middle of the two eyebrows (thus converting the dual current of the physical vision into the single current of the omniscient astral eye). Such a muni wins complete emancipation.
A muni—he who holds liberation as the sole object of life and therefore frees himself from longings, fears, and wrath—controls his senses, mind, and intelligence and removes their external contacts by (a technique of) making even, or neutralizing, the currents of prana and apana that manifest as inhalation and exhalation in the nostrils. He fixes his gaze at the middle of the two eyebrows (thus converting the dual current of the physical vision into the single current of the omniscient astral eye). Such a muni wins complete emancipation.
He finds peace who knows Me as the Enjoyer of the holy rites (yajnas) and of the austerities (offered by devotees), as the Infinite Lord of Creation, and as the Good Friend of all creatures.