Chapter 12
Bhakti Yoga
The Yoga of Devotion · 20 verses
This chapter is traditionally called Bhakti Yoga, the yoga or disciplined path of bhakti, which means loving devotion to God. It opens with a question from Arjuna.
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Some people worship God as a person, with a form they can see and love. Others worship God as formless: no shape, no body, just pure presence. Arjuna asks which group is the better yogi. Krishna answers that those who fix the mind on Him with form, in constant union and deep faith, are the most joined. He grants that the formless path also reaches the goal, but calls it harder, since we feel we are the body and the formless gives the mind nothing to hold. Krishna then offers a ladder of easier means. Fix the mind on Him; if you cannot, keep returning it to Him again and again; if not, do works for Him; otherwise act and give up the fruit. Then He turns to the marks of the devotee He holds dear: one who hates no being, is friendly and content, the same in pleasure and pain and in honour and dishonour, and offers his mind and heart to Him. The schools differ on how worship of the form and the formless relate. Advaita Vedanta, Vishishtadvaita, and Dvaita each read that relation in their own way.
- 1Arjuna asks which devotion knows union best: the one that holds a form, or the one that reaches past every form.
- 2The mind that flows into the Lord without a break, Krishna calls the most perfect in yoga.
- 3Some worship the Imperishable, and the seven names given it all point past every name.
- 4Restrain the senses, hold an even mind, delight in every being's good, and you reach the very same Krishna.
- 5The formless road is not the wrong road; it is simply the harder one for a mind still living as a body.
- 6Lay every action into the Lord, hold him alone as the goal, and worship him with an undivided heart.
- 7The Lord himself becomes the swift deliverer of the mind that has entered into him.
- 8Give the Lord your whole mind and your whole intellect, and dwelling in him is no longer in doubt.
- 9When you cannot hold the mind steady all at once, there is still a door: practice.
- 10When even practice is beyond you, ordinary work done for God's sake alone will still carry you home.
- 11When even devotion's discipline is too much, this much is still open: take refuge, and let the fruit go.
- 12Practice, knowledge, meditation, and letting go of the fruit: each ranked above the last, and peace waiting at the final one.
- 13He hates no being at all, not even the one who has actually harmed him.
- 14A mind and an intellect handed over, wholly: this is what makes a devotee dear.
- 15No alarm given, none received: the fourfold freedom of the devotee at peace with the world.
- 16The one dear to me expects nothing, and begins nothing for private gain.
- 17The one who neither leaps at gain nor breaks at loss, and lets go of good deeds along with bad, is dear to Me.
- 18One face for both: the same toward enemy and friend, the same in honor and disgrace, in cold and heat, in pleasure and pain.
- 19Unmoved by praise or blame, holding no fixed ground, resting in devotion: such a one is dear to the Lord.
- 20Take up this teaching in full, with faith, and you become exceedingly dear.