Chapter 15
Purushottama Yoga
The Yoga of the Supreme Divine Personality · 20 verses
This chapter is traditionally called Purushottama Yoga, the yoga of the Supreme Person. It opens with a strange picture: an upside-down tree whose root is above and whose branches grow downward.
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The root above is the supreme source; the branches are the unfolding world. The tree stands for samsara, the round of worldly life. Krishna says to cut it with asanga, non-attachment, an inner sword sharpened by viveka, steady discernment. Then seek the supreme abode, the refuge from which no one returns, by taking shelter in the primal Person. The living being, the jiva, is an eternal portion (amsha) of the Lord, carrying the senses and the mind from body to body, seen only by the eye of knowledge. The Lord also sustains the world: he holds up the earth, ripens the plants, digests food as the inner fire, and sits in every heart as the source of memory. Finally Krishna names three: the perishable (kshara), the imperishable (akshara), and the Supreme Person (Purushottama) beyond both. He closes by calling this teaching a scripture whose knowing completes the seeker's task. The schools differ on whether the world-tree is an illusion or the Lord's real display, and on what the portion, the imperishable, and the goal truly are. Advaita Vedanta, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, and Shuddhadvaita each read them their own way.
- 1The world is a tree growing upside down, and to know it root and all is to know what the Veda is for.
- 2The tree of birth and death roots itself, again and again, in exactly this human life.
- 3You cannot see the tree from inside it, but you can still put down the axe.
- 4Seek the place of no return, and take refuge in the one from whom everything has come.
- 5Every mark named here is a bond falling away, not a virtue being added on.
- 6No sun, no moon, no fire can light that home, because it is the light they borrow.
- 7You are a portion of Me alone, drawing to yourself instruments that were never truly your own.
- 8What travels with you from body to body is not your flesh, but your instrument of experience.
- 9The self takes its seat over the senses; how completely it "enjoys" is exactly what the schools contest.
- 10The self stands in plain sight through every state; only the eye of knowledge sees it there.
- 11Two seekers strive alike; only the one whose mind has been made ready sees the Self within.
- 12The light in sun, moon, and fire is not their own; Krishna says it is his.
- 13The ground beneath you and the food that feeds you are named as the Lord's own sustaining power.
- 14The fire that digests your food is the Lord's own hidden work in every body.
- 15Seated in every heart, the Lord is the quiet source of your memory, your knowledge, and even their loss.
- 16Two Persons are named before you, the perishable and the steady, and neither is the whole truth.
- 17Beyond the world that changes and the self that watches stands the One who holds both up.
- 18The highest Person spoken of a moment ago was never anyone but the one now speaking.
- 19To know Krishna as the Supreme Person, without confusion, already is to worship him completely.
- 20The most secret teaching is spoken; to understand it is to be complete.