Chapter 16
Daivasura Sampad Vibhaga Yoga
Yoga through Discerning the Divine and Demoniac Natures · 24 verses
This chapter is traditionally called Daivasura Sampada Vibhaga Yoga, the yoga that sorts the divine and demonic shares. Krishna names two endowments.
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The daivi sampad is the divine endowment, the qualities to take up: fearlessness, purity, self-restraint, truthful speech, non-violence, compassion, and the like. The asuri sampad is the demonic endowment: pretence, arrogance, conceit, anger, harshness, and the loss of the power to tell right action from wrong. The divine endowment leads to release from the round of birth and death, the demonic to bondage; Krishna reassures Arjuna that he is born to the divine side. There are only two kinds of beings, and the long portrait that follows describes the demonic one so a seeker can spot these marks in himself and avoid them: bottomless craving, hypocrisy, sacrifice done only for show, the boast that credits every gain to oneself, and hatred of the Lord who dwells in all. Such people fall into lower births. Krishna closes by naming desire, anger, and greed as the threefold gate of hell, telling the seeker to give up all three, and making scripture the measure of right action. The schools differ on what release finally means and on how one is born to a given nature. Advaita Vedanta, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, Shuddhadvaita, Bhakti, and Kashmir Shaivism each read it their own way.
- 1The divine qualities are named first, so a seeker knows which nature to take up.
- 2Eleven marks of a nature turning toward the good, defined with unusual care.
- 3Six qualities close the portrait: not achievements you assemble, but the shape of a nature already turning toward the good.
- 4Six traits, set beside the twenty-six, name what to lay down rather than take up.
- 5The two endowments meet their ends, and the divine one is already yours.
- 6Two creations only: the divine already told, the demonic now to be told in full.
- 7The first thing missing in the demonic nature is knowing what to do and what to leave undone.
- 8Krishna reports the demonic creed in full, so it can be recognized rather than mistaken for the truth.
- 9A view narrows the mind, and the narrowed mind ripens into cruelty.
- 10This is not a life without religion; it is a religion quietly bent toward getting.
- 11A worry with no measure, feeding a certainty with no opening.
- 12Hope in the hundreds becomes a rope, and the one it drags mistakes the pulling for power.
- 13Overhear the mind that never once stops to ask who really gives.
- 14A mind that has declared itself lord, enjoyer, and complete, owing nothing to anyone.
- 15Listen to a man convince himself that he has no equal, and that nothing beyond himself made him so.
- 16A scattered mind weaves its own net, and the net alone decides the fall.
- 17A rite offered for one's own name is a sacrifice in name only, and earns nothing.
- 18The demonic life leans on ego, force, pride, desire, and anger, and turns that whole weight into hatred of the Lord who dwells within.
- 19The hater of the good is cast, again and again, into the wombs he has already chosen.
- 20The demonic pattern does not level off on its own; it deepens, birth after birth.
- 21Three faults, one gate: give them up, and the road to ruin closes.
- 22Free of desire, anger, and greed, a person finally takes up the good, and that good carries them home.
- 23Cast the rule of scripture aside for your own desire, and perfection, happiness, and the highest goal all go with it.
- 24Where your own judgment falters, let the tested standard decide, and act on what it says.