Chapter 17
Sraddhatraya Vibhaga Yoga
Yoga through Discerning the Three Divisions of Faith · 28 verses
This chapter is traditionally called the yoga of the threefold division of faith. It opens with a question from Arjuna: where does a person stand whose faith is sincere but whose practice does not follow scripture.
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Krishna answers that faith, called shraddha, is the inner trust a person leans on, and that everyone has it. Faith comes in three kinds because human nature comes in three kinds, shaped by the three gunas: sattva (clarity), rajas (restless drive), and tamas (dullness). A person, Krishna says, is what their faith is. He then sorts the ordinary acts of a devoted life by these same three qualities. What people worship reveals their guna. Food, sacrifice, austerity, and giving each split into a sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic form, described one by one. Austerity is divided into body, speech, and mind, then graded by its motive. Krishna warns against harsh, showy austerity that wears down the body and troubles the divine seated within it. The chapter closes with the threefold name of the Supreme, Om Tat Sat, and how each word consecrates a sacred act. The schools differ on whether the Supreme named here is the personal Lord (the Bhakti and Shuddhadvaita readings) or the non-dual Self (Advaita Vedanta). The final word is that any act done without faith is asat, unreal, and bears no fruit.
- 1Arjuna asks where sincere but unschooled faith actually stands.
- 2Faith is not one thing; it wears the colour of the nature you already carry.
- 3You are made of your faith; whatever it is, that is exactly what you are.
- 4Whom you worship quietly tells which of the three strands is ruling you right now.
- 5A hard practice with no root in trustworthy teaching is not devotion; it is ego wearing devotion's shape.
- 6The body you punish is not yours alone to punish; the Lord dwells there too.
- 7Even your food shows which strand of nature is running you.
- 8The food a clear mind loves is itself a quiet teacher of clarity.
- 9The same tastes anyone enjoys become rajasic only when carried past their measure, and the excess is punished in stages.
- 10The food dear to the dull heart is named by six plain marks of decline.
- 11The highest sacrifice asks for nothing back; its own rightful performance is reason enough.
- 12The same rite, reaching for a reward or an audience, falls from sattva into rajas.
- 13A sacrifice named entirely by what it leaves out, down to the faith beneath it.
- 14The body's austerity is honor paid, cleanliness kept, conduct held straight, and no creature harmed.
- 15Speech becomes austerity only when kindness, truth, and benefit arrive in the same breath.
- 16The austerity of the mind: five marks of a heart grown calm, kind, quiet, mastered, and sincere.
- 17The same discipline becomes light by the faith, the fruitlessness, and the steadiness carried into it.
- 18The same discipline, done now to be seen, becomes shaky the moment the watching eyes look away.
- 19The darkest austerity is not the hardest one; it is the one gripped in delusion, turned against the body, or aimed at another's ruin.
- 20A gift becomes clear not by its size but by the meeting of a clean intention with the right recipient, place, and time.
- 21The same gift, given for a return, is no longer quite a gift.
- 22A gift falls into darkness by either of two roads: wrong placement, or a contemptuous manner, and either alone is enough.
- 23Om Tat Sat is the threefold name of Brahman, spoken to make a flawed sacred act whole.
- 24Every sacred act among the Veda's followers opens with the sound that names Brahman.
- 25Naming the act 'Tat,' the seeker performs it fully and lets its fruit go where it will.
- 26Sat names what truly is, what is truly good, and any act truly worth doing.
- 27The steadiness behind the act, and whatever serves it, is itself called Sat.
- 28Whatever you offer, give, or undertake without faith is called asat, and carries nothing here or hereafter.