सांख्ययोग
Chapter 2
Sankhya Yoga
Transcendental Knowledge · 72 verses
This chapter is traditionally treasured as Sankhya Yoga, the yoga of knowledge of the Self, and is said to gather the heart of the whole Gita. It opens on the battlefield.
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Arjuna is overcome by grief and will not fight. He turns to Krishna, says plainly that he is the student, and asks to be taught. Krishna's answer runs in two movements. First he teaches the Self (Atman), what you truly are, deeper than the body. The Self is never born and never dies; only the body comes and goes, the way a person changes worn-out clothes for new ones. Grief, then, rests on a mistake. Krishna also points to plain duty, the warrior's sva-dharma, the work that is his to do. Second, he turns to action. You have a right to your action only, never to its fruits, so act without clinging to results and stay even in gain and loss. This evenness is what he calls yoga. The chapter closes with the sthita-prajna, the person of steady wisdom: free of craving, calm in pain, drawing the senses in like a tortoise into its shell, still as an ocean that many rivers cannot disturb. The schools (Advaita Vedanta, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, and others) differ on how the Self relates to Brahman, the supreme Reality, and to the Lord, but they meet on the deathless Self and on action without attachment.
Contentsश्लोकाः
- 1Arjuna sinks in grief that looks like compassion; Madhusūdana begins to answer it.
- 2Krishna breaks his silence with one startled question: where has this weakness come from.
- 3What looks like noble restraint is named a loss of nerve, not a virtue.
- 4Arjuna refuses to raise arrows against Bhishma and Drona, men he is bound to revere.
- 5Arjuna chooses the beggar's bowl over a kingdom soaked in his teachers' blood.
- 6Arjuna cannot weigh the two courses, nor foresee the outcome, nor bear to win.
- 7Arjuna stops arguing, admits his reasoning has failed, and asks Krishna for the higher good.
- 8Arjuna sees nothing, on earth or in heaven, that could lift his grief.
- 9Arjuna says, I will not fight, and falls silent.
- 10As if smiling, Krishna begins to speak to Arjuna sinking in grief between the two armies.
- 11The wise grieve neither for the dead nor for the living.
- 12There was never a time when we were not, nor will there ever be.
- 13From childhood to age to another body: one self, unbroken.
- 14Cold and heat, pleasure and pain are passing contacts of sense and object; endure them.
- 15The steady one whom pleasure and pain cannot shake is fit for the deathless.
- 16The line between the unreal and the real, the ground beneath endurance.
- 17What pervades all this cannot be destroyed.
- 18The bodies end, the self that wears them cannot, and grief loses its ground.
- 19The Self neither slays nor is slain; to think either is not to know.
- 20The unborn, undying Self is not slain when the body is slain.
- 21The knower of the changeless Self neither slays nor causes anyone to be slain.
- 22The embodied Self changes bodies as a person changes worn-out clothes.
- 23The four great destroyers of the world have no power over the Self.
- 24No cutting, burning, wetting, or drying can enter the Self at all.
- 25Unmanifest, unthinkable, unchanging: the Self known this way leaves nothing to grieve.
- 26Even granting that the Self is born and dies, grief has no ground.
- 27Death is certain for the born, birth for the dead; grief over the unavoidable is misplaced.
- 28Unseen before birth, unseen after death: the brief visible life leaves nothing to grieve over.
- 29The Self is a wonder, hard to know even after one has heard of it.
- 30The self in every body cannot be slain, so grieve for no being.
- 31Considering your own duty, do not waver: righteous battle is the warrior's highest good.
- 32A righteous battle arrives unsought, and the warrior who meets it is called fortunate.
- 33The threefold loss in refusing the righteous war.
- 34For one who has been honored, lasting disgrace is worse than death.
- 35The watching warriors will read his leaving as fear, not compassion.
- 36Your enemies will mock the very strength you are known for.
- 37Both outcomes are gain: heaven if slain, the kingdom if he prevails.
- 38An even mind toward all three pairs, and the battle incurs no sin.
- 39A seam in the teaching: from Self-knowledge to the wisdom of action.
- 40On this path no effort is wasted; even a little shelters you from great fear.
- 41The resolute understanding is single; the irresolute mind branches without end.
- 42The undiscerning take the Veda's promise of reward as the highest there is.
- 43The desire-souled take heaven as the highest goal; their rites yield only another birth.
- 44In those given to pleasure and power, the resolute understanding never takes shape.
- 45Rise above the three strands, free of craving, established in the Self.
- 46To the one who knows the Self, the Vedas are a well beside the flood.
- 47Your claim is on the action you do, and not on the fruit it brings.
- 48Evenness in success and failure, held while acting, is called yoga.
- 49Action for the fruit falls far below the even understanding; take refuge there.
- 50Evenness casts off both good and bad karma here; yoga is skill in action.
- 51Giving up the fruit of action frees the wise from the bondage of birth.
- 52When discernment crosses the thicket of delusion, what is heard loses its pull.
- 53When the mind confused by hearing grows still in absorption, you attain yoga.
- 54Arjuna asks for the marks of steady wisdom: how such a one speaks, sits, moves.
- 55The first mark of steady wisdom: all desires let go, content in the Self alone.
- 56The sage of steady wisdom is known by how he meets sorrow and pleasure.
- 57With clinging fondness gone, good and bad fortune no longer move the steady one.
- 58Steady wisdom draws the senses in, as a tortoise draws in its limbs.
- 59Objects fall away from the abstinent; the taste departs only on seeing the Supreme.
- 60The turbulent senses can carry off even a wise and striving mind.
- 61Restrain every sense and sit intent on the Lord; that wisdom stands firm.
- 62Dwelling on an object quietly begins the slide into attachment, desire, and anger.
- 63How anger destroys discernment, and the person with it.
- 64Moving among objects free of liking and disliking, the mind grows clear.
- 65In that calm, all sorrow ends and the understanding quickly settles.
- 66Without a collected mind: no understanding, no contemplation, no peace, and so no happiness.
- 67The mind follows the wandering senses and carries off wisdom, as wind carries a boat.
- 68Wisdom stands firm in the one whose senses are wholly withdrawn from their objects.
- 69The sage is awake in the world's night; the world's day is night to him.
- 70Desires enter the sage as rivers enter the full sea, and he attains peace.
- 71Free of desire, longing, "mine," and "I," the person attains peace.
- 72The firm standing in Brahman that ends delusion, even when reached at the last hour.