Chapter 6
Dhyana Yoga
Path of Meditation · 47 verses
Chapter 6 is traditionally called Dhyana Yoga, the yoga of meditation. It opens by joining two words people treat as opposites: Krishna says the true renouncer (sannyasi) and the true yogi are the same person, the one who does his duty without leaning on its fruit.
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The test is inward, not the kind of work. He names a ladder: for the seeker still climbing, action is the means; for the one established, stillness is. The chapter then gives plain instructions for sitting meditation: a clean, firm seat, an erect body, a steady inward gaze, and measure in food, sleep, and work, never harsh extremes. The settled mind is likened to a lamp that does not flicker where no wind reaches. Such a yogi sees the same Self in all beings and meets pleasure and pain alike. When Arjuna objects that the mind is restless as wind, Krishna grants this and answers with practice (abhyasa) and dispassion (vairagya). He closes by promising that no sincere effort is lost: the one who falls from the path is reborn well and takes it up again. The schools differ on what is finally reached and on what the Self is. Advaita Vedanta, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, Shuddhadvaita, Bhakti, and Kashmir Shaivism each read it in their own way.
- 1The true renouncer and yogi is the one who keeps doing his work without leaning on its fruit.
- 2Renunciation and yoga are two names for one inner act: laying down the resolve set on the fruit.
- 3For one climbing into yoga the means is action; for one already settled, it is stillness.
- 4When can a person be called risen to yoga? By the inner mark of non-attachment, not by years counted.
- 5The whole work of this path is laid on you: lift yourself by yourself, and do not sink.
- 6One self in two roles: friend when you have brought it under your own command, foe when you let it run loose.
- 7When you have won yourself, the supreme Self stays steady through every pair of opposites.
- 8The steadfast yogi: filled by knowledge and its tasting, unmoved within, equal toward clod, stone, and gold.
- 9The same steady regard for well-wisher and foe, and for everyone in between
- 10Steadying the mind in solitude, free of desire and the wish to possess.
- 11The seat for meditation: a clean place, a firm and moderate seat, three layers laid with care.
- 12Once seated, gather the scattered mind to a single point and practice the yoga that purifies.
- 13The posture for meditation: hold the body, head, and neck straight and still, the gaze drawn inward.
- 14How to take your seat in meditation: a settled mind, fearless and continent, fixed wholly on Me.
- 15The peace that ends in liberation is the goal toward which the whole meditation has been pointing.
- 16The middle measure in food and sleep is the body's doorway into yoga.
- 17A life kept in measure, in food, movement, work, and sleep, is what lets yoga end sorrow.
- 18When the mind comes to rest in the Self alone, and craving for every object falls away, yoga has arrived.
- 19The mind of the deep meditator is a lamp in a windless place.
- 20The inner marks of yoga: the mind at rest, the Self seen by the Self, contentment in the Self alone.
- 21The boundless joy the meditator comes to know, grasped only within and never again let go.
- 22The gain past which nothing greater can be wanted, and the steadiness it gives.
- 23What Krishna here calls "yoga" is the parting from all union with pain.
- 24Let go of every desire born of your own resolve, and draw the senses inward by the mind.
- 25Quieting the mind, step by patient step, until it rests in the Self and thinks of nothing else.
- 26Wherever the restless mind runs out, draw it back from there and settle it in the Self alone.
- 27When the mind comes to rest, the highest happiness arrives on its own.
- 28The boundless bliss that the long discipline ripens into: the touch of Brahman.
- 29The yogin made steady by yoga sees the one Self in all beings, and all beings in the Self.
- 30When you see the Lord in all and all in the Lord, that nearness never breaks.
- 31The yogi settled in oneness who worships God in all beings abides in Him, however he lives.
- 32Measuring others by himself, the highest yogi sees every joy and pain as his own.
- 33Arjuna admits he cannot find a steady footing for the yoga of evenness, because the mind will not stay still.
- 34Arjuna names four hard qualities of the mind and calls it as uncatchable as the wind.
- 35When the mind is restless and hard to hold, practice and dispassion are how it is held.
- 36Yoga is hard for the unrestrained mind, but reachable for the one who keeps striving.
- 37Arjuna asks what becomes of the seeker who has faith but cannot finish the path.
- 38Arjuna's fear for the seeker who falls short: fallen from both, does he simply perish?
- 39Arjuna asks Krishna alone to cut, root and all, his doubt about the soul who fell short.
- 40The seeker who falls short is not ruined, here or hereafter
- 41The seeker who falls from yoga is not lost, but carried up and then set down to begin again.
- 42The other birth: when the fallen yogi comes straight into a household of the wise.
- 43The yogi reborn recovers the understanding of his former life and strives once more toward perfection.
- 44No spiritual effort is ever lost: a former life's practice carries the lapsed yogi forward again.
- 45The one who fell from yoga is never lost; his honest effort ripens, over many births, into the goal.
- 46Higher than the ascetic, the knower, and the ritualist stands the yogi, and so become one.
- 47Among all yogis, the one whose inner self has gone to the Lord in faith is the best.