Shrimat Bhagwat
GEETA
A Lawyer’s Perspective
Shri Krishn said: He who carries on his duties without dependent on its fruits, he is a sanyaasi and he is a yogi, not he who is without agni and without activities. Paandav, understand that as yog-saadhna which is called sanyaas, for no one becomes a yogi without renouncing sankalp.Karm is said to be the means of the muni who seeks for yog, absence of sankalp is said to be the means when he is established in yog. Then alone is one said to be established in yog when, having renounced all sankalp, one is not attached to sense objects and actions. Let a man raise himself by his own Self, let him not debase himself. He is himself his friend and himself his foe.
He who has conquered himSelf by the Self, his own Self is the friend, but to him who has not understood the Self, his own Self acts as the foe. The Self-disciplined and serene is constant in cold and heat, pleasure and pain, also in honour and dishonour. That yogi is steadfast who is satisfied with knowledge and wisdom, who remains unshaken, who has conquered the senses, to whom a clod, a stone and a piece of gold are the same. He stands supreme who has equal regard for friends, companions, enemies, neutrals, arbiters, hateful, relatives, saints and sinners.
A yogi should always try to concentrate his mind living alone in solitude, having subdued his mind and body and got rid of desires and possessions. Having firmly fixed in a clear place, his seat neither too high nor too low, and having spread over it kush, a deer skin and a cloth, one over the other. Sitting there, on his seat, making the mind one pointed and restraining the thinking faculty and the senses, he should practice yog for Self-purification. Let him hold the body, head and neck erect and still, gazing at the tip of his nose, without looking around. Firm and fearless, firm in the vow of a brahmachaari, subdued in mind, he should sit in yog thinking on Me and intent on Me alone. Keeping himself ever steadfast in this manner, the yogi of subdued mind attains peace abiding in Me and culminating in nirvaan.
Yog is not possible for him who eats too much or for him who abstains too much from eating. It is not for him, Arjun, who sleeps too much or too little. For him who is moderate in eating and recreation, temperate in his actions, who is regulated in sleep and wakefulness, yog becomes the destroyer of pain. When the disciplined mind rests in the Self-alone, free from desire for objects, then is one said to be established in yog. As a lamp in a windless place does not flicker, this is the simile used for the disciplined mind of yogi practicing concentration on the Self. When the mind, disciplined by the practice of yog, attains quietude and when beholding the Self by the Self, he is satisfied in the Self, when he feels that supreme bliss which is perceived by the intelligence and which transcends the senses and wherein established he never moves from the reality and having gained which, he thinks that there is no greater gain than that, wherein established he is not shaken even by the heaviest affliction, let this disconnection from union with pain be known by the name of yog. This yog should be practiced with determination and with undistracted mind.
Abandoning without reserve all desires born of sankalp and curbing in, by the mind, all the senses from all sides, with his intellect set in firmness let him attain quietude little by little. With the mind fixed on the Self, let him not think of anything. By whatever cause the wavering and unsteady mind wanders away, let him curb it from that and subjugate it solely to the Self. Supreme bliss certainly comes to that yogi whose mind is calm, whose passions are pacified, who has become one with Brahm and who is sinless. Constantly engaging the mind this way, the yogi who has put it away, attains with ease the infinite bliss of contact with Brahm. His mind being harmonized by yog, he sees himself in all beings and all beings in himself, he sees the same in all. He who sees Me everywhere and sees all in Me, he never becomes lost to Me, nor do I become lost to him. He, who established in oneness, worships Me abiding in all beings, that yogi lives in Me, whatever may be his mode of living. That yogi, Arjun, is regarded as the supreme, who judges pleasure or pain everywhere by the same standard as he applies to himself.
Arjun said: This yog of equanimity taught by you, Madhusudan, I do not see any stability in it, because of restlessness. The mind certainly is Krishn, is restless, turbulent, strong and obstinate. It deems it as hard to control as the wind.
Shri Krishn said: Doubtless, mighty armed the mind is restless and hard to control but by practice and non-attachment, son of Kunti, it can be controlled. Yog is hard to attain, I concede, by a man who cannot control himself, but it can be attained by him who has controlled himself and who strives by right means.
Arjun said: He who is unable to control himself, though possessed of faith, whose mind deviates from yog, what end he meets with, Krishn, having failed to attain perfection in yog.37 Fallen from both, does he not perish like a free cloud, without any hold, mighty armed, deluded in the path of Brahm? Design, to dispel completely this doubt of mine, Krishn, for there is none but Yourself who can destroy this doubt.
Shri Krishn said: Paarth, neither in this world nor in the next is there destruction for him, for the doer of good, my son never comes to grief. Having attained to the worlds of the righteous and having lived for countless years, he who falls from yog is reborn in the house of the pure and prosperous or he is born in a family of wise yogis only, a birth like this is certainly very difficult to obtain in this world. There he regains the knowledge acquired in his former body and he strives more than before for perfection, joy of the Kurus. By that very former practice, he is led on in spite of himself. Even he who merely wishes to know of yog rise superior to the performer of vedic rites. The yogi, who strives with assiduity, purified from sins and perfected through many births reaches then the supreme goal. The yogi is deemed superior to ascetics, superior to men of knowledge even, he is also superior to ritualists. Therefore, be you a yogi, Arjun and of all yogis, he who worships Me with faith, his in-most Self merges in Me, him I hold to be the most devout.
