“The Geeta: as a Chaitanyite reads it” by Tridandi Swami B.H. Bon, "Chapter Two : Thread of the Book"

"SANJAYA said, "Then seeing the dejection of
Arjuna
Whose eyes were dim and moist with unshed tears,
Madhusudana Who slays all mental anguish by His
tender words,
Did with compassion then address the Prince Arjuna.
The blessed Lord Sree Krishna said, "Arjuna !
Why art thou at this great trial overpowered by illusion:
Unmerited, disgraceful, a reproach to heaven, -
Unworthy of an Aryan?
Son of Pritha! Succumb not to such cowardice
And be not destitute of all verility;
It ill becomes thee.
Being My friend thou dost not lack in valour;
Thou canst be conqueror of all thy worldly foes.
But this despondency is due to thy religious conscience
Concerning thy revered elders, Bhisma and the like.
Tormentor thou of enemies!
Out with this pretty weaknes of thy heart
And rise up thou to fight".

ARJUNA thus replied, "Madhusudana-Slaugh-
terer of foes !
How can I feel inclined to fight against my master Drona,
Or aim an evil arrow at great Bhisma the revered ?
'T were better far to live on alms
Than kill great souls who are my own superiors.
If Thou wilt say that how can these be deemed 'great
souls' ?
When they are mercenary teachers and therefore
should be killed,
Even in such case destruction may bring forth
Prosperity in this poor world alone,
But can afford no peace or true felicity
In life alotted in the worlds to come.
If I should kill preceptors who are my superiors
And therefore held in high esteem,
I would perforce enjoy a world but stained with blood.

"I know not whether begging is to be preferred
to war,
For, vanquished or victorious
We do not wish survival at the death
Of Dhritarastra's sons who are now ready for the
fray.
A beggar's life though free from jealousy
And all those pangs of separation after death,
Which are concomitants of war,
Is far beneath the dignity of a Kshatriya,
A ruling race whose duty and religion is
To breast the arrows of his foes.
Conversely if we stood victorious in the fight,
'T would be past bearing to endure
The pangs of separation from our kith and kin
And from the sons of Dhritarastra,
Who are brothers all to us,
And the remembrance of the killing of the elders
And the jealousy arising out of love for worldly
pomp
Would torture us in consequence throughout an after-life.
So entering upon a war
Whether we vanquish or be vanquished,
We shall be losers, and shall suffer in the end.
Thus placed upon the horns of a dilemma,
I dare not make a selection now of either course of action.

I fall a victim to the stigma of rank cowardice
Owing to vacillation of my nature.
I cannot ascertain my duty at the present hour.
I therefore the emplore, O Krishna !
To inform me what is good for me.
I am Thy true disciple.
Surrender I entirely to Thee,
And take Thee as my refuge.
Were I to attain the sovereignty of all the world,
Free from impediments e'enthe lordship over all
the gods in heaven
Yet would I find no remedy against this grief
That would absorb the vigour of my mind,
And would torment my sense."

SANJAYA said, "Then the tormentor of enemies
And conqueror of sleep became taciturn ;
Addressing the Lord of Senses Sri Krishna, he said,
"Govinda ! I shall fight no more !"
Then, O Dhritarastra ! smilingly
Did the Lord of all senses speak to Arjuna
Dejected in the midst of the belligerent."
Now it is beseemed the Lord Sree Krishna to reveal
That a temporary abnegation
That arose from griefs and earthly miseries
Leads not to the renunciation of the world
Or to the life of a recluse.

THE Lord said to Arjuna,
"Though thou speakest like the wise,
Yet art thy mourning ; but the truly wise
Do not lament nor for the living nor for the dead."
To demonstrate the difference in Spirit and in Matter,
Sree Krishna here explaned that soul is everlasting
And not bound by the laws of bodily mortality
Being identical in nature with the Over-soul
And therefore there is no cause to grieve.
"Two kinds of souls there are" said He, -
"Paramatma the Over-soul, and Jivatma the indivi-
dual soul.
I am the Over-soul - Paramatma.
Thou and these Princes
Are individual souls - Jivatmas.
There was no time in the ages past,
When I and thou and all these Princes
Did not live before;
Nor shall We cease to live in countless aeons yet to come;
In other words, We now exist,
And did exist, and shall, for all eternity."

NEXT He referred to the embodied souls, saying :
"Just as this fleshy body passes on
From childhood into youth, which in its turn
Becomes metamorphosed into maturity
And yet the corporeal self remains identical the
while,
So does the soul not cease to be
Throughout its age-long cycle of births and deaths.
Thus it is that the intelligent
Do not deplore the loss by way of death
Of the soul's gross mortal tenement.
"O son of Kunti ! sense-perceptions
Must be pleasant or be fraught with pain;
That which is pleasant in one instance
May be a pang when new conditions rule.
Welfare and woe, heat and the bitterness of the
cold,
And all the appetites of earth,
Have their existence but in the transient world of sense.
It is a duty, commanded by the Scriptures
That thou endure them patiently.
Fighting, then, is no more or less
Than a relgious duty of a Kshatriya,
Default of which involves grave penalty.

GREAT soul !
The temperate one who is not ruffled by the
heat or cold,
The pleasure or the pain of this material world,
May gain a blissful comprehension
Of the true nature of the self.
That body formed of flesh and blood is hardly real,
Hence changeable and thus ephemeral;
But, investing subtle mind and grosser body
The Jivatma, individual soul, is real,
Unchangeable and thus eternal;
The soul is indestructable.
Grief and infatuation are the properties of the nonsoul;
Springing from the affinities of earth
They exist not in the transcendental plane of soul -
Eternal and immortal.
They who have learnt the purest Truth
Have made this great division :
Reality apart from non-reality,
Substance as distinct from shadow.
Hence the souls of Bhisma, Drona and others
Are immortal, though their bodies are destructable.

JIVA, the deathless soul, pervades man's body.
Though but a fraction of the Over-soul's
pure essence,
His potency sustains the body's life;
He cannot perish or be killed; he is eternal.
The gross and subtle bodies of the soul -
The physical and astral - but fetter its existence;
The soul though circumscribed
By time and space in earthly life
Is free, eternal, beyond measure
And can never be destroyed.
So Bharata !
Rather than grieve at physical existence,
Fight as a dutiful Kshatriya should,
According to the Scriptures.
He who imagines that the soul
Could possibly destroy another
Or itself be killed by another soul,
Knows naught of truth.
A soul does not kill any one, nor suffers death itself.

MY dear Arjuna ! being a soul thyself
None can destroy thee or be destroyed by thee.
The Jiva-soul was never born;
He is eternal, existing in all time,
Before the past and far beyond the future.
No births and deaths for him
Nor process of decay or growth;
He is the ancient of all ancients,
Yet ever fresh and new;
Births and deaths associated with the body
Do not affect the soul;
There is no essential relation
Between him and his present body.
O Partha !
Can he who truly knows the soul to be immortal,
Unborn eternal and unchangeable,
Kill anyone or cause another to be killed ?
Just as a person dons new clothes
Casting aside his old and worn-out ones,
So the soul sheds, in regular succession,
His dying body entering upon a fresh life-span
In newer fleshy garb.

NO weapon can destroy him,
Nor water soil, nor air dry,
Nor fire burn him.
The soul can ne'er be cleft asunder :
He is beyond burning; nothing can soil him ;
Nor can he e'er be absorbed;
He is omnivagous, serene, immutable, existing ever.
He is beyond description-
More subtle than the subtlest thing in the material
world,
Beyond perception of the mortal eyes.
He is beyond conception, too.
Pervading all the body,
Surpassing human reasoning and thought
But realisable through transcendental sound.
He is immutable,
Not subject to the attributes that handicap the flesh,
Birth, hunger, thirst, disease, decrepitude and death;
Nor is he prone to lust, infatuation, fear,
Or anger, avarice, or grief or vanity
Or malice of the mind.

KNOWING the nature of the soul
Thou shouldst abandon all thy melancholy
thought.
O Mighty-armed ! if thou believest the soul
To be inseparably bound up with the body,
And that it shares its births and deaths
Within the cycle of fruitive action,
Or if thou holdst the view of the Vaibhasika
That soul and body and consciousness are one,
Ending in complete annihilation ;
Or once again if thou shouldst think
The soul to be subject to eternal birth and death,
Even then hast thou no reason to be sorrowful :
Grief will debase thee to a still more heinous level
Than the worst of atheists.

CONSIDER next the arguments of the logicians.
If at the expiry of either joy or pain
As the result of thy fruitive acts,
Death be inevitable after birth,
And if rebirth is certain after death
To suffer or enjoy the actions of this life,
Then does it not befit thee to lament
Over inevitable consequence.
If thou be led away by grief,
Thou wilt degrade thyself thereby
Far lower than the worst polemic.
O Bharata ! those elements which manifest
Between the periods of birth and death
Become unmanifest again when they decay ;
There is no use in wailing.
Though this belief is non-acceptable
By them who know the real nature of such
principles
Yet for the sake of argument if it be so admitted,
Then shouldst thou fight in order to fulfil
The duties of a Kshatriya.

SOME view the soul as marvellous;
Describe him in rich and wondrous terms,
And others, knowing him to be extra-ordinary,
Listen to his real nature;
Besides these, there are others
Who, despite their hearing, cannot understand him;
Out of such ignorance of the true nature of the Jiva-soul
Arise the misconceptions of materialism,
Cessation of animation and monism.
In fact, corporeal souls continue to exist as entities
Eternally imperishable, even after death.
Therefore it does not befit thee
Thus to mourn for them.
If thou wilt but consider
The meet responsibilities of thy class in society,
Thou canst not be afraid of giving battle in this way,
For there is no more worthy act for a Kshatriya
Than to fight on for a cause that's right,
And such an act protects the subjects,
Rules righteously the kingdom
And helps subdue the foe.

THE duties in society are twofold
In accordance with the freed
And bound state of the souls.
The duties of a soul unfettered
Transcend all gross and subtle references,
Whereas the duties of all souls engrossed
In certain sections of society
Are more or less attributed to mundane relativities.
In their conditioned and diversified existences,
The duties of such souls accordingly do vary.
When a conditioned soul is born into the human
state,
His duties at that stage will then be appropriate
If they be classified into four parts and orders
Ruling life according to his qualities and actions
As laid down by the Scriptures.
Such stipulated duties then, are normally incumbent
Upon conditioned souls in this society.
What other course is therefore meet
For a Kshatriya, but to fight ?

O Partha ! Happy those Kshatriya brave,
To whom this battle comes
Like unto an unexpected open door, direct to heaven.
If thou leadest not this battle in a righteous cause,
And sin by shirking now thy licit duties,
Thou wilt be forcibly diverted
From thy present path and fame.
Then will the world cry shame on thee for long.
For infamy in men of high repute
Is worse than death.
Great charioteers who hold thee in such high esteem
Will think but lightly of thee.
They will assume that thou hast turned
Thy back upon thine enemies in fear.
They will cry shame on thee and will deride thy
prowess !
What more regettable for thee
Than thou hear thine enemies revile thee?
O son of Kunti ! if thou be killed in battle
Thou shalt enter heaven;
If thou emerge victorious, thou shalt enjoy the world.
Rise up, then, O Arjuna !
With a firm determination now to fight.
Sin will not touch thee if thou fight
With aim at final liberation,
Steadfast in indifference to weal and woe,
To gain or loss, defeat or victory.

THUS far the diverse forms of Jnana
And social religious dutis are described ;
Now listen to the deeper concepts of Bhakti,
Loving service to the Personality of God,
That links the Karma-Yoga, elevation,
With that of Jnana-Yoga, which for salvation
stands.
Partha ! If thou wilt cultivate the Yoga of devotion
Thine is the undying bliss
Of loosening the bonds that bind the world.
Karma which is action and Jnana - intuitional perception,
Are two paths on the fleeting planes
Of mundane relativities,
And therefore limited, imperfect ;
Whereas Bhakti, service of souls to God's Divinity,
Is wholly of the transcendental Plane.

WHEN both karma and jnana yield to Bhakti,
They blend into devotion, perfect path.
That which is Karma-Yoga
Aims at the limit of fruitive acts,
While Jnana seeks to extend this aim
To abstract Knowledge or Sankhya-Yoga.
That which transcends the bounds of both
And rise to the plane of true devotion,
Which is the normal service of devout pure souls,
Is known as Bhakti, or the perfect dedication
Of all intelligence towards eternal kinship.
Bhakti is the deathless link
Connecting all pure souls with God.
Sankhya-Yoga gives the explanation
Most clearly of the diverse principles involved*
(*The slokas from 12 to 30 deal with the conception of the pure soul, and from 31 to 38 explain the nature of non-souls and their relative duties. The relation between soul and non-soul is described ahead.)

NO effort to perform these services devotional
Will ever be in vain ;
Slight though this service be,
It will deliver the devotee
From all horrors of the world.
When Jnanins do energise all their activities
To that objective only, keeping in view
The nature of the purest self
This is called "one definite unmixed intelligence",
While the attention of the shifting embodied souls
Aims at inclinations without limit.
Here apprehension enters
Lest actions be destroyed and duties be infringed.

Or

O Son of Kunti !
Bhakti-Yoga is of two fundamental kinds :
The first the primary devotional practices
As chanting, listening and meditation;
The secondary Bhakti does in absolutely
offering to Me
All the results of thy fruitive acts.
I am the sole Acme and the Aim
Of spiritual loving services.
Mind that is dedicated unto Me alone
Is based on firm conviction.
Devotees such as these are stable in their purpose.
But those who are indifferent to Me
Or no steadfast attachment have for Me
Do cultivate an inclination unawares
For multifarious fruitive acts.
As their attention wanders over manifold objectives,
So are their yearnings also endless.

OF all processes Bhakti-Yoga is explained
As of the highest wisdom,
Being steadfastly concentrated in the One,
Sree Krishna the Supreme;
Whereas all other methods of progression
Direct to innumerable ends,
Are ineffective and uncertain.
A genuine devotee thinks:
'The means becomes the end itself,
Meditating on the glories,
Of my Blessed Lord Sree Krishna and His Host
Is the very essence of my life
As taught me by my Master :
The means and the end are one :
The only covetable aim in life-
No other wish have I but this.
Be there pain or pleasure
When I sleep or wake,
Whether the world continues or it be destroyed,
What matters aught to me?
My sole existence is the loving service of my Lord !'
Sincere devotees only give unflinching love like this.
But in Karma-Yoga yearnings know no limit
And attention is dispersed as in Jnana o'er many
paths.

THOSE who are vacillating e'er are ignorant ;
Extol the Vedas knowing not their inner
meaning,
And misinterpret them;
They desire the paltry fruits of action;
They are the seekers of a lowly heaven
Beneath the transcendental Realm of God;
They satisfy their ears with honeyed words,
Agreeable at first but poisined at the end,
For they are led astray by the alluring taste
Of their fruitive acts and abstract wisdom
To render certain duties
Resulting in the cycle of new births and deaths
And an insatiable longing
To enjoy an earthly happiness
With wealth and power o'er others.
Those foolish ones who are addicted
To voluptuous enjoyment of their grandeur,
Cannot attain the higher scales of wisdom
Nor are they steadfastly attached to Me.

THE Scriptures have a two-fold object-
The ultimate intent and the object indicated.
The one straightly aimed at, the other pointed out.
That which is aimed at in a given Scripture
Is the acme of that Scripture ;
And that which points out the acme
Is the end that's indicated.
Now, when the Pole-star is intended,
The brightest nearest star to it is pointed out,
Which is not in itself the end.
The Vedas' final aim is Truth-
The Absolute Who's inconceivable to human minds.
The Vedas also therefore use in the beginning
Qualified principles to indicate the end intended.
That is why Maya or Deluding Energy
With her three qualities of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas
Appears superficially to be the subject matter of
theVedas.
O Arjuna ! be not attracted to that indicated end,
But free thyself from the triple qualities
By realising the Supreme Being
Who is beyond all mundane attributes
And Who is the intended subject of the Vedas.

IN the same Vedas there is often mention
Of Karma, actuated by the principles of
Rajas-Tamas
Which is an active and an opiate quality combined.
Sometimes the Vedas tell of Jnana,
The abstract knowledge, promoted by the principle
of Sattva.
Now Sattva is the first principle of relative bene-
volence
Which is one of the inherent traits of Maya, the
Deluding Energy,
And only on occasion is pure Bhakti mentioned and enjoined.
Let Me, Arjuna, here remind thee
That pure Bhakti is the loving service of a soul
No longer misidentified with mind and body,
Dedicated to the Personality of God.
Absolve thyself, Arjuna, from such qualitative
sentiments
Of honour and dishonour;
Associate thou ever with eternal entities-
These are My devotees.
Desist thou from the quest of Yoga,
For, this search after objects unattained
Is aimed at by salvationists;
And free thyself of Kshema,
The earthly care that thou dost lavish
In preserving such results attained.
Apply thy pure intelligence to all
The highest aims, and reach thy goal
Of unalloyed existence
Without these qualities that cloy.

SMALL pools and larger sheets of water such as
lakes,
Both serve the self-same purposes
For bathing and for quenching thirst.
So also the Brahmanas who have solved
The mysteries of the Vedas and their parts
Like the Upanishads,
Essentially declare Me to be Lord,
Ultimate, Supreme and that all things
Are fully served by serving Me.

ACTION has been divided into Karma proper,
Then Akarma and lastly Vikarma.
Of these, both Vikarma or sin
Comitted by the violation of thy duties
And Akarma, the negligence of duties,
Do occasion great calamities.
Incline not to Akarma,
Do thy duty and adopt the Karma very carefully,
Leaving aside Akarma,
There are three basic kinds of Karma, namely :
Daily duties which are Nitya-Karma;
Those which are causal and occasional
And take the name of Naimittika-Karma,
And those which are gift-desired or interested,
And known as Kamya-Karma.
Of these, the last,
The act performed with motive of some gain
Is deeply ominous. Those who act thus
Perforce must suffer or enjoy
The fruits of all their actions.
Therefore I tell thee for thy good :
Refrain from all fruitive acts.
Perform such duties as devolve upon thee
By the socio-religios laws od Scriptures,
But bear in mind that these do not entitle thee
To claim the fruits.
Those who follow this "Yoga"- method are allowed
To do their duty day by day
To earn their livelyhood.

O Dhananjaya ! Cast aside all longing for results
Of good or evil, and occupy thyself
In the performance of thy socio-religious duties.
Face the succes or failure of fruitive acts
With calm and equability, for this is Yoga.
Cultivate, Dhananjaya, an aptitude devotional,
Applying pure intelligence,
Pursue disinterestedly the Karma proper;
For 'tis contemptible to follow virtue for her gifts.
They who do Kamya-Karma with some gain in view
Drift back into the streams of births and deaths
As a result of their fruitive acts,
And they are low and mean.
Right thinking in discharging selfless deeds
Shows adroit performance of all acts.
Apply thyself disinterestedly to work,
Casting aside good deeds and evil in this world.
Rise thou above such worldly relativities.
The truly wise giveup by perfect understanding
All thought of either joy or suffering
Accruing from the discharge of their duties,
And thus they are released from further bondage of
rebirth,
Attaining to the highest bliss
Which liberates from limitations and all strife-
That End which devotees attain.

WHEN by the practice of such selfless deed
Dedication to the Lord-for I am He
Thy own free will forsakes the quicksands of
infatuation,
Thou wilt incline to cultivate a pure devotion,
Holding impartial views of all the Scriptures
That are yet to be, and those that have been heard.
When thou hast ceased to be bewildered
By diverse expositions of the Vedas and the Srutis,
Steadfast shall be thy meditation
On the inner meaning of the text
And thou shalt attain true "Yoga" :
Clearest conception of the harmony
Between a dedicated action,
Devotion and knowledge freed from misconception.

ARJUNA said, "Tell me, O Keshava !
The traits of such a person
Who with steadfast mind and heart
Maintains such deep serenity.
What does he think of honour and disgrace,
Or praise and blame, or love and hatred ?
Sore is my anxiety to know."
The Lord replied : "O Partha !
When an individual renounces
All the glamour of the mind
And revels in the bliss and calm security
Of self-realisation, he can be said
To have achieved serenity.
He is free from any sort of perturbation ;
His mind remains unruffled
In the midst of weal and woe.
He does not hanker after physical or mental
pleasures
Or the enjoyments of society ;
He is indifferent to pleasure and pain ;
Free from the fear of peril or of apprehension as to
action.
Firm controlled intelligence becomes the sign
Of this exalted soul.

BOUND not by the ties of flesh,
His wisdom is well founded,
For he is not exultant nor despondent
In either good or evil circumstance.
So long as human body must exist,
Questions of worldly gain and loss are wonted
factors,
Yet he who will need them not,
Attain to sweet tranquility of mind.
The senses are by nature unrestrained
Prone to exploit the full range of phenomena,
Yet with the truly wise they rest subservient
To a controlled mind, for as the tortoise
Draws its feet beneath the shelter of its shell
And uses them when needs arise,
So does the wise one with firm determined mind
Bring full control to bear upon his senses
Which for a right cause may be exercised at will
And subsequently kept in check.

THE practices of abstinence from food and self-
denial
Are only for the ignorant.
Thus can they best control the senses of the body
With eight processes for the concentration of the
mind,
Such as forbearance and special regulations,
Even to their ways of sitting, breathing,
Meditation and practices of abnegation.
These ways do not hold good for the wise ones
Who are self-controlled.
For them alnoe is the Divine Beauty of Eternal
Truth-
I am the Eternal Truth.
No longer do they feel the need for worldly joys.
Though rules of fasting to control
The senses are prescribed for many,
Such paths lead not to everlasting good,
Unless the principle of Love
Ecstatic and Divine be present too.
Attachment to Divinity
Causes a corresponding detachment
From the lower inclinations.
When once Divine Love is awakened
And self's relation to the Lord is understood,
Worldly enjoyment ceases to entice.

O Son of Kunti ! even the self-controlled
Who master their senses on the path of
abstract concentration
Are sometimes swept away by sense-storms:
For the allurement of the senses is often very great.
Only the path of unalloyed devotion
And Divine Love, frees man from such danger.
He who, by following the course
Of disciplined detachment from all mundane things
And cleaving unto My Divinity,
Allotting to his senses just their proper place
And rightful functions, otherwise keeping them controlled,
Follows the path of Karma-Yoga,
With a view to render loving service unto Me,
He is in very truth a person self-controlled.
The human mind forever seeks enjoyment from
phenomena
Using the senses, as a vehicle,
But there is no permanence in this.
I am the Lord of senses and phenomena
Made manifest on earth.
Thus he who worships Me with pure devotion
Is indeed self-disciplined-
Perfect in his abnegation.

SEE the ill effects of mock-ascetism.
To meditate on worldly things
And ponder overmuch about renouncing them,
Begets undue attachment and desire for them;
Attachment then gives rise to lust and passion;
Lust, when repressed, arouses anger;
Anger leads to infatuation;
This, again, the memory betrays;
Loss of memoray wipes out all knowledge
And conception of Reality,
And this loss of wisdom, in destruction ends.
Even in mechanical asceticism
Which is divorced from pure devotion,
There is no escape from mundane contemplation
Which gradually engenders thirst for earthly joys
Either in a gross or subtle form,
Ultimately leading the ascetic
To the vortex of an earthly sojourn.
Such are the evil consequences of pseudo-asceticism
As laid down in the Yoga-system.

A self-controlled well-balanced soul.
Can know a perfect bliss within
Though he applies his ordered mind to the pheno-
mena of earth
By being free from love or hatred of them.
A Yogi true has neither sympathy nor antipathy
For any worldly thing.
He has supreme command of all his senses,
And in the service of the Lord
Lies their power and proper use.
Out of that tranquility of mind
Follows the end and healing of all earthly pains.
The heart of such a peaceful soul soon
Becomes intent upon his object of devotion.
Bliss is attainable only by devotion.
Self-content attends the cultivation of devotion
And services like this alone can banish grief and pain.
The truest devotee does dedicate his efforts
To fulfilling the desires of the Lord.
HE who is not bound close to the Divine
By the internal tie of transcendental Love
Cannot conceive of Mellowness Divine;
Unless there be knowledge and the thought of Love-
Divine,
None can escape from wordly lust
In either gross or subtle form.
He therefore lacks serenity and any means
Of cultivating lasting bliss.
Those souls which are ungoverned
Have no knowledge of their true and pure existence
They cannot thus conceive
The transcendental Personality of God.
Those who cannot meditate on God
Because they lack a true conception of Divinity
Cannot have peace of mind,
And being without peace,
How can bliss attain upon God-realisation ?
Just as a ship is tossed and shaken
To and fro by an unfavoured wind
And ultimately doomed to wreck and ruin,
So also the mind of an uncotrolled soul
Is at the mercy of the senses
Devoid of all discrimination
And thereby led astray.

SO, great Prince ! he whose serenity of mind
Is not disturbed by objects of the senses,
Is veritably equipoised.
This can only be obtained
By adoption of a balanced abnegation.
Such is true asceticism,
Which is, in other words, devotion.

ARJUNA ! intelligence is two-fold-
One bent upon self-consciousness,
The other upon selfish gross enjoyment
Either by acceptance of material things
Or subtle things through mechanical renunciation.
The state of self-realisation is
As the screen of night for worldly minded people.
Just as the sleepers know not what takes place at
night,
So those of the world are ignorant
Of what self-conscious beings know.
He who is self-conscious is awakened
In that sphere of night, and enjoying everlasting bliss
From steadfast comprehension
Of his own self and the Supreme Soul.
They are awake who welter
In the sink of worldliness,
Conscious of selfish joys
And grief, fear and delusion,
For their sphere is like the night to the self-conscious
Who are therefore unaware of this.
Thus the self-conscious people sleep
In that sphere where the worldly-minded wake.
That which is night for one is day for others.
Where the self-conscious are awakened
And when it is like day to them,
That is to say, when they enjoy
Eternal bliss in the realisation of the Over-soul,
They of the world do sleep,
Ignorant of all bliss that passes through their night.
Indifferent to pain and pleasure
Which entangle worldly men in meshes of illusion,
They who are divinely conscious
Accept the things of earthly life with nonchalance.

THOSE who have inordinate desires
Can never know true happiness.
Just as rivers entering the Ocean
Cannot create disturbance there,
So the desires embosomed
In the hearts of all the self-controlled
Cannot ruffle their tranquility of mind and senses;
They alone are happy.
Whosoever slips the yoke of egotism
Does not desire enjoyment or renunciation;
He is indifferent to all phenomena;
Lives in an unattached and very humble manner,
He ever-lasting bliss and peace attains.

O Son of Pritha ! such firmness and stability
Lead one to know Brahman.
He who reaches that stage even at the hour of death,
Like King Khattanga, realises
Spiritual identity with Brahman,
That which is salvation
And free from worldly bondage.
Casting off the yoke of time and space,
The soul attaining to the realm of Brahman,
Tastes of all-conscious bliss for ever-
This is true Nirvana.
Brahman is disctinct from Matter.
He who is settled in that sphere,
Savours the mellowness of Transcendental Love."