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Sanjaya said:
1. Then, Krishna, the destroyer of the demon Madhu, spoke these words to the dejected Arjuna, who, eyes blurred and brimming with tears, was so overcome by pity:
The Lord said:
2. Arjuna, where do you get this weakness from at a moment of crisis? A noble should not experience this. It does not lead to heaven, it leads to disgrace.
3. No impotence, Partha, it does not become you. Abandon this base, inner weakness. Get up, Incinerator of the Foe!
Arjuna said:
4. Destroyer of Madhu, destroyer of the enemy, how can I shoot arrows at Bhishma and Drona in battle when they should be honoured?
5. Better to eat begged food among common people than to kill such worthy teachers. For having killed my teachers, who desire legitimate worldly ends, I should be consuming food smeared with blood.
6. And we do not know which is better for us – that we should overcome Dhritarashtra’s men, standing there before us, or that they should overcome us. For if we were to kill them, we should have no desire to go on living.
7. My inner being is disabled by that vice of dejection. My mind is bewildered as to what is right. I ask you, which would be better? Tell me for certain. I am your student, I have come to you for help. Instruct me!
8. Though I were to obtain a prosperous, unrivalled kingdom on earth, and even mastery over the gods, I cannot imagine what should dispel my grief, which withers the senses.
Sanjaya said:
9. And having spoken thus to Krishna, to Govinda, having said “I will not fight!” Arjuna, the Incinerator of the Foe, fell silent.
10. O Dhritarashtra, between the two armies, Krishna, with the shadow of a smile, spoke these words to that dejected man:
The Lord said:
11. You utter wise words, yet you have been mourning those who should not be mourned; the truly wise do not grieve for the living or the dead.
12. There never was a time when I was not, or you, or these rulers of men. Nor will there ever be a time when we shall cease to be, all of us hereafter.
13. Just as within this body the embodied self passes through childhood, youth, and old age, so it passes to another body. The wise man is not bewildered by this.
14. But contacts with matter, Son of Kunti, give rise to cold and heat, pleasure and pain. They come and go, Bharata; they are impermanent and you should endure them.
15. For these things, Bull among men, do not perturb that wise man for whom pleasure and pain are the same; he is ready for immortality.
16. For the non-existent there is no coming into existence, for the existent there is no lapsing into non-existence; the division between them is observed by those who see the underlying nature of things.
17. But know that that on which all this is stretched is indestructible. No one can destroy this imperishable one.
18. It is just these bodies of the indestructible, immeasurable, and eternal embodied self that are characterised as coming to an end – therefore fight, Bharata!
19. Anyone who believes this a killer, and anyone who thinks this killed, they do not understand: it does not kill, it is not killed.
20. It is not born, it never dies; being, it will never again cease to be. It is unborn, invariable, eternal, primeval. It is not killed when the body is killed.
21. Partha, how can that man who knows it is to be indestructible, invariable, unborn, and imperishable bring about the death of anyone? Whom does he kill?
22. Just as a man casting off worn-out clothes takes up others that are new, so the embodied self, casting off its worn-out bodies, goes to other, new ones.
23. Blades do not pierce it, fire does not burn it, waters do not wet it, and the wind does not parch it.
24. It cannot be pierced, it cannot be burned, it cannot be wetted, it cannot be parched. It is invariable, everywhere, fixed, immovable, eternal.
25. It is said to be imperceptible, unthinkable, and immutable; knowing it to be so, you should not therefore grieve.
26. And even if you believe that it is regularly born and regularly dead, you should not grieve for it, Great Arm.
27. Death is inevitable for those who are born; for those who are dead birth is just as certain. Therefore you must not grieve for what is ineluctable.
28. Bharata, beings have imperceptible beginnings; the interim is clear; their ends are again indistinct. What is there to lament in this?
29. Quite exceptionally does anyone see it, and quite exceptionally does anyone speak of it; it is quite exceptional for anyone to hear of it, but even when they have heard of it, no one in fact knows it.
30. Bharata, this embodied self in the body of everyone is eternally unkillable. Therefore you must not grieve for any beings at all.
31. Recognising your inherent duty, you must not shrink from it. For there is nothing better for a warrior than a duty-bound war.
32. It is a door to heaven, opened fortuitously. Fortunate are the warriors, Partha, who are presented with such a war.
33. But if, careless of your inherent duty and renown, you will not undertake this duty-bound conflict, you shall transgress.
34. Moreover, people will recount your limitless disgrace – and disgrace is worse than death for the man who has once been honoured.
35. The great warriors will suppose that you withdrew from the battle out of fear. And you will fade from their high regard into insignificance.
36. Then your enemies will say many things that would be better unsaid, slighting your strength – and what could be more painful than that?
37. You will either be killed and attain heaven, or conquer and enjoy the earth. So rise, Son of Kunti, determined to fight.
38. Making yourself indifferent to pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, commit yourself to battle. And in that way you shall not transgress.
39. You have received this intelligence according to Sankhya theory, now hear it as it applies to practice. Disciplined with such intelligence, Partha, you shall throw off the bondage of action.
40. In this there is no wasted effort, no reverse; just a little of this truth saves from great danger.
41. Son of the Kurus, in this the resolute intelligence is one, the intellects of the irresolute are without limit and many-branched.
42. Partha, that florid speech the uninspired utter, addicted to the words of the Veda, claiming that there is nothing else,
43. Their nature desire, their aim heaven – that speech which produces rebirth as the fruit of action, and which is dense with specific ritual acts aimed at the attainment of enjoyment and power.
44. Robs those addicted to enjoyment and power of their minds. For them no resolute intelligence is established in concentration.
45. The Vedas’ sphere of activity is the three constituents of material nature. Arjuna, be free from the three constituents, free from duality, forever grounded in purity, beyond getting and keeping, possessed of the self.
46. For the brahmin who knows, there is no more purpose in all the Vedas than in a water-tank surrounded by a flood.
47. You are qualified simply with regard to action, never with regards to its results. You must be neither motivated by the results of action or attached to inaction.
48. Grounded in yogic discipline, and having abandoned attachment, undertake actions. Dhananjaya, evenly disposed as to their success or failure. Yoga is defined as evenness of mind.
49. For action in itself is inferior by far to the discipline of intelligence, Dhananjaya. You must seek refuge in intelligence. Those motivated by results are wretched.
50. The man disciplined in intelligence renounces in this world the results of both good and evil actions. Therefore commit yourself to yogic discipline; yogic discipline is skill in actions.
51. For, having abandoned the result produced from action, those who understand, who are disciplined in intelligence, are freed from the bondage of rebirth and achieve a state without disease.
52. When your intelligence emerges from the thicket of delusion, then you will become disenchanted with what is to be heard and has been heard in the Veda.
53. When, turned away from the Veda, your intelligence stands motionless, immovable in concentration, then you will attain yogic discipline.
Arjuna said:
54. O Keshava, how do you describe that man whose mentality is stable, whose concentration is fixed? What should the main whose thought is settled say? How should he sit? How should he walk?
The Lord said:
55. Partha, when he abandons every desire lodged in the mind, by himself content within the self, then he is called a man of stable mentality.
56. He is called a holy man, settled in thought, whose mind is not disturbed in the midst of sorrows, who has lost the desire for pleasures, whose passion, fear, and anger have disappeared.
57. His mentality is stabilised who feels no desire for anything, for getting this or that good or evil, and who neither rejoices in nor loathes anything.
58. When this man, like a tortoise retracting its limbs entirely withdraws his senses from the objects of sense, his mentality is stabilised.
59. For the embodied being who doe snot feed on them the objects of sense disappear, except flavour; flavour fades too for the one who has seen the highest.
60. Son of Kunti, even for the man of discernment who strives, the harassing senses forcibly seize the mind.
61. Restraining all the senses, one should sit, yogically disciplined, focused on me; for if one’s senses are under control one’s mentality is grounded.
62. When a man meditates on the objects of sense he becomes attached to them; from attachment desire is born, from desire anger.
63. Out of anger confusion arises, through confusion memory wanders, from loss of memory the intelligence is destroyed; from the destruction of intelligence a man is lost.
64. But engaging the objects of sense with his senses separated from desire and loathing, and subject to the will of the self, a man who is self-controlled attains calmness.
65. In calm all his miseries are ended, for the intelligence of the whose mind is calm is immediately stabilised.
66. The undisciplined man has no intelligence, and no capacity to produce anything, and one who has no capacity is without serenity. And how can there be happiness for the man who lacks serenity?
67. For a mind conforming to the wandering senses carries away one’s insight, as the wind a ship on the water.
68. Therefore, Great Arm, whoever has entirely withheld the senses from the objects of sense has stabilised his insight.
69. When it is night for all creatures, the man who restrains himself is awake; when creatures are awake, it is night for the perceptive seer.
70. Just as waters enter the sea, which is forever being filled although its depths are unmoving, so the man whom all desires enter in the same way attains peace – but not the desirer of desires.
71. The man who, having abandoned all desires, lives free from longing, unpossessive and unegoistical, approaches peace.
72. This, Partha, is the Brahman state; having attained it, one is not deluded; fixed in it, even at the moment of death one reaches the nirvana of Brahman.