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Arjuna said:
1. Krishna, you approve the renunciation of actions, and then again the practice of yogic discipline. Tell me unambiguously, which is the better of these two?
The Lord said:
2. Both renunciation and the practice of yogic action lead to ultimate bliss, but, of the two, the practice of yogic action is superior to the renunciation of action.
3. Great Arm, the man who neither desires nor hates is considered a perpetual renouncer; free from duality, he is easily liberated.
4. Fools hold that the way of Sankhya and the practice of yogic action are different, but not those who know. Through either one of them, carried out properly, one attains the reward of both.
5. The state achieved by Sankhyas is also achieved by yogic actors; whoever sees the ways of Sankhya and yogic action as one truly sees.
6. But renunciation, Great Arm, is hard to attain without yogic practice; the sage disciplined in yogic practice swiftly reaches Brahman.
7. Even when he is acting, the main who is disciplined in yogic practice, whole self is pure, whose self and senses are controlled, whose self is the self of all beings, is not defiled.
8-9. The disciplined man, who knows the underlying principle of reality, thinks: “I really don’t do anything at all,” certain that whether seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, walking, sleeping, breathing, talking, excreting, grasping, opening or shutting the eyes, it is merely the senses acting on the objects of sense.
10. The man who acts, having rendered his actions to Brahman and abandoned attachment, is untainted by evil, in the same way that a lotus leaf is untainted by water.
11. Having abandoned attachment, yogins undertake action with the body, mind, and intelligence, even with the senses alone, for the sake of self-purification.
12. The disciplined man, having abandoned the result of action, attains complete peace; the undisciplined man, whose action is implelled by desire, and who is attached to the result, is bound.
13. Having renounced all actions with the mind, the embodied self sits easily, ruler in its nine-gated city, neither acting nor causing action.
14. The lord of the body does not create agency or actions for the world, or the connection of action and result; rather it is inherent nature that accomplishes this.
15. The all-pervading lord does not take on the merit or demerit of anyone’s actions. Knowledge is concealed by ignorance – and in that way people are deluded.
16. But for those whose ignorance of the self has been destroyed by knowledge, their knowledge is like the sun, flooding the highest reality with light.
17. With their intelligences on it, their selves in it, grounded in it, wholly devoted to it, they go never again to be reborn, their impurities shed by knowledge.
18. Those who know see the same thing in a wise and disciplined brahmin as in a cow or an elephant, or even in a dog or an outcast.
19. The created world is overcome even here for those whose minds are firmly impartial; for since Brahman is faultless and the same in everything, so they are established in Brahman.
20. A man should no more rejoice on obtaining what is pleasant than he should become agitated when suffering what is unpleasant. Undeluded, with firm intelligence, the knower of Brahman is established in Brahman.
21. He whose self is unaffected by outside contact finds his happiness in the self; united through yogic discipline with Brahman, he reaches inextinguishable happiness.
22. For pleasures deriving from outside contact are sources of unhappiness, Son of Kunti, because they have a beginning and an end; the wise man takes no delight in them.
23. The man able to withstand in this world, before liberation from the body, the violent disturbance caused by desire and anger is disciplined and happy.
24. He who has inner happiness, inner delight, and thereby inner radiance – that yogin, being Brahman, achieves the nirvana of Brahman.
25. Seers whose impurities have been destroyed, whose doubts have been dispelled, who have restrained themselves, who delight in the welfare of all beings, reach the nirvana of Brahman.
26. For those ascetics whose thought is controlled, who have separated themselves from desire and anger, who know themselves, the nirvana of Brahman lies close.
27. Having excluded outside contacts, fixing his gaze between his eyebrows, making the inward and outward breaths even within the nostrils,
28. The wise man, whose senses, mind, and intelligence are controlled, who is wholly intent upon release, whose desire, fear, and anger have vanished, is liberated forever.
29. Realising that I am the consumer of sacrifices and austerities, the great lord of all the worlds, the companion of all creatures, he attains peace.