The Bhagavad Gita
Chapter 2
2.1Sanjaya said: To him thus with pity overcome, with smarting brimming eyes, despondent, Madhusûdana spake these words:
2.2The Blessed Lord said: Whence hath this dejection befallen thee in this perilous strait, ignoble, heaven-closing, infamous, O Arjuna?
2.3Yield not to impotence, O Partha! it doth not befit thee. Shake off this paltry faint-heartedness! Stand up, Parantapa!
2.4Arjuna said: How, O Madhusûdana, shall I attack Bhîshma and Drona with arrows in battle, they who are worthy of reverence, O slayer of foes?
2.5Better in this world to eat even the beggar's crust than to slay these most noble Gurus. Slaying these Gurus, our well-wishers, I should taste of blood-besprinkled feasts.
2.6Nor know I which for us be the better, that we conquer them or they conquer us—these, whom having slain we should not care to live, even these arrayed against us, the sons of Dhritarâshtra.
2.7My heart is weighed down with the vice of faintness; my mind is confused as to duty. I ask thee which may be the better—that tell me decisively. I am thy disciple, suppliant to Thee; teach me.
2.8For I see not that it would drive away this anguish that withers up my senses, if I should attain unrivalled monarchy on earth, or even the sovereignty of the Shining Ones.
2.9Sanjaya said: Gudâkesha, conqueror of his foes, having thus addressed Hrishîkesha and said to Govinda, "I will not fight!", became silent.
2.10Then Hrishîkesha, smiling, as it were, O Bhârata, spake these words to him, despondent, in the midst of the two armies:
2.11The Blessed Lord said: Thou grievest for those that should not be griev ed for, yet speakest words of wisdom. The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.
2.12Nor at any time verily was I not, nor thou, nor these princes of men, nor verily shall we ever cease to be, hereafter.
2.13As the dweller in the body experienceth in the body childhood, youth, old age, so passeth he on to another body; the steadfast one grieveth not thereat.
2.14The contacts of matter, O son of Kuntî, giving cold and heat, pleasure and pain, they come and go, impermanent; endure them bravely, O Bhârata.
2.15The man whom these torment not, O chief of men, balanced in pain and pleasure, steadfast, he is fitted for immortality.
2.16The unreal hath no being; the real never ceaseth to be; the truth about both hath been perceived by the seers of the essence of things.
2.17Know That to be indestructible by whom all this is pervaded. Nor can any work the destruction of that imperishable One.
2.18These bodies of the embodied One, who is eternal, indestructible and immeasurable, are known as finite. Therefore fight, O Bhârata.
2.19He who regardeth this as a slayer, and he who thinketh he is slain, both of them are ignorant. He slayeth not, nor is he slain.
2.20He is not born, nor doth he die; nor having been, ceaseth he any more to be; unborn, perpetual, eternal and ancient, he is not slain when the body is slaughtered.
2.21Who knoweth him indestructible, perpetual, unborn, undiminishing, how can that man slay, O Pârtha, or cause to be slain?
2.22As a man, casting off worn-out garments, taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, casting off worn-out bodies, entereth into others that are new.
2.23Weapons cleave him not, nor fire burneth him, nor waters wet him, nor wind drieth him away.
2.24Uncleavable he, incombustible he, and indeed neither to be wetted nor dried away; perpetual, all-pervasive, stable, immovable, ancient.
2.25Unmanifest, unthinkable, immutable, he is called; therefore knowing him as such, thou shouldst not grieve.
2.26Or if thou thinkest of him as being constantly born and constantly dying, even then, O mighty-armed, thou shouldst not grieve.
2.27For certain is death for the born, and certain is birth for the dead; therefore over the inevitable thou shouldst not grieve.
2.28Beings are unmanifest in their origin, manifest in their midmost state, O Bhârata, unmanifest likewise are they in dissolution. What room then for lamentation?
2.29As marvellous one regardeth him; as marvellous another speaketh thereof; as marvellous another heareth thereof; yet having heard none indeed understandeth.
2.30This dweller in the body of everyone is ever invulnerable, O Bhârata; therefore thou shouldst not grieve for any creature.
2.31Further, looking to thine own duty thou shouldst not tremble; for there is nothing more welcome to a Kshattriya than righteous war.
2.32Happy the Kshattriyas, O Pârtha, who obtain such a fight, offered unsought as an open door to heaven.
2.33But if thou wilt not carry on this righteous warfare, then casting away thine own duty and thine honour, thou wilt incur sin.
2.34Men will recount thy perpetual dishonour, and, to one highly esteemed, dishonour exceedeth death.
2.35The great car-warriors will think thee fled from the battle from fear, and thou, that wast highly thought of by them, wilt be lightly held.
2.36Many unseemly words will be spoken by thine enemies, slandering thy strength; what more painful than that?
2.37Slain, thou wilt obtain heaven; victorious, thou wilt enjoy the earth; therefore stand up, O son of Kuntî, resolute to fight.
2.38Taking as equal pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, gird thee for the battle; thus thou shalt not incur sin.
2.39This teaching set forth to thee is in accordance with the Sâñkhya; hear it now according to the Yoga, imbued with which teaching, O Pârtha, thou shalt cast away the bonds of action.
2.40In this there is no loss of effort, nor is there transgression. Even a little of this knowledge protects from great fear.
2.41The determinate Reason is but one-pointed, O joy of the Kurus; many-branched and endless are the thoughts of the irresolute.
2.42Flowery speech is uttered by the foolish, rejoicing in the letter of the Vedas, O Pârtha, saying: "There is naught but this";
2.43With desire for self, with heaven for goal, they offer birth as the fruit of action, and prescribe many and various ceremonies for the attainment of pleasure and lordship.
2.44For them who cling to pleasure and lordship, whose minds are captivated by such teaching, is not designed this determinate Reason, on contemplation steadily bent.
2.45The Vedas deal with the three attributes; be thou above these three attributes, O Arjuna; beyond the pairs of opposites, ever steadfast in purity, careless of possessions, full of the Self.
2.46All the Vedas are as useful to an enlightened Brâhmana as is a tank in a place covered all over with water.
2.47Thy business is with the action only, never with its fruits; so let not the fruit of action be thy motive, nor be thou to inaction attached.
2.48Perform action, O Dhananjaya, dwelling in union with the divine, renouncing attachments and balanced evenly in success and failure: equilibrium is called yoga.
2.49Far lower than the Yoga of Discrimination is action, O Dhananjaya. Take thou refuge in the Pure Reason; pitiable are they who work for fruit.
2.50United to the Pure Reason one abandoneth here both good and evil deeds; therefore cleave thou to yoga; yoga is skill in action.
2.51The Sages, united to the Pure Reason, renounce the fruit which action yieldeth, and, liberated from the bonds of birth, they go to the blissful seat.
2.52When thy mind shall escape from this tangle of delusion, then thou shalt rise to indifference as to what has been heard and shall be heard.
2.53When thy mind, bewildered by the Scriptures, shall stand immovable, fixed in contemplation, then shalt thou attain unto yoga.
2.54Arjuna said: What the mark, of him who is stable of mind, steadfast in contemplation, O Keshava? How doth the stable-minded talk, how doth he sit, how walk?
2.55The Blessed Lord said: When a man abandoneth, O Pârtha, all the desires of the heart, and is satisfied in the Self by the Self, then is he called stable in mind.
2.56He whose mind is free from anxiety amid pains, indifferent amid pleasures, loosed from passion, fear and anger, is called a sage of stable mind.
2.57He who on every side is without attachments, whatever hap of fair and foul, who neither likes nor dislikes, of such a one the understanding is well poised.
2.58When, again, as a tortoise draws in on all sides its limbs, he withdraws his senses from the objects of sense, then is his understanding well poised.
2.59The objects of sense, but not the relish for them, turn away from an abstemious dweller in the body; and even relish turneth away from him after the Supreme is seen.
2.60O son of Kuntî, the excited senses of even a wise man, though he be striving, impetuously carry away his mind.
2.61Having restrained them all, he should sit harmonised, I his supreme goal; for, whose senses are mastered, of him the understanding is well poised.
2.62Man, musing on the objects of sense, conceiveth an attachment to these; from attachment ariseth desire; from desire anger cometh forth;
2.63From anger proceedeth delusion; from delusion confused memory; from confused memory the destruction of Reason; from destruction of Reason he perishes.
2.64But the disciplined self, moving among sense-objects with senses free from attraction and repulsion, mastered by the Self, goeth to peace.
2.65In that Peace the extinction of all pains ariseth for him, for of him whose heart is peaceful the Reason soon attaineth equilibrium.
2.66There is no Pure Reason for the non-harmonised, nor for the non-harmonised is there concentration; for him without concentration there is no peace, and for the unpeaceful how can there be happiness?
2.67Such of the roving senses as the mind yieldeth to, that hurries away the understanding, just as the gale hurries away a ship upon the waters.
2.68Therefore, O mighty-armed, whose senses are all completely restrained from the objects of sense, of him the understanding is well poised.
2.69That which is the night of all beings, for the disciplined man is the time of waking; when other beings are waking, then is it night for the sage who seeth.
2.70He attaineth Peace, into whom all desires flow as rivers flow into the ocean, which is filled with water, but remaineth unmoved—not he who desireth desires.
2.71Whoso forsaketh all desires and goeth onwards free from yearnings, selfless and without egoism—he goeth to Peace.
2.72This is the Eternal state, O son of Prithâ. Having attained thereto, none is bewildered. Who, even at the death-hour, is established therein, he goeth to the Nirvâna of the Eternal.