Passage 20

¹Though the Ātma dwells together with the body, it remains beyond the body's guṇas and attributes. Just as the body passes through childhood, adolescence, youth and old age, so too the passage into another body is another change of condition. The dhīra, the steady one, does not grieve over this, Kṛṣṇa declared firmly as He shook the reins of the chariot. ²Arjuna asked with doubt: 'Swami! You say that changing bodies is like changing states of the same body. But we remember events from earlier states of this body, whereas we do not remember events from previous bodies. How can the analogy stand?' Kṛṣṇa replied: 'Take only the relevant point of the illustration; do not force every detail to correspond. Though the bodily states change, the Ātma does not change. Likewise, though bodies change, the Ātma does not. That is all the illustration is meant to show.' ³Yet Arjuna moved to another aspect. This doubt is not Arjuna's alone; Bhagavān knew that ordinary people too would raise it. Hence, in the words 'dhīras tatra na muhyati,' He gave the remedy immediately: 'Arjuna! Through the changes within one life, Buddhi can retain memory to some extent. At death, when the condition of the body itself changes, Buddhi becomes disordered and with that shock forgets the past at once. Memory and forgetfulness are functions of Buddhi, not attributes of the Ātma. Consider another example.' ⁴'Suppose you are twenty-five years old. If I ask you where exactly you were on some particular day ten years ago, you may not be able to say. Yet it is certainly true that you existed then; you cannot say, "I was not." So it is with previous bodies. You existed, though the events are not now present in memory. One whose Buddhi is strong does not become confused by this; such a one is called a jñānī. The Ātma does not go away, and the body does not remain. If you grieve for someone's death, does that bring happiness to his Ātma? That is an even more foolish thought. Nothing that happens to the body causes sorrow to the Ātma.' ⁵'When the senses remain in their proper places there is no fear. Fear arises through contact with their objects; the conjunction of sense and object is the cause of pleasure and pain. If someone insults you and you hear it, the words disturb you. If those very words never reach your ear, no such disturbance arises in you. Is it not therefore the meeting of sense and object that produces this agitation?' ⁶'These contacts are like heat and cold. Coolness gives comfort in hot weather; warmth gives comfort in cold weather. So too with the contacts of the senses. As long as the world remains, external objects will remain. As long as prārabdha remains, pleasure and pain will arise. What must be learned is the art and means of bearing them.' ⁷'If you say, "I shall not bathe in the sea until the waves subside," when will the waves ever stop, and when will you bathe? You must learn how not to be struck down by the waves; to abandon bathing altogether because you have not learned that skill is absurd. Therefore, Arjuna, wear the armour of Titikṣā. Then pleasure and pain will not torment you.' Thus Kṛṣṇa began to teach Titikṣā. ⁸Titikṣā means endurance amid the pairs of opposites. Such endurance belongs to the strong; it is their wealth and companion. The weak man, struck by dualities, cannot remain steady even for a moment. He moves like a peacock feather in the wind, like the pendulum of a clock—now toward pleasure, now toward pain. ⁹This deserves reflection. Endurance born merely of helplessness, with no choice and no inner strength, is not Titikṣā. When one has capacity and options, yet consciously chooses forbearance, that endurance becomes a means to Mokṣa. Outer strength should be accompanied by inner peace. True endurance is joined with Viveka. ¹⁰Here Viveka means remembering that experiences are āgamāpāyinaḥ—they come and go. They are not permanent. Titikṣā should therefore rest upon discrimination. Ordinarily people desire only pleasure and happiness and never desire hardship or sorrow. They regard happiness as a dear friend and hardship as a mortal enemy. This is great lack of discrimination. Pleasure often contains little real joy and much restlessness, while hardship brings inquiry and reflection. There is often less pāpa in hardship than in unexamined pleasure. Difficulty awakens man, makes him cautious and thoughtful. Pleasure can make him forget his humanity and, through indiscretion and ahaṁkāra, lead him into pāpa while spending away his accumulated puṇya. Hardship that wears down our pāpa and awakens vigilance is therefore a true friend; pleasure that exhausts puṇya and stimulates fresh pāpa should be regarded with caution, even as an enemy. ¹¹Hardships make Viveka flourish and strengthen the power of inquiry. Pleasures can make one forget even recent lessons and become dull. Therefore, even if we cannot yet welcome hardship as a friend, we should at least not treat it as an enemy. 'Regard the pleasures and pains allotted by prārabdha as the prasāda of Paramātma. Then you become free from bondage. That discrimination is Jñāna; its absence is ajñāna. One in ignorance may be compared to a blind man. Just as a blind man needs someone to guide him, pleasure itself is never without its companion, pain. If you ask only for pleasure, pain must come with it; only in the presence of pain is the value of pleasure understood.' Hearing this, Arjuna said, 'Mādhava! If, as You say, I practise Titikṣā and conquer pleasure and pain, what is the gain? One may call it patience, but is there anything beyond that?' Bhagavān replied: ¹²'Kaunteya! In the ocean of saṁsāra, waves of pleasure and pain rise without pause. One who remains unmoved by them, does not lose the equilibrium of Chitta, and stands firmly in Niṣṭhā is a dhīra. One who has the strength and capacity to refuse subjection to the dualities of sense-experience is truly intelligent. Such a Buddhi marks the dhīra.' ¹³'Dhī means Buddhi. A true puruṣa is one who possesses such Buddhi—not merely one who grows a moustache and wears the clothing of a man. The puruṣa is one whose intelligence can reject slavery to the pairs of opposites. Better than conquering outer enemies is conquering the enemies within. To conquer pleasure and pain is the work of the dhīra; that is the true fruit.' ¹⁴'Dear one, perhaps you will still doubt—you are a very mine of doubts! You may ask again, "Even if I conquer all these, what do I gain?" The destination is the path of immortality. The fruit of conquering pleasure and pain is amṛta that does not depend upon external conditions. Dear one, you are a foremost among men. For you, therefore, the conquest of these impermanent and unreal worldly pleasures and pains and the attainment of that immortality are indeed necessary.' In this way, beginning from Arjuna's grief, Kṛṣṇa taught him discrimination between Ātma and anātma. ¹⁵Kṛṣṇa Paramātma established the distinction between sat and asat: the Ātma alone is the abiding reality; the body and the contacts of the senses are passing. Sat never becomes nonexistent, and asat never acquires true existence. ¹⁶A person without Jñāna may perform actions and still remain bound; the jñānī is not tied by Karma. One who knows how to swim may enter a river without fear and reach safety. One who plunges into deep water without knowing how to swim has only danger before him; death may become his refuge. ¹⁷Therefore Kṛṣṇa Paramātma began with Ātma-jñāna. He taught that the Ātma neither kills nor is killed. Those who think 'I kill' or 'I am killed' do not know the true svarūpa and svabhāva of the Ātma. Arjuna's Ātma does not kill; the Ātmas of Bhīṣma and Droṇa do not die; nor is Kṛṣṇa's Ātma an external agent compelling another Ātma. 'Doer,' 'deed,' and 'impeller' are roles within empirical action. The changeless Ātma is neither an agent of killing nor an object that can be killed. Kṛṣṇa explains it thus: ¹⁸'Birth, existence, growth, transformation, decline and destruction are the six modifications called ṣaḍ-bhāva-vikāras. Birth means coming into manifestation after not having been manifest; death means ceasing to appear after having appeared. These modifications belong only to things made of parts. The Ātma is partless; how can there be birth for it? And if there is no birth, how can death arise? Whom can such an Ātma kill, and by whom can it be killed? It is unborn, eternal and everlasting. Just as a person discards worn and soiled garments and puts on fresh ones, the dehī leaves worn-out bodies and takes new bodies. Clothes are worn by the body; the body is worn by the indwelling one. Had you known in truth this Ātma, the witness of bodies, you would not grieve in this way. All your weapons may strike these inert bodies, but they cannot in any way touch the changeless Ātma. Knowing this truth, abandon grief over the body.' ¹⁹'To stand for Dharma and remove adharma is the supremely sacred duty of a Kṣatriya. Dear Arjuna, it is your great good fortune that warriors such as Bhīṣma and Droṇa stand before you. Was it not out of fidelity to Kṣatriya Dharma that Bhīṣma—your revered grandsire, a brahmacārin—once fought even Paraśurāma, the Guru who had taught him? Have you reflected on that? Did Bhīṣma then weep as you do? If Bhīṣma, endowed with every virtue and great Tyāga, could remain true to his Kṣatriya Dharma even when facing his own Guru Paraśurāma, why do you now shrink from battle against those very upholders of Dharma? To overcome everything that obstructs Dharma and establish it is the highest śreyas of the Kṣatriya; that is his path of highest good.' ²⁰'Have you considered the meaning of kṣatriya? Kṣata means injury or suffering; one who protects multitudes from suffering is a kṣatriya. A Dharma-yuddha of this kind is a rare privilege granted only to the worthy. Especially for a Kṣatriya, this is sacred opportunity. Think of the puṇya in protecting those who live by Dharma and restraining those who live by adharma. A war undertaken to establish peace and well-being in the world is called Dharma-yuddha.' ²¹'What wrongdoing have they not committed? They dishonoured elders, rejected what was good, humiliated chaste women, persecuted those who stood for Dharma, and committed offences beyond counting. Their time of destruction has arrived. If at such a moment you become a coward, you will bring disgrace upon your parents, brothers, kinsmen—and indeed upon the Kṣatriya lineage itself.' ²²'Dear one, you say that fighting is pāpa. You are greatly mistaken. To refuse battle and thereby fail to end the reign of the wicked, bringing harm upon multitudes of the righteous—that itself is pāpa. By abandoning the battle now you would incur a greater fault. If you desert your svadharma at this moment, you will sink into a very low state. Fulfil svadharma and no pāpa will cling to you. Meet the battle with firm Chitta and equal regard for the pairs of opposites.' For this reason, from the thirty-first śloka of the second chapter Kṛṣṇa teaches eight ślokas on svadharma. In the thirty-seventh He teaches entering Karma with equanimity in pleasure and pain. The thirty-ninth śloka is a bridge: 'Eṣā te 'bhihitā sāṅkhye'—I have taught you the Buddhi of Sāṅkhya; now listen as I teach you the Buddhi of Yoga. ²³Action performed with Buddhi, relinquishing attachment to its fruit, is Niṣkāma Karma. This is Buddhi Yoga. Without clear determination of Buddhi, how can attachment to the fruit be relinquished? Hence it is also called Yoga-buddhi. With its help, free yourself from the bonds of Karma and rise beyond the sense of doership. But do not imagine that freedom can be obtained simply by refusing to act. It is impossible not to act at all. No one can remain without Karma. Therefore Kṛṣṇa says in the third chapter, 'na hi kaścit kṣaṇam api'—not even for a moment can anyone remain wholly without action. ²⁴'Arjuna! In kāmya-karma, action undertaken for a desired fruit, an effort may be lost or interrupted. In Niṣkāma Karma there is no such loss of beginning. This is a distinction between sakāma and Niṣkāma Karma. Desired action binds one to the consequences it seeks; selfless action carries no such chain. Expectation of fruit is a cause of saṁsāra; relinquishment of the fruit is a cause of Mokṣa. One who follows the path of Niṣkāma Karma Yoga does not lose what has been done even if Siddhi is not attained in that very birth. Its force bears fruit in a later birth and leads onward toward the goal. Therefore place your adhikāra in Karma itself; do not claim ownership over its fruit.' ²⁵'Dear one, expectation of fruit belongs to rajoguṇa and does not suit you. But when I say "give up the fruit," do not abandon the action itself—that would be an even greater deception and a mark of tamoguṇa. Be careful!' Here Bhagavān lays down four directions: the first is a positive injunction and the remaining three are restraints. The first establishes what is to be done; the others show the errors to be avoided. The teaching is not only for Arjuna: every human being has adhikāra over action. ²⁶Arjuna should be understood as the representative of humanity. This is one of the first points a reader of the Gītā should grasp. There is another point: the special adhikāra over Karma spoken of here belongs to the human condition. Animals and birds act according to instinct; devas occupy another order. In ordinary life, men act seeking results; if they believed there were no result at all, many would abandon action itself. This is the common mind. But the student of the Gītā who longs for Mokṣa must act while offering the fruit to Bhagavān. Such offering brings peace.