The Teaching

The yoga of the inner Self, he said, is the highest good, in which pain and pleasure both come to rest. The mind is what binds the self, and the mind is what frees it: caught in the three strands of nature, goodness, passion and darkness, it binds, and given to the Lord it frees. When the mind is clean of I and mine, of desire and greed, the person sees the Self alone, beyond nature, unbroken and shining by its own light. For those who seek Brahman, there is no road as safe as devotion to the Lord, the Self of all.

The wise know that clinging is a noose on the self that never wears out. But clinging to the good is the open door of release. The good are patient and kind, friends to every creature, enemies to none, at peace. Ask for their company, good woman, for they take the harm out of clinging. In their company come stories of me that heal the ear and the heart, and from delight in them come faith and love and devotion, one after another.

What devotion should I have? Devahūti asked. What kind of devotion can I reach, so that I may come at once to your state of peace? And what is that yoga like? Explain it to me, Hari, so that I, a woman of little understanding, may grasp easily what is hard to grasp.

Then, out of love for his mother, Kapila taught her the Sāṃkhya, the counting of the principles of what is real: the Person, who has no beginning and no strands of nature and shines by his own light, and nature with its three strands and the twenty-four principles that come from it. He taught her the yoga that gives the mind something to rest on, the restraints and observances, the seat and the breath, and how to meditate on the Lord's form limb by limb. He taught her the many kinds of devotion, and that the Lord dwells in every being, so that whoever hates any creature cannot please him by worshipping an image. He taught her how a creature enters the womb and is born, how a man bound to his house suffers, and who comes back to birth and who does not.