Verse 18·49

असक्तबुद्धिः सर्वत्र जितात्मा विगतस्पृहः ।नैष्कर्म्यसिद्धिं परमां संन्यासेनाधिगच्छति ॥

asaktabuddhiḥ sarvatra jitātmā vigataspṛhaḥnaiṣkarmyasiddhiṃ paramāṃ saṃnyāsenādhigacchati

It is to put off the lower mental, vital, physical existence and to put on the pure spiritual being. This can best be done by the intelligence and will, buddhiḥ, our present topmost principle. It has to turn away from the things of the lower existence and first and foremost from its effective knot of desire, from our attachment to the objects pursued by the mind and the senses. One must become an understanding unattached in all things, asaktabuddhiḥ sarvatra. Then all desire passes away from the soul in its silence; it is free from all longings, vigataspṛhaḥ. That brings with it or it makes possible the subjection of our lower and the possession of our higher self, a possession dependent on complete self-mastery, secured by a radical victory and conquest over our mobile nature, jitātmā. And all this amounts to an absolute inner renunciation of the desire of things, saṁnnyāsa. Renunciation is the way to this perfection and the man who has thus inwardly renounced all is described by the Gita as the true Sannyasin. But because the word usually signifies as well an outward renunciation or sometimes even that alone, the Teacher uses another word, tyāga, to distinguish the inward from the outward withdrawal and says that Tyaga is better than saṁnnyāsa. The ascetic way goes much farther in its recoil from the dynamic Nature. It is enamoured of renunciation for its own sake and insists on an outward giving up of life and action, a complete quietism of soul and nature. That, the Gita replies, is not possible entirely so long as we live in the body. As far as it is possible, it may be done, but such a rigorous diminution of works is not indispensable: it is not even really or at least ordinarily advisable. The one thing needed is a complete inner quietism and that is all the Gita’s sense of naiṣkarmya.