यो न हृष्यति न द्वेष्टि न शोचति न काङ्क्षति ।शुभाशुभपरित्यागी भक्तिमान्यः स मे प्रियः ॥
yo na hṛṣyati na dveṣṭi na śocati na kāṅkṣatiśubhāśubhaparityāgī bhaktimānyaḥ sa me priyaḥ
He who neither desires the pleasant and rejoices at its touch nor abhors the unpleasant and sorrows at its touch, who has abolished the distinction between fortunate and unfortunate happenings (because his devotion receives all things equally as good from the hands of his eternal Lover and Master), he is dear to Me.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
Or he will be one who has given up all desire and action to the Master of his being, one pure and still, indifferent to whatever12·16 comes, not pained or afflicted by any result or happening, one who has flung away from him all egoistic, personal and mental initiative whether of the inner or the outer act, one who lets the divine will and divine knowledge flow through him undeflected by his own resolves, preferences and desires, and yet for that very reason is swift and skilful in all action of his nature, because this flawless unity with the supreme will, this pure2·50 instrumentation is the condition of the greatest skill in works. Again,12·17 he will be one who neither desires the pleasant and rejoices at its touch nor abhors the unpleasant and sorrows at its burden. He has abolished the distinction between fortunate and unfortunate happenings, because his devotion receives all things equally as good from the hands of his eternal Lover and Master.12·18–19 The God-lover dear to God is a soul of wide equality, equal to friend and enemy, equal to honour and insult, pleasure and pain, praise and blame, grief and happiness, heat and cold, to all that troubles with opposite affections the normal nature. He will have no attachment to person or thing, place or home; he will be content and well-satisfied with whatever surroundings, whatever relation men adopt to him, whatever station or fortune. He will keep a mind firm in all things, because it is constantly seated in the highest self and fixed for ever on the one divine object of his love and adoration. Equality, desirelessness and freedom from the lower egoistic nature and its claims are always the one perfect foundation demanded by the Gita for the great liberation. There is to the end an emphatic repetition of its first fundamental teaching and original desideratum, the calm soul of knowledge that sees the one self in all things, the tranquil egoless equality that results from this knowledge, the desireless action offered in that equality to the Master of works, the surrender of the whole mental nature of man into the hands of the mightier indwelling spirit. And the crown of this equality is love founded on knowledge, fulfilled in instrumental action, extended to all things and beings, a vast absorbing and all-containing love for the divine Self who is Creator and Master of the universe, suhṛdaṁ sarva-bhūtānāṁ sarva-loka-maheśvaram5·29.
This is the foundation, the condition, the means by which the supreme spiritual perfection is to be won, and those who have it in any way are all dear to me, says the Godhead,12·17 bhaktimān me priyaḥ. But exceedingly dear, atīva me priyāḥ, are those12·20 souls nearest to the Godhead whose love of me is completed by the still wider and greatest perfection of which I have just shown to you the way and the process. These are the bhaktas who make the Purushottama their one supreme aim and follow out with a perfect faith and exactitude the immortalising Dharma described in this teaching. Dharma in the language of the Gita means the innate law of the being and its works and an action proceeding from and determined by the inner nature,18·47 svabhāva-niyataṁ karma. In the lower ignorant consciousness of mind, life and body there are many dharmas, many rules, many standards and laws because there are many varying determinations and types of the mental, vital and physical nature. The immortal Dharma is one; it is that of the highest spiritual divine consciousness and its powers, parā prakṛtiḥ. It is beyond the three gunas, and to reach it all these lower dharmas have to be abandoned,18·66 sarva-dharmān parityajya. Alone in their place the one liberating unifying consciousness and power of the Eternal has to become the infinite source of our action, its mould, determinant and exemplar. To rise out of our lower personal egoism, to enter into the impersonal and equal calm of the immutable eternal all-pervading Akshara Purusha, to aspire from that calm by a perfect self-surrender of all one’s nature and existence to that which is other and higher than the Akshara, is the first necessity of this Yoga. In the strength of that aspiration one can rise to the immortal Dharma. There, made one in being, consciousness and divine bliss with the greatest Uttama Purusha, made one with his supreme dynamic nature-force, svā prakṛtiḥ, the liberated spirit can know infinitely, love illimitably, act unfalteringly in the authentic power of a highest immortality and a perfect freedom. The rest of the Gita is written to throw a fuller light on this immortal Dharma.
Record of Yoga
Trigunatita udasinata is that which takes all things alike, making no difference between sattwic, rajasic & tamasic reactions, but holding in soul aloof from all these movements & all the dwandwas, observing them first with an absolute impartiality & by constant refusal to participate in them getting rid of them out of the mind & the prana. It neither rejoices nor grieves at their coming & going, na sochati, na nandate. It regards all these things as the workings of Prakriti & their causes as the will of the Ishwara. This udasinata is the preparation for the third element of [samata],* nati.
