अहिंसा सत्यमक्रोधस् त्यागः शान्तिरपैशुनम् ।दया भूतेष्वलोलुप्त्वं मार्दवं हीरचापलम् ॥
ahiṁsā satyamakrodhas tyāgaḥ śāntirapaiśunamdayā bhūteṣvaloluptvaṁ mārdavaṁ hīracāpalam
The Blessed Lord said: Fearlessness, purity of temperament, steadfastness in the Yoga of Knowledge, giving self-control, sacrifice, the study of Scripture, askesis, candour and straight-forwardness, harmlessness, truth; absence of wrath, self-denial, calm, absence of fault-finding, compassion to all beings, absence of greed, gentleness, modesty, freedom from restlessness, energy, forgiveness, patience, cleanness, absence of envy and pride—these are the wealth of the man born into the Deva nature.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
The answer of a hero to a hero, shall we say, but not that which we should expect from a divine Teacher from whom we demand rather that he shall encourage always gentleness and saintliness and self-abnegation and the recoil from worldly aims and cessation from the ways of the world? The Gita expressly says that Arjuna has thus lapsed into unheroic weakness, “his eyes full and distressed with tears, his heart overcome by depression and discouragement,”2·1 because he is invaded by pity, kṛpayāviṣṭam. Is this not then a divine weakness? Is not pity a divine emotion which should not thus be discouraged with harsh rebuke? Or are we in face of a mere gospel of war and heroic action, a Nietzschean creed of power and high-browed strength, of Hebraic or old Teutonic hardness which holds pity to be a weakness and thinks like the Norwegian hero who thanked God because He had given him a hard heart? But the teaching of the Gita springs from an Indian creed and to the Indian mind compassion has always figured as one of the largest elements of the divine nature. The Teacher himself enumerating in a later16·1–3 chapter the qualities of the godlike nature in man places among them compassion to creatures, gentleness, freedom from wrath and from the desire to slay and do hurt, no less than fearlessness and high spirit and energy. Harshness and hardness and fierceness16·4–20 and a satisfaction in slaying enemies and amassing wealth and unjust enjoyments are Asuric qualities; they come from the violent Titanic nature which denies the Divine in the world and the Divine in man and worships Desire only as its deity. It is not then from any such standpoint that the weakness of Arjuna merits rebuke.
- Gita, II. 1–38.
The Deva nature is distinguished by an acme of the sattwic16·1–3 habits and qualities; self-control, sacrifice, the religious habit, cleanness and purity, candour and straightforwardness, truth, calm and self-denial, compassion to all beings, modesty, gentleness, forgivingness, patience, steadfastness, a deep sweet and serious freedom from all restlessness, levity and inconstancy are16·4 its native attributes. The Asuric qualities, wrath, greed, cunning, treachery, wilful doing of injury to others, pride and arrogance and excessive self-esteem have no place in its composition. But its gentleness and self-denial and self-control are free too from all weakness: it has energy and soul force, strong resolution, the fearlessness of the soul that lives in the right and according to the truth as well as its harmlessness, tejaḥ, abhayam, dhṛtiḥ, ahiṁsā, satyam. The whole being, the whole temperament is integrally pure; there is a seeking for knowledge and a calm and fixed abiding in knowledge. This is the wealth, the plenitude of the man born into the Deva nature.
