ये शास्त्रविधिमुत्सृज्य यजन्ते श्रद्धयान्विताः ।तेषां निष्ठा तु का कृष्ण सत्त्वमाहो रजस्तमः ॥
ye śāstravidhimutsṛjya yajante śraddhayānvitāḥteṣāṁ niṣṭhā tu kā kṛṣṇa sattvamāho rajastamaḥ
Arjuna said: When men sacrifice to God or the gods with faith, but abandon the rule of the Shastra, what is that concentrated will of devotion in them, nishtha, which gives them this faith and moves them to this kind of action, O Krishna? Is it sattwa, rajas or tamas?
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
When his doubts and perplexities are resolved and he knows that it is the Divine which must be his law, he aims again and always at such clear and decisive knowledge as will guide him practically to this source and this rule of his future action. How is the Divine to be distinguished among the various states of being which constitute our ordinary experience? What are the10·16 great manifestations of its self-energy in the world in which he can recognise and realise it by meditation? May he not see even11·1–4 now the divine cosmic Form of That which is actually speaking to him through the veil of the human mind and body? And his last questions demand a clear distinction between renunciation of works and this subtler renunciation he is asked to prefer; the actual difference between Purusha and Prakriti, the Field and the Knower of the Field, so important for the practice of desireless action under the drive of the divine Will; and finally a clear14·21 statement of the practical operations and results of the three modes of Prakriti which he is bidden to surmount.17·1
Now we have to see how the Gita deals with this question on its own line of spiritual teaching and self-discipline. For Arjuna puts immediately a suggestive query from which the problem or one aspect of it arises. When men, he says, sacrifice17·1 to God or the gods with faith, śraddhā, but abandon the rule of the Shastra, what is that concentrated will of devotion in them, niṣṭhā, which gives them this faith and moves them to this kind of action? Is it sattwa, rajas or tamas? to which strand of our nature does it belong? The answer of the Gita first states the principle that the faith in us is of a triple kind like all things in17·2 Nature and varies according to the dominating quality of our nature. The faith of each man takes the shape, hue, quality given17·3 to it by his stuff of being, his constituting temperament, his innate power of existence, sattvānurūpā sarvasya śraddhā. And then there comes a remarkable line in which the Gita tells us that this Purusha, this soul in man, is, as it were, made of śraddhā, a faith, a will to be, a belief in itself and existence, and whatever is that will, faith or constituting belief in him, he is that and that is he. Śraddhāmayo ‘yaṁ puruṣo yo yac-chraddhaḥ sa eva saḥ. If we look into this pregnant saying a little closely, we shall find that this single line contains implied in its few forceful words almost the whole theory of the modern gospel of pragmatism. For if a man or the soul in a man consists of the faith which is in him, taken in this deeper sense, then it follows that the truth which he sees and wills to live is for him the truth of his being, the truth of himself that he has created or is creating and there can be for him no other real truth. This truth is a thing of his inner and outer action, a thing of his becoming, of the soul’s dynamics, not of that in him which never changes. He is what he is today by some past will of his nature sustained and continued by a present will to know, to believe and to be in his intelligence and vital force, and whatever new turn is taken by this will and faith active in his very substance, that he will tend to become in the future. We create our own truth of existence in our own action of mind and life, which is another way of saying that we create our own selves, are our own makers.
