नेहाभिक्रमनाशोऽस्ति प्रत्यवायो न विद्यते ।स्वल्पमप्यस्य धर्मस्य त्रायते महतो भयात् ॥
nehābhikramanāśo’sti pratyavāyo na vidyatesvalpamapyasya dharmasya trāyate mahato bhayāt
On this path no effort is lost, no obstacle prevails; even a little of this dharma delivers from the great fear.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
His translation
Thus hath been declared to thee the mind that dwells in the way of Sankhya, hearken now to that which dwells in Yoga, to which being wedded thou shalt cast from thee, O Partha, action’s binding chain. In this path no step once taken is lost, in this path thou shalt meet with no stumblingblock; even a little of this Law saveth the heart from its great fear. One is the mind of a man that holds fast to its aim, but infinite are their minds and manybranching who have no resolved goal. ‘Tis a flowery word they babble, men of little understanding who take delight in the creed of Veda, disputing, saying “There is nought else”, their souls full of desires, their hopes bent upon Heaven; but he who hearkeneth to their word that giveth but the fruit of life’s actions and is crowded with multifold ritual, aiming only at splendour & enjoyment & lordship, lo it hurrieth away his heart and causeth it to cling to lordship and pleasure and his mind is unfixed to God and cannot set itself on the rock of concentration. The three nature-moods are the stuff of the Vedas, but thou, O Urjoona, rise above the three, high beyond the dualities, steadfast on the plane of the Light; be careless of getting and having, be a man with a soul. As much use as there is in a well, when all the regions are flowing with water, so much is there in all the Vedas to the Brahman who hath the Knowledge. Thou hast a right to action only, to the fruit of action thou hast no manner of right at all; be not motived by the fruits of action, neither to inaction sell thy soul; but put attachment far from thee, O Dhanunjoy, and do thy deeds with a mind in Yoga, awaiting success and failure with an equal heart; for ‘tis such equipoise of the soul that is Yoga indeed. For far lower is action than Yoga of the Super-Mind; in the Super-Mind desire thy refuge; for this is a mean and pitiful thing that a man should work for success and rewards. The man whose Super-Mind is in Yoga casteth from him even in this world both righteousness and sin; therefore to Yoga gird thy soul; when thou doest works, Yoga is the one auspicious way. For the wise whose understandings have reached God, cast from them the fruit that is born of their deeds, they are delivered from the fetters of birth, they pass into the sphere where suffering is not, neither any disease. When thy soul shall have voyaged to the other shore over the Chaos of the Great Bewilderment, then shalt thou become careless of the Scripture that is and the Scripture that shalt be, and when the mind that is perplexed and beaten about by the Scripture shall stand fast and motionless in Samadhi, then shalt thou attain Yoga.
Essays on the Gita
I have declared to you the poise of a self-liberating intelligence in Sankhya, says the divine Teacher to Arjuna. I will now declare to you another poise in Yoga. You are shrinking from the results of your works, you desire other results and turn from your right path in life because it does not lead you to them. But this idea of works and their result, desire of result as the motive, the work as a means for the satisfaction of desire, is the bondage of the ignorant who know not what works are, nor their true source, nor their real operation, nor their high utility. My Yoga will free you from all bondage of the soul to its works, karmabandhaṁ prahāsyasi. You are afraid of many things, afraid of sin, afraid of suffering, afraid of hell and punishment, afraid of God, afraid of this world, afraid of the hereafter, afraid of yourself. What is it that you are not afraid of at this moment, you the Aryan fighter, the world’s chief hero? But this is the great fear which besieges humanity, its fear of sin and suffering now and hereafter, its fear in a world of whose true nature it is ignorant, of a God whose true being also it has not seen and whose cosmic purpose it does not understand. My Yoga will deliver2·40 you from the great fear and even a little of it will bring deliverance. When you have once set out on this path, you will find that no step is lost; every least movement will be a gain; you will find there no obstacle that can baulk you of your advance. A bold and absolute promise and one to which the fearful and hesitating mind beset and stumbling in all its paths cannot easily lend an assured trust; nor is the large and full truth of it apparent unless with these first words of the message of the Gita we read also the last, “Abandon all laws of conduct and18·66 take refuge in Me alone; I will deliver you from all sin and evil; do not grieve.”
The kinetic man is not satisfied with any ideal which does not depend upon the fulfilment of this cosmic nature, this play of the three qualities of that nature, this human activity of mind and heart and body. The highest fulfilment of that activity, he might say, is my idea of human perfection, of the divine possibility in man; some ideal that satisfies the intellect, the heart, the moral being, some ideal of our human nature in its action can alone satisfy the human being; he must have something that he can seek in the workings of his mind and life and body. For that is his nature, his dharma, and how can he be fulfilled in something outside his nature? For to his nature each being is bound and within it he must seek for his perfection. According to our human nature must be our human perfection; and each man must strive for it according to the line of his personality, his svadharma, but in life, in action, not outside life and action. Yes, there is a truth in that, replies the Gita; the fulfilment of God in man, the play of the Divine in life is part of the ideal perfection. But if you seek it only in the external, in life, in the principle of action, you will never find it; for you will then not only act according to your nature, which is in itself a rule of perfection, but you will be—and this is a rule of the imperfection—eternally subject to its modes, its dualities of liking and dislike, pain and pleasure and especially to the rajasic mode with its principle of desire and its snare of wrath and grief and longing,—the restless, all-devouring principle of desire, the insatiable2·37–40 fire which besieges your worldly action, the eternal enemy of knowledge by which it is covered over here in your nature as is a fire by smoke or a mirror by dust and which you must slay in order to live in the calm, clear, luminous truth of the spirit. The senses, mind and intellect are the seat of this eternal cause of imperfection and yet it is within this sense, mind and intellect, this play of the lower nature that you would limit your search for perfection! The effort is vain. The kinetic side of your nature must first seek to add to itself the quietistic; you must uplift yourself beyond this lower nature to that which is above the three gunas, that which is founded in the highest principle, in the soul. Only when you have attained to peace of soul, can you become capable of a free and divine action.
The Synthesis of Yoga
The calm established in the whole being must remain the same whatever happens, in health and disease, in pleasure and in pain, even in the strongest physical pain, in good fortune and misfortune, our own or that of those we love, in success and failure, honour and insult, praise and blame, justice done to us or injustice, everything that ordinarily affects the mind. If we see unity everywhere, if we recognise that all comes by the divine will, see God in all, in our enemies or rather our opponents in the game of life as well as our friends, in the powers that oppose and resist us as well as the powers that favour and assist, in all energies and forces and happenings, and if besides we can feel that all is undivided from our self, all the world one with us within our universal being, then this attitude becomes much easier to the heart and mind. But even before we can attain or are firmly seated in that universal vision, we have by all the means in our power to insist on this receptive and active equality and calm. Even something of it, alpam api asya dharmasya, is a great step towards perfection; a first firmness in it is the beginning of liberated perfection; its completeness is the perfect assurance of a rapid progress in all the other members of perfection. For without it we can have no solid basis; and by the pronounced lack of it we shall be constantly falling back to the lower status of desire, ego, duality, ignorance.
Other writings
स्वल्पमप्यस्य धर्मस्य त्रायते महतो भयात् ।
The opponents of the new spirit have discovered that boycott is an illusion. An entire and sweeping boycott, they say, is a moral and physical impossibility; and their infallible economic authority, Mr. Gokhale, has found out that a graduated boycott is an economic impossibility. They point to the failure of the thorough-going boycott in Bengal as a proof of the first assertion; the second, they think, requires no proof, for how can what Mr. Gokhale has said be wrong? This assertion of the impossibility of a graduated boycott is an answer to the reasoning by which Mr. Tilak has supported the movement in Maharashtra. In the first days of the movement Mr. Tilak published a series of vigorous and thoughtful articles in the Kesari on boycott as a political Yoga. He advocated the entire exclusion of British goods, the preference of Swadeshi goods at a sacrifice when they were attainable, and, when unattainable, the preference of any foreign goods not produced in the British Empire. To the argument that this programme was not immediately practicable in its completeness, he replied that as in Yoga, so in the boycott, “even a little of this dharma saves us from a mighty peril”. The mighty peril is the entire starvation of the country by foreign exploiters and its complete and hopeless dependence on aliens for almost all articles of common use. Even a slight immediate diminution of this dependence would be a great national gain and could by degrees be extended until the full boycott policy became an accomplished fact. Mr. Tilak, with his shrewd practical insight, was able to see clearly that immediate and complete success of a thorough-going boycott was not possible in India but that a gradually efficacious boycott would naturally result from a thorough-going boycott campaign. What Mr. Tilak foresaw, is precisely what is happening.
स्वल्पमप्यस्य धर्मस्य त्रायते महतो भयात् ।
Poetry rather determines its own form; the form is not imposed on it by any law mechanical or external to it. The poet least of all artists needs to create with his eye fixed anxiously on the technique of his art. He has to possess it, no doubt; but in the heat of creation the intellectual sense of it becomes a subordinate action or even a mere undertone in his mind, and in his best moments he is permitted, in a way, to forget it altogether. For then the perfection of his sound-movement and style come entirely as the spontaneous form of his soul: that utters itself in an inspired rhythm and an innate, a revealed word, even as the universal Soul created the harmonies of the universe out of the power of the word secret and eternal within him, leaving the mechanical work to be done in a surge of hidden spiritual excitement by the subconscient part of his Nature. It is this highest speech which is the supreme poetic utterance, the immortal element in his poetry, and a little of it is enough to save the rest of his work from oblivion. Svalpam apyasya dharmasya!
Writings in Bengali
It is difficult for a human being to make a complete self-surrender, but if he makes even a little effort then God Himself gives him assurance, becomes his guru, protector and friend and leads him forward on the path of Yoga. Svalpamapyasya dharmasya trāyate mahato bhayāt. Even a little of this dharma delivers one from the great fear. He has said that it is easy and delightful to practise this dharma. And in fact it is so, yet the result of the total consecration is an inexpressible joy, purity and acquisition of power. Māmevaisyasi (to Me thou shalt come) means the human being will find Me, will live with Me, will acquire My nature. In these words the realisations of sādṛśya, God-nature, sālokya, living with God, and sāyujya, identification with God are mentioned.
Svalpamapyasya dharmasya trāyatē mahatō bhayāt ||
(Even a little of this dharma protects from great fear.)
এই দুটী শ্লোকের অর্থ এক কথায়ই ব্যক্ত হয়, আত্মসমর্পণ। যিনি যত পরিমাণে শ্রীকৃষ্ণের নিকট আত্মসমর্পণ করিতে পারেন, তাঁহার শরীরে তত পরিমাণে ভগবদ্দত্ত শক্তি আসিয়া পরম মঙ্গলময়ের প্রসাদে পাপমুক্ত ও দেবভাবপ্রাপ্ত করে। সেই আত্মসমর্পণের বর্ণনা প্রথম শ্লোকার্দ্ধে করা হইয়াছে। তন্মনা তদ্ভক্ত তদ্যাজী হইতে হয়। তন্মনা অর্থাৎ সর্ব্বভূতে তাঁহাকে দর্শন করা, সর্ব্বকালে তাঁহাকে স্মরণ করা, সর্ব্বকার্য্যে ও সর্ব্বঘটনায় তাঁহার শক্তি, জ্ঞান ও প্রেমের খেলা বুঝিয়া পরমানন্দে থাকা। তদ্ভক্ত অর্থাৎ তাঁহার উপর সম্পূর্ণ শ্রদ্ধা ও প্রীতি স্থাপন করিয়া তাঁহার সহিত যুক্ত থাকা। তদ্যাজী অর্থাৎ ক্ষুদ্র মহৎ সর্ব্বকর্ম্ম শ্রীকৃষ্ণ উদ্দেশ্যে যজ্ঞরূপে অর্পণ করা এবং স্বার্থ ও কর্ম্মফলে আসক্তি ত্যাগ করিয়া তদর্থে কর্ত্তব্যকর্ম্মে প্রবৃত্ত হওয়া। সম্পূর্ণ আত্মসমর্পণ মানুষের পক্ষে কঠিন, কিন্তু অল্পমাত্র চেষ্টা করিলে স্বয়ং ভগবান অভয়দানে গুরু, রক্ষক ও সুহৃদ্ হইয়া যোগপথে অগ্রসর করাইয়া দেন। স্বল্পমপ্যস্য ধর্ম্মস্য ত্রায়তে মহতো ভয়াৎ। তিনি বলিয়াছেন এই ধর্ম্ম আচরণ করা সহজ ও সুখপ্রদ। বাস্তবিকই তাহাই, অথচ সম্পূর্ণ আচরণের ফল অনির্ব্বচনীয় আনন্দ, শুদ্ধি ও শক্তিলাভ। মামেবৈষ্যসি অর্থাৎ আমাকে প্রাপ্ত হইবে, আমার সহিত বাস করিবে, আমার প্রকৃতি প্রাপ্ত হইবে। এই কথায় সাদৃশ্য, সালোক্য ও সাযুজ্য ফলপ্রাপ্তি ব্যক্ত হইয়াছে। যিনি গুণাতীত তিনিই ভগবানের সাদৃশ্যপ্রাপ্ত। তাঁহার কোনও আসক্তি নাই, অথচ তিনি কর্ম্ম করেন, পাপমুক্ত হইয়া মহাশক্তির আধার হন ও সেই শক্তির সর্ব্বকার্য্যে আনন্দিত হন। সালোক্যও কেবল দেহপতনান্তর ব্রহ্মলোকগতি নয়, এই শরীরেও সালোক্য হয়। দেহযুক্ত জীব যখন তাঁহার অন্তরে পরমেশ্বরের সহিত ক্রীড়া করেন, মন তাঁহার দত্ত জ্ঞানে পুলকিত হয়, হৃদয় তাঁহার প্রেমস্পর্শে আনন্দপ্লুত হয়, বুদ্ধি মুহুর্মুহুঃ তাঁহার বাণী শ্রবণ করে ও প্রত্যেক চিন্তায় তাঁহারই প্রেরণা
স্বল্পমপ্যস্য ধর্ম্মস্য ত্রায়তে মহতো ভয়াৎ।
