बुद्धियुक्तो जहातीह उभे सुकृतदुष्कृते ।तस्माद्योगाय युज्यस्व योगः कर्मसु कौशलम् ॥
buddhiyukto jahātīha ubhe sukṛtaduṣkṛtetasmādyogāya yujyasva yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam
One whose intelligence has attained to unity, casts away from him even here in this world of dualities both good doing and evil doing; therefore strive to be in Yoga; Yoga is skill in works.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
Mottoes of The Life Divine
One whose intelligence has attained to Unity, casts away from him both sin and virtue.
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
And yet he does not cease from work and action. There is the originality and power of the Gita, that having affirmed this static condition, this superiority to nature, this emptiness even of all that constitutes ordinarily the action of Nature for the liberated soul, it is still able to vindicate for it, to enjoin on it even the continuance of works and thus avoid the great defect of the merely quietistic and ascetic philosophies,—the defect from which we find them today attempting to escape.2·47 “Thou hast a right to action, but only to action, never to its fruits; let not the fruits of thy works be thy motive, neither let there be in thee any attachment to inactivity.” Therefore it is not the works practised with desire by the Vedavadins, it is not the claim for the satisfaction of the restless and energetic mind by a constant activity, the claim made by the practical or the kinetic man, which is here2·48 enjoined. “Fixed in Yoga do thy actions, having abandoned attachment, having become equal in failure and success; for it is equality that is meant by Yoga.” Action is distressed by the choice between a relative good and evil, the fear of sin and the difficult endeavour towards virtue? But the liberated who has united his reason and will with the Divine, casts away from him even here in this world of dualities both good doing and evil doing; for he rises to a higher law beyond good and evil, founded in the liberty of self-knowledge. Such desireless action can have no decisiveness, no effectiveness, no efficient motive, no large or vigorous creative power? Not so; action done in Yoga is not only the highest but the wisest, the most potent and efficient even for the affairs of the world; for it is informed by the knowledge2·50–51 and will of the Master of works: “Yoga is skill in works.” But all action directed towards life leads away from the universal aim of the Yogin which is by common consent to escape from bondage to this distressed and sorrowful human birth? Not so, either; the sages who do works without desire for fruits and in Yoga with the Divine are liberated from the bondage of birth and reach that other perfect status in which there are none of the maladies which afflict the mind and life of a suffering humanity.
It does not follow that the work is not to be done perfectly, with success, with a right adaptation of means to ends: on the contrary a perfect working is easier to action done tranquilly in Yoga than to action done in the blindness of hopes and fears, lamed by the judgments of the stumbling reason, running about amidst the eager trepidations of the hasty human will: Yoga, says the Gita elsewhere, is the true skill in works, yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam2·50. But all this is done impersonally by the action of a great universal light and power operating through the individual nature. The Karmayogin knows that the power given to him will be adapted to the fruit decreed, the divine thought behind the work equated with the work he has to do, the will in him, — which will not be wish or desire, but an impersonal drive of conscious power directed towards an aim not his own, — subtly regulated in its energy and direction by the divine wisdom. The result may be success, as the ordinary mind understands it, or it may seem to that mind to be defeat and failure; but to him it is always the success intended, not by him, but by the all-wise manipulator of action and result, because he does not seek for victory, but only for the fulfilment of the divine will and wisdom which works out its ends through apparent failure as well as and often with greater force than through apparent triumph. Arjuna, bidden to fight, is assured of victory; but even if certain defeat were before him, he must still fight because that is the present work assigned to him as his immediate share in the great sum of energies by which the divine will is surely accomplished.
There is therefore a distinction to be made between what is essential in the nature, its native and inevitable action, which it avails not at all to repress, suppress, coerce, and what is accidental to it, its wanderings, confusions, perversions, over which we must certainly get control. There is a distinction implied too between coercion and suppression, nigraha, and control with right use and right guidance, saṁyama. The former is a violence done to the nature by the will, which in the end depresses the natural powers of the being, ātmānam avasādayet; the latter is the control of the lower by the higher self, which successfully gives to those powers their right action and their maximum2·50 efficiency, — yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam. This nature of saṁyama is made very clear by the Gita in the opening of its sixth chapter, “By the self thou shouldst deliver the self, thou shouldst not4·5–7 depress and cast down the self (whether by self-indulgence or suppression); for the self is the friend of the self and the self is the enemy. To the man is his self a friend in whom the (lower) self has been conquered by the (higher) self, but to him who is not in possession of his (higher) self, the (lower) self is as if an enemy and it acts as an enemy.” When one has conquered one’s self and attained to the calm of a perfect self-mastery and self-possession, then is the supreme self in a man founded and poised even in his outwardly conscious human being, samāhita. In other words, to master the lower self by the higher, the natural self by the spiritual is the way of man’s perfection and liberation.
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.
Mottoes of The Life Divine
One whose intelligence has attained to Unity, casts away from him both sin and virtue.
Gita.*
The Synthesis of Yoga
The faith in the divine Shakti must be always at the back of our strength and when she becomes manifest, it must be or grow implicit and complete. There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit’s omnipotence. All knowledge, all strengths, all triumph and victory, all skill and works are in her hands and they are full of the treasures of the Spirit and of all perfections and siddhis. She is Maheshwari, goddess of the supreme knowledge, and brings to us her vision for all kinds and widenesses of truth, her rectitude of the spiritual will, the calm and passion of her supramental largeness, her felicity of illumination: she is Mahakali, goddess of the supreme strength, and with her are all mights and spiritual force and severest austerity of tapas and swiftness to the battle and the victory and the laughter, the aṭṭahāsya, that makes light of defeat and death and the powers of the ignorance: she is Mahalakshmi, the goddess of the supreme love and delight, and her gifts are the spirit’s grace and the charm and beauty of the Ananda and protection and every divine and human blessing: she is Mahasaraswati, the goddess of divine skill and of the works of the Spirit, and hers is the Yoga that is skill in works, yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam, and the utilities of divine knowledge and the self-application of the spirit to life and the happiness of its harmonies. And in all her powers and forms she carries with her the supreme sense of the masteries of the eternal Ishwari, a rapid and divine capacity for all kinds of action that may be demanded from the instrument, oneness, a participating sympathy, a free identity, with all energies in all beings and therefore a spontaneous and fruitful harmony with all the divine will in the universe. The intimate feeling of her presence and her powers and the satisfied assent of all our being to her workings in and around it is the last perfection of faith in the Shakti.
Other writings
In this calm, right knowledge comes. The thoughts of men are a tangle of truth and falsehood, satyam and anṛtam. True perception is marred and clouded by false perception, true judgment lamed by false judgment, true imagination distorted by false imagination, true memory deceived by false memory. The activity of the mind must cease, the chitta be purified, a silence fall upon the restlessness of Prakriti, then in that calm, in that voiceless stillness illumination comes upon the mind, error begins to fall away and, so long as desire does not stir again, clarity establishes itself in the higher stratum of the consciousness compelling peace and joy in the lower. Right knowledge becomes the infallible source of right action. Yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam.
But it is ahaṅkāra that by making the relation and effect of things on ourselves or on things connected with us the standard of life, makes the dvandvas a chain for our bondage. Ahaṅkāra in its action on our life and sadhana will be seen to be of three kinds, rajasic, tamasic and sattwic. Rajas binds by desire and the craving in the nature for occupation and activity, it is always reaching after action and the fruit of action; it is in order that we may be free from the rajasic ahaṅkāra that we have the command, “Do not do works from the desire of fruit,” mā karma-phala-hetur bhūḥ, and the command to give up our actions to God. Tamas binds by weakness and the craving in the nature for ease and inaction; it is always sinking into idleness, depression, confusion of mind, fear, disappointment, despondency and despair; it is in order that we may get rid of the tamasic ahaṅkāra that we are given the command, “Let there be no attachment to inaction,” and the instruction to pursue the yoga always, whether we seem to advance or seem to be standing still or seem even to be going back, always with a calm faith and patient and cheerful perseverance, anirviṇṇacetasā. Sattwa binds by knowledge and pleasure; it is always attaching itself to some imperfect realisation, to the idea of one’s own virtue, the correctness of one’s own opinions and principles or at its highest, as in the case of Arjuna, opposing some personal idea of altruism, justice or virtue against the surrender of our will that God demands of us. It is for the escape from the sattwic ahaṅkāra that we have to pass beyond the attachment to the duality of virtue and sin, ubhe sukṛtaduṣkṛte.
Yoga is skill in works.
The objection to any large change—for a large and bold change is needed and no peddling will serve our purpose—can be given a plausible turn only if we rest it on the contention that the forms of a culture are the right rhythm of its spirit and in breaking the rhythm we may expel the spirit and dissipate the harmony for ever. Yes, but though the Spirit is eternal in its essence and in the fundamental principles of its harmony immutable, the actual rhythm of its self-expression in form is ever mutable. Immutable in its being and in the powers of its being but richly mutable in life, that is the very nature of the spirit’s manifested existence. And we have to see too whether the actual rhythm of the moment is still a harmony or whether it has not become in the hands of an inferior and ignorant orchestra a discord and no longer expresses rightly or sufficiently the ancient spirit. To recognise defect in the form is not to deny the inherent spirit; it is rather the condition for moving onward to a greater future amplitude, a more perfect realisation, a happier outflow of the Truth we harbour. Whether we shall actually find a greater expression than the past gave us, depends on our own selves, on our capacity of response to the eternal Power and Wisdom and the illumination of the Shakti within us and on our skill in works, the skill that comes by unity with the eternal spirit we are in the measure of our light labouring to express; yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam.
Writings in Bengali
buddhiyukto jahātīha ubhe sukṛtaduṣkṛte
tasmādyogāya yujyasva yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam
বুদ্ধিযুক্তো জহাতীহ উভে সুকৃতদুষ্কৃতে।
তস্মাদ্ যোগায় যুজ্যস্ব যোগঃ কর্ম্মসু কৌশলম্॥
Letters
From one standpoint; from the other the prudence of postponing for the fitting century might be classed under যোগঃ কর্ম্মসু কৌশলম্ । It would certainly be unpoetic.
Oh that! Of course. Your irregulars were very rough with the poor English language. As for Romen, I understand he simply hooks on to the source and lets it tumble through him. That explains his success: যোগঃ কর্ম্মসু কৌশলং—যোগ = joining on, hooking on.
Evening talks
There was a letter from a political prisoner who argued with a sadhak here about Work and Sadhana. He held that work should be done as sadhana for one could get perfection through work. He quoted the Gita: _yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam_ — yoga is cleverness or efficiency in doing action.
(I read a letter from X who is detained in Insein Jail. In connection with his reference to _yogah karmasu kauśalam_, Sri Aurobindo remarked: “He seems to think that _kauśalam_ is the Yoga; in that case all clever men would be Yogis.” Y put a long and elaborate question which turned upon the question whether Sri Aurobindo had built up a Yoga-Pitha in the higher plane and the supramental plane, as other Yogis are supposed to do in their own way, which has to be brought down to the lower plane – down to the material.)
