Verse 2·56

दुःखेष्वनुद्विग्नमनाः सुखेषु विगतस्पृहः ।वीतरागभयक्रोधः स्थितधीर्मुनिरुच्यते ॥

duḥkheṣvanudvignamanāḥ sukheṣu vigataspṛhaḥvītarāgabhayakrodhaḥ sthitadhīrmunirucyate

He whose mind is undisturbed in the midst of sorrows and amid pleasures is free from desire, from whom liking and fear and wrath have passed away, is the sage of settled understanding.

Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy

Essays on the Gita

A man with mind untroubled by sorrows, who has done with desire for pleasures, from whom liking and wrath and fear have passed away, such is the sage whose understanding has become founded in stability.

His translation

KRISHNA When a man casteth far away from him, O son of Pritha, all the desires that cling to the mind, when he is self-content in the Self, then is it said of him that the Reason hath taken his seat. He whose soul is not shaken in sorrows and in happiness hungereth not after their delight, he to whom fear and liking and wrath are forgotten things, he is the Sage the thought in whom is settled. He who is in all things without affections whether evil come to him or whether good, who delights not in the pleasure neither hateth the pain, he is the man of an established understanding. As a tortoise gathereth in its limbs from all sides, so when this understanding Spirit gathereth in the senses away from the things in which the senses work, then is the Reason in a man safely seated. By fasting and refraining the objects of passion cease from a man but the desire and the delight in them remain, but when the embodied Spirit hath beheld the Most High, the very desire and delight cease and are no more. For very furious and turbulent are the senses, O son of Coonty, and though a man be Godseeking, though he have the soul that discerneth, they seize upon even his mind and ravish it violently away. Let a man coerce all these and sit fast in Yoga utterly giving himself up to Me; for only when a man has his senses in his grip, is the Reason of him firm in its seat. But when a man thinketh much and often of the things of sense, fondness for them groweth upon him, and from fondness desire & passion are born; and passion’s child is wrath; but out of wrath cometh delusion & disturbance of the brain and from delusion cometh confusion of the recording mind and when memory falleth and faileth, the overmind is destroyed, and by the ruin of the overmind the soul goeth to its perdition. When one moveth over the fields of the passions with his senses in the grip of the Self, delivered from likings and dislikings, and when the Spirit itself answers to the helm, a pure serenity becometh his. In that bright gladness of the soul there cometh to him a waning away of all grief; for when a man’s heart is like a calm and pure sky, the Thought findeth very quickly its firm foundation. Who hath not Yoga, hath not understanding, who hath not Yoga, hath not infinite and inward contemplation, who thinketh not infinitely and inwardly, hath not peace of soul, and how shall he be happy, whose soul is not at peace? For the mind that followeth the control and working of the senses when they range abroad, hurleth along with it the Thought in the Spirit as the wind hurleth along a ship upon the waters. Therefore it is, O strong-armed, that his reason is firmly based only whose senses are reined in on all sides from the things of their desire.

Essays on the Gita

The sign of the man in Samadhi is not that he loses consciousness of objects and surroundings and of his mental and physical self and cannot be recalled to it even by burning or torture of the body, — the ordinary idea of the matter; trance is a particular intensity, not the essential sign. The test is the expulsion of all desires, their inability to get at the mind, and it is the inner state from which this freedom arises, the delight of the soul gathered within itself with the mind equal and still and high-poised above the attractions and repulsions, the alternations of sunshine and storm and stress of the external life. It is drawn inward even when acting outwardly; it is concentrated in self even when gazing out upon things; it is directed wholly to the Divine even when to the outward vision of others busy and preoccupied with the affairs of the world. Arjuna, voicing the average human mind, asks for some outward, physical,2·54 practically discernible sign of this great Samadhi; how does such a man speak, how sit, how walk? No such signs can be given, nor does the Teacher attempt to supply them; for the only possible test of its possession is inward and that there are plenty of hostile psychological forces to apply. Equality is the great stamp of the liberated soul and of that equality even the most discernible signs are still subjective.2·56 “A man with mind untroubled by sorrows, who has done with desire for pleasures, from whom liking and wrath and fear have passed away, such is the sage whose understanding has become founded in stability.” He is “without the triple action of the qualities of Prakriti,2·45 without the dualities, ever based in his true being, without getting or having, possessed of his self.” For what gettings and havings has the free soul? Once we are possessed of the Self, we are in possession of all things.

The Gita, making its call on the warrior nature of Arjuna, starts with this heroic movement. It calls on him to turn on the great enemy desire and slay it. Its first description of equality is that of the Stoic philosopher. “He whose mind is undisturbed2·56–57 in the midst of sorrows and amid pleasures is free from desire, from whom liking and fear and wrath have passed away, is the sage of settled understanding. Who in all things is without affection though visited by this good or that evil and neither hates nor rejoices, his intelligence sits firmly founded in wisdom.” If one abstains from food, it says, giving a physical example, the2·59 object of sense ceases to affect, but the affection itself of the sense, the rasa, remains; it is only when, even in the exercise of the sense, it can keep back from seeking its sensuous aim in the object, artha, and abandon the affection, the desire for the pleasure of taste, that the highest level of the soul is reached. It is by using the mental organs on the objects, “ranging over them with the2·64 senses,” viṣayān indriyaiś caran, but with senses subject to the self, freed from liking and disliking, that one gets into a large and sweet clearness of soul and temperament in which passion and grief find no place. All desires have to enter into the soul, as waters into the sea, and yet it has to remain immovable, filled but not disturbed: so in the end all desires can be abandoned. To be freed from wrath and passion and fear and attraction is repeatedly stressed as a necessary condition of the liberated status, and for this we must learn to bear their shocks, which cannot be done without exposing ourselves to their causes.5·23 “He who can bear here in the body the velocity of wrath and desire, is the Yogin, the happy man.” Titikṣā, the will and power to endure, is the means. “The material touches which cause heat and cold, happiness and pain, things transient which come and go,2·14–15 these learn to endure. For the man whom these do not trouble nor pain, the firm and wise who is equal in pleasure and suffering, makes himself apt for immortality.” The equal-souled has to bear suffering and not hate, to receive pleasure and not rejoice. Even the physical affections are to be mastered by endurance and this too is part of the Stoic discipline. Age, death, suffering, pain are not fled from, but accepted and vanquished by a high indifference.^* Not to flee appalled from Nature in her lower masks, but to meet and conquer her is the true instinct of the strong nature, puruṣarṣabha, the leonine soul among men. Thus compelled, she throws aside her mask and reveals to him his true nature as the free soul, not her subject but her king and lord, svarāṭ, samrāṭ.

1. Dhīras tatra na muhyati, says the Gita; the strong and wise soul is not perplexed, troubled or moved by them. But still they are accepted only to be conquered, jarā-maraṇa-mokṣāya yatanti.

Then evidently the straight and simplest way to get out of the close bondage of the active nature and back to spiritual freedom is to cast away entirely all that belongs to the dynamics of the ignorance and to convert the soul into a pure spiritual existence.18·53 That is what is called becoming Brahman, brahma-bhūya. It is to put off the lower mental, vital, physical existence and to put on the pure spiritual being. This can best be done by the intelligence and will, buddhi, our present topmost principle. It has to turn away from the things of the lower existence and first and foremost from its effective knot of desire, from our attachment to the objects pursued by the mind and the senses. One must18·49 become an understanding unattached in all things, asakta-buddhiḥ sarvatra. Then all desire passes away from the soul in its silence; it is free from all longings, vigata-spṛhaḥ. That brings with it or it makes possible the subjection of our lower and the possession of our higher self, a possession dependent on complete self-mastery, secured by a radical victory and conquest over our6·7 mobile nature, jitātmā. And all this amounts to an absolute inner renunciation of the desire of things, sannyāsa. Renunciation is the way to this perfection and the man who has thus inwardly renounced all is described by the Gita as the true Sannyasin. But because the word usually signifies as well an outward renunciation or sometimes even that alone, the Teacher uses another word, tyāga, to distinguish the inward from the outward withdrawal and says that Tyaga is better than Sannyasa. The ascetic way goes much farther in its recoil from the dynamic Nature. It is enamoured of renunciation for its own sake and insists on an outward giving up of life and action, a complete quietism of soul and nature. That, the Gita replies, is not possible entirely so long as we live in the body. As far as it is possible, it may be done, but such a rigorous diminution of works is not indispensable: it is not even really or at least ordinarily advisable. The one thing needed is a complete inner quietism and that is all the Gita’s sense of naiṣkarmya.

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Writings in Bengali

This state of imprisonment is the perennial condition of man. On the other hand, on every page of literature and history we find the irrepressible eagerness and enthusiasm on the part of the human race to gain freedom. As in the political and social spheres, so in the life of the individual in every age we find the…Read the whole passage · 632 wordsClose the passage

This state of imprisonment is the perennial condition of man. On the other hand, on every page of literature and history we find the irrepressible eagerness and enthusiasm on the part of the human race to gain freedom. As in the political and social spheres, so in the life of the individual in every age we find the same endeavour. Restraint, self-torture, indifference, stoicism. Epicureanism, asceticism, Vedanta Buddhism, Advaita, the doctrine of Maya. Raja Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Gita, the path of Knowledge, Devotion and Activity—the paths are many, the goal is the same. The aim is always—victory over the body, getting rid of the domination of the physical, the freedom of the inner life. Western scientists have arrived at the conclusion that there is no world other than the physical, the subtle is based on the material, the subtle experiences are but reflections of the external experiences, man’s attempt to be free is in vain; the philosophy, religion and Vedanta are but unreal imaginings, and wholly limited by the physical reality as we are, the attempt to untie the knot or cross the limitations of our physical nature is an attempt doomed to fail. But the longing to be free is lodged in such a deep layer of the human heart that a thousand arguments are helpless to uproot it. Man can never remain content with the conclusions of the physical sciences. In all ages he has felt vaguely that the subtle elements capable of conquering the physical limits are definitely to be found in his own inner being, that there is an Inner Controller, a Person, for ever free and full of Delight, within him. It is the object of religion to realise this state of eternal freedom and pure Delight. This object of religious seeking is also the object of evolution of which science speaks. Reason or its absence is not the real difference between man and animals. The animals have the power to judge, but in the animal body that power does not develop. The real difference between man and animal lies elsewhere: a complete submission to the body is what constitutes the animal state, while in the conquest of the body and the effort at inner freedom lies man’s manhood! This freedom is the chief goal of religion, this is what it calls mukti. It is for the sake of mukti that through knowledge we try to find out the mental guide of the body and life who lives within, or through action-devotion try to surrender to it our body, mind and life. The central ethical injunction in the Gita—yogasthaḥ kuru karmāṇi—this freedom is the yoga of the Gita. When the interior joys and sorrows, instead of depending on external good and evil, well-being and danger, become self-generated, self-propelled, self-bound, then the normal human condition is reversed, and the outer life can be modelled on the inner, the bondage of action slackens. The ideal person of the Gita renounces the desire for the fruit of action and practises active renunciation in the supreme Person, Purushottama. He is “duḥkheṣvanudvignamanāḥ sukheṣu vigataspṛhaḥ”; attaining an inner freedom he enjoys self-delight and self-control. Unlike the normal human individual he does not seek any external refuge out of fear or sorrow born of greed for pleasure, he does not accept his joys and sorrows from others and yet is free of the bondage of action. Rather in the battle between Gods and Titans, it is the man, sent by God, greatly controlled, a mightily puissant protagonist, beyond anger and fear, he the man of yogic action who helps to usher in a political or religious revolution, or by preserving the established state and religious order, fulfills in a non-attached spirit God’s own work; he is the superior person of whom the Gita speaks.

হঠযোগ, গীতা, জ্ঞানমার্গ, ভক্তিমার্গ, কর্ম্মমার্গ, — নানা পন্থা একই গম্যস্থান। উদ্দেশ্য শরীর জয়, স্থূলের আধিপত্য বর্জ্জন, আন্তরিক জীবনের স্বাধীনতা। পাশ্চাত্য বিজ্ঞানবিদ্গণ এই সিদ্ধান্ত করিয়াছেন যে স্থূলজগৎ ভিন্ন অন্য জগৎ নাই, স্থূলের উপর সূক্ষ্ম প্রতিষ্ঠিত, সূক্ষ্ম অনুভব স্থূল অনুভবের প্রতিকৃতি মাত্র, মনুষ্যের স্বাধীনতা-প্রয়াস ব্যর্থ; ধর্ম্মদর্শন বেদান্ত অলীক কল্পনা, সম্পূর্ণ ভূতপ্রকৃতি-আবদ্ধ আমাদের সেই বন্ধনমোচনে বা ভূতপ্রকৃতির সীমা উলঙ্ঘনে মিথ্যা চেষ্টা। কিন্তু মানবহৃদয়ের এমন গূঢ়তর স্তরে এই আকাঙ্ক্ষা নিহিত যে সহস্র যুক্তিও তাহা উন্মূলন করিতে অসমর্থ। মনুষ্য বিজ্ঞানের সিদ্ধান্তে কখনও সন্তুষ্ট থাকিতে পারে না। চিরকাল মনুষ্য অস্পষ্ট রূপে অনুভব করিয়া আসিতেছেন যে স্থূলজয়ে সমর্থ সূক্ষ্মবস্তু তাহার অভ্যন্তরে দৃঢ়ভাবে বর্ত্তমান, সূক্ষ্মময় অধিষ্ঠাতা নিত্যমুক্ত আনন্দময় পুরুষ আছেন। সেই নিত্যমুক্তি ও নির্ম্মল আনন্দলাভ করা ধর্ম্মের উদ্দেশ্য। এই যে ধর্ম্মের উদ্দেশ্য, সেই বিজ্ঞানকল্পিত evolution-এরও উদ্দেশ্য। বিচারশক্তি ও তাহার অভাব পশু ও মনুষ্যের প্রকৃত ভেদ নহে। পশুর বিচারশক্তি আছে, কিন্তু পশুদেহে তাহার উৎকর্ষ হয় না। পশু মনুষ্যের প্রকৃত ভেদ এই যে শরীরের নিকট সম্পূর্ণ দাসত্ব স্বীকার পাশবিক অবস্থা, শরীর জয় ও আন্তরিক স্বাধীনতার চেষ্টাই মনুষ্যত্ব বিকাশ। এই স্বাধীনতাই ধর্ম্মের প্রধান উদ্দেশ্য, ইহাকেই মুক্তি বলে। এই মুক্ত্যর্থে আমরা অন্তঃকরণস্থ মনোময় প্রাণশরীরনেতাকে জ্ঞানদ্বারা চিনিতে কিম্বা কর্ম্মভক্তিদ্বারা প্রাণ মন শরীর অর্পণ করিতে সচেষ্ট হই। “যোগস্থঃ কুরু কর্ম্মাণি” বলিয়া গীতার যে প্রধান উপদেশ এই স্বাধীনতাই সেই গীতোক্ত যোগ। আন্তরিক সুখদুঃখ যখন বাহ্যিক শুভাশুভ সম্পদবিপদকে আশ্রয় না করিয়া স্বয়ংজাত, স্বয়ংপ্রেরিত, স্বসীমাবদ্ধ হয়, তখন মনুষ্যের সাধারণ অবস্থার বিপরীত অবস্থা হয়, বাহ্যিক জীবন আন্তরিক জীবনের অনুযায়ী করা যায়, কর্ম্মবন্ধন শিথিল হয়। গীতার আদর্শ পুরুষ কর্ম্মফলে আসক্তি ত্যাগ করিয়া পুরুষোত্তমে কর্ম্মসন্ন্যাস করেন। তিনি “দুঃখেষ্বনুদ্বিগ্নমনাঃ সুখেষু বিগতস্পৃহঃ” আন্তরিক স্বাতন্ত্র্য লাভ করিয়া আত্মরতি ও আত্মসন্তুষ্ট হইয়া থাকেন। তিনি প্রাকৃত লোকের ন্যায় সুখলালসায় দুঃখভয়ে কাহারও আশ্রিত হন না, পরের দত্ত সুখদুঃখ গ্রহণ করেন না, অথচ কর্ম্মভোগ করেন না। বরং মহাসংযমী মহাপ্রতাপান্বিত দেবাসুর যুদ্ধে রাগ ভয় ক্রোধাতীত মহারথী হইয়া ভগবৎপ্রেরিত যে কর্ম্মযোগী রাষ্ট্রবিপ্লব ধর্ম্মবিপ্লব অথবা প্রতিষ্ঠিত রাজ্য ধর্ম্ম সমাজ রক্ষা করিয়া নিষ্কাম ভাবে ভগবৎকর্ম্ম সুসম্পন্ন করেন, তিনি গীতার শ্রেষ্ঠ পুরুষ।