यदा संहरते चायं कूर्मोऽङ्गानीव सर्वशः ।इन्द्रियाणीन्द्रियार्थेभ्यस् तस्य प्रज्ञा प्रतिष्ठिता ॥
yadā saṁharate cāyaṁ kūrmo’ṅgānīva sarvaśaḥindriyāṇīndriyārthebhyas tasya prajñā pratiṣṭhitā
Who draws away the senses from the objects of sense, as the tortoise draws in his limbs into the shell, his intelligence sits firmly founded in wisdom.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
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
Therefore, it is the upward and inward orientation of the2·41 intelligent will that we must resolutely choose with a settled concentration and perseverance, vyavasāya; we must fix it firmly in the calm self-knowledge of the Purusha. The first movement must be obviously to get rid of desire which is the whole root of the evil and suffering; and in order to get rid of desire, we must put an end to the cause of desire, the rushing out of the senses to seize and enjoy their objects. We must draw them back when they are inclined thus to rush out, draw them away from their objects, — as the tortoise draws in his limbs into2·58 the shell, so these into their source, quiescent in the mind, the mind quiescent in intelligence, the intelligence quiescent in the soul and its self-knowledge, observing the action of Nature, but not subject to it, not desiring anything that the objective life can give.
It is not an external asceticism, the physical renunciation of the objects of sense that I am teaching, suggests Krishna immediately2·58–68 to avoid a misunderstanding which is likely at once to arise. Not the renunciation of the Sankhyas or the austerities of the rigid ascetic with his fasts, his maceration of the body, his attempt to abstain even from food; that is not the self-discipline or the abstinence which I mean, for I speak of an inner withdrawal, a renunciation of desire. The embodied soul, having a body, has to support it normally by food for its normal physical action; by abstention from food it simply removes from itself the physical contact with the object of sense, but does not get rid of the inner relation which makes that contact hurtful. It retains the pleasure of the sense in the object, the rasa, the liking and disliking, — for rasa has two sides; the soul must, on the contrary, be capable of enduring the physical contact without suffering inwardly this sensuous reaction. Otherwise there is nivṛtti, cessation of the object, viṣayā vinivartante, but no subjective cessation, no nivṛtti of the mind; but the senses are of the mind, subjective, and subjective cessation of the rasa is the only real sign of mastery. But how is this desireless contact with objects, this unsensuous use of the senses possible? It is possible, paraṁ dṛṣṭvā, by the vision of the supreme, — param, the Soul, the Purusha, — and by living in the Yoga, in union or oneness of the whole subjective being with that, through the Yoga of the intelligence; for the one Soul is calm, satisfied in its own delight, and that delight free from duality can take, once we see this supreme thing in us and fix the mind and will on that, the place of the sensuous object-ridden pleasures and repulsions of the mind. This is the true way of liberation.
