विषया विनिवर्तन्ते निराहारस्य देहिनः ।रसवर्जं रसोऽप्यस्य परं दृष्ट्वा निवर्तते ॥
viṣayā vinivartante nirāhārasya dehinaḥrasavarjaṁ raso’pyasya paraṁ dṛṣṭvā nivartate
If one abstains from food, the objects of sense cease to affect, but the affection itself of the sense, the rasa, remains; the rasa also ceases when the Supreme is seen.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
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
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.
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.
- 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.
But the Gita accepts this Stoic discipline, this heroic philosophy, on the same condition that it accepts the tamasic recoil, — it must have above it the sattwic vision of knowledge, at its root the aim at self-realisation and in its steps the ascent to the divine Nature. A Stoic discipline which merely crushed down the common affections of our human nature, — although less dangerous than a tamasic weariness of life, unfruitful pessimism and sterile inertia, because it would at least increase the power and self-mastery of the soul, — would still be no unmixed good, since it might lead to insensibility and an inhuman isolation without giving the true spiritual release. The Stoic equality is justified as an element in the discipline of the Gita because it can be associated with and can help to the realisation of the free immutable Self in the mobile human being, paraṁ dṛṣṭvā, and to status in that new self-consciousness, eṣā brāhmī sthitiḥ. “Awakening by the understanding to3·43 the Highest which is beyond even the discerning mind, put force on the self by the self to make it firm and still, and slay this enemy who is so hard to assail, Desire.” Both the tamasic recoil of escape and the rajasic movement of struggle and victory are only justified when they look beyond themselves through the sattwic principle to the self-knowledge which legitimises both the recoil and the struggle.
