The Yoga Of The Bhagayad Gift

THE Bhagavad Gita is regarded in India as the greatest compendium of religious inspiration devotional, philosophical ethical, and moral. It is well known in the Western world also, through perhaps a hundred translations into English and various European languages. It is not so well known that every chapter in it is entitled a form of yoga, such as 'The Yoga of Action', The Yoga of Knowledge', 'The Yoga of Devotion', 'The Yoga of the Royal Science and the Royal Mystery'. Therefore an extract of its yoga methods must find place here.

First of all, it offers many brief definitions and descriptions of yoga, for example:

Various terms associated with yoga practices found in the Gita are used with the same meaning as the same terms in the Toga Sutras of Patanjali. Such are dharana, meaning concentration, dhyana, meaning meditations and samadhi, meaning profound contemplation, all found in the Gita.

In view of the fact that the Bhagavad Gita is a scripture of yoga, and calls itself such, we will now give a brief survey of the teaching, which merely describes the circumstances in which Shri; Krishna gave the teaching, and how the mental depression of his disciple Arjuna in those circumstances called it forth.

 The teacher tells the disciple that he should not be grieved by death. He teaches that the owner of the body (dehi) will exist after death and existed before birth and, in fact, never did not exist or will not exist. This spirit is the real man, and takes body after body. The body is temporary and is as it were a garment. Pleasures and pains are tem porary and should be taken as they come.

All this Krishna describes as scientifically known (sankhya), because in his day these matters were taken to be matters well established by what would today be called the psychical observations and researches of many yogis.

This is not left as a mere negative or consoling doctrine. The Teacher says that scientific knowledge is not enough. In modern terms, knowledge of facts does not tell us what to do. There must be the application of it to the benefit of the continuing life. There is such a thing as wisdom (buddhi), which is' knowing the life and its needs, and so giving proper value to the things and using them for that purpose. He goes so far as to call the endeavor to make this wisdom constant and never to lose sight of it in any circumstances buddhi yoga.

This is not different from Patanjali's yoga, for he also puts in the forefront what we may call his ten commandments, without which ah, attempts to realize the real man will be ineffective. People who have not these virtues are engulfed in desires for bodily pleasures and self-satisfaction, which constitutes a bondage to laziness (tarnas), or excitement (rajas), or orderliness (sattwa), which are qualities of the environment, and of the body, not of the real man. Such people want a pleasant heaven after death, but the ouddhiyogi takes his circumstances as they come, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, and does what he can for the benefit of all concerned. His buddhic wisdom gives a new motive for action, and this makes him a practical man, a karmayog.