Sanskrit Verses

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This chapter defines yoga, teaches how to control the mind and meditate, gives the benefits of meditation and answers our query on what happens to an unsuccessful yogi.

The Lord says that external symbols of renunciation are not sufficient and true yogis strive for detachment in action. A sa.nnyasi may be free from action in his path to perfection. While a karma yogi achieves the same by action more than renunciation. The Lord says that both these paths to perfection embody the same principle of detachment from the results and hence represent the same.

The Lord also tells Arjuna that One can elevate or degrade oneself by one’s own mind. The mind can become one’s best friend, or the worst enemy “aatmaiva aatmano bandhuH aatmaiva ripuraatmanaH “. The mind becomes a friend to the one who has control over it, and becomes an enemy for the one who is controlled by the mind.

Verses 10 to 22 deal with the practice of meditation. Meditation requires one to be firmly seated, alone, sitting erect, with least physical movement. All these are necessary since we are endowed with so much imagination that bridling our minds is extremely difficult. The lord also says that a wandering mind should be brought back to course by the contemplation of God. This yoking of mind with God is called Yoga.

A true Yogi regards every being like himself and treats all people like his own family. The mind can be subdued by sincere spiritual practice or meditation and by detachment. Not all Yogis are successful in subduing the mind. The unsuccessful yogi is given mercy by the Lord who allows him to carry forward his yogic practices of previous lives onto his next life. God assures us “No spiritual effort is ever wasted”.

The chapter concludes with the words that the most devoted of all the yogis are those who love God, live, breathe and think of God at all times - manasaa, vaacha and karmaNa (mentally, in words and actions) and whose mind is ever absorbed in God.

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