Chapter Six
11 This describes the traditional seat used for meditation. The Gita is not concerned with the outer forms of the spiritual life, but here we do get a mention of the grass and deerskin used by the ancient sages. Perhaps the point is that they used what was available in their forest retreats, and that the seat should be what Patanjali calls sukhasana: comfortable enough to forget about your body.
14 “All actions dedicated to Brahman” is a literal translation of the Sanskrit word brahmacharya, a life of self-control and sense restraint.
Chapter Seven
16 Artharthi has given translators some difficulties. “Those who desire to achieve their purpose” captures the basic meaning of the word. Artha is goal or purpose; the second word of the compound, arthi, means “one who has a goal.” So artharthi probably refers to those who take to the spiritual life with a particular purpose in view. Artha also means wealth or worldly goods, but to translate this phrase as “those who desire wealth” would go against the entire tenor of the Gita.
23 “The gods” here are the devas, the lower, celestial deities such as Indra.
30 These obscure terms (adhibhuta, adhidaiva, and adhiyajna) are taken up in the next chapter.
CHAPTER EIGHT
6 Whatever is the content of the mind at the moment of death determines the direction of the soul’s rebirth. The implication is that whatever has been the bedrock of consciousness during life will be remembered at the time of death and lead the soul on to fulfill that desire in the next life.
9–10 The eyebrow center is discussed in the note to 5:27–28.
Chapter Nine
5 Yoga here means “mysterious power.” This is yet another meaning attached to the word yoga, for those who practiced yoga were sometimes thought of as concealing within themselves extraordinary powers developed through their disciplines. The folklore of India relates many stories about mysterious yogis who have strange, divine powers.
Krishna speaks here of his yoga aishvaram, his mysterious and majestic power. Ishvara means “lord” and aishvaram “lordly”:
Krishna’s yoga is something he uses as Ishvara, the Lord of the world.
Now he begins to show Arjuna something of the nature of the mystery.
17 Rig, Yajur, and Sama are the principal Vedas, the ancient scriptures that are Hinduism’s orthodox authority.
20–21 These verses repeat the idea that heaven itself is an impermanent state. After exhausting the store of their good karma, the blessed souls in heaven must be reborn on earth. Only the liberated soul, the one who has found union with Krishna or brahmanirvana, escapes the round of rebirth and death as a separate, mortal creature.
Chapter Ten
This chapter contains many Sanskrit names, which are briefly identified in the glossary (see p. 279).
18 Amrita, “immortal,” comes from a “not” and mrita “mortal.” The Greek word ambrosia is cognate and has the same meanings: amrita is the ambrosia of the gods, the drink that makes them live forever, and in a general sense it means sweet or nectar-like. So the translation could also be “your words, which are like ambrosia.”
22 The mind (manas) is here taken to be one of the senses or indriyas of perception; for example, it is really with the mind rather than with the eye that we see.
33 The Sanskrit alphabet, too, begins with the letter a; perhaps this is why Krishna declares that among letters he is a, the first. Another possible reason is that a is the most frequent sound in Sanskrit.
Chapter Eleven
14 Here Arjuna presses the palms of his hands together in the gesture calledanjali, like the Western gesture of prayer. This is the usual form of respectful greeting in India, as well as being used in worship and prayer.
15 Brahma, the Creator (not to be confused with Brahman, the attributelessGodhead, which is beyond the Trinity of creation, preservation, and destruction) sits within a lotus that grows from the navel of Lord Vishnu.
17 Here Arjuna sees not his friend Krishna, but the Lord incarnate in Krishna: Vishnu, armed with his traditional weapons, a club (or mace) and a discus. Not mentioned in this verse are the two benign symbols he carries in his other hands, a conch and a lotus.
Chapter Twelve
1 Arjuna is asking which path is superior, that of knowledge (jnana yoga) or love (bhakti yoga).
Chapter Thirteen
5 This is a list of all the twenty-four categories given in Sankhya philosophy to describe phenomena in the field of prakriti.
Chapter Fifteen
1 The ashvattha is the sacred pipal tree, a kind of fig often grown in temple compounds in India. The idea of a “world tree” appears in many ancient cultures. Here the Gita uses the image of the tree as “upside down,” drawing on the fact that the pipal sends out aerial roots, making “branches above and below.” The image illustrates the phenomenal world, rooted in Brahman, complete unity, and branching out into the apparent diversity of life.
13 Rasatmaka soma is here translated as “life-giving fluid,” the nourishment of plants. In Hindu mythology it is the moon, sometimes called Soma, that nourishes plants, as the source of the life-giving nectar called Soma. In the Vedas, soma is an intoxicating, invigorating drink distilled from a plant grown high in the mountains and drunk by participants in a sacred ritual. Scholars have tried to discover what the soma plant might have been, but so far no conclusive identification has been made. Soma also appears as an important god in the Vedas.
Chapter Seventeen
27–28 Sat means that which is real or true and that which is good; it derives from the Sanskrit verb as, to be, and is directly related to our English word is. It is noteworthy that this word sat links reality and goodness, reflecting the idea that good is eternal; it is merely covered from time to time by asat, evil, which is temporary and in that sense unreal. Asat is formed from sat by the addition of the prefix a “without,” very much the way English forms words like amoral.
Chapter Eighteen
1 Sannyasa and tyaga both mean renunciation, sannyasa from the root as “to cast aside” and tyaga from tyaj “to give up.” The distinction between these two is clarified in the introduction to this chapter.
14 “The divine will” is a translation of daivam, which comes from the word deva, “god.” Daivam is sometimes translated as “fate,” but this is inappropriate in the Gita, which is not at all fatalistic. The Gita does, however, allow a place for God’s will or Providence in the affairs of humankind – though of course the dominant force is usually karma, not daivam.
34 This verse uses the phrase dharma-kama-artha, “duty, pleasure, and wealth,” traditionally considered the three goals of ordinary human life. The fourth and highest goal is moksha, salvation. The rajasic personality, as this verse points out, pursues the first three worldly goals; moksha is ignored.
41 The Vedas establish the fourfold division of society into the classes of brahmin, kshatriya, vaishya, and shudra – roughly priests and intellectuals; warriors and rulers; businessmen, farmers, and craftsmen; and workers and servants.
66 Dharma is not used here in the usual sense of law or inner nature, but in a rarer meaning: a thing’s attribute, condition, or conditioning. Usually dharma is used in this sense only in the plural, as here: thus dharma is divine law; dharmas are the innumerable beings, things, emotions and mental states that make up everyday existence as we experience it. Here, following the root meaning (dhri, to support or hold up), sarvadharman is translated as “all your supports,” in the sense of external props, conditioned dependencies. Another translation would be: “Cast off your dependency on everything external, Arjuna, and rely on the Self alone.”
Glossary
This brief glossary is a guide to Sanskrit terms used in this volume. Words used once and explained in context are not included. As a rough guide, Sanskrit vowels may be pronounced as in Italian or Spanish. The combinations kh, gh, jh, th, dh, ph, and bh are always pronounced as the consonant plus a slight h sound: e.g., ph as in haphazard (not as in phone). Pronounce ch as in church; h as in home; g as in gold; j as in June except in the combination jn, which can be pronounced like gn in Italian compagna.
The other consonants are approximately as in English.
Every Sanskrit vowel has a short and a long form, the long pronounced for twice as long as the short. The diphthongs – e, ai, o, au – are also long.
The Sanskrit alphabet has 48 characters, each representing a precisely defined sound. Scholars represent these characters in our Roman alphabet by adding marks to letters as necessary, creating a system of spelling that is precise but confusing to the general reader. For simplicity, these differentiating marks have been omitted in this e-book, but may be found in the printed edition.
adharma “Not dharma.” Injustice, evil, anything which goes against moral laws.
advaita Having no duality; the supreme Reality, which is the “One without a second.” The word advaita is especially used in Vedanta philosophy, which stresses the unity of the Self (Atman) and Brahman.
ahamkara [aham “I”; kara “maker”] Self-will, separateness.
ahimsa [a “not”; himsa “violence”] Nonviolence, doing no injury, wishing no harm.
akasha Space, sky; the most subtle of the five elements. akshara The eternal; the syllable Om.
Ananta The cosmic serpent on which Vishnu reclines in rest.
apara [“not transcendent”] Lower knowledge; intellectual knowledge.
Arjuna One of the five Pandava brothers and an important figure in Indian epic and legend. He is Sri Krishna’s beloved disciple and friend in the Bhagavad Gita.
Aryaman “The noble one,” a Vedic god, revered as an ancestor of mankind.
asat [a “not”; sat
