Bhagavad Gītā – Chapter 3 Notes

 

Krishna begins by explaining that there are two paths available:

 

1. samkhya/jnana yoga (intellectual exploration of the nature of reality)

2. karma yoga (as already explained in Chapter 2)

 

However they are not mutually exclusive – no-one can avoid action, but you have to act in a spirit of detachment, and this is achieved through the mind, which can control the senses.

 

Verses 27-28 refer to the gunas as the real cause of all action.  The Ātman, being transcendent and changeless, is not affected by the gunas.  [Krishna will go into more detail in Chapter 14.]

 

In verse 30, Krishna says, “Performing all actions for my sake” – referring to bhakti yoga, which he returns to in more detail in Chapters 8-12.

 

Krishna urges Arjuna to fight in verse 41, but he must do so dispassionately.  It is also clear from verses 42-43 that the concept of fighting is metaphorical.

 

 

Notes from Radhakrishnan’s commentary on BG

 

 

 1 Arjuna misunderstands the teaching that work for reward is less excellent than work without attachment and desire and believes that Kṛṣṇa is of the view that knowledge without action is better than work and asks, if you think that knowledge is superior to action, why do you ask me to engage in this frightful work?

 

 3 For the Gītā, the path of works is a means of liberation quite as efficient as that of knowledge, and these are intended for two classes of people.  They are not exclusive but complementary.

 

 4 What is demanded is not renunciation of works, but renunciation of selfish desire.

 

 5 While life remains, action is unavoidable.  Thinking is an act; living is an act – and these acts cause many effects.  To be free from desire, from the illusion of personal interest, is the true non-action and not the physical abstention from activity.

 

19 Here work done without attachment is marked as superior to work done in a spirit of sacrifice which is itself higher than work done with selfish aims.

 

29 We should not disturb those who act under the impulsion of nature.  They should be slowly delivered from the false identification of the self with the ego subject to nature.  The true self is the divine, eternally free and self-aware.

 

35 There is more happiness in doing one’s own work even without excellence than in doing another’s duty well.  Each one must try to understand his psychophysical make-up and function in accordance with it.

 

42 Consciousness must be raised step by step.  The higher we rise the more free we are.  If we act under the sway of the senses, we are least free.  We are freer when we adopt the dictates of manas; still more free when our manas is united with buddhi; we attain the highest freedom when our acts are determined by buddhi suffused by the light from beyond, the self.