Bhagavad Gītā – Chapter 6 Notes

 

 

This chapter gives attention to the practice of meditation.

 

Krishna begins by re-emphasising selfless-service/renunciation, which is achieved by the power of the Ātman.  (verses 1-5)

 

He then explains that we should seek contact with the Ātman through meditation, and gives detailed instructions on how to meditate and describes the benefits of meditation: perfect stillness of mind and the ability to look inward and unite with Brahman.

 

Arjuna’s questions and doubts in verses 33-34, 37-39 are the questions that every ordinary, honest seeker would want to ask.  Krishna’s answer provides hope and comfort.  He also makes the point in verse 46 that meditation is superior not only to severe asceticism and the path of knowledge, but even to selfless service.

 

 

 

 

Notes from Radhakrishnan’s commentary on BG

 

 

1  The teacher emphasizes that sannyāsa or renunciation has little to do with outward works.  It is an inward attitude.

 

2  This verse says that disciplined activity (yoga) is just as good as renunciation.

 

3  When we are aspirants for liberation, work done in the right spirit with inner renunciation helps us.  When once we achieve self-possession we act, not for gaining any end but out of our anchorage in God-consciousness.  Through work we struggle to obtain self-control; when self-control is attained, we obtain peace.  It does not follow that we then abandon all action.  For in VI, 1 it is stated that the true yogin is one who performs work and not one who renounces it.

 

4  We must give up our likes and dislikes, forget ourselves, leave ourselves out.  By the abandonment of all purposes, by the mortification of the ego, by the total surrender to the will of the Supreme, the aspirant develops a condition of mind approximating to the eternal.

 

5  The Supreme is within us.  It is the consciousness underlying the ordinary individualized consciousness of every-day life but incommensurable with it.  The two are different in kind, though the Supreme is realizable by one who is prepared to lose his life in order to save it.  For the most part we are unaware of the Self in us because our attention is engaged by objects which we like or dislike.  We must get away from them, to become aware of the Divine in us. … If we subdue our petty cravings and desires, if we do not exert our selfish will, we become the channel of the Universal Self. … Every one of us has the freedom to rise or fall and our future is in our own hands.

 

10 Here the teacher develops the technique of mental discipline on the lines of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra.  Its main purpose is to raise our consciousness from its ordinary waking condition to higher levels until it attains union with the Supreme.  The human mind is ordinarily turned outwards.   Absorption in the mechanical and material sides of life leads to a disbalanced condition of consciousness.  Yoga attempts to explore the inner world of consciousness and helps to integrate the conscious and the subconscious.

The aspirant must seek a quiet place with soothing natural surroundings such as the banks of rivers or tops of hills which lift our hearts and exalt our minds.  In a world which is daily growing noisier, the duty of the civilized man is to have moments of thoughtful stillness.

 

Worry about daily needs, about earning and spending money, disturbs meditation and takes us away from the life of the spirit.  So we are asked to be free from desire and anxiety born of it, from greed and fear.

 

12 Yoga here means dhyāna yoga, meditation.  To realize truth, man must be delivered from the clutches of practical interests which are bound up with our exterior and material life.  The chief condition is a disciplined disinterestedness.

 

14 It is not ascetic celibacy that is meant by brahmacarya, but control. … To be a celibate is not to deaden the senses and deny the heart.

 

Only the single-visioned see the Real. … They acquire the creative vision since they combine absorption with detachment.  They act in the world, but the passionless tranquillity of the spirit remains undisturbed.  They are compared to the lotus on the lake which is unruffled by the tide.

 

20 While the Supreme is beyond perception by the senses, it is seizable by reason, not by the reason which deals with sense data and frames concepts on their basis but reason which works in its own right.  When it does so, it becomes aware of things not indirectly, through the medium of the senses or the relations based on them, but by becoming one with them.  All true knowledge is knowledge by identity.  Our knowledge through physical contact or mental symbols is indirect and approximate.  Religion is contemplative realization of God.

 

43 Progress on the path to perfection is slow and one may have to tread through many lives before reaching the end.  But no effort is wasted.  The relations we form and the powers we acquire do not perish at death.  They will be the starting point of later developments.

 

46 Yoga or union with God which is attained through bhakti is the highest goal.  The next verse points out that even among yogins, the greatest is the devotee or the bhakta.