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  "chapter": {
    "num": 2,
    "slug": "02-discourse-2-the-yoga-of-knowledge-sankhya-yoga",
    "title": "Discourse 2: The Yoga of Knowledge (Sankhya Yoga)",
    "of": 18,
    "words": 1880,
    "text": "## Discourse 2: The Yoga of Knowledge (Sankhya Yoga)\n\n\nVerse 2:1: Sanjaya said: To him thus with pity overcome, with smarting brimming eyes, \ndespondent, Madhusŭdana spake these words: \n\nVerse 2:2: The Blessed Lord said: Whence hath this dejection befallen thee in this perilous \nstrait, ignoble, heaven-closing, infamous, O Arjuna? \n\nVerse 2:3: Yield not to impotence, O Partha! it doth not befit thee. Shake off this paltry \nfaint-heartedness! Stand up, Parantapa! \n\nVerse 2:4: Arjuna said: How, O Madhusŭdana, shall I attack Bhishma and Drona with \narrows in battle, they who are worthy of reverence, O slayer of foes? \n\nVerse 2:5: Better in this world to eat even the beggar's crust than to slay these most noble \nGurus. Slaying these Gurus, our well-wishers, I should taste of blood-besprinkled feasts. \nVerse 2:6: Nor know I which for us be the better, that we conquer them or they conquer us \n—these, whom having slain we should not care to live, even these arrayed against us, the \nsons of Dhritarashtra. \n\nVerse 2:7: My heart is weighed down with the vice of faintness; my mind is confused as to \nduty. I ask thee which may be the better that tell me decisively. I am thy disciple, suppliant \nto Thee; teach me. \n\nVerse 2:8: For I see not that it would drive away this anguish that withers up my senses, if I \nshould attain unrivalled monarchy on earth, or even the sovereignty of the Shining Ones. \nVerse 2:9: Sanjaya said: Gudakesha, conqueror of his foes, having thus addressed \nHrishikesha, and said to Govinda, \"I will not fight!\" became silent. \n\nVerse 2:10: Then Hrishikesha, smiling, as it were, O Bharata, spake these words to him, \ndespondent, in the midst of the two armies: \n\nVerse 2:11: The Blessed Lord said: Thou grievest for those that should not be grieved for, \nyet speakest words of wisdom. The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead. \n\nVerse 2:12: Nor at any time verily was I not, nor thou, nor these princes of men, nor verily \nshall we ever cease to be, hereafter. \n\nVerse 2:13: As the dweller in the body experienceth in the body childhood, youth, old age, \nso passeth he on to another body; the steadfast one grieveth not thereat. \n\nVerse 2:14: The contacts of matter, O son of Kunti, giving cold and heat, pleasure and pain, \nthey come and go, impermanent endure them bravely, O Bharata. \n\nVerse 2:15: The man whom these torment not, O chief of men, balanced in pain and \npleasure, steadfast, he is fitted for immortality. \n\nVerse 2:16: The unreal hath no being; the real never ceaseth to be the truth about both hath \nbeen perceived by the seers of the essence of things. \n\nVerse 2:17: Know THAT to be indestructible by whom all this is pervaded. Nor can any \nwork the destruction of that imperishable One. \n\nVerse 2:18: These bodies of the embodied One, who is eternal, indestructible and \nimmeasurable, are known as finite. Therefore fight, O Bharata. \n\nVerse 2:19: He who regardeth this as a slayer, and he who thinketh he is slain, both of them \nare ignorant. He slayeth not, nor is he slain. \n\nVerse 2:20: He is not born, nor doth he die; nor having been, ceaseth he any more to be; \nunborn, perpetual, eternal and ancient, he is not slain when the body is slaughtered. \n\nVerse 2:21: Who knoweth him indestructible, perpetual, unborn, undiminishing, how can \nthat man slay, O Partha, or cause to be slain? \n\nVerse 2:22: As a man, casting off worn-out garments, taketh new ones, so the dweller in the \nbody, casting off worn-out bodies, entereth into others new. \n\nVerse 2:23: Weapons cleave him not, nor fire burneth him, nor waters wet him, nor wind \ndrieth him away. \n\nVerse 2:24: Uncleavable he, incombustible he, and indeed neither to be wetted nor dried \naway; perpetual, all-pervasive, stable, immovable, ancient, \n\nVerse 2:25: Unmanifest, unthinkable, immutable, he is called; therefore knowing him as \nsuch, thou shouldst not grieve. \n\nVerse 2:26: Or if thou thinkest of him as constantly being born and constantly dying, even \nthen, O mighty-armed, thou shouldst not grieve. \n\nVerse 2:27: For certain is death for the born, and certain birth for the dead; therefore over \nthe inevitable thou shouldst not grieve. \n\nVerse 2:28: Beings are unmanifest in their origin, manifest in their midmost state, O \nBharata, unmanifest likewise are they in dissolution. What room then for lamentation? \nVerse 2:29: As marvellous one regardeth him; as marvellous another speaketh thereof; as \nmarvellous another heareth thereof; yet having heard none indeed understandeth. \n\nVerse 2:30: This dweller in the body of everyone is ever invulnerable, O Bharata; therefore \nthou shouldst not grieve for any creature. \n\nVerse 2:31: Further, looking to thine own duty thou shouldst not tremble; for there is \nnothing more welcome to a Kshattriya than righteous war. \n\nVerse 2:32: Happy the Kshattriyas, O Partha, who obtain such a fight, offered unsought as \nan open door to heaven. \n\nVerse 2:33: But if thou wilt not carry on this righteous warfare, then casting away thine own \nduty and thine honour, thou wilt incur sin. \n\nVerse 2:34: Men will recount thy perpetual dishonour, and, to one highly esteemed, \ndishonour exceedeth death. \n\nVerse 2:35: The great car-warriors will think thee fled from the battle from fear, and thou, \nthat wast highly thought of by them, wilt be lightly held. \n\nVerse 2:36: Many unseemly words will be spoken by thine enemies, slandering thy strength; \nwhat more painful than that? \n\nVerse 2:37: Slain, thou wilt obtain heaven; victorious, thou wilt enjoy the earth; therefore \nstand up, O son of Kunti, resolute to fight. \n\nVerse 2:38: Taking as equal pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, gird thee \nfor the battle; thus thou shalt not incur sin. \n\nVerse 2:39: This teaching set forth to thee is in accordance with the Sankhya; hear it now \naccording to the Yoga, imbued with which teaching, O Partha, thou shalt cast away the \nbonds of action. \n\nVerse 2:40: In this there is no loss of effort, nor is there transgression. Even a little of this \nknowledge protects from great fear. \n\nVerse 2:41: The determinate Reason is but one-pointed, O joy of the Kurus; many-branched \nand endless are the thoughts of the irresolute. \n\nVerses 2:42-2:44: Flowery speech is uttered by the foolish, rejoicing in the letter of the \nVedas, O Partha, saying: \"There is naught but this\"; With desire for self, with heaven for \n\ngoal, they offer birth as the fruit of action, and prescribe many and various ceremonies for \nthe attainment of pleasure and lordship. For them who cling to pleasure and lordship, whose \nminds are captivated by such teaching, is not designed this determinate Reason, on \ncontemplation steadily bent. \n\nVerse 2:45: The Vedas deal with the three attributes; be thou above these three attributes, O \nArjuna; beyond the pairs of opposites, ever steadfast in purity, careless of possessions, full \nof the SELF. \n\nVerse 2:46: All the Vedas are as useful to an enlightened Brahmana as is a tank in a place \ncovered all over with water. \n\nVerse 2:47: Thy business is with the action only, never with its fruits; so let not the fruit of \naction be thy motive, nor be thou to inaction attached. \n\nVerse 2:48: Perform action, O Dhananjaya, dwelling in union with the divine, renouncing \nattachments and balanced evenly in success and failure: equilibrium is called yoga. \n\nVerse 2:49: Far lower than the Yoga of Discrimination is action, O Dhananjaya. Take thou \nrefuge in the Pure Reason; pitiable are they who work for fruit. \n\nVerse 2:50: United to the Pure Reason one abandoneth here both good and evil deeds; \ntherefore cleave thou to yoga; yoga is skill in action. \n\nVerse 2:51: The Sages, united to the Pure Reason, renounce the fruit which action yieldeth, \nand, liberated from the bonds of birth, they go to the blissful seat. \n\nVerse 2:52: When thy mind shall escape from this tangle of delusion, then thou shalt rise to \nindifference as to what has been heard and shall be heard. \n\nVerse 2:53: When thy mind, bewildered by the Scriptures, shall stand immovable, fixed in \ncontemplation, then shalt thou attain unto yoga. \n\nVerse 2:54: Arjuna said: What the mark, of him who is stable of mind, steadfast in \ncontemplation, O Keshava? how doth the stable-minded talk, how doth he sit, how walk? \nVerse 2:55: The Blessed Lord said: When a man abandoneth, O Partha, all the desires of the \nheart, and is satisfied in the SELF by the SELF, then is he called stable in mind. \n\nVerse 2:56: He whose mind is free from anxiety amid pains, indifferent amid pleasures, \nloosed from passion, fear and anger, is called a sage of stable mind. \n\nVerse 2:57: He who on every side is without attachments, whatever hap of fair and foul, \nwho neither likes nor dislikes, of such a one the understanding is well poised. \n\nVerse 2:58: When, again, as a tortoise draws in on all sides its limbs, he withdraws his \nsenses from the objects of sense, then is his understanding well poised. \n\nVerse 2:59: The objects of sense, but not the relish for them, turn away from an abstemious \ndweller in the body; and even relish turneth away from him after the Supreme is seen. \n\nVerse 2:60: O son of Kunti, the excited senses of even a wise man, though he be striving, \nimpetuously carry away his mind. \n\nVerse 2:61: Having restrained them all, he should sit harmonised, I his supreme goal; for \nwhose senses are mastered, of him the understanding this well poised. \n\nVerse 2:62: Man, musing on the objects of sense, conceiveth an attachment to these; from \nattachment ariseth desire; from desire anger cometh forth; \n\nVerse 2:63: From anger proceedeth delusion; from delusion confused memory; from \nconfused memory the destruction of Reason; from destruction of Reason he perishes. \n\nVerse 2:64: But the disciplined self, moving among sense-objects with senses free from \nattend on and repulsion, mastered by the SELF, goeth to peace. \n\nVerse 2:65: In that Peace the extinction of all pains ariseth for him, for of him whose heart \nis peaceful the Reason soon attaineth equilibrium. \n\nVerse 2:66: There is no Pure Reason for the non-harmonised, nor for the non-harmonised is \nthere concentration; for him without concentration there is no peace, and for the unpeaceful \nhow can there be happiness? \n\nVerse 2:67: Such of the roving senses as the mind yieldeth to, that hurries away the \nunderstanding, just as the gale hurries away a ship upon the waters. \n\nVerse 2:68: Therefore, O mighty-armed, whose senses are all completely restrained from the \nobjects of sense, of him the understanding is well poised. \n\nVerse 2:69: That which is the night of all beings, for the disciplined man is the time of \nwaking; when other beings are waking, then is it night for the sage who seeth. \n\nVerse 2:70: He attaineth Peace, into whom all desires flow as rivers flow into the ocean, \nwhich is filled with water, but remaineth unmoved-not he who desireth desires. \n\nVerse 2:71: Whoso forsaketh all desires and goeth onwards free from yearnings, selfless and \nwithout egoism- he goeth to Peace. \n\nVerse 2:72: This is the ETERNAL state, O son of Pritha. Having attained thereto none is \nbewildered. Who, even at the death-hour, is established therein, he goeth to the Nirvana of \nthe ETERNAL.",
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