Bhagavad Gita · 18.50 · Yoga through the Perfection of Renunciation and Surrender·50 of 78
सिद्धिं प्राप्तो यथा ब्रह्म तथाप्नोति निबोध मे।समासेनैव कौन्तेय निष्ठा ज्ञानस्य या परा ॥
siddhiṁ prāpto yathā brahma tathāpnoti nibodha
me samāsenaiva kaunteya niṣhṭhā jñānasya yā parā
Sanskrit recitation
Toward inner perfection · 18.49–18.55 · Teaching
Translation
Learn from Me, O Arjuna, in brief how one who has attained perfection reaches Brahman—the Eternal, that supreme state of knowledge.
Meaning
When a man has the good fortune to hear the words of wisdom from a teacher, dualism and egoism vanish and his mind rests in union with the Supreme Being. The need for action no longer exists for such a man. Nothing further remains for him to do. He has become a Kritakritya (a man of total fulfilment, or one who has done all that there is to be done).The aspirant obtains the grace of the Lord by worshipping Hims with his proper duty. The Lord gives him dispassion, discrimination, devotion to knowledge. The Lord removes his veil of ignorance. To these ever harmonious, worshipping in love, I give the Yoga of discrimination by which they come unto Me. Out of My mere compassion for them, I, dwelling within their Self, destroy the darkness born of ignorance by the luminous lamp of knowledge. (X.10and11)The perfection is JnanaNishtha or devotion to knowledge by which he attains Selfrealisation or becomes identical with the Supreme Being when the veil of ignorance is rent asunder. The way to the attainment of this devotion to knowledge will be described only in a succint manner. The process or method of Selfrealisation will be described only in brief in the following verses.The actual technie has to be learnt direct from a Guna.
After Swami Sivananda
Toward inner perfection· 18.49–18.55→
Teachers usually read this idea across several verses together, one shared reflection covers the whole unit.
- 18.49He whose intellect is unattached everywhere, who has subdued his self, from whom desire has fled, he attains the supreme state of freedom from action through renunciation.
18.50Learn from Me, O Arjuna, in brief how one who has attained perfection reaches Brahman—the Eternal, that supreme state of knowledge.
- 18.51Endowed with a pure intellect, controlling the self through firmness, relinquishing sound and other objects and abandoning attraction and hatred.
- 18.52Dwelling in solitude, eating sparingly, with speech, body, and mind subdued, always engaged in meditation and concentration, and resorting to dispassion.
- 18.53Having abandoned egoism, strength, arrogance, desire, anger, and covetousness, and being free from the notion of 'mine' and peaceful, he is fit for becoming Brahman.
- 18.54Becoming Brahman, serene in the Self, he neither grieves nor desires; he is the same to all beings, and obtains supreme devotion to Me.
- 18.55By devotion, he knows Me in truth, who and what I am; then, having known Me in truth, he immediately enters into the Supreme.
Word-by-word→
- me
- from me
- eva
- indeed
- yā
- which
- parā
- transcendental
- brahma
- Brahman
- tathā
- also
- yathā
- how
- nibodha
- hear
- siddhim
- perfection
- āpnoti
- attain
- kaunteya
- Arjun, the son of Kunti
- samāsena
- briefly
- jñānasya
- of knowledge
- prāptaḥ
- attained
- niṣhṭhā
- firmly fixed
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