原典

The Gita opens in breakdown: right action can be agonisingly unclear, and recoil from harm is a real good that may still be mixed with confusion.

The Self is deathless and unborn. Act without attachment to the fruit, and let equanimity — not reward-seeking ritual — be the mark of wisdom.

Action is unavoidable, so purify it rather than flee it. Selfless action sustains the world, and desire is the enemy of wisdom.

The divine descends to restore order. Knowing that reality liberates from rebirth, and the freed act without bondage — action within inaction.

Detached action and renunciation reach the same goal, and action is the surer road. The equal vision sees one Self in all beings.

One is one's own friend or enemy: raise the self by the self. Meditation asks moderation and an even mind, and no spiritual effort is ever lost.

The One pervades and underlies all things yet transcends them. Illusion and the three qualities veil the truth, and true knowers are rare.

Constant remembrance shapes the soul's destiny. Beyond all cosmic cycles abides the Imperishable, and reaching it ends rebirth.

The Lord pervades all yet is unattached to all. Loving devotion, not reward-seeking ritual, is the saving path; grace is impartial yet answers love.

Every excellence points back to the One, who is seated in the heart of every creature. Loving devotion draws down the inner lamp of wisdom.

The Absolute holds all worlds in a single Form. The Maker is also the Destroyer — the Lord is Time itself — and is known only by love and surrender.

Loving devotion to the personal Lord is the dearest and most attainable path. The beloved devotee is compassionate, self-free, equable and steadfast.

The Self is the deathless knower behind the perishable body. Wisdom is a lived character, and seeing one Self alike in all is the highest road.

All embodied life is woven of three qualities. The one dominant at death shapes the next birth, and liberation lies in transcending all three.

The world-tree of bondage is felled by detachment. The Lord is the indwelling vital power of all life, beyond both perishable and imperishable.

Two endowments shape human destiny, the divine and the demonic. Denial of moral order is the root of the second; lust, wrath and greed are its gates.

A person is made by their faith. The whole religious life is graded by the three qualities, and true austerity is inward and disinterested.

Renounce the fruit, not the act. Do your own duty rather than another's, see one Life in all lives, and end in surrender to grace.

See the whole world as pervaded by the Lord. Act without being defiled — renunciation within engagement — and seeing all beings in the Self ends grief.

Nachiketas at the door of death: choose the good over the merely pleasant. The Self is deathless, known by grace and purity rather than by argument.

Brahman is the power behind every power, beyond the grasp of mind and senses. True knowing is knowing that you cannot finitely know it.

Distinguish higher knowledge from lower. Works alone are unsafe boats; Om is the bow, the self the arrow, and truth alone conquers.

All this is Brahman, and this Self is Brahman. Three ordinary states and a Fourth beyond them, mapped by the syllable AUM.

One God is the world's single cause, his power hidden in the qualities. Yoga is concrete practice — posture, breath, place, perseverance.

In the beginning the Self alone was. The Self is the 'who' behind every faculty, and consciousness itself is Brahman.

Speak truth, practise dharma, honour parents, teacher and guest. The self has five sheaths, Brahman is bliss, and no guest is refused.

Six questions put to a teacher: discipline before doctrine, breath as chief of the personal powers, and thinking that shapes one's destiny.

'That art thou' — the canonical identification of the self with Brahman. Being alone is, the Infinite alone is bliss, and the heart holds the whole world.

'I am Brahman'; the Self as the true object of every love; the inner ruler present in everything yet other than it, approached only by 'not this, not that'.

Two paths after death, one returning and one not. Breath is Brahman, and consciousness is the indispensable condition of all cognition.

The vanity of embodied life prompts the search. The body is a chariot whose driver is not truly a doer, and a six-limbed yoga reaches the source.