The Gita in 18 steps
The Bhagavad Gita has 18 chapters. Read one a day, in order: each step gives the chapter’s name and what it teaches, and opens the full chapter with every verse and its meaning.
- 1Bhagavad Gita 1 · 47 verses
Arjuna Vishada Yoga — the Yoga of Arjuna's Grief
अर्जुनविषादयोगः
The Gita opens with a blind king's question. Dhritarashtra asks Sanjaya, who sees the field of Kurukshetra by the divine sight Maharshi Vyasa gave him, what his sons and the sons of Pandu did there. Duryodhana goes to his teacher Drona and names the great warriors on both sides. Bhishma blows his conch, and the conches of both armies answer: Panchajanya in the hands of Hrishikesha, Devadatta in Arjuna's. Arjuna asks Achyuta to set his chariot between the two armies so he can see whom he must fight. There he sees grandfathers, teachers, uncles, brothers, sons, friends and fathers-in-law. His limbs give way, his mouth dries, and Gandiva slips from his hand. He argues that killing kinsmen will destroy family dharma, bring confusion of varna and drag the ancestors down. He would sooner be killed unarmed. Then he sinks down on the seat of the chariot and lets fall his bow and arrows, his mind overcome with sorrow.
- 2Bhagavad Gita 2 · 72 verses
Sankhya Yoga — the Yoga of Knowledge
साङ्ख्ययोगः
Arjuna, in tears, refuses to fight and then does something new. He asks Shri Krishna to teach him, calling himself His disciple. Bhagwan smiles and begins. The wise grieve for neither the living nor the dead. The Self is never born and never dies; weapons cannot cut it, fire cannot burn it. As a man puts off worn clothes and puts on new ones, the embodied Self leaves worn-out bodies and takes new ones. Then Bhagwan speaks of svadharma: for a kshatriya there is nothing better than a righteous war, and to flee would bring dishonour. From verse 39 He turns to buddhi yoga, action with a steady mind. Your right is to the work alone, never to its fruits. Evenness of mind is yoga; yoga is skill in action. Arjuna asks how a man of steady wisdom speaks, sits and walks. The answer closes the chapter: he draws in his senses as a tortoise draws in its limbs, and at the end he attains the peace of Brahman.
- 3Bhagavad Gita 3 · 43 verses
Karma Yoga — the Yoga of Action
कर्मयोगः
Arjuna is puzzled. If understanding is higher than action, why push him into this terrible deed? Shri Krishna answers that there have always been two paths, knowledge for the Sankhyas and action for the yogis, and that no one escapes action by refusing to begin it. Nobody stays without acting even for a moment; the gunas of prakriti drive everyone. So do your prescribed work, without attachment, as yajna. Prajapati created beings together with yajna, and the wheel turns: from food come beings, from rain comes food, from yajna comes rain. Janaka and others reached perfection through action. Bhagwan Himself has nothing to gain in the three worlds and still works, because people follow the example of the great. All actions are done by the gunas; only the deluded think "I am the doer." Better one's own dharma done imperfectly than another's done well. Arjuna asks what drives a man to sin against his will. It is desire, answers Bhagwan, born of rajas, which turns into anger. Master the senses and slay this enemy.
- 4Bhagavad Gita 4 · 42 verses
Jnana Karma Sannyasa Yoga — the Yoga of Knowledge and the Renunciation of Action
ज्ञानकर्मसंन्यासयोगः
Shri Krishna gave this yoga to Vivasvan, the Sun; Vivasvan gave it to Manu, Manu to Ikshvaku, and the royal sages kept it until time wore it away. Arjuna asks how one born so recently could have taught the Sun. Bhagwan answers that He and Arjuna have both had many births. He remembers all of His, Arjuna none. Unborn and imperishable, He still takes birth by His own Maya whenever dharma declines, to protect the good, destroy the wicked and set dharma on its feet again, age after age. Then the teaching turns to action itself. Even the wise are confused about what action and inaction are. The one who sees inaction in action, whose deeds are burnt in the fire of knowledge, is never bound. Many kinds of yajna are named and the yajna of knowledge is placed above them all. Seek that knowledge from those who have seen the truth, with humility, questions and service. The chapter ends with a command: cut doubt with the sword of knowledge and stand up.
- 5Bhagavad Gita 5 · 29 verses
Karma Sannyasa Yoga — the Yoga of Renouncing Action
कर्मसंन्यासयोगः
Arjuna is still torn. He asks plainly which is better, renouncing action or the yoga of action. Bhagwan answers that both lead to the highest good, but karma yoga is the easier and the surer, because true renunciation is hard to reach without it. Sankhya and Yoga are one road; only children call them two. The yogi goes on seeing, hearing, eating, walking and breathing, and knows that it is the senses moving among their objects. He offers his work to Brahman and stays untouched, as a lotus leaf sits on water and stays dry. The embodied self rests in the city of nine gates, doing nothing and causing nothing. The wise look with the same eye on a learned brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater. Pleasures born of contact are wombs of sorrow; whoever can bear the surge of desire and anger before the body falls is a yogi. The chapter closes with the sage who knows Bhagwan as the friend of all beings, and finds peace.
- 6Bhagavad Gita 6 · 47 verses
Atma Samyama Yoga — the Yoga of Self-Mastery
आत्मसंयमयोगः
The sannyasi, Shri Krishna begins, is the one who does his duty without leaning on its fruit. Raise yourself by your own self, He says; the self is your only friend and your only enemy. Then the sitting itself. A clean place, a firm seat neither high nor low, kusha grass, then deerskin, then cloth. Body, head and neck held straight, eyes resting on the tip of the nose, the mind on Bhagwan. Eat in measure, sleep in measure. The steadied mind is like a lamp in a windless place that does not flicker. Arjuna answers honestly that the mind is as hard to hold as the wind. Bhagwan agrees, and gives the cure in two words, abhyasa and vairagya, practice and dispassion. Arjuna asks about the man of faith who falls short in this life. No one who does good comes to ruin, Krishna tells him. He is born again among the pure or in a family of yogis and takes up where he left off. Highest of all is the yogi who worships Bhagwan with faith.
- 7Bhagavad Gita 7 · 30 verses
Jnana Vijnana Yoga — the Yoga of Knowledge and Its Realisation
ज्ञानविज्ञानयोगः
Shri Bhagwan now speaks of Himself directly, promising Arjuna knowledge with its realisation, after which nothing remains to be known. Among thousands, hardly one strives for perfection, and among those, hardly one knows Him as He is. He names His two natures: the lower, eightfold prakriti of earth, water, fire, air, space, mind, intellect and ego, and the higher, the life-principle that upholds the world. All beings spring from these; He is the source and dissolution of everything, and all is strung on Him like pearls on a thread. He is the taste in water, the light of sun and moon, Om in the Vedas. His divine maya of the three gunas is hard to cross, but those who take refuge in Him cross it. Four kinds of virtuous people worship Him: the distressed, the seeker of knowledge, the seeker of wealth and the wise. Rarest is the mahatma who, after many births, knows that Vasudeva is all. Even boons sought from other devatas are granted by Him alone.
- 8Bhagavad Gita 8 · 28 verses
Akshara Brahma Yoga — the Yoga of the Imperishable Brahman
अक्षरब्रह्मयोगः
Arjuna asks seven questions: what are Brahman, adhyatma, karma, adhibhuta and adhidaiva, who is the adhiyajna in this body, and how is Bhagwan known at death. Shri Bhagwan answers each. Brahman is the supreme Imperishable; its own nature is adhyatma; the offering that brings beings forth is karma; perishable existence is adhibhuta; the Purusha is adhidaiva; and He Himself, in the body, is the adhiyajna. Whatever one remembers at the last moment, to that one goes, so Arjuna must remember Him at all times and fight. The yogi who departs uttering Om, the one-syllabled Brahman, with prana held between the brows, reaches the highest goal. All worlds up to Brahmaloka return, but one who reaches Him is not born again. Brahma's day is a thousand yugas, his night as long; beings arise at his dawn and dissolve at his nightfall. Beyond that unmanifest is an eternal Unmanifest, His supreme abode. Of the bright path and the dark, one leads beyond return, the other back to birth.
- 9Bhagavad Gita 9 · 34 verses
Raja Vidya Raja Guhya Yoga — the Yoga of the Royal Knowledge and the Royal Secret
राजविद्याराजगुह्ययोगः
Shri Bhagwan calls this teaching the king of sciences and the king of secrets: pure, directly experienced, easy to practise, imperishable. In His unmanifest form He pervades the world; all beings rest in Him as the wind rests in space, yet He is not held by them. At the end of a kalpa beings enter His prakriti, and at the next He sends them forth, sitting as one indifferent, unbound by the act. The deluded scorn Him in human form; the mahatmas worship Him with undivided minds, chanting His name with firm vows. He is the yajna, the mantra, the ghee, the fire and the oblation; father, mother and grandsire of the world; Om and the three Vedas. Those who reach heaven by Vedic rites return when their merit is spent. For those who think of Him alone, He carries what they lack and guards what they have. A leaf, a flower, a fruit or water offered with love, He accepts. Even one of very bad conduct who worships Him alone is a sadhu, for His devotee never perishes.
- 10Bhagavad Gita 10 · 42 verses
Vibhuti Yoga — the Yoga of Divine Glories
विभूतियोगः
Bhagwan Shri Krishna speaks again, out of love for Arjuna. Neither the devas nor the great rishis know His origin, for He is the source of them all; the seven rishis and the four Manus were born from His mind. Every quality in beings, from forgiveness to fear, comes from Him alone. Those who fix their hearts on Him, speak of Him to one another and find joy in it, receive from Him the yoga of understanding, and He lights the lamp of knowledge within them. Arjuna declares Him the Supreme Brahman, as Narada, Asita, Devala and Vyasa had said, and asks how he should think of Him. Bhagwan then names His chief glories: Vishnu among the Adityas, the Samaveda among the Vedas, Shankara among the Rudras, Om among words, the Himalaya among things that stand, the Ganga among rivers, Vasudeva among the Vrishnis. There is no end to them. Whatever is glorious, beautiful or mighty is born of a spark of His splendour, and He holds the whole universe with a single fraction of Himself.
- 11Bhagavad Gita 11 · 55 verses
Vishvarupa Darshana Yoga — the Yoga of the Vision of the Universal Form
विश्वरूपदर्शनयोगः
Arjuna says his delusion is gone and asks to see Bhagwan's divine form with his own eyes. Shri Krishna gives him divine sight, for no human eye can bear it. Sanjaya tells Dhritarashtra what Arjuna saw: a form with countless faces, eyes, arms and weapons, brighter than a thousand suns rising together, holding the whole universe in one place. Arjuna, his hair standing on end, sees Brahma on the lotus, the rishis and the devas within that body, and then sees the sons of Dhritarashtra, Bhishma, Drona and Karna rushing into its blazing mouths like moths into fire. Shaken, he asks who this is. Bhagwan answers, 'I am Time, the destroyer of worlds'; the warriors are already slain by Him, and Arjuna is only the instrument. Arjuna bows again and again, begs forgiveness for having treated Him as a friend, and asks to see the four-armed form. Bhagwan shows it, then His gentle human form, and declares that neither Vedas, yajna, charity nor tapas can win this vision. Only undivided bhakti can.
- 12Bhagavad Gita 12 · 20 verses
Bhakti Yoga — the Yoga of Devotion
भक्तियोगः
Arjuna asks which worshippers know yoga best: those devoted to Bhagwan in His form, or those who worship the imperishable, unmanifest Brahman. Shri Krishna answers that those who fix their minds on Him with supreme faith are the most united with Him. The seekers of the unmanifest also reach Him, but their path is harder, for embodied beings attain the formless only with great difficulty. For those who give all their actions to Him and meditate on Him alone, He is the one who lifts them quickly out of the ocean of death and samsara. Then He gives a ladder of practice: fix the mind on Him; if not, practise; if not, work for Him; if not, give up the fruits of action. Giving up the fruit brings peace at once. The chapter closes with the marks of the devotee dear to Him: free of hatred, friendly and compassionate, the same in honour and insult, content with whatever comes, steady in mind.
- 13Bhagavad Gita 13 · 34 verses
Kshetra Kshetrajna Vibhaga Yoga — the Yoga of the Field and the Knower of the Field
क्षेत्रक्षेत्रज्ञविभागयोगः
Shri Krishna names the body the kshetra, the field, and the one who knows it the kshetrajna, the knower of the field. Then he says plainly that he himself is the knower in every field, and that true knowledge is knowing the two apart. He lists what makes up the field: the five great elements, ego, intellect, the unmanifest, the ten senses and the mind, their objects, desire, aversion, pleasure, pain and the rest. He lists what knowledge looks like in a person: humility, freedom from pretence, non-violence, patience, service of the guru, purity, steady devotion to him, and a liking for quiet places. He describes Brahman, the one thing worth knowing, beginningless, with hands and eyes everywhere, beyond the senses yet lighting them. Prakriti and Purusha are both without beginning; Prakriti does, Purusha experiences. The one who sees the Supreme Lord standing alike in every being, untouched as the sky is untouched, sees as it is and goes to the highest.
- 14Bhagavad Gita 14 · 27 verses
Gunatraya Vibhaga Yoga — the Yoga of the Division of the Three Gunas
गुणत्रयविभागयोगः
Shri Krishna opens with the highest of all knowledge, the knowledge by which the munis reached perfection and are no longer born at creation nor shaken at dissolution. The great Prakriti is his womb; he places the seed in it, and he is the father who gives the seed to every form in every womb. Three gunas born of Prakriti bind the embodied one. Sattva is clear and full of light, and binds through attachment to happiness and knowledge. Rajas is passion, born of craving, and binds through attachment to action. Tamas is born of ignorance and binds through carelessness, sloth and sleep. Each overpowers the others in turn, and each shows its signs in the body and mind; each also decides where a soul goes at death. Arjuna asks how one who has gone beyond the gunas lives. Krishna answers: he is even in pain and pleasure, praise and blame, honour and dishonour, and serves Bhagwan with unswerving devotion. Bhagwan is the ground of Brahman.
- 15Bhagavad Gita 15 · 20 verses
Purushottama Yoga — the Yoga of the Supreme Person
पुरुषोत्तमयोगः
Shri Krishna speaks of the ashvattha, the sacred pipal of samsara, with its roots above and its branches below. The Vedic hymns are its leaves, and whoever knows this tree knows the Veda. Its branches spread up and down, fed by the gunas, budding into sense objects, and its roots run down into the world of men, binding them to action. Cut it down with the strong axe of detachment, he says, and seek the place from which there is no return, taking refuge in the primal Purusha. There neither sun nor moon nor fire gives light; that is his supreme abode. The jiva in every body is his own eternal portion, carrying the senses from body to body as the wind carries scent. He is the light in sun, moon and fire, the soma that feeds the plants, the digestive fire in every creature, and he dwells in every heart. Beyond the perishable and the imperishable stands Purushottama, the Supreme Person, the one to be known by all the Vedas.
- 16Bhagavad Gita 16 · 24 verses
Daivasura Sampad Vibhaga Yoga — the Yoga of the Divine and the Demoniac Natures
दैवासुरसम्पद्विभागयोगः
Shri Krishna names two kinds of nature a person may be born with. The divine wealth comes first: fearlessness, a clean heart, steadiness in knowledge, charity, self-control, yajna, study of the Veda, austerity, straightness, non-violence, truth, freedom from anger, compassion for all beings, modesty, forgiveness, patience and purity. This wealth leads to liberation. The demoniac wealth is hypocrisy, arrogance, pride, anger, harshness and ignorance, and it binds. Bhagwan tells Arjuna not to grieve, for he is born to the divine. He then describes the asuric mind at length: it denies any Ishvara behind the world, lives only for desire, piles up wealth by wrong means, and says 'I have this today, I shall have that tomorrow; I am the lord, I am the enjoyer.' Such people fall birth after birth into lower wombs. Desire, anger and greed are the three gates of hell, and a person freed from them walks to the highest goal. The chapter closes on a plain rule: let the Shastra be your authority in deciding what to do and what to leave.
- 17Bhagavad Gita 17 · 28 verses
Shraddhatraya Vibhaga Yoga — the Yoga of the Threefold Faith
श्रद्धात्रयविभागयोगः
Arjuna asks about those who set aside the scriptural rule yet worship with faith: is their standing sattvic, rajasic or tamasic? Shri Krishna answers that every embodied being's shraddha follows its own nature, and a person is made of faith; as the faith is, so is the person. The sattvic worship the Devas, the rajasic worship yakshas and rakshasas, and the tamasic worship ghosts and spirits. Those who torment the body with fierce austerities the Shastra does not prescribe, driven by show and ego, are called asuric in resolve. Bhagwan then sorts four things by the three gunas: food, yajna, tapas and dana. Tapas is set out as threefold too, of body, of speech and of mind; truthful, pleasant and helpful speech is the tapas of speech. The chapter ends with Om Tat Sat, the threefold name of Brahman. Om begins every act of the knowers of Brahman, Tat marks acts done without seeking fruit, and Sat names what is good and true. Whatever is offered, given or endured without faith is called asat, of no use here or hereafter.
- 18Bhagavad Gita 18 · 78 verses
Moksha Sannyasa Yoga — the Yoga of Liberation through Renunciation
मोक्षसंन्यासयोगः
Arjuna asks how sannyasa differs from tyaga. Shri Krishna answers that yajna, dana and tapas must never be dropped, for they purify even the wise; what goes is attachment and the wish for fruit. Every action has five causes, the fifth being daiva, the unseen. One who sees the Self as the sole doer does not see rightly. Knowledge, action, doer, understanding, steadiness and happiness are each sorted by the gunas, and the duties of Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra are shown to rise from the gunas of one's own nature. Worshipping Bhagwan through one's own work, a person reaches perfection; one's own dharma, even done imperfectly, is better than another's done well. Bhagwan then gives His most secret word: fix your mind on Me, be My devotee, give up all dharmas and take refuge in Me alone; I shall free you from all sins, do not grieve. Arjuna's delusion is gone. Sanjaya, who heard it all by Vyasa's grace, ends: where Krishna and Partha stand, there are fortune, victory and prosperity.