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Chapter 5

The Path of Renunciation

True renunciation is inner: a person who acts without attachment stays untouched, like a lotus leaf in water.

Verses in this chapter(29)

  1. 5.1Arjuna said: Renunciation of actions, O Krishna, Thou praisest, and again Yoga. Tell me conclusively that which is the better of the two.
  2. 5.2The Blessed Lord said: Renunciation and the Yoga of action both lead to the highest bliss; but of the two, the Yoga of action is superior to the renunciation of action.
  3. 5.3He should be known as a perpertual Sannyasi who neither hates nor desires; for, free from the pairs of opposites, O mighty-armed Arjuna, he is easily set free from bondage.
  4. 5.4Children, not the wise, speak of knowledge and the Yoga of action or the performance of action as though they are distinct and different; he who is truly established in one...
  5. 5.5That place which is reached by the Sankhyas or the Jnanis is reached by the Yogis (Karma Yogis). He sees, who sees knowledge and the performance of action (Karma Yoga) as one.
  6. 5.6But renunciation, O mighty-armed Arjuna, is hard to attain without Yoga; the Yoga-harmonised sage quickly goes to Brahman.
  7. 5.7He who is devoted to the path of action, whose mind is quite pure, who has conquered the self, who has subdued his senses and who realises his Self as the Self in all beings...
  8. 5.8I do nothing at all," thus would the harmonised knower of Truth think seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, going, sleeping, breathing.
  9. 5.9Speaking, letting go, seizing, opening and closing the eyes convinced that the senses move among the sense-objects.
  10. 5.10He who does actions, offering them to Brahman, and abandoning attachment, is not tainted by sin, just as a lotus-leaf is not tainted by water.
  11. 5.11Yogis, having abandoned attachment, perform actions only by the body, mind, intellect, and even by the senses, for the purification of the self.
  12. 5.12The united one (the well poised or the harmonised) having abandoned the fruit of action attains to the eternal peace: the non-united only (the unsteady or the unbalanced) impelled...
  13. 5.13Mentally renouncing all actions and self-controlled, the embodied one rests happily in the nine-gated city, neither acting nor causing others (body and senses) to act.
  14. 5.14Neither agency nor actions does the Lord create for the world, nor union with the fruits of actions. But it is Nature that acts.
  15. 5.15The Lord takes neither the demerit nor even the merit of any; knowledge is enveloped by ignorance, thery beings are deluded.
  16. 5.16But to those whose ignorance is destroyed by the knowledge of the Self, like the sun, knowledge reveals the Supreme (Brahman).
  17. 5.17Their intellect absorbed in That, their self being That, established in That, with That for their supreme goal, they go whence there is no return, their sins dispelled by...
  18. 5.18Sages look with an equal eye on a Brahmana endowed with learning and humility, on a cow, on an elephant, and even on a dog and an outcaste.
  19. 5.19Even here (in this world) birth (everything) is overcome by those whose minds rest in equality; Brahman is spotless indeed and equal; therefore they are established in Brahman.
  20. 5.20Resting in Brahman, with steady intellect and undeluded, the knower of Brahman neither rejoiceth on obtaining what is pleasant nor grieveth on obtaining what is unpleasant.
  21. 5.21With the self unattached to external contacts he finds happiness in the Self; with the self engaged in the meditation of Brahman he attains to the endless happiness.
  22. 5.22The enjoyments that are born of contacts are only generators of pain, for they have a beginning and an end, O Arjuna; the wise man does not rejoice in them.
  23. 5.23He who is able, while still here (in this world) to withstand, before the liberation from the body, the impulse born out of desire and anger he is a Yogi, he is a happy man.
  24. 5.24He who is happy within, who rejoices within, and who is illuminated within, that Yogi attains absolute freedom or Moksha, himself becoming Brahman.
  25. 5.25The sages (Rishis) obtain absolute freedom or Moksha they whose sins have been destroyed, whose dualities (perception of dualities or experience of the pairs of opposites) are...
  26. 5.26Absolute freedom (or Brahmic bliss) exists on all sides for those self-controlled ascetics who are free from desire and anger, who have controlled their thoughts and who have...
  27. 5.27Shutting out (all) external contacts and fixing the gaze between the eyrow, ealising the outgoing and incoming breaths moving within the nostrils.
  28. 5.28With the senses, the mind and the intellect (ever) controlled, having liberation as his supreme goal, free from desire, fear and anger the sage is verily liberated for ever.
  29. 5.29He who knows Me as the enjoyer of sacrifices and austerities, the great Lord of all the worlds and the friend of all beings, attains to peace.

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