Sanskrit
श्रुतिविप्रतिपन्ना ते यदा स्थास्यति निश्चला । समाधावचला बुद्धिस्तदा योगमवाप्स्यसि ॥
śrutivipratipannā te yadā sthāsyati niścalā samādhāv acalā buddhis tadā yogam avāpsyasi
Translation
When thy mind, bewildered by the Scriptures, shall stand immovable, fixed in contemplation, then shalt thou attain unto yoga.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The last verse of Krishna’s uninterrupted teaching in this chapter — once the mind stops being pulled in different directions by conflicting scriptural claims and settles, unmoving, in contemplation, that settling is itself yoga. It’s a deliberately open, almost anticlimactic definition, which is exactly what prompts Arjuna’s very concrete question in the verse immediately following: what does that actually look like in a person?
Concepts