Senses, mind, intellect (इन्द्रिय-मनस्-बुद्धि)

Chapter 3 gives the hierarchy explicitly. BG 3.42: “the senses (indriya) are said to be higher than their objects; higher than the senses is the mind (manas); higher than the mind is the intellect (buddhi); and higher even than the buddhi is He — the self (ātman).” BG 3.43 draws the instruction: “knowing the self as higher than the buddhi, steadying the self by the Self, slay the enemy in the form of desire.”

Why the order matters in practice

The point is diagnostic. Desire, the Gita says, “sits in the senses, the mind, and the buddhi, veiling knowledge through them” (BG 3.40) — so fighting it at the level of the senses alone (bare restraint) is fighting downstream. BG 2.62–BG 2.63’s ladder of ruin runs up the same structure — from sense-contact to a lost buddhi. BG 6.5 turns it into a charge: “lift the self by the Self; do not let the self sink — for the self is its own friend, and its own enemy.” The faculty that must do the lifting is the buddhi; the leverage point is the self above it.

Related

• Atman (आत्मन्) — the term at the top of the ladder; everything below it is instrument
• Sthitaprajna (स्थितप्रज्ञ) — the person of steady wisdom is defined by the senses being “drawn in from their objects, like a tortoise drawing in its limbs” (BG 2.58)
• Buddhi-yoga (बुद्धियोग) — the discipline of steadying precisely the buddhi, the faculty this ladder puts in charge