Vairāgya (वैराग्य)
When Arjuna objects that the mind is “restless, turbulent, strong, unyielding” and calls stilling it “as hard as holding the wind” (BG 6.34), Krishna concedes the difficulty and gives a two-part answer: BG 6.35 — “without doubt the mind is hard to restrain; but by abhyāsa (repeated practice) and vairāgya (dispassion), it is held.” Practice supplies the repeated return; dispassion removes the reason the mind keeps leaving.
Not aversion, but a lowered charge
Vairāgya is easy to confuse with distaste or withdrawal. In the Gita it is closer to a reduced pull: the objects are still there, but the mind no longer leans toward them as though its well-being depended on getting them. BG 13.8 lists it among the marks of real wisdom — “dispassion toward sense-objects, and absence of egoism.” BG 18.51–BG 18.52, on the approach to Brahman, names “resorting to vairāgya” alongside solitude, moderate eating, and controlled speech. It is the counterpart to abhyāsa: one trains the return, the other drains the departure.
Related
- Abhyasa (अभ्यास) — the Gita never recommends one without the other; abhyāsa is the doing, vairāgya is the letting-go that makes the doing hold
- Kāma (काम) — vairāgya is what dismantles kāma’s grip without requiring the feeling to be crushed
Verses that reference this
Dispassion towards the objects of the senses, and also absence of egoism, insight into the pain and evil of birth, death, old age and sickness,
Nor here may be acquired knowledge of its form, nor its end, nor its origin, nor its rooting-place; this strongly rooted Asvattha having been cut down by the unswerving weapon of non-attachment,
Dwelling in solitude, abstemious, speech, body and mind subdued, constantly fixed in meditation and yoga, taking refuge in dispassion,