Bhagavad-Gita: Chapter 06

Notes: The path of union properly begins with withdrawal from the pursuit of self-centered desires. In here, the term saṁnyāsa, commonly rendered as "full renunciation", has two imports. One meaning of nyāsa is "resigning" or "laying aside", and another is "assigning" or "depositing". The text hints at the real and complete meaning as "total reassignment", the deposition of every aspect of the fractured individual into a realm of integration and union. In the upcycling and repurposing of our being, we reach for a state of living and integral liberation — beyond a mere resignation from the complexity of existence.

Notes: The forsaking of self-centered desire is a natural and obvious implication from the call for union. Pursuit of fragmented desire reinforces the separation of the individual from the whole and, as such, is evidently antithetical to unification. The yogī (unifier) necessarily pursues yoga (union) — instead of separation. When fragmented desires stem from the pursuit of a natural potential and promise beneficial collective outcomes, they can be repurposed into a pure and selfless momentum, integrated into the agency of the collective sphere. An aspiring yogi must discern between desires to be abandoned and desires that may be repurposed — releasing desires from the shackles of the finite self.

Notes: The word karma indicates a spectrum of active engagement, both practical works and contemplative practices, through which the senses and mind of the contemplator are captured and brought under the control of the underlying self. This is the initial practice. The word śamaḥ indicates "equanimity" relative to the world of action, an internal abiding where the phenomenal world is abstracted into an inner sphere of contemplation and cultivation, where the plurality of phenomena are distilled into the unity of yoga. This is the advanced practice.

Notes: We are bound to suffering with the ropes of our finite fixations, the various conditioned imperatives that govern our operation in this world. We strive to acquire material assets and to experience sensual pleasures. We long for particular emotions and mental states. We seek to validate and enhance a specific self-conception in our social and internal spheres. We pursue preferred conditions and states of existence — or even the cessation of existence. Finite fixations, whether positive or negative, rooted in the fractured self, are merely two poles of the same magnet of conditioning. All of these compulsive drives enforce our state of separation and stand in the way of our purification, reintegration, and ascension to unity.

Notes: The word ātmā or "self" has multiple imports. In here, the "self that uplifts" is the emergent higher self reached through purification and progressive union, the self-presence that is rooted in actuality, unconditioned by the hallucinations born of a fractured and finite sense of self. The common self is the conflicted being that navigates the dualities of existence, struggling to reconcile the push and pull of its internal polarization in relation to the environment. The "self that degrades" is the self given to the pursuit of self-centered desire — the nemesis of the authentic self. Another import of the term "self", discussed later in the text, is the "absolute self" in the sphere of undifferentiated consciousness.