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TEXT 39 esa te 'bhihita sankhye
SYNONYMS  esa--all
these; te--unto you; abhihita--described; sankhye--by
analytical study; buddhih--intelligence; yoge--work without
fruitive result; tu--but; imam--this; srnu--just hear;
buddhya--by
intelligence; yuktah--dovetailed; yaya--by which; partha--O
son of Prtha; karma-bandham--bondage of reaction; prahasyasi--you
can be released from.
TRANSLATION Thus far
I have declared to you the analytical knowledge of sankhya philosophy.
Now listen to the knowledge of yoga whereby one works without fruitive
result. O son of Prtha, when you act by such intelligence, you can free
yourself from the bondage of works.
PURPORT According to
the Nirukti, or the Vedic dictionary, sankhya means that
which describes phenomena in detail, and sankhya refers to that
philosophy which describes the real nature of the soul. And yoga
involves controlling the senses. Arjuna's proposal not to fight was based
on sense gratification. Forgetting his prime duty, he wanted to cease fighting
because he thought that by not killing his relatives and kinsmen he would
be happier than by enjoying the kingdom by conquering his cousins and brothers,
the sons of Dhrtarastra. In both ways, the basic principles were for sense
gratification. Happiness derived from conquering them and happiness derived
by seeing kinsmen alive are both on the basis of personal sense gratification,
for there is a sacrifice of wisdom and duty. Krsna, therefore, wanted to
explain to Arjuna that by killing the body of his grandfather he would
not be killing the soul proper, and He explained that all individual persons,
including the Lord Himself, are eternal individuals; they were individuals
in the past, they are individuals in the present, and they will continue
to remain individuals in the future, because all of us are individual souls
eternally, and we simply change our bodily dress in different manners.
But, actually, we keep our individuality even after liberation from the
bondage of material dress. An analytical study of the soul and the body
has been very graphically explained by Lord Krsna. And this descriptive
knowledge of the soul and the body from different angles of vision has
been described here as sankhya, in terms of the Nirukti dictionary.
This sankhya has nothing to do with the sankhya philosophy
of the atheist Kapila. Long before the imposter Kapila's sankhya,
the sankhya philosophy was expounded in the Srimad-Bhagavatam
by the true Lord Kapila, the incarnation of Lord Krsna, who explained it
to His mother, Devahuti. It is clearly explained by Him that the Purusa,
or the Supreme Lord, is active and that He creates by looking over the
prakrti.
This is accepted in the Vedas and in the Gita. The description
in the Vedas indicates that the Lord glanced over the prakrti,
or nature, and impregnated it with atomic individual souls. All these individuals
are working in the material world for sense gratification, and under the
spell of material energy they are thinking of being enjoyers. This mentality
is dragged to the last point of liberation when the living entity wants
to become one with the Lord. This is the last snare of maya or sense
gratificatory illusion, and it is only after many, many births of such
sense gratificatory activities that a great soul surrenders unto Vasudeva,
Lord Krsna, thereby fulfilling the search after the ultimate truth.
Arjuna has
already accepted Krsna as his spiritual master by surrendering himself
unto Him: sisyas te 'ham sadhi mam tvam prapannam. Consequently,
Krsna will now tell him about the working process in buddhi-yoga,
or karma-yoga, or in other words, the practice of devotional service
only for the sense gratification of the Lord. This buddhi-yoga is
clearly explained in Chapter Ten, verse ten, as being direct communion
with the Lord, who is sitting as Paramatma in everyone's heart. But such
communion does not take place without devotional service. One who is therefore
situated in devotional or transcendental loving service to the Lord, or,
in other words, in Krsna consciousness, attains to this stage of buddhi-yoga
by the special grace of the Lord. The Lord says, therefore, that only to
those who are always engaged in devotional service out of transcendental
love does He award the pure knowledge of devotion in love. In that way
the devotee can reach Him easily in the ever-blissful kingdom of God.
Thus the
buddhi-yoga
mentioned in this verse is the devotional service of the Lord, and the
word sankhya mentioned herein has nothing to do with the atheistic
sankhya-yoga
enunciated by the imposter Kapila. One should not, therefore, misunderstand
that the sankhya-yoga mentioned herein has any connection with the
atheistic sankhya. Nor did that philosophy have any influence during
that time; nor would Lord Krsna care to mention such godless philosophical
speculations. Real sankhya philosophy is described by Lord Kapila
in the Srimad-Bhagavatam, but even that
sankhya has nothing
to do with the current topics. Here, sankhya means analytical description
of the body and the soul. Lord Krsna made an analytical description of
the soul just to bring Arjuna to the point of buddhi-yoga, or bhakti-yoga.
Therefore, Lord Krsna's sankhya and Lord Kapila's sankhya,
as described in the Bhagavatam, are one and the same. They are all
bhakti-yoga. He said, therefore, that only the less intelligent
class of men make a distinction between
sankhya-yoga and bhakti-yoga.
Of course,
atheistic sankhya-yoga has nothing to do with bhakti-yoga,
yet the unintelligent claim that the atheistic sankhya-yoga is referred
to in the Bhagavad-gita.
One should
therefore understand that buddhi-yoga means to work in Krsna consciousness,
in the full bliss and knowledge of devotional service. One who works for
the satisfaction of the Lord only, however difficult such work may be,
is working under the principles of buddhi-yoga and finds himself
always in transcendental bliss. By such transcendental engagement, one
achieves all transcendental qualities automatically, by the grace of the
Lord, and thus his liberation is complete in itself, without his making
extraneous endeavors to acquire knowledge. There is much difference between
work in Krsna consciousness and work for fruitive results, especially in
the matter of sense gratification for achieving results in terms of family
or material happiness. Buddhi-yoga is therefore the transcendental
quality of the work that we perform.
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