Chapter 12: The Yoga of Devotion

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Symbolic illustration for Chapter 12: The Yoga of Devotion — Visual threshold · Chapter 12: The Yoga of Devotion

The gist: After the vast vision of the eleventh chapter, a natural question stirs in Arjuna’s mind: to reach the Lord, should he worship the one with form, or the formless? Krishna’s answer is direct and warm with compassion. Both roads arrive at him, though for an ordinary human bound in a body the love-filled road of form is far gentler. Then he opens a window onto the qualities that make a devotee dear to him.

Arjuna’s question

The vision of the previous chapter was still burning behind Arjuna’s eyes, and the fear it had poured into him had barely drained away. Out of it rose a question of the plainest, most practical kind: in daily practice, what should he hold on to? The full, affectionate form, one he could speak with and fold his hands before, or the formless truth, which owns no shape and keeps no address?

So Arjuna asked, “Some devotees fix their minds on you and worship you in a form like this one, steady and undivided in their love. Others worship the imperishable, formless Brahman. Between these two, judged by yoga, who stands higher?”

Krishna’s answer never climbed into lofty philosophical debate. He spoke like a practical man: “Those who settle their minds in me and worship my form with the deepest faith, ever holding to me, those I count as the most fully yoked.” The classic picture of such a mind is the cowherd women of Vraja, who sang his glories while they milked their cows, churned the curds, and swept their courtyards, every ordinary hour of the day bent toward him.

The hard road of the formless

Then he opened a truth many people meet in their own practice. There are those who reach instead for the other face of the same reality: the imperishable that no word can name and no eye can picture, present everywhere at once, past the grasp of thought, unchanging, unmoving, fixed and without end. They hold every sense in check, keep an even mind toward all, and give themselves to the good of every living thing. They too arrive at him.

But that road asks far more of a person. Oneness with the formless comes hard to anyone still wearing a body. A creature with hands and eyes, with a mind and a heart that feels, finds in one form, one name, one face a support it can actually take hold of. To fix instead on something with no edge and no image, while the body keeps insisting on itself, is punishing work.

So he turned to the road he had already called the higher one. Those who lay all their actions at his feet, who lean on him and nothing else, who keep him in mind with an undivided love and worship him so, these he lifts up himself. He becomes their rescuer, and without delay he draws them out of the ocean of birth and death, the way a boatman rows a passenger across a wide and dangerous river to the far shore.

And because not every temperament is ready for that surrender all at once, he set the approach out in steps, each of them arriving at the same place. First, give me your mind and your understanding together; settle them in me, and you will come to dwell in me, and of that there is no doubt. If the mind will not rest there yet, then come to me through steady practice, turning back to me again and again until the turning becomes a habit. If even that is beyond you for now, then act for my sake, let everything you do be done for me, and the work itself will carry you. And if you cannot manage even that, then hold your senses in and release your grip on every reward your actions might bring. For the moment a person truly lets the fruit go, peace follows, and it follows at once.

The marks of a dear devotee

And now the chapter reaches its most beautiful stretch. One by one, Krishna counts out the marks of the person who has come home to him, and the count adds up to a complete portrait of what such a soul is like from the inside.

अद्वेष्टा सर्वभूतानां मैत्रः करुण एव च।
निर्ममो निरहङ्कारः समदुःखसुखः क्षमी॥

“One who bears hatred toward no creature, who meets all beings with friendship and compassion, who is free of possessiveness and ego, who stays even through joy and sorrow, and who knows how to forgive.” Such a devotee, always content, self-restrained, firm of resolve, mind and intellect already handed over to him: that one, Krishna says, is dear to me.

Then comes a mark anyone can read from the outside.

यस्मान्नोद्विजते लोको लोकान्नोद्विजते च यः।
हर्षामर्षभयोद्वेगैर्मुक्तो यः स च मे प्रियः॥

“The one who agitates no other person, and whom no other person can agitate, who has slipped free of elation, envy, fear, and anxiety, that one is dear to me.” Here is one proof of your devotion: how other people feel when they sit beside you. The one who troubles no one and is troubled by no one, the stillness inside such a person begins to speak on its own.

Krishna keeps counting, and the portrait fills in. The one who asks nothing of the world, clean in body and in mind, clear-sighted and even-handed, undisturbed inside even when there is reason to be disturbed, who has given up the sense that he is the one making things happen: that devotee is dear to him. So is the one who neither leaps up in joy nor curdles into hatred, who neither grieves over what is gone nor hungers after what is not yet his, who lets go of the good deed and the bad alike and stays full of love for him.

He counts further. The one who holds the same face toward friend and foe, toward honor and insult, who stays level through cold and heat, through pleasure and pain, and carries no attachment anywhere. The one who takes praise and blame as the same thing, whose mind rests quiet and turned inward, who is content with whatever comes to him and keeps no claim on the roof over his head, steady in mind and full of devotion. A person settled that deeply, Krishna says, is dear to him.

Notice what this whole list never asks for. There is no demand for a grand miracle, no call for harsh austerity, no impossible condition anywhere in it. Krishna is drawing the portrait of a human being whose inner weather is cool, who keeps no feud with anyone, and whose mind stays tilted toward him. That temperament, slowly and on its own, ripens into bhakti, the love the whole chapter has been describing.

Those seven verses drew the finished soul, the one who has already reached him. The chapter’s last turn is toward everyone still walking that way. Those who take this nectar of dharma to heart, exactly as he has laid it out, holding him as their one refuge and trusting him with their whole faith, those devotees, he says, are dearer to him still. That is the closing thread of this short chapter.

The gist

Put it in one sentence: the road of devotion is the gentle one because it asks for surrender and nothing more, and the long labor of decoding yourself is set aside. And the true devotee is the person who causes no one pain and takes no pain from anyone. This is one of the shortest chapters of the Gita, and every line of it is worth carrying with you for a lifetime. Centuries later the southern teacher Ramanuja built his philosophy of devotion around exactly this teaching, and a great deal of India’s devotional song grew up in the lap of these verses.

Source: Srimad Bhagavad Gita

Verse by verse

All 20 verses of this chapter: Devanagari, Roman transliteration, word by word, prose order, and a plain rendering. Every verse has its own link, such as lulla.net/en/bhagwad-gita/12/1/. Read the chapter above first, then come down to the source.

12.1एवं सततयुक्ता ये भक्तास्त्वां पर्युपासते

अर्जुन उवाच

एवं सततयुक्ता ये भक्तास्त्वां पर्युपासते ।
ये चाप्यक्षरमव्यक्तं तेषां के योगवित्तमाः ॥1॥

evaṃ satatayuktā ye bhaktās tvāṃ paryupāsate |
ye cāpy akṣaram avyaktaṃ teṣāṃ ke yogavittamāḥ

एवम्: इस प्रकार
सततयुक्ताः: निरन्तर आपमें लगे हुए
ये: जो
भक्ताः: भक्त
त्वाम्: आपको
पर्युपासते: उपासना करते हैं
ये: जो
च: और
अपि: भी
अक्षरम्: अविनाशी को
अव्यक्तम्: अव्यक्त को
तेषाम्: उन दोनों में
के: कौन
योगवित्तमाः: योग को सबसे अच्छा जानने वाले

Prose order: एवम् ये सततयुक्ताः भक्ताः त्वाम् पर्युपासते, ये च अपि अक्षरम् अव्यक्तम् पर्युपासते, तेषाम् के योगवित्तमाः।

evam ye satatayuktāḥ bhaktāḥ tvām paryupāsate, ye ca api akṣaram avyaktam paryupāsate, teṣām ke yogavittamāḥ|

Those devotees who, ever steadfast in this way, worship you, and those who worship the imperishable unmanifest, which of these know yoga best?