Chapter 10: The Yoga of Divine Glories

About 15 minutes

The gist: The ninth chapter left Arjuna‘s mind standing wide open. Now he wanted his own eyes on it: a glimpse, however small, of the vast presence they had been speaking of. So Krishna strings out for him a long garland of his glories. Take any class of things in this creation; whatever stands highest in it, whatever shines brightest, is one small fragment of him.

Arjuna’s longing

The dust of war had still to settle. Two armies stood staring at each other across the field, and inside one chariot a conversation of another order entirely was underway. In the ninth chapter Arjuna had heard that this whole world hangs strung on a single thread, and that the one holding the thread never abandons the devotee who holds to him. The words had woken a new hunger in him, to know this presence whose glory ran so high a little more closely, by name, to be able to point and say, there, that is him.

Arjuna folded his hands. “Everything you have told me about yourself is dissolving my delusion,” he said. “But the mind is still thirsty. Be gracious and tell me: through what forms do you spread across this creation? Where, in how many places, should I recognize you? Tell it to me again, for I never grow full of hearing these words of yours.”

Krishna smiled. “Very well, listen. I will name only the chief of my glories, for the full list has neither shore nor end. Neither the gods nor the great rishis know where I come from, since I am the source out of which they themselves arose.”

The first recognition, inside the heart

Before naming a single mountain or river, Krishna points inward.

“Gudakesha, conqueror of sleep, I am the atman, the self, seated in the heart of every being. I am the beginning of all beings, their middle, and their end as well.” So the first glory hides closer than any far mountain or river, inside your own chest. The one we travel out to find has been sitting within us all along.

A garland of the cosmos

Then Krishna’s voice begins to unspool like a garland, bead after bead. Among the unmoving mountains I am the Himalaya; among flowing rivers, the Ganga. Among the Adityas, Vishnu; among the burning lights of the sky, the blazing sun; among the stars, the cool moon. Among the Vedas, the Sama Veda; among the gods, Indra; among the senses, the mind; and in living beings, the consciousness that makes them alive.

Among trees I am the peepal; among the divine rishis, Narada; among the gandharvas, Chitraratha; among the perfected ones, the sage Kapila. Among the great rishis, Bhrigu; among yajnas, the silent yajna of whispered repetition; among words, the imperishable syllable Om, and among the letters of speech, the first sound, ‘a’. Among the meters, the Gayatri; among the months, Agahan; among the seasons, spring bent low with flowers. Among horses, Uchchaihshravas, the steed thrown up when the ocean was churned for nectar; among elephants, Indra’s Airavata, risen from that same churning; among men, the king.

Among those who keep order, I am the rod that restrains; among those set on victory, I am the strategy that wins it. Among the sages I am Vyasa, and among the seer-poets, Shukracharya. Among those who take up weapons, I am Rama. Among his own Vrishni kinsmen Krishna named himself, Vasudeva. And then comes the line that reaches Arjuna in the deepest room of his heart: “Among the Pandavas, I am you yourself, Dhananjaya.” The very friend before whom he was unrolling this whole garland carried a fragment of him too, and Krishna wanted him to see it.

Wherever splendor burns, that splendor is me. The victory of the victorious, the striving of those who strive, the goodness of good people: all of it is me. Among all that measures and counts, I am Time itself. And I am the death that carries everything away, and the first source of everything still waiting to be born. Among the feminine graces I am fame, fortune, speech, memory, intelligence, constancy, and forgiveness. The sense beneath it all: behind every beautiful wave that life lifts, one and the same ocean stands.

By naming himself in object after object, Krishna was doing something quietly practical, driving in pegs for Arjuna’s wandering mind, one at every turn. Let the mind roam where it will, to some mountain, some river, some person of rare gift, and a peg waits there, with the memory of him hanging on it. Why hunt for an idol in some far-off shrine when the whole world keeps handing you his address?

One formula to keep

The list runs past seventy names, and even then it has no end; what Arjuna has heard is the barest sketch of it. Before he lets the subject rest, Krishna draws the whole garland back to its root: “I am the seed of every living thing, Arjuna. Nothing that moves, nothing that stands still, holds together for a moment without me.” Then, knowing how hard such a tally is to carry in the mind, he presses one plain formula into Arjuna’s hand.

“Wherever your eye falls on anything rich with glory, anything beautiful, anything charged with power, know it to have sprung from a fragment of my splendor.” There is no garland to memorize. Wherever the eye lingers, wherever the mind pulls up short in wonder, a glimpse of him sits waiting. A high mountain, an art brought to mastery, a heart without stain: pieces, every one, of that single splendor.

And at the very end he gathers the entire expanse into one breath.

“Or what will all this detail gain you, Arjuna? I hold up this entire world with a single fragment of myself.” Everything we call the cosmos rests on one small piece of him. Learn him for a lifetime, and what remains will still be without end.

The gist

Put it in one sentence: whatever strikes you as great, beautiful, or overwhelming is a tiny glimpse of Krishna. This chapter takes you by the finger and walks you through the world, pointing out his address at every turn. And it gives you that address for a reason, so that the moment the next chapter arrives, the full form can open before your eyes, all of it at once.

Source: Srimad Bhagavad Gita