Sri Krishna, pleased with the steady gathering of his disciple Arjuna’s mind, gently loosened the knots that bound his inner focus. He taught that when the mind is single-pointed, when a person entertains one resolute determination and acts consistently toward its fulfilment, success inevitably follows. Yet most are victimized by ego, drifting among countless desires that often contradict one another. These desires invade the field of action, exhausting the mind, impoverishing its strength, and cancelling one another until all faculties are devoured and potential is stripped away, leading at last to failure. Though his words appear as counsel, they are also a bold critique of an age that silenced its own capabilities, preferring ritualistic confusion to living spirit. Flowery expressions of uncertainty are set aside by him for crisp, luminous methods, for his aim is the integration of the inner personality into a state evolved, free, and unburdened by anxiety.
He reveals that three inseparable qualities dwell in all living beings in varying degrees, and both mind and intellect are shaped by them. One who transcends the mind becomes free from temperament itself. In the ancient Upanishadic counsel, to rise beyond mind and intellect is to rediscover the true Self. Thus, he instructs how to go beyond instinctive tendencies: serenity, restlessness, and inertia. This teaching is a clear indication of the soul’s transport from the realm of imperfection into the boundless region of bliss and beatitude.
Earlier he had urged Arjuna to enter the field and engage in battle; here he refines that command with deeper fortification. Pairs of opposites—joy and sorrow, health and disease, success and failure, heat and cold—are known only through contrast. Therefore, Arjuna is advised to rise beyond them all. Purity, the subtlest of the three qualities, is often tainted by attachment and agitated conquest, which silence the intellect with delusion and grief and conceal the true nature of things. To remain in purity, one must remain least agitated. Yoga is acquisition, and preservation is the safeguarding of what is acquired. Together they encompass ego-cantered activity, driven by selfish desire and compelled by possessive fear. To renounce these tendencies is to withdraw from the battlefield of opposites that harvest restlessness and sorrow, and to remain pure, free from natural cravings for contrasts, detached yet alert, rooted in constant awareness, abiding in the Self, ever pure and free from anxiety, beyond the experiences of the world.
This state is the discovery of the Self and the joy derived from performance itself. Krishna exposes the error of mistaking means for ends when the mind is not equipped with the proper inner state. When work is undertaken without anxiety for results, the personality becomes integrated. When the heart is purified, a clear power of discrimination arises, and in its light truth stands self-evident. His emphasis is unwavering: single-pointed dedication, divine in spirit, free from desire for fruits, alone brings inner purification. Wrong imagination is the bane of life, and all failures spring from a weakened mental balance caused by unintelligent indulgence in fears of possible loss. It is common to refrain from great undertakings out of fear, and those who dare often grow nervous before completion due to inward dissipation. To avoid this, one must bring the best within oneself, dedicate it to the noble cause of the work, and draw unseen inspiration that inevitably results in brilliant success. This is the law of perpetual activity in the world.
The future is always carved in the present. Tomorrow’s harvest depends upon today’s ploughing and sowing. If the farmer abandons the present hour through fear of possible damage, he meets certain failure. The present moment must be invested with intelligence to reap a richer future. The past is dead, and the future yet unborn. If one grows unhealthy and inefficient in the present, there is no ground for hope in what is to come. The simple truth Krishna gives Arjuna in lucid form is this: if success is sought, never strive with a mind dissipated by anxiety and fear of results.
In this connection, the reward of action is not different from the science of action itself. Action in the present, when viewed from a future moment, appears as its fruit. Action fulfils itself only in reaction, which is but action seen from another time. To worry over rewards is to escape from the living dynamics of the present and to dwell in a future not yet born. Krishna’s call is not to waste the present moment in fruitless dreams and fears, but to bring one’s best into the present, to live each moment vitally, trusting that the future will take care of itself and will crown action with divine accomplishment.
In essence, he advises Arjuna that all he has now is the power to act, and, knowing the cause to be noble, he must bring the best within himself to that action and forget himself in the activity. Such inspired action is sure to bear fruit and carries its own spiritual reward. The worker, released from mental preoccupation, lives in the joy and ecstasy of self-inspired forgetfulness. The work itself is his reward; it is both the means and the experience of the higher Self, which alone is the divine goal.
By responding readily to external challenges with devoted attention, one finds peace easily and is freed from bondage, becoming fit for higher tasks. The tranquillity of mental composure, the evenness of mind in facing all pairs of opposites, marks a special condition in which balance is maintained amid the ebb and flow of life. This condition is called yoga. It signifies not merely neutrality of mind but the reinforcement of equanimity through the renunciation of attachment to the fruits of action. In this process, the dead moment of the past no longer binds. Thus Sanjaya, narrating to Dhṛutarāṣṭra, beholds Arjuna poised in equanimity, renouncing all attachment to success and failure alike.
