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WorkRāmānuja

Gītā Bhāṣya

The Bhagavadgītā read verse by verse as Krishna's teaching of loving devotion to a personal God, against the reading that makes the world an illusion.

by Rāmānuja791 passages held

  • Sanskrit, the original language
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Original title
Bhagavadgītā-bhāṣya
Original language
Sanskrit

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Overview

Arjuna, a warrior, sees his teachers and cousins in the army facing him and refuses to fight; Krishna, his charioteer, whom the poem reveals as God, answers him through eighteen chapters. That dialogue is the Bhagavadgītā, a part of the epic Mahābhārata, and this work is Rāmānuja's bhāṣya on it, a commentary that explains the poem verse by verse. Every school of Vedānta, the philosophy built on the Upanishads, had to show that the Gītā taught its own doctrine. For Advaita, the non-dualism of the earlier teacher Śaṅkara, the highest teaching is the knowledge that the self is identical with Brahman, the ultimate reality, which has no qualities, and that the world of many things is an appearance. Rāmānuja reads the poem as teaching devotion to a personal God who is real, as the selves and the world are real. When Krishna tells Arjuna that there was never a time when Krishna himself, Arjuna or the assembled kings did not exist, Rāmānuja takes the plural at its word: the selves are many. When Krishna speaks of his māyā, Rāmānuja denies that the word means illusion and takes it as God's real power, the material world. Two practices are stages on the way: disciplined action without thought of reward, which the poem calls karma yoga, and the contemplation of one's own self. Rāmānuja judges contemplation hard for a beginner and action safe. Both prepare for bhakti, a loving meditation on Krishna that should become as unbroken as a stream of poured oil, and God answers it with grace. The commentary opens with a verse of homage to Yāmuna, who led the Śrīvaiṣṇava community of Vishnu worshippers before Rāmānuja. Yāmuna had left a short verse summary of the Gītā, and scholars have traced what the commentary owes to it. Near the end of the poem Krishna tells Arjuna to give up everything else and take refuge in him alone. In the generations after Rāmānuja's death, his followers came to teach surrender, prapatti, as a path in its own right. Their disagreement over whether surrender needs any human effort was among the disputes that divided the community into a northern and a southern school. Vedānta Deśika, whom the northern school honours as its chief teacher, wrote a commentary on this commentary. Scholars still dispute whether Rāmānuja's three large works teach surrender as a separate path at all.

Key concepts

Which three paths does the Gītā teach, in Rāmānuja's reading?

Three disciplines, each called a yoga, that build on one another. Karma yoga is doing one's duties without claim to their results. Jñāna yoga is the contemplation of one's own self as distinct from the body. Both lead to a clear sight of the self, and that prepares for bhakti yoga, loving devotion to God, which is the path that reaches him.

What is karma yoga?

Karma yoga is disciplined action: doing what one's place in life requires, as an act of worship, without wanting the reward and without thinking of oneself as the doer. The commentary treats it as safe and suited to everyone, because people are used to acting and must act anyway to stay alive. Done this way, action no longer binds a person to further births.

What does māyā mean in this commentary?

Māyā here means a real power of God, never illusion. Where Krishna speaks of his māyā that is hard to cross, Rāmānuja takes it as material nature with its three qualities, which hides God from the selves caught in it. Where Krishna says he is born through his own māyā, the word is explained as his own knowledge or will. Taking refuge in God is the way across.

What are the three qualities of nature?

They are three strands, called guṇas, that run through everything material, body and mind included. Sattva is clarity, and it binds a person through attachment to happiness and knowledge. Rajas is passion, and it binds through attachment to action. Tamas is inertia, and it clouds the understanding. The commentary advises strengthening clarity, through fitting food and action without claim to reward, until the self is seen as distinct from all three.

What is the self, according to this commentary?

The self is the knower that lives in a body and is not the body. It was never born and cannot be killed, since weapons, fire and water reach only bodies. There are many selves, all alike in nature, and each depends on God as its ruler. Mistaking the self for the body is the root of Arjuna's grief.

What does taking refuge in God mean?

Taking refuge means turning to God as one's only protector and placing oneself in his care. In this commentary it stands at the beginning of devotion and inside it, not in its place: God frees the one who takes refuge from the past wrongs that keep devotion from starting. Krishna's closing words to Arjuna, to take refuge in him alone and not to grieve, are read in this way.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Acting Without Claiming the Result

Arjuna would rather beg than kill his teachers, and his refusal sounds like conscience. Rāmānuja follows Krishna's answer to show why laying down the bow is no way out, and what kind of action is.

Arjuna's grief, on this reading, comes from taking the body for the self and from confusion about his duty. The cure is karma yoga: doing what one's place requires, as worship, without claim to the result and without the thought 'I am the doer'. Rāmānuja ranks it above the quiet contemplation of one's own self, even for those fit for contemplation, because action is familiar, hard to get wrong and needed anyway as long as there is a body to keep alive. A person who withdraws while the mind still dwells on what it wants is a pretender.

  • karma yoga
  • duty
  • action
  • renunciation
  • detachment
  • nonattachment
  • desire
  • agency
  • grief
  • war
  • equanimity
  • self-knowledge
  • self-discipline
  • karma

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Many Selves and a Real World

Is the Gītā a poem about one consciousness dreaming a world, or about a God who speaks to someone other than himself? The rest of the commentary hangs on the answer.

When Krishna says there was never a time when he, Arjuna or the kings did not exist, Rāmānuja holds him to the plural: the selves are many and without beginning, alike in nature and distinct from their ruler. A teacher who knew all difference to be false would find no one left to teach. Māyā, the word others translate as illusion, is God's real power, the material world with its three qualities, and Krishna's birth among men is no result of karma but his own will, so that people can take refuge in him.

  • self
  • individual self
  • embodiment
  • prakriti
  • material nature
  • gunas
  • three qualities
  • delusion
  • ignorance
  • divine incarnation
  • divine nature
  • divine attributes
  • cosmology
  • creation
  • consciousness
  • metaphysics
  • rebirth

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Devotion Like a Stream of Oil

Action and self-knowledge are stages. What they prepare for is a love of God that Rāmānuja finds on both sides of the relation, in the devotee and in Krishna.

Bhakti, loving devotion, is for Rāmānuja a meditation on Krishna that should run unbroken, as oil runs when it is poured. God is not unmoved by it: of the devotee who cannot live without him Krishna says, in this reading, that he cannot live without that devotee either, and out of affection he takes the servant's place as Arjuna's charioteer. The verse telling Arjuna to give up everything and take refuge in him alone is read, in one of the two explanations offered, as comfort for someone crushed by the sins that keep devotion from beginning, which God himself removes.

  • devotion
  • worship
  • meditation
  • divine grace
  • surrender
  • faith
  • dependence
  • liberation
  • divine vision
  • divine immanence
  • divine sovereignty
  • spiritual practice

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Within this work

passages held
791
distinct concepts
520
by passages held, corpus-wide
#82

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “devotion” and “liberation”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 26 pairings. 85 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
devotionliberation40
liberationself-knowledge38
karma yogaself-knowledge34
karma yogaliberation29
karmaliberation28
knowledgeliberation19
liberationself17
devotionself-knowledge16
karma yogaknowledge14
knowledgeself12
devotionkarma yoga11
devotionknowledge10
karmaself-knowledge9
karmaself7
devotionkarma6
cosmologyknowledge5
cosmologyself5
devotionself4
karmakarma yoga4
karmaknowledge4
cosmologykarma3
knowledgeself-knowledge3
cosmologykarma yoga1
cosmologyliberation1
cosmologyself-knowledge1
karma yogaself1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. Gītā Bhāṣya (Bhagavadgītā-bhāṣya) you are here SA
  2. Vedārthasaṃgraha

    The only free-standing treatise among the three large works that are securely Rāmānuja's; the other two are commentaries. Its title means "Summary of the Meaning of the Vedas", and the Śrībhāṣya, his main commentary, refers back to it repeatedly.

     SA
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