The Bhagavad Gita is a 700 verse Hindu text written around 200BC and one of the primary holy texts in the Hindu religion.
The text is written as a narrative between the Prince Arjuna and his mentor Krishna. Where Krishna guides Arjuna through the concepts and struggles of violence and death, and the difficult moral and philosophical questions that surround them.
The writing covers concepts such as dharma, karma, and yogic teaching, and has been used for thousands of years to help people find answers to questions about life and morality.
Below are a selection of quotes from the Bhagavad Gita.
Bhagavad Gita Quotes:
When meditation is mastered,
The mind is unwavering like the
Flame of a lamp in a windless place.
In the still mind,
In the depths of meditation,
The Self reveals itself.
Beholding the Self
By means of the Self,
An aspirant knows the
Joy and peace of complete fulfilment.
Having attained that
Abiding joy beyond the senses,
Revealed in the stilled mind,
He never swerves from the eternal truth.
You have the right to work, but for the work’s sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working. Never give way to laziness, either.
Perform every action with you heart fixed on the Supreme Lord. Renounce attachment to the fruits. Be even-tempered in success and failure: for it is this evenness of temper which is meant by yoga.
Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the calm of self-surrender. Seek refuge in the knowledge of Brahma. They who work selfishly for results are miserable.
In this world three gates lead to hell—the gates of passion, anger and greed. Released from these three qualities one can succeed in attaining salvation and reaching the highest goal.
You are what you believe in. You become that which you believe you can become
Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is
Seek refuge in the attitude of detachment and you will amass the wealth of spiritual awareness. The one who is motivated only by the desire for the fruits of their action, and anxious about the results, is miserable indeed.
When a man dwells on the pleasure of sense, attraction for them arises in him. From attraction arises desire, the lust of possession, and this leads to passion, to anger.
From passion comes confusion of mind, then loss of remembrance, the forgetting of duty. From this loss comes the ruin of reason, and the ruin of reason leads man to destruction.
Look to this day,
For it is life,
The very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the truths
And realities of your existence;
The bliss of growth
The glory of action, and
The splendor of beauty;
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well lived makes
Every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
Such is the salvation of the dawn.
The soul who meditates on the Self is content to serve the Self and rests satisfied within the Self; there remains nothing more for him to accomplish.
One who performs his duty without attachment, surrendering the results unto the Supreme Lord, is unaffected by sinful action, as the lotus is untouched by water.
One who has control over the mind is tranquil in heat and cold, in pleasure and pain, and in honour and dishonour; and is ever steadfast with the Supreme Self.
One should strive and employ oneself to uplift oneself. One should never dishonor oneself. The self is one’s friend as well as one’s enemy.
It is both near and far, both within and without every creature; it moves and is unmoving. In its subtlety it is beyond comprehension. It is invisible, yet appears divided in separate creatures. Know it to be the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer. Dwelling in every heart, it is beyond darkness. It is called the light of the lights, the object and goal of knowledge, and knowledge itself.
It is better to strive in one’s own dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another. Nothing is ever lost in following one’s own dharma. But competition in another’s dharma breeds fear and insecurity.
For him who has no concentration, there is no tranquillity.
Death is as sure for that which is born, as birth is for that which is dead. Therefore grieve not for what is inevitable.
Delusion arises from anger.
The mind is bewildered by delusion.
Reasoning is destroyed when the mind is bewildered.
One falls down when reasoning is destroyed.
