Chapter 18 - Moksha Sanyaas Yoga


Yoga through the Perfection of Renunciation and Surrender



The eighteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita is Moksha Sanyas Yoga. Arjuna requests the Lord to explain the difference between the two types of renunciations - sanyaas(renunciation of actions) and tyaag(renunciation of desires). Krishna explains that a sanyaasi is one who abandons family and society in order to practise spiritual discipline whereas a tyaagi is one who performs their duties without attachment to the rewards of their actions and dedicating them to the God. Krishna recommends the second kind of renunciation - tyaag. Krishna then gives a detailed analysis of the effects of the three modes of material nature. He declares that the highest path of spirituality is pure, unconditional loving service unto the Supreme Divine Personality, Krishna. If we always remember Him, keep chanting His name and dedicate all our actions unto Him, take refuge in Him and make Him our Supreme goal, then by His grace, we will surely overcome all obstacles and difficulties and be freed from this cycle of birth and death.


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Verse 44


The natural duties of the Vaisyas are agriculture, cattle-rearing and trade. Of the Sudras, too, the natural duty is in the form of service.

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Verse 45


Being devoted to his own duty, man attains complete success. Hear that as to how one devoted to his own duty achieves success.

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Verse 46


A human being achieves success by adoring through his own duties Him from whom is the origin of creatures, and by whom is all this pervaded.

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Verse 47


One's own duty, (though) defective, is superior to another's duty well performed. By performing a duty as dictated by one's own nature, one does not incur sin.

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Verse 48


O son of Kunti, one should not give up the duty to which one is born, even though it be faulty. For all undertakings are surrounded with evil, as fire is with smoke.

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Verse 49


He whose intellect remains unattached to everything, who has conquered his internal organs and is desire-less, attains through monasticism the supreme perfection consisting in the state of one free from duties.

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