Bhagavad Gita · Chapter 15

The Yoga of the Supreme Divine Personality

1. 15.1Krishna describes the world as an everlasting Asvattha, a sacred fig tree, growing upside down. Its roots are above and its branches below. Its leaves are the sacred hymns, and whoever understands this tree truly knows the Vedas (the holy scriptures).Krishna
2. 15.2Krishna says the tree's branches spread up and down, fed by the three qualities. The things we see, hear and taste are its buds. Its roots also reach down into the human world, where they tie people to their actions.Krishna
3. 15.3Krishna says no one in this world can see the tree's true shape, its beginning, its end or where it is rooted. Still, this deep-rooted tree must be cut down with the strong axe of non-attachment, which means not clinging to things.Krishna
4. 15.4Krishna says that after cutting the tree, a person should seek the path beyond it, and whoever takes it never comes back to this world. They should seek shelter in the First Being, from whom all of creation first flowed.Krishna
5. 15.5Krishna says some people walk the path that never ends. They are free of pride and confusion and have beaten attachment. They stay focused on the true Self and have calmed their desires. Pleasure and pain no longer push them around.Krishna
6. 15.6Krishna says his highest home needs no sun, moon or fire to light it. Those who reach it never return to this world.Krishna
7. 15.7Krishna says each living soul is a small, eternal part of himself. Living in the world, it gathers around itself the five senses and the mind, and these are wrapped in matter.Krishna
8. 15.8Krishna says when the soul takes a body and when it leaves one, it carries the senses and mind along with it. It is like the wind carrying scents away from flowers.Krishna
9. 15.9Krishna says the soul lives in the ears, eyes, skin, tongue, nose and mind. Through them it experiences and enjoys the world.Krishna
10. 15.10Krishna says that people confused by their desires and moods do not notice the soul inside the body, whether it is staying, leaving at death, or enjoying the senses. Only people with the eye of wisdom can see it.Krishna
11. 15.11Krishna says that people who practice yoga and work hard at it, staying centered in their true self, do see the soul. But people who have not trained their minds do not see it, even when they try.Krishna
12. 15.12Krishna says the light of the sun that lights up the whole world, and the light in the moon and in fire, all come from him.Krishna
13. 15.13Krishna says he enters the earth and holds up all living things with his energy. He also becomes Soma, a life-giving juice, and feeds all the plants.Krishna
14. 15.14Krishna says he lives inside every breathing body as the fire of digestion. Working with the breath, he digests the four kinds of food people eat.Krishna
15. 15.15Krishna says he lives in the heart of every being. Memory and wisdom, and also forgetting, come from him. He is what all the Vedas, the holy books, aim to teach, and he is the one who wrote and truly knows them.Krishna
16. 15.16Krishna says there are two kinds of being in the world. All living creatures are perishable, and the unchanging part behind them is called imperishable.Krishna
17. 15.17Krishna says there is a highest being beyond both of these, called the Supreme Self. This Lord fills everything, holds up all three worlds, and never perishes.Krishna
18. 15.18Krishna says that because he is greater than both the perishable and the imperishable, the world and the holy books call him the Supreme Person.Krishna
19. 15.19Krishna tells Arjuna that whoever clearly knows him as the Supreme Person knows everything that matters. That person worships him with their whole heart and life.Krishna
20. 15.20Krishna tells Arjuna, whom he calls pure, that he has now shared this most secret teaching. Whoever understands it becomes wise and has done what life is for.Krishna