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BHAGAVAD GITA
assumes all possiblc forms at will and is an insatiable conflagration. The sense-forces (indriyāni), the mind (manas), and the faculty of intuitive awareness (buddhi), are all said to be its abode. Through these it bewilders and confuses the Owner of the Body, veiling his higher understanding. Therefore begin by curbing the sense organs and slay this Evil One, the destroyer of wisdom (jñāna) and realization (vijñāna).209 The senseforces are superior [to the physical body); thc mind is superior 10 the senses; intuitive understanding again is superior to the mind; superior to intuitive understanding is He [su: the Owner of the Body, the Sclf). Therefore, having awakened to the fact that He is beyond and superior to the sphere of intuitive understanding, firinly stabilize the Self by the Self (or thyself through the Sell], and slay the fiend who has the form of desire for who takes whatever shapes he likes) and who is difficult to overcome.'" 110
"Through contemplating sense-objects inwardly, visualizing and brooding over them, one brings into existence attachment to the objects; out of attachment comes desire; from desire, fury, violent passion; from violent passion, bewilderment, confusion; from bewilderinent, loss of memory and of conscious self-control; from this perturbation or ruin of self-control comes the disappearance of intuitive understanding; and from this ruin of intuitive understanding comes the ruin of man himself." 111
The technique of detachment taught by the Blessed Krsņa through the Gitā is a sort of "middlc path.” On the one hand his devotee is to avoid the extreme of clinging to the sphere of action and its fruits (the selfish pusuit of life for personal aims, out of acquisitiveness and possessiveness), while on the other
109 Vijñana: the supreme discriminating insight which realizes the Self as utterly distinct from the personality with all of its cravings, sufferings, and attachments.
110 Bhagavad Gita g. 36-48. 111 Ib. 2. 62-68.
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