Chapter 2, Verse 48
yogasthaḥ kuru karmāṇi
saṅgaṁ tyaktvā dhanañjaya
siddhy-asiddhyoḥ samo bhūtvā
samatvaṁ yoga ucyate
Fixed in yoga do your actions, having abandoned attachment, having become equal in failure and success; for it is equality that is the essence of yoga.
Here Krishna is saying, “Fixed in yoga do your actions, having abandoned attachment…” This is what Christ teaches in the Bible that when your right hand is doing something, the left hand should not know about it. It is better to cut if off and throw it away.
In this verse Krishna says that when you do yoga, it will help you to rise above expectations. Yoga will unite you with the Divine. Whatever you do is yoga, when you’re not attached to the fruits of the action. But whatever you do with expectation, will never free you. You will damn yourself, you will get yourself attached to the world. Christ says, “What is the use if you do a service, and then you go around talking about it?” When a person who is practising Karma Yoga lets go of attachment to his own actions and the fruits of those actions, when he ceases to have likes and dislikes, then he is free from joy and sorrow. The essence of equality awakens and then one attains the Divine. As long as there is judgement, this is not possible.
Through the constant practice of indifference to success and failure in action, a human being reaches the ultimate state of unshakeable stability in equality. This is the culmination of Karma Yoga. Therefore, Bhagavan Krishna tells Arjuna to perform his duty established in yoga. Krishna is trying to remind Arjuna that the practice of equality in failure or success is important. You have to be equal in both failure and success. You have to have equanimity in the performance of your daily duties in your every act, by being free from like and dislike, with reference to every object, every being, every fruit of that action itself. Krishna says that this is the essence of yoga: to free yourself, to rise above attachment to the fruits of your actions. Yoga is this equanimity. He shows that one can become a yogi and attain this equanimity, through any discipline, or through any sadhana whatsoever. That’s why He says to Arjuna, “Establish yourself in this equality. Establish yourself in that yoga. Become a yogi.”
Bhagavad Gita
