Chapter 12

Arjuna asked: Lord, between those who serve you faithfully as you have revealed yourself in form, and those who worship you as the Unrevealed, the Bodiless, the Far — which group follows the better path of faith and practice?

Krishna replied: Those who serve me as I have shown myself, steady and constantly devoted, fixed wholly upon me — these I count as truly holy. But those who worship me as the One, the Invisible, the Unrevealed, the Unnamed, the Unthinkable, the Ultimate, the All-pervading, the Highest and Most Sure — who adore me with their senses mastered, even-minded toward all beings, rejoicing in the good of all — these blessed souls also come to me.

Yet the labor is hard for those who set their minds on reaching the Unmanifest. That pathless path can scarcely be walked by anyone still wearing flesh. But whoever performs all his actions while renouncing self for my sake, filled with me, fixed on serving only the Highest, meditating on me day and night — him I will quickly lift out of the ocean of life’s distress and death, since his soul clings fast to me. So cling to me! Embrace me with heart and mind, and you will surely dwell with me on high. But if your thought cannot reach that height, if you are too weak to fix body and soul on me unbroken, do not despair — give me lower service. Try to reach me by worshiping with steady will. And if you cannot even worship steadily, then work for me, labor in tasks that please me. For one who labors rightly for love of me will arrive in the end. And if even in this your faint heart fails, then bring me your failure itself — take refuge in me, let go of the fruits of your labor, renounce all hope for my sake, with a humble heart. So you will come to me. For though knowledge is greater than mere diligence, worship is better than knowledge, and renunciation is better still. Close to renunciation — very close — dwells Eternal Peace.

The one who hates nothing that lives, who is himself kind and compassionate, free of arrogance and free of self-love, unshaken by good fortune or bad, patient, content, firm in faith, master of himself, true to his word, seeking me with heart and soul, vowed to me — that man I love. The one who neither troubles others nor is troubled by them, free of anger, lifted above elation, grief, and fear — that man I love. The one who lives quiet-eyed, untainted, serene, balanced, untroubled, working alongside me yet detached from all his works — that man I love. The one fixed in faith on me, who dotes on no one and despises no one, who neither rejoices nor grieves, letting good and bad fall where they will and pass when they will — that man I love. The one who keeps an even heart toward friend and foe, who bears shame and honor with equal mind, who meets heat and cold, pleasure and pain with equal peace, who lives free of desire, who hears praise and slander alike in calm restraint, unmoved by either, bound by no earthly ties, steadfast in me — that man I love. But most of all I love those happy ones for whom living means living in single fervent faith and unseeing love, drinking the blessed Amrit of my Being.

Here ends Chapter XII of the Bhagavad Gita, called “Bhaktiyog,” or “The Book of the Religion of Faith.”