Chapter 16

Krishna spoke: Fearlessness, purity of heart, a steady will to pursue wisdom; generosity and self-control; piety and a love of solitary study; humility, honesty, and care never to injure any living thing; truthfulness, patience instead of anger, a mind that easily releases what others cling to; calm balance and a charity that overlooks the faults of others; tenderness toward all who suffer; a contented heart undisturbed by desires; a manner that is gentle, modest, and serious yet still strong; patience, courage, and purity; a spirit free of vindictiveness and never inclined to overrate itself—these, Prince of India, are the marks of one whose feet are set on the bright path leading to heavenly birth.

Deceit, arrogance, pride, quickness to anger, harsh and cruel speech, and an ignorance that cannot see its own darkness—these, my Prince, are the marks of one whose birth is fated for the lower regions.

The heavenly birth leads to liberation, you should know this, while the birth among the Asuras leads into bondage. Rejoice, Prince, for your destiny is the heavenly birth.

Every living being is stamped with one of two natures, the divine or the undivine. I have told you the marks of the heavenly man; now hear from me about the unheavenly.

The unheavenly do not understand how souls go forth from me, nor how they return to me. They have no truth, no purity, no rule of life. They say, “The world has no law, no order, no Lord; it did not arise through cause following cause in some perfect design—it is nothing but a house of lust.” Holding this view, these ruined ones—small-minded and dark of spirit—give themselves over to evil deeds, becoming a curse to their kind. Slaves to unending desires, full of deceit, folly, and pride, blindly clinging to their errors, swept along the sinful path, they trust this lie that leads to death as if it were truth, finding in pleasure all the good there is and declaring, “This is the end of everything!”

Caught in the snares of a hundred empty hopes, slaves to lust and anger, they pile up wealth by base means to feed their burning appetites. “We gained this much today,” they say, “and with it such and such desire will be satisfied. This is ours, and that too shall be ours. Today we killed one enemy, and tomorrow we will kill another. Are we not lords? Don’t we live well? Isn’t our fortune splendid and great? We are rich, of noble birth—what other men live as we do? So let us offer sacrifices, give lavishly, and be merry!” So they speak, blinded by ignorance, and so they fall—tossed about by their schemes, deceived, bound in the net of black delusion, lost in their lusts—down into foul Naraka. Conceited, foolish, stubborn, and proud, drunk on the wine of wealth and heedless, their offerings carry only the appearance of reverence, lacking any genuine devotion of the old faith. Devoted to self, to force, to insolence, indulgence, and rage, these blasphemers of mine—both in the bodies they now wear and in the bodies they will produce—are my enemies, hateful and hating, cruel, evil, vile, the lowest and meanest of men. I cast them down, again and again at the end of each life, into some demonic womb, from which—birth after birth—those demonic wombs spawn them again, still deluded; and until they find me and worship me, sweet Prince, they walk that downward road.

The gates of hell are three, through which souls pass to ruin: the gate of lust, the gate of wrath, and the gate of greed. Let a person avoid all three. Whoever turns away from entering these three gates of Naraka goes straight toward peace and arrives at the gate of Swarga.

Here ends Chapter XVI of the Bhagavad Gita, titled “Daivasarasaupadwibhagayog,” or “The Book of the Separateness of the Divine and Undivine.”