Samadhi

Samadhi is the disciplined state of meditative absorption in which the mind becomes steady, the senses cease to dictate attention, and the practitioner discovers a happiness beyond their reach. In the teaching addressed to Arjuna, it is both a rigorous practice and a transformed mode of being: the practitioner acts without attachment, sees the same self in all creatures, and advances toward assimilation with Brahman and intimate devotion to Krishna.

Definition and Aim

Samadhi begins when the mind is no longer carried outward by desire. The practitioner withdraws from sensory objects, renounces the resolutions that generate craving, and gradually quiets the mind through patience and controlled understanding. The aim is not mere blankness. It is an inward apprehension in which the self beholds the self, becomes inwardly satisfied, and receives a happiness that lies beyond the senses but can be grasped by understanding.

This state severs the connection with pain. Its attainment is described as more valuable than any other acquisition: once established in it, a person is not shaken even by the heaviest sorrow and does not turn away from truth. Because the mind is naturally restless, the discipline must be sustained with perseverance and an undespairing heart. Whenever attention runs toward an object, it is to be brought back to the self rather than allowed to become another chain of attachment.

Conditions and Practice

The practice has a precise physical and ethical form. The devotee chooses a clean, secluded place and prepares an immovable seat that is neither too high nor too low, spreading upon it cloth, a deerskin, or blades of Kusa grass. Seated there, the practitioner keeps body, head, and neck even and steady, directs the gaze toward the tip of the nose, avoids looking about, restrains the functions of the heart and senses, and fixes the mind on one object.

The discipline also requires freedom from fear, observance of the practices of Brahmacharya, and a heart directed toward Krishna as the object of attainment. Samadhi is therefore not produced by posture alone. It depends upon the coordination of body, senses, mind, intention, and devotion. The practitioner must abandon desires born of mental projection, regulate speech and bodily activity, and cultivate indifference to the claims of the surrounding world.

Moderation is essential. Devotion does not belong to one who eats excessively or refuses food altogether, nor to one who sleeps too much or remains perpetually awake. It belongs to the person temperate in food, recreation, work, sleep, and waking. The famous image of the lamp in a windless spot expresses the result: when the heart has been restrained and applied to abstraction, the mind no longer flickers under every external pressure.

The Mind, the Senses, and Equanimity

Samadhi is defined against the destructive sequence that begins with sensory fixation. Thinking repeatedly about objects produces attachment; attachment gives rise to wrath; wrath destroys discrimination; the loss of discrimination brings loss of memory and understanding, ending in ruin. The senses can pull even a wise person away from the discipline of contemplation, so control must be active rather than assumed.

The self-restrained person, by contrast, encounters sensory objects without being governed by affection or aversion and thereby attains peace of mind. Peace dissolves misery, and a peaceful heart becomes steady. The image of the ocean clarifies the distinction: desires may enter the practitioner as waters enter an ocean that is continually replenished, yet the ocean does not abandon its established measure. Samadhi is thus not the physical disappearance of experience but freedom from being enlarged or diminished by whatever enters consciousness.

This steadiness extends into ethical perception. The devotee who has attained inward tranquility sees well-wishers, friends, enemies, strangers, partisans, the disliked, relatives, the good, and the wicked with an equal eye. The highest devotee regards the happiness and misery of others as his or her own and beholds the self in all creatures and all creatures in the self. Because Krishna is seen in everything and everything in Krishna, the state joins inward absorption to universal relation rather than isolating the practitioner in private consciousness.

Samadhi and Action

The teaching does not identify absorption with abandoning all work. A person who performs the actions that ought to be performed without regard for their fruits is called both a renouncer and a devotee; merely discarding the sacrificial fire or abstaining from action is not enough. Action serves as the means for one who is still rising toward devotion, while cessation of action becomes the means for one who has already risen.

The same principle governs duty. Every living being follows its nature, and one's own duty, even when imperfectly performed, is better than another's duty performed well. Death in one's own duty is preferable to adopting another's, which carries fear. Samadhi therefore transforms the inner relation to action rather than erasing the obligations arising from nature. Work is dedicated to Krishna, while desire, affection, egoism, and weakness are relinquished.

This distinction also explains why self-mastery is described as raising the self by the self. For the person who has subdued the self, the self is a friend; for the person who has not, it behaves like an enemy. The practitioner must become steady amid cold and heat, pleasure and pain, honor and dishonor, and must regard a clod, a stone, and gold alike. Absorption is consequently inseparable from a practical equanimity tested by changing circumstances.

Fruition and Relation to Brahman

When the mind has become tranquil, passions have been suppressed, and sin has been cast off, the highest felicity comes naturally to the devotee. Such a practitioner becomes one with Brahman, sees equally everywhere, and gains a happiness described as being with Brahman. The culmination is not a private achievement secured by a single successful meditation; it is the result of sustained practice, self-restraint, devotion, and the gradual cleansing of action and perception.

The teaching also addresses failure. A person who possesses faith but falls away from devotion before attaining success is not ruined, either in this life or hereafter. After dwelling for many years in regions reserved for those who perform meritorious acts, the fallen practitioner is reborn either in a pious and prosperous household or in the family of intelligent devotees. In those births, former knowledge is recovered, former practice draws the person onward even without deliberate intention, and continued effort eventually leads to perfection after many births.

In the final synthesis, Samadhi prepares the practitioner for the highest devotion to Krishna. One who becomes pure in mind, controls the self through constancy, renounces sensory objects, withdraws from affection and aversion, abandons egoism, violence, pride, lust, wrath, and possessiveness, and remains tranquil becomes fit for assimilation with Brahman. Becoming one with Brahman, the person neither grieves nor desires, treats all beings alike, understands Krishna truly through devotion, and enters into him. Thus Samadhi is the inward discipline through which knowledge, duty, equanimity, and devotion converge in liberation.