Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/259

Rh gle and an inner victory. The tamasic recoil turns from both the pains and pleasures of the world to ftee from them ; the rajasic movement turns upon them to bear, master and rise superior to them. The Stoic self-discipline calls desire and passion into its embrace of the wrestler and crushes them between its arms, as did old Dhritarastra in the epic the iron image of Bhima. It endures the shock of things painful and pleasurable, the causes of the physical and mental affections of the nature, and breaks their effects to pieces ; it is complete when the soul can bear all touches without being pained or attracted, excited or troubled. It seeks to make man the conqueror and king of his nature.

The Gita, making its call on the warrior nature of Arjuna, starts with this heroic movement. It calls on him to turn on the great enemy desire and slay it, Its first description of equality is that of the Stoic philosopher. *“He whose mind is undisturbed in the midst of sorrows and amid pleasures is free from desire; from whom liking and fear 'and wrath have passed away, is the sage of settled understanding. Who in all things js without affection though visited by this good or that evil and neither hates nor rejoices, his intel- ligence sits firmly founded in wisdom.” If one abstains - from food, it says, giving a physical example, the ob- ject of sense ceases to affect, but the affection itself of the sense, the 7asa, remains ; it is only when, even in the exercise of the sense, it can keep back from seeking its sensuous aim in the object, artka, and abandon the affection, the desire for the pleasure of taste, that the highest level of the soul is reached. It is by using the mental organs on the objects,“ranging over them with