The vocabulary · योग
Yoga
Yoking — the disciplines that join a person to the real.
What does yoga mean in the Bhagavad Gita?
Yoga means yoking — joining one thing to another, the way a beast is put to a cart. The Gita never teaches a posture outside its sixth chapter, and the word is not doing that work here. The text defines it three times. Evenness in success and failure is what yoga means (2.48). Yoga is skill in action (2.50). And yoga is the breaking of every link with sorrow (6.23). What is being yoked, in each case, is a person’s attention and will.
Hansi Gita Bhawan Trust · 93 verses use योग
In the text
योग
yoga
A verse is counted when its Sanskrit contains the word, compounds included. That is a checkable fact and a floor, not a total — the Gita teaches the idea in verses that never say it.
The root of the word is the same root that gives the English yoke. It means a joining, and the Gita uses it for anything that joins a person to what is real: work done in a certain manner, knowledge, devotion, the steadying of the mind. That is why the same text can speak of the yoga of knowledge for those of the Sankhya way and the yoga of action for yogis (3.3), and why so many different disciplines are called by one name without contradiction.
The two central definitions both arrive in the middle of an argument about work, which is worth noticing. Evenness is called yoga in a verse that begins by telling Arjuna to do his work standing in yoga, letting attachment go, the same whether it succeeds or fails (2.48). Two verses later comes the line most often quoted on its own: yoga is skill in action (2.50). Neither is a claim about sitting. Both are claims about the state a person works from.
The third definition is later and differently shaped. Know this as what is called yoga: the breaking of every link with sorrow, to be taken up with resolve and with a mind that does not lose heart (6.23). Defining a thing by what it severs rather than by what it joins is unusual, and the second half is the part readers skip. Resolve is named, and so is the refusal to be discouraged, which implies a practice long enough to become discouraging.
The text also refuses the distinction most readers bring with them, between the active life and the contemplative one. What people call renunciation, know that to be yoga (6.2). The one who does the necessary work without leaning on its fruit is both a renouncer and a yogi, and the man who lights no fire and performs no rite is neither (6.1). And 5.5 says the place reached by the followers of Sankhya and by the followers of yoga is one place; whoever sees the two as one sees truly.
What it does not mean
The yoga of the Gita is the postures and breathing taught in a yoga class.
The Gita’s physical instruction is confined to one passage. Chapter six describes a firm seat, neither too high nor too low (6.11), the body held straight and still (6.13), and measure in food, sleep and effort (6.16–17). That is the whole of it, and it is a seated discipline rather than a sequence of postures. Everywhere else the word names the yoking of attention: evenness under success and failure (2.48), skill in action (2.50), the cutting of sorrow’s hold (6.23). The two are not opposed. They are simply not the same subject.
In the Gita’s own words
The verses this rests on.
The Sanskrit and both translations are the text. The note under each verse is the Trust’s reason for pointing at it — you may disagree with the note and still trust the verse.
Bhagavad Gita 2.48Shri Bhagavan
योगस्थः कुरु कर्माणि सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा धनञ्जय ।
सिद्ध्यसिद्ध्योः समो भूत्वा समत्वं योग उच्यते ॥Do your work standing in yoga, Dhananjaya, letting attachment go, the same whether it succeeds or fails. That evenness is what yoga means.
The Gita defining its own term: evenness in success and failure is what yoga means. The definition is given inside an instruction to work.
Bhagavad Gita 2.50Shri Bhagavan
बुद्धियुक्तो जहातीह उभे सुकृतदुष्कृते ।
तस्माद्योगाय युज्यस्व योगः कर्मसु कौशलम् ॥One joined to this understanding leaves behind both good deeds and bad, here in this life. So take up yoga. Yoga is skill in action.
The second definition, and the one most often quoted alone: yoga is skill in action. The skill meant is doing work without being bound by it.
Bhagavad Gita 6.23Shri Bhagavan
तं विद्याद् दुःखसंयोगवियोगं योगसञ्ज्ञितम् ।
स निश्चयेन योक्तव्यो योगोऽनिर्विण्णचेतसा ॥Know this as what is called yoga: the breaking of every link with sorrow. It is to be taken up with resolve, and with a mind that does not lose heart.
A third definition, by subtraction: yoga is the severing of every link with sorrow. The verse also asks for resolve and for a mind that does not lose heart.
Bhagavad Gita 6.16–17Shri Bhagavan
नात्यश्नतस्तु योगोऽस्ति न चैकान्तमनश्नतः ।
न चातिस्वप्नशीलस्य जाग्रतो नैव चार्जुन ॥युक्ताहारविहारस्य युक्तचेष्टस्य कर्मसु ।
युक्तस्वप्नावबोधस्य योगो भवति दुःखहा ॥Yoga is not for the man who eats too much, Arjuna, nor for the man who does not eat at all; not for one who sleeps too much, nor for one who stays awake. For the man who is measured in eating and in rest, measured in the effort he puts into work, measured in sleep and waking, yoga becomes the end of sorrow.
The Gita’s only instruction about the body, and it is about measure: not too much food or too little, not too much sleep and not constant waking.
Bhagavad Gita 6.2Shri Bhagavan
यं संन्यासमिति प्राहुर्योगं तं विद्धि पाण्डव ।
न ह्यसंन्यस्तसङ्कल्पो योगी भवति कश्चन ॥Know that what men call renunciation is the same as yoga, Pandava. No one becomes a yogi who has not let go of the plans his mind keeps making.
Renunciation and yoga are named as the same thing, and no one becomes a yogi without letting go of the plans the mind keeps making.
Bhagavad Gita 5.5Shri Bhagavan
यत्साङ्ख्यैः प्राप्यते स्थानं तद्योगैरपि गम्यते ।
एकं साङ्ख्यं च योगं च यः पश्यति स पश्यति ॥The state reached by the followers of sankhya is reached by the followers of yoga too. The man who sees sankhya and yoga as one sees truly.
Sankhya and yoga reach one place. The verse is the Gita’s clearest refusal to rank the contemplative life above the active one.
Bhagavad Gita 2.53Shri Bhagavan
श्रुतिविप्रतिपन्ना ते यदा स्थास्यति निश्चला ।
समाधावचला बुद्धिस्तदा योगमवाप्स्यसि ॥When your understanding, no longer pulled about by what you have heard, stands unmoving and steady in itself, then you will have reached yoga.
Yoga named as a state arrived at, not only a practice performed: when the understanding stands unmoving, then you will have reached yoga.
In practice
What it looks like when someone does it.
A person who has taken a yoga class and then opens the Gita expecting more of the same is not being foolish; the word is genuinely shared. The useful adjustment is small. Where the class uses yoga to mean what you do for an hour on a mat, the Gita uses it to mean the condition you are in for the rest of the day. A clerk who has kept his temper through a difficult counter is, in the Gita’s usage, doing yoga.
The test the text supplies is 2.48, and it is usable. Take a piece of work that went well and a piece that went badly, and ask honestly how differently each left you. Most people find the gap is wide. Narrowing it is the practice. It is not achieved by deciding to feel less, which does not work, but by loosening the reason you were working in the first place.
For anyone actually sitting to meditate, the Gita’s own advice is plain: a firm seat, a straight back, and measure in eating and sleeping (6.11, 6.13, 6.16–17). And 6.23 says in the same breath that this is to be taken up with a mind that does not lose heart — which is the text conceding, in advance, that it will be dull for a long while before it is anything else.
Words that travel with it
Common questions
About yoga.
Is the yoga in the Bhagavad Gita the same as the yoga in a yoga class?
They share a word and a root. The Gita describes a seated discipline in one chapter — a firm seat, a still body, measure in food and sleep (6.11, 6.13, 6.16–17) — and nothing resembling a sequence of postures. Its own definitions of the word are about evenness of mind and skill in work, which is a different subject rather than a rival one.
Does the Gita define yoga?
Three times, and the three do not say quite the same thing. Evenness in success and failure (2.48); skill in action (2.50); the breaking of every link with sorrow (6.23). Taken together they describe a state a person acts from rather than a technique a person performs, which is why the text can call knowledge, work and devotion all by the same name.
Do I have to renounce the world to practise yoga?
The Gita says the opposite, and unusually plainly. What people call renunciation, know that to be yoga (6.2). The one who does the work that must be done without leaning on its fruit is both a renouncer and a yogi; the man who lights no fire and performs no rite is neither (6.1). The place reached by both paths is one place (5.5).
What is karma yoga, jnana yoga and bhakti yoga?
Three names for three ways of being joined. The Gita itself speaks of the yoga of knowledge for those of the Sankhya way and the yoga of action for yogis (3.3), and of serving through the yoga of devotion (14.26). The text does not rank them as three levels, and 5.5 says the two it contrasts most often arrive at the same place.