GLOSSARY

41 Sanskrit terms that unlock the book. Words with a highlight anywhere in the reader link here.

ĀTMAN आत्मन्: The self — the deathless conscious witness within every being. Often translated 'soul', but the Gita means something more precise: not a personal ghost, but pure awareness itself.; SEE IT IN 2.20 →
BRAHMAN ब्रह्मन्: The ultimate reality — infinite, formless, the ground of everything that exists. The Gita's summit teaching is that ātman and Brahman are one.; SEE IT IN 2.72 →
KARMA कर्मन्: Action — and, by extension, its binding consequences. Every willed act plants a seed; karma-yoga is acting without planting new bondage.; SEE IT IN 2.47 →
YOGA योग: Literally 'yoking, union'. In the Gita it means the disciplined path that joins the self to the supreme — through action, knowledge, meditation, or devotion. Also defined as equanimity (2.48) and skill in action (2.50).; SEE IT IN 2.48 →
DHARMA धर्म: Duty, righteousness, the order that upholds life. It means both universal right conduct and your own particular duty (svadharma) — the role life has actually given you.; SEE IT IN 2.31 →
SVADHARMA स्वधर्म: Your own duty — the work proper to your nature and station. The Gita insists it is better done imperfectly than another's duty done well (3.35).; SEE IT IN 3.35 →
SAṂSĀRA संसार: The cycle of birth, death, and rebirth in which beings wander, driven by desire and past action. Liberation (mokṣa) is release from it.; SEE IT IN 2.51 →
MOKṢA मोक्ष: Liberation — release from the cycle of rebirth and the end of suffering. The Gita's final goal, reached here through knowledge, selfless action, and devotion.; SEE IT IN 18.66 →
GUṆA गुण: One of three strands woven through all of nature: sattva (clarity), rajas (restless drive), tamas (dark inertia). Everything you feel and do is their interplay.; SEE IT IN 14.5 →
SATTVA सत्त्व: Lucidity, goodness, clarity — the brightest of the three guṇas. It illuminates but can still bind through attachment to happiness and knowledge.; SEE IT IN 14.6 →
RAJAS रजस्: Passion, restless energy, craving — the guna of ambition and agitation. It binds through attachment to action and its fruits.; SEE IT IN 14.7 →
TAMAS तमस्: Darkness, inertia, delusion — the heaviest guna. It binds through heedlessness, laziness, and sleep.; SEE IT IN 14.8 →
AHAṄKĀRA अहङ्कार: The 'I-maker' — ego, the sense of a separate self that claims experience as 'mine'. Peace comes when it falls silent (2.71).; SEE IT IN 2.71 →
BUDDHI बुद्धि: Understanding, discriminating intelligence — the faculty that judges, resolves, and steadies. Yoga is largely the training of buddhi (2.41).; SEE IT IN 2.41 →
MANAS मनस्: The mind as sense-coordinator — restless, quick, the battlefield's true terrain. Friend to the conquered self, foe to the unconquered (6.6).; SEE IT IN 6.6 →
INDRIYA इन्द्रिय: A sense — the five powers of perception and five of action. Turbulent when unleashed, trustworthy when trained (2.60–2.61).; SEE IT IN 2.60 →
PRAKṚTI प्रकृति: Nature — the field of matter and energy, woven of the three guṇas. All action happens within prakṛti; the self only witnesses.; SEE IT IN 13.20 →
PURUṢA पुरुष: The conscious person or spirit — the knower set against known nature (prakṛti). Krishna reveals himself as the supreme puruṣa (15.18).; SEE IT IN 13.21 →
KṢETRA क्षेत्र: The field — the body and its whole apparatus of senses, mind, and experience. Knowing it as distinct from yourself is the start of wisdom (ch. 13).; SEE IT IN 13.2 →
KṢETRAJÑA क्षेत्रज्ञ: The knower of the field — the conscious self within the body. Krishna identifies himself as the knower in every field (13.3).; SEE IT IN 13.3 →
BHAKTI भक्ति: Devotion — loving surrender to the supreme. The Gita's warmest path: even a leaf offered with love is accepted (9.26).; SEE IT IN 9.26 →
JÑĀNA ज्ञान: Knowledge — direct knowing of the self, not book-learning. The fire of jñāna burns all action's bondage to ash (4.37).; SEE IT IN 4.37 →
VAIRĀGYA वैराग्य: Dispassion — the cooling of craving toward sense-objects. Paired with practice (abhyāsa), it masters even the restless mind (6.35).; SEE IT IN 6.35 →
ABHYĀSA अभ्यास: Practice — steady repeated effort. Mind-mastery comes from practice plus dispassion, not from a single resolve (6.35).; SEE IT IN 6.35 →
SAMĀDHI समाधि: Collected stillness — the mind settled unwaveringly, like a lamp-flame in a windless place (6.19). Understanding established there is yoga (2.53).; SEE IT IN 2.53 →
STHITAPRAJÑA स्थितप्रज्ञ: One steady in wisdom — the Gita's portrait of the realized person: desireless, even-minded, sense-controlled (2.55–2.72).; SEE IT IN 2.55 →
SAMATVA समत्व: Evenness — steadiness amid success and failure, pleasure and pain. 'That evenness is called yoga' (2.48).; SEE IT IN 2.48 →
SANNYĀSA संन्यास: Renunciation — giving up selfish motive, not action itself. True renunciation and karma-yoga are one in effect (5.2–5.3).; SEE IT IN 5.3 →
TYĀGA त्याग: Relinquishment — letting go of attachment to action's fruits. The Gita distinguishes abandoning duty (tāmasic) from abandoning reward (sāttvic, 18.9).; SEE IT IN 18.9 →
YAJÑA यज्ञ: Sacrifice — offerings that sustain the cosmic exchange; widened by the Gita to mean any selfless dedicated act (3.9–3.16, 4.24–4.33).; SEE IT IN 3.9 →
TAPAS तपस्: Austerity — disciplined heat of body, speech, and mind that purifies. The Gita grades it threefold by guna (17.14–17.19).; SEE IT IN 17.14 →
ŚRADDHĀ श्रद्धा: Faith — the deep trust that shapes a person: 'you are what your faith is' (17.3). Without it, practice does not take root.; SEE IT IN 17.3 →
MĀYĀ माया: The divine power of seeming — the veiling force that makes the one reality appear as many. Hard to cross, but crossed through surrender (7.14).; SEE IT IN 7.14 →
ĪŚVARA ईश्वर: The Lord — the supreme person dwelling in the heart of every being, turning all as a potter turns vessels on a wheel (18.61).; SEE IT IN 18.61 →
AVATĀRA अवतार: A divine descent — whenever dharma declines, the imperishable takes form to protect the good and restore order (4.7–4.8).; SEE IT IN 4.7 →
DHYĀNA ध्यान: Meditation — sustained one-pointed attention. Chapter 6 is its manual: posture, moderation, and the slow taming of the mind.; SEE IT IN 6.12 →
KṢATRIYA क्षत्रिय: The warrior-protector order — those whose social role is courage and defense of the just. Arjuna's identity and the ground of Krishna's duty-argument (2.31).; SEE IT IN 2.31 →
BRAHMANIRVĀṆA ब्रह्मनिर्वाण: Extinction in Brahman — final liberation, the peace in which the separate self dissolves like a river in the sea (2.72, 5.26).; SEE IT IN 2.72 →
AKṢARA अक्षर: The imperishable — the undecaying supreme reality, beyond both the perishable body and even the imperishable soul (8.3, 15.16–15.18).; SEE IT IN 8.3 →
PURUṢOTTAMA पुरुषोत्तम: The Supreme Person — beyond both the perishable and the imperishable, the highest self Krishna declares himself to be (15.18).; SEE IT IN 15.18 →
PRASĀDA प्रसाद: Serenity, grace, settled clarity — the mind's still surface in which sorrow ends and wisdom stands firm (2.64–2.65).; SEE IT IN 2.64 →