Chapter 15 · Verse 8·Spoken by Arjuna
शरीरं यदवाप्नोति यच्चाप्युत्क्रामतीश्वरः।गृहीत्वैतानि संयाति वायुर्गन्धानिवाशयात्
śharīraṁ yad avāpnoti yach chāpy utkrāmatīśhvaraḥ gṛihītvaitāni sanyāti vāyur gandhān ivāśhayāt
When the embodied self takes on a body, and when it departs from one, it carries these with it, as the wind carries scents from their source.
Word by Word
Saved for this reading session
Three movements · tap a label to switch
Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
Audio from the Gītā Supersite, IIT Kanpur
Synthesis · a glossed leaf
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
he verse describes what happens at death and rebirth. When the embodied self leaves one body and takes on another, it does not go alone. It carries with it the senses (the powers of seeing, hearing, and so on) together with the mind. Several commentators specify the order of events implied by the verse's wording: the self first departs from the old body, then travels to the new one, and the 'drawing' of the senses is read as happening with that departure, so that going follows departure. The self moves with no return to the body it has left behind.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Śrī Puruṣottama · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Sant Jñāneśvar
The word the verse uses for this traveler is 'ishvara,' which normally means 'Lord.' Most commentators take it here to name the individual living being (the jiva), called 'lord' or 'master' because it presides over the aggregate of the body and the senses. It is the master of its own little household of body and instruments. Sridhara and Sivananda both flag this directly: the jiva is svami (owner) of its own body and faculties, and Sridhara reads this lordship as a small reflection of the great Lord, since the jiva is in truth a portion of him. Ramanuja and Vedantadeshika likewise stress that the 'ishvara' here is the embodied self in its lordship over its own body, not the supreme Lord.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya · Swami Ramsukhdas
What exactly the self carries is the subtle equipment, not the gross flesh. The senses and mind are taken in their subtle form. Ramanuja, Vallabha, and Purushottama add that the subtle elements are carried along with them. Abhinavagupta names this bundle the puryashtaka, the subtle body of eight. Sivananda frames the whole verse as a description of how the subtle body leaves the gross body. The gross body is what is left behind; the inner instrument travels on, so that wherever the self goes and whatever form it assumes, it operates again through these same senses and mind.
Braided from 6 commentators
Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
The verse gives a vivid image for this carrying: as the wind takes the scents from their source (a flower, a garland, sandal, musk, and the like), so the self takes the senses from the body. The point of the comparison, several commentators note, is the subtlety of what is carried. The wind lifts only the fine fragrant portions, not the flower itself, just as the self lifts only the subtle faculties, not the gross body. The illustration also shows that the grasping of the senses can happen while the old body still stands, in the way fragrance is drawn off while the flower remains.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Lokmanya Tilak · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar
Read together with the next verse, this passage explains why the self carries the senses at all: in order to experience the sense-objects in the new body. Vishvanatha and Baladeva make this purpose explicit. Once it has arrived and presides over the ear, eye, touch, taste, smell, and mind, the embodied self enjoys the objects, sound and the rest; the taking-along is for the sake of that enjoyment. Jnaneshwari adds that it is precisely on entering and dwelling in a body that the self begins to feel itself the doer and the enjoyer.
Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Vedānta Deśika · Sant Jñāneśvar
Divergence
Dvaita
On the surface the verse, by saying the self 'draws' the senses, seems to credit the living being with independence: it looks as if the jiva acts on its own to gather up its faculties and migrate. This school reads the verse precisely to ward that off. The doubt is raised that the word 'draws' suggests the soul's self-sufficiency, and Krishna corrects it: it is the Lord alone who, taking these, carries the soul and its instruments along. The soul is throughout dependent on the Lord, not only in drawing the senses but in gaining a body, in its very activity, and in its departure. This is backed by scripture: the Disposer joins the soul to whatever womb he chooses, so the soul dwells where it is placed, not where it desires; even one who slays and conquers and thinks himself the independent doer is in truth no doer, since the Lord does the deed; and the Brihadaranyaka image of the embodied self going 'mounted' and presided over by the wise Supreme Self confirms that even leaving the body is the Lord's doing. The Chandogya sequence of speech merging into mind, mind into breath, and so on, shows the higher deities being drawn at departure under the Lord's governance.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Modern
This reading turns the wind-and-fragrance image into a teaching about freedom and bondage. The crucial point is that wind and fragrance have no permanent bond; the wind carries the scent for a while, but the scent does not abide in it. So too the self is in truth wholly untouched (niralipta) by the mind, senses, and body it carries; it has only mistakenly taken them as its own through the assumption of 'I' and 'mine.' Here the word 'ishvara,' lord, is read with weight: unlike the wind, which is unconscious and cannot refuse the fragrance, the self has been given the discernment and the power to break the false connection whenever it wishes. The bondage of birth and death loosens of itself the moment the self corrects its mistaken sense of ownership and remembers that, as an eternal portion of the supreme Self, it has no real bond with the products of nature. The self's real ruin is that, by claiming mastery over insentient things, it becomes their servant and forgets its true Lord.
Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If the self merely carries its senses from body to body like wind carrying a scent, what is it that makes the difference between staying bound to this endless travel and being free of it?
Begin with what the verse plainly teaches: at death the embodied self does not vanish, nor does it carry the flesh; it carries only the subtle equipment, the senses and the mind, into a new body, as the wind lifts the fine fragrance from a flower and leaves the flower behind. This is why life continues across bodies and why, on arriving, the self again experiences the world through those same faculties.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Swami Sivananda · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
The difference between bondage and freedom turns on the image's deeper point. The wind and the fragrance have no permanent bond, and neither do you and the faculties you carry; in truth you remain untouched by them. The travel continues only because the self has mistakenly taken the mind, senses, and body as its own through the sense of 'I' and 'mine.' That single error, the imagined identification with the body, is the real cause of rebirth.
Swami Ramsukhdas
Here the very word the verse uses, 'ishvara,' lord, points to your freedom. You are the master of this little household of body and senses, a portion of the great Lord, and unlike the unconscious wind that cannot refuse its fragrance, you have been given both the discernment to see the false bond and the power to release it. Correct the sense of ownership, remember your true Lord, and the knot of birth and death loosens of itself.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
Sit with the image the verse gives: the wind carries the fragrance, but the fragrance never truly belongs to the wind, and the moment the wind sets it down, it is unburdened. You are like that wind. The body, the senses, the mind, the tendencies you carry from life to life are a fragrance you have picked up, not your own substance; in truth you remain untouched by them. The whole weight of birth and death rests on one mistaken thought, 'I am the body, these faculties are mine.' Notice where you have claimed ownership over things and people, and notice how the claim has quietly made you their servant and made you forget the One who is truly yours. You are not like the unconscious wind, which cannot help carrying what it carries; you have been given both the discernment to see the false bond and the freedom to loosen it. The practice is simply to let the mistaken sense of ownership change: to hold, clearly and often, that you, the living self, have no real connection with these bodies that are products of nature. When that one error clears, the knot of coming and going slips loose on its own.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, tap a name in The seating.