Chapter 6 · Verse 34·Spoken by Arjuna
चञ्चलं हि मनः कृष्ण प्रमाथि बलवद्दृढम्। तस्याहं निग्रहं मन्ये वायोरिव सुदुष्करम्
chañchalaṁ hi manaḥ kṛiṣhṇa pramāthi balavad dṛiḍham tasyāhaṁ nigrahaṁ manye vāyor iva su-duṣhkaram
For the mind is restless, turbulent, strong, and unyielding, Krishna. To control it seems to me as hard as controlling the wind.
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
rjuna names four qualities of the mind, and the commentators read each one as making a distinct point about why control is hard. 'Chanchala' means restless or unsteady: the mind is forever moving, never staying in one place, so it cannot be held still long enough to settle into evenness. 'Pramathi' means churning or agitating: the mind does not just wander, it stirs up the body and the senses and throws them into disorder, dragging the whole person off course. 'Balavat' means strong or mighty: the mind has such force that it cannot be turned back from an object it wants, and it overpowers even reasoning. 'Dridha' means firm, tough, or stubborn: the mind clings to its objects and will not let go, so it cannot simply be cut loose. Taken together, these four say the mind cannot be steadied, cannot be quieted by sense-restraint, cannot be overpowered by force, and cannot be severed from its attachments.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Lokmanya Tilak
The firmness of the mind is rooted in deep impressions, not just present desire. Several commentators explain 'dridha', tough, by saying the mind is threaded through with countless vasanas, the latent impressions or grooves left by long enjoyment of objects. Because it is woven from these old impressions, the mind is like a great rope or like iron: it cannot be quickly broken or pierced even by a subtle, discriminating intellect. This is why mere knowledge or reasoning is not enough; the pull of accumulated habit runs underneath thought itself.
Braided from 6 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas
Arjuna gives a vivid image: restraining such a mind is as hard as restraining the wind. Just as the wind tossing about in open sky cannot be caught, bottled, or made motionless by ordinary means, so the moving mind cannot be brought to a movement-free state. The commentators stress that this is not a small difficulty but a near-impossibility by one's own effort: 'sudushkara' means exceedingly hard, hard to do by any means at all.
Braided from 12 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Vallabhācārya · Lokmanya Tilak · Dhanapati Sūri
The address 'Krishna' is not casual; it carries Arjuna's hidden hope. Many commentators read the name through the root 'krish', to draw or scrape away: Krishna is the one who scrapes away the sins and faults of His devotees and draws to them even goods that are otherwise unattainable. By choosing this name at the moment he confesses defeat, Arjuna is quietly suggesting that the Lord alone can draw this unruly mind into stillness, and that what is impossible by the seeker's own strength may yet be possible by grace.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Sivananda · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Swami Ramsukhdas
This verse is the chapter's hinge: it is Arjuna's honest objection, not a refusal, and it sets up the answer to come. The commentators note that Arjuna is asking the Lord to tell him the means, and that the Lord at once agrees the difficulty is real and then names the remedy in the next verse, abhyasa (steady practice) and vairagya (dispassion). So the despair of 6.34 exists precisely to draw out the method of 6.35.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīla Baladeva · Vallabhācārya
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
This source presses the objection to its sharpest philosophical edge. The deeper worry, it says, is whether the mind can be fully controlled even after the knowledge of reality has dawned. Because the mind is by nature momentarily transforming, restlessness cannot be removed from it any more than wetness can be removed from water or heat from fire. And because the action whose fruit has already begun to ripen keeps the body and senses in play, the mind's movements will keep arising by the sheer force of that ripening karma. So even yoga, like knowledge itself, may not be able to ward off this unsteadiness, and the claim that the even-visioned person is the highest yogin is thrown into doubt. The reply is liberation-in-life: the witnessing self was already freed by knowledge, and what remains is only the residual stir of the body-mind running out its started fruit.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Bhakti
These sources stage the objection as a debate with scripture. The Katha Upanishad's chariot image makes the intellect the charioteer and the mind the reins, which suggests a discriminating intellect should easily govern the mind. The four qualities answer this: 'strong' means the mind ignores even a discriminating intellect the way a powerful disease ignores the very medicine meant to cure it, and 'firm' means it cannot be pierced by the subtlest intellect any more than iron can be pierced by a needle. The conclusion is that even the eightfold yoga finds the mind hard to hold, like wind that cannot be held in the fist, which is exactly why Arjuna asks the Lord to tell him the means.
Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva
Śuddhādvaita
These sources read the verse through the soul's long captivity and the Lord's bliss-nature. One holds that the conscious 'cit' portion of the jiva has been so long in the field of maya that holding the mind in, while it can be named, is near impossible by the seeker's own strength, so the two-handled lever of practice and dispassion finally bites only because of the Lord's grace behind it. The other reads the address 'Krishna' as 'Krishna of unending bliss': having heard the Lord called ever-blissful, Arjuna would not have raised the question at all if his own mind were not by nature unsteady, and he offers an alternative sense in which even the restless vital breath, the prana, is what one cannot hold back.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Modern
This source traces all four troublesome qualities to a single root: kama, desire, lodged in the self. The mind is churning, stubborn, and strong only because desire still sits in the chij-jada-granthi, the knot of conscious and inert, and shows itself through the mind and senses. Scripture says the mind alone is the cause of bondage and liberation. The decisive point is that the moment the seeker becomes wholly free of desire, the mind's churning, firmness, and strength are destroyed, and its very restlessness ceases to be any hindrance at all. So the problem is not the mind as such but the desire it carries.
Swami Ramsukhdas
Modern
This source adds a cosmological reason for the wind comparison: the mind is said to be born of the wind root-element (vayu-tanmatra), which is why it is as restless as the wind. It also stresses the mechanism of restlessness, that the mind works always in conjunction with the five senses and is drawn by them in all directions toward the five kinds of objects, so its agitation comes from its constant traffic with the sense-world.
Swami Sivananda
A Seeker Asks
If the mind is as uncatchable as the wind, is the spiritual goal simply out of reach for an ordinary person, or is there a real way through?
First, take heart from the fact that even Arjuna's own teacher does not deny the difficulty. The verse is an honest report, not a refusal, and the Lord immediately agrees that the mind is indeed hard to restrain. The point of voicing the despair is to draw out the remedy, so the verse exists to be answered, not to end the conversation.
Vallabhācārya · Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Bhāskara
Second, the means is named right here at the chapter's hinge: steady practice (abhyasa) and dispassion (vairagya) are the two-handled lever by which even this mind is held in check. The difficulty is real, but it is not the last word.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Bhāskara · Madhvācārya
Third, the deeper relief is that the mind's strength is borrowed, not its own. Its churning, stubbornness, and force last only as long as desire sits in the self. When that desire is emptied out, those qualities are destroyed and the mind's very restlessness ceases to hinder you. So the goal is not out of reach: the wind grows still as its cause is removed.
Swami Ramsukhdas
Fourth, the very name Arjuna chooses, Krishna, the one who draws away the faults of His devotees, points past self-effort to grace. What is near impossible by one's own strength becomes possible because the Lord Himself draws the mind into stillness; the lever bites because His grace is behind it.
Śaṅkarācārya · Vallabhācārya · Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
Notice where the despair really comes from. The mind feels uncatchable because it is restless, churning, stubborn, and strong, but underneath all four of these lies one thing: desire still lodged in you. The grooves of old wanting keep tugging the mind toward objects, and that is what makes it churn the senses and dig in its heels. So do not wage a hopeless war against restlessness itself, as though you had to catch the wind with your bare hands. Turn instead toward loosening desire at its root. As that desire empties out, the mind's churning, its firmness, and its strength fall away with it, and even its restlessness stops being a hindrance at all. The contact with objects may remain, but none of it reaches you. The work, then, is not to crush the mind but to become free of the wanting it carries.
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.