Lord Krishna
Divine TeacherThe Supreme Lord, the charioteer and divine guide of Arjuna. Krishna delivers the eternal wisdom of the Gita, revealing the nature of the soul, duty, and the path to liberation.
Speaking: Chapter 17, Verse 16
Verse 16
The Yoga of the Three Types of Faith
Serenity of mind, gentleness, silence, self-control, and purity of being — this is called the austerity of the mind.
Context & Meaning
The deepest of the three austerities: tapas of the mind (mānasa tapas). Five qualities characterise it: manaḥ-prasāda (serenity of mind — the settled, clear, undisturbed quality of a mind that is not at the mercy of every passing event), saumyatva (gentleness — the quality of equanimity that responds to difficulty without hardness), mauna (silence — not merely the absence of speech but the inner stillness from which wise speech can arise), ātma-vinigraha (self-control — the mastery of the inner movements of thought and desire), and bhāva-saṃśuddhi (purity of being — the complete integrity of inner motive, free from hidden agendas and self-deception). These are the qualities of a mind that has been genuinely trained, over years of practice, to rest in its own nature.
Scholar Commentaries
1 commentary · Public domainAdi Shankaracharya
AdvaitaManaḥprasādaḥ — serenity of mind — heads the list because it is both the goal and the precondition of all other mental austerities. A disturbed mind cannot practise gentleness reliably; a mind full of inner noise cannot truly be silent; a mind driven by its own compulsions cannot exercise genuine self-control. The cultivation of manaḥ-prasāda — the clearing and stilling of the mental atmosphere — is the foundation of all genuine inner work.