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 18
Verse 18
The Yoga of the Three Types of Faith
Austerity practised for the sake of honour, respect, and reverence — and with hypocrisy — is said to be rajasic, unstable and impermanent.
Context & Meaning
The rajasic austerity is motivated by social goods: satkāra (honour), māna (respect), and pūjā (reverence from others). The practitioner performs their austerity to be seen, admired, and held in high regard. This is not a small category — much of what passes for spiritual discipline in any culture is performed with a significant component of this motivation. The additional mark is dambha (hypocrisy) — the performance of the outer austerity while the inner life is not correspondingly purified. And the consequences: cala (unstable) and adhruva (impermanent). Austerity built on social motivation collapses when the social reward disappears. Without the inner fire of genuine aspiration, there is nothing to sustain the practice through difficulty.
Scholar Commentaries
1 commentary · Public domainMadhvacharya
DvaitaCalam adhruvam — unstable and impermanent. This is the defining characteristic of all rajasic spiritual achievement: it is real while the conditions that produced it are maintained, and it evaporates when those conditions change. Social admiration is a shifting foundation — it depends on the opinions of others, which can reverse overnight. The practitioner whose discipline rests on this foundation has built on sand. Only the inner fire of genuine aspiration — indifferent to social reward — creates a stable foundation for spiritual development.