चञ्चलं हि मनः कृष्ण प्रमाथि बलवद्दृढम्।तस्याहं निग्रहं मन्ये वायोरिव सुदुष्करम्॥
cañcalaṃ hi manaḥ kṛṣṇa pramāthi balavad dṛḍhamtasyāhaṃ nigrahaṃ manye vāyor iva su-duṣkaram
शब्दार्थ
व्याख्या अभी अंग्रेज़ी में उपलब्ध है। हिन्दी व्याख्या एक-एक अध्याय करके जोड़ी जा रही है।
श्लोक कहता है
For the mind is restless, Krishna — it churns, it is strong, it will not give. Holding it seems to me as hard as holding the wind.
सरल शब्दों में
Four words for the mind, and none of them is flattering.
Restless. Churning. Strong. Unyielding.
And then the image that has outlived every commentary on it: trying to hold the wind.
आपने इसे कहाँ महसूस किया है
You lie down at eleven having decided to go to sleep. Your mind produces, unprompted, a conversation from 2014. You did not choose it and you cannot make it stop.
और गहराई में
Pramāthi is the word that makes this more than a complaint.
It means churning, agitating, but also carrying off by force — the sense of something that abducts. Arjuna is not describing a mind that drifts. He is describing one that takes him somewhere against his will.
And then the wind. It is exactly the right image, because wind is not solid enough to grip and not weak enough to ignore. Nothing about it is available to a hand.
What makes this passage unusual is that the Gita gives the objection its best form rather than a weak one it can knock down. Four adjectives and a perfect simile, from a sympathetic character, in the middle of the chapter it is objecting to.
A text that was mainly interested in persuading would not have written this verse.