The verse and its meaning · Bhagavad Gita · Chapter 13 · Nature and the Witness

Learning by Listening Alone

Bhagavad Gita 13.26

अन्ये त्वेवमजानन्तः श्रुत्वाऽन्येभ्य उपासते।तेऽपि चातितरन्त्येव मृत्युं श्रुतिपरायणाः

Meaning · English

Others, not knowing these paths for themselves, hear about them from others and begin to worship. Those who hold fast to what they have heard also cross beyond death.

Krishna has just named people who see the Self through meditation, knowledge or action. Now he turns to people who can do none of that on their own. Two words carry the verse. Shruti means what is heard, and parayana means having it as one's whole resort, one's final refuge. So shruti-parayana describes people for whom listening is the entire path. Upasate means to sit near, and so to worship. These people do not know the way themselves. They hear it from others, then begin to worship. Krishna says they too cross over death, and he adds a firm 'even', so no one is left out. The reason is plain. The earlier verses might leave an ordinary person thinking the goal belongs only to the skilled meditator or the scholar. Krishna answers that trusting hearing, and acting on it, also carries a person across. The text asks the listener to hear with devotion and to hold what is heard. Shankara and Ramanuja both read the 'others' as people of lesser ability who still gain freedom through faithful listening to a teacher. Madhva stresses that the teacher's word is itself a means of knowledge. Crossing death is read by the tradition as ending rebirth.

A traveller in a strange town cannot read the map, so she asks a shopkeeper the way and follows each turn he names. She reaches the station like the person with the map. The map-reader is the one who sees directly. The traveller who trusts good directions and walks them is the listener who still arrives.

1. Choose one person whose spiritual words you trust: a grandparent, a teacher, a recorded talk, or a passage you respect. 2. Today, give them ten quiet minutes. Put the phone in another room and just listen or read. 3. Pick one sentence you heard and repeat it to yourself once at midday and once at night. 4. Notice whether doing so changes how you act in one small moment, such as answering someone patiently.

A man sits in a hospital corridor at night while his father is in surgery. He has never meditated and cannot follow a book on philosophy. Years ago an aunt told him a short saying about the Self not dying with the body, and it comes back to him. He repeats it slowly and his breathing steadies a little. Krishna's teaching here lets that count for something real. He does not need to work out the path alone; he can lean on what he was taught, and keep to it. Step by step: he remembers the saying, repeats it, and lets it guide the next hour, whether that means sitting quietly or speaking kindly to the nurse. Ordinary experience agrees that words from a trusted person can steady us when our own thinking cannot. The limit is plain. A remembered teaching does not make the surgery succeed, remove fear or grief, or replace the doctors. It gives the man something to hold while he waits.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: Three Roads, One Sight · Bhagavad Gita 13.25
• Next: Field and Knower Joined · Bhagavad Gita 13.27
• All of Bhagavad Gita · Ask Krishna about it

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