Verse 18.51

Verse 18.51: “Possessed of a chastened intellect, and having controlled the self with firmness, having abjured sound and other objects of sense, and having altogether discarded passion and aversion. (1011)

Commentary called Jnaneshwari by Jnaneshwar:

He follows the course indicated by the preceptor, and reaching the bank of the holy waters in the form of right discrimination washes out therein the filth adhering to his intellect. Then just as the Moon embraces (regains) her splendour just released by the planet Rahu (after the eclipse), the purified intellect contacts the Self. The intellect abandoning all the pairs of opposites (like pleasure and pain etc.), engages itself in the meditation of the Self in the way a loyal (loving) wife leaving both her own parental and father-in-law’s home follows only her husband (lit. lover).

The five sense-objects such as speech, etc. which were pampered and lionized by the senses, under the temptation of securing the vital part of the knowledge,—(all these five (senses) are eliminated by putting a check on their innate tendency in the way the mirage disappears with the withdrawal of the Sun’s rays (at Sunset). He makes the senses vomit out the sense-objects and the inner proclivity towards them, in the way one unknowingly taking food at a vile one’s causes it to be forcibly vomitted out. Then bringing all the senses on the bank of the holy Ganges in the form of thorough absorption in spiritual meditation (pratyagvṛtti), and making them observe penances (by way of expiation) he makes them clean washed out.

With Sattva-dominated courage he applies his purified senses together with the mind to the practice of the Yoga-discipline. Similarly whatever (action-fruit) good or bad of the past he has to experience according to his destiny (he puts up with), feeling neither any hatred (aversion) for the bad ones he has to face (suffer) nor any jubilation for the good ones that may fall to his lot. In this way, discarding passion and aversion with regard to good and bad (respectively) he goes and dwells, Oh Kiriti, in mountain caves or bowers of dense forests.