Is the chain a law of the mind or a warning?

The two verses read like a law: thought leads to attachment, attachment to desire, desire to anger, and on to ruin. Yet the Gita itself shows people who do not fall. A mind can move among objects and find tranquillity (Gita 2.64), and a person can bear the surge of desire and anger and be a yogi (Gita 5.23). So which is it, a law or a warning?

The answer is that it is the description of how the mind falls when nothing holds it. The verse before it names what holds it: the senses restrained and the mind devoted to the Lord (Gita 2.61). Without that anchor the mind runs down the chain; with it the chain does not start. Commentators weigh the passage in three ways, set out below, and all three keep the early steps as the place where work is possible. A simple reading and a detailed reading of the steps come first for those who want them.

The two verses read closely

The first verse starts with a person, not an object (Gita 2.62).

It is the person who dwells. Attachment then "arises in him", a verb that speaks of coming into being, not of being done to him. The object stays as it was. The next step is also stated simply. Desire is born of attachment, and the mind has moved from "this is here" to "I want". Then anger is born of desire. The verse names no obstacle. Commentators who read an obstacle into it, the wanting that meets a wall, are the second stream below.

The second verse names the four losses (Gita 2.63).

Delusion is a bewilderment that covers the whole mind, and is more than an error of fact. Confusion of memory does not mean the memory is gone; it wanders, so that what a person once knew and decided no longer governs him. Loss of intellect does not mean the faculty is destroyed; it stops doing its work of weighing ends. The last word, ruin, means a fall, a falling away from the aim.

Why the mind lands on objects at all

The chain seems to begin with a free act: the person chooses to dwell. The Gita goes one step further back. Attraction and aversion are seated in the objects of every sense, and a person is told not to come under their control, because they are enemies on the path (Gita 3.34). So the pull is already waiting in the object before the mind arrives. The sign across the road, the remark in the meeting, the photograph on the screen each carry a hook, liking or dislike, and the mind is caught by whichever it meets.

This changes how the first station is read. Dwelling can be on what pleases or on what hurts. Rohan's remark in the meeting is not something he likes, yet he cannot let it go. The verse names attachment, but dislike binds just as firmly: it is the same hold turned inside out, and the free person is free of both together (Gita 2.64). The next stop on the path, attraction and aversion, takes up this pair; here it is enough to see that it stands behind the first step of the chain.

The Gita also shows what feeds the wanting once the mind has landed. A seeker is to renounce wholly the desires born of imagination and to bring the senses under control by the power of the mind (Gita 6.24). Much of the wanting in the chain is built by the mind itself. Meena has not lost a single customer when she begins to picture the empty shop, and the picture drives the desire. The remedy that follows is gradual: the mind is calmed step by step with an intellect strengthened by patience, and established in the Self (Gita 6.25). The tradition counts this imagining among the first things to be cut.

Where the passage stands in the teaching on steady wisdom

The two verses belong to a larger answer. Arjuna asks how the person of steady wisdom speaks, sits and walks (Gita 2.54). The reply runs to the end of the chapter. The sage is content in the Self by the Self (Gita 2.55) and is free from attachment, fear and anger (Gita 2.56). The chain shows how a person becomes the opposite of that sage, and the verses that follow show the sage again, so the passage is a portrait in negative.

Read as a pair, the verses answer the question of whether the chain is a law. The objects are the same on both sides of the table. What differs is the mind.

What lost intellect is the opposite of

The seventh station is the loss of intellect, and the Gita has a word for the opposite state. On the path of yoga the resolute intellect is single, while the intellects of the irresolute are many-branched and endless (Gita 2.41). The chain is, in this light, the breaking of a single resolve into many pulls: first the one aim, then the many wants, then no steady aim at all. That is why ruin follows. A person with a resolute intellect can take a blow and keep his course, and a person whose intellect has been split cannot keep any. Buddhi Yoga: The Resolute Intellect is the hub that studies this resolve; the chain here shows what the mind looks like when it is lost.

Forgetting and remembering

The fifth station, confusion of memory, also has its opposite. The Lord asks Arjuna to remember Him at all times and to fight, with mind and intellect surrendered to Him (Gita 8.7). The command joins remembrance to action, not to withdrawal from it. What the chain takes away is the memory of what matters in the midst of the day, and what the Gita gives back is a remembrance that can be kept in the midst of work. Arjuna's last words complete the picture: his delusion is destroyed and he has regained his memory (Gita 18.73).

From the tradition: remembrance is counted as one of the forms of devotion, together with hearing and singing the Lord's glory, and the teachers recommend it above all because it can be practised anywhere. The person who dwells on objects is already practising remembrance; the Gita turns the same power toward a worthier object.

Three ways commentators read the chain

Commentators on the Gita differ here, and each stream has reasons.

The first stream reads it as a psychological order. The passage describes how an untrained mind runs, every step causing the next. The remedy is to enter at the earliest step. This stream reads the two verses together with the verses that follow as two halves of one picture: the bound mind and the free mind. The free mind moves among objects without attraction and aversion and finds tranquillity (Gita 2.64), and its sorrows end and its intellect steadies (Gita 2.65). Without harmony with the Self there is no steady intellect and no peace (Gita 2.66).

The second stream reads it as desire that meets an obstacle. Not every desire ends in anger; anger comes from desire that is refused or threatened, while desire that is fed gives greed. This stream ties the chain to the three gates of lust, anger and greed (Gita 16.21) and to the enemy that is desire and anger together (Gita 3.37).

The third stream reads it as the picture of a mind without an anchor. The verse just before the chain says that one who restrains the senses and sits devoted to the Lord has steady wisdom (Gita 2.61). The chain begins because attention has nowhere better to rest. So the cure is not to suppress thought but to give the mind a higher object, which is the Lord. This stream draws on the teaching that the restless mind is to be brought back again and again to the Self (Gita 6.26) and that the Lord asks Arjuna to fix his mind on Him (Gita 12.8).

All three agree on three things. The chain begins in the mind, not in the world. The early steps are where work is possible. The Gita's remedy is a change in what the mind rests on, not the removal of objects. This is also how the tradition counts the inner enemies: desire, anger and greed, with delusion, pride and envy, the six that a seeker watches.

What each stream must answer

Each stream also meets a difficulty, and its reply shows what it holds dear.

The first stream must say why the Lord puts the anchor right before the chain (Gita 2.61). It replies that the anchor is the first remedy in the order of the chapter, and the chain is shown so that the seeker sees what the anchor guards against.

The second stream must say what the chain tells of desire that is fulfilled. It replies with the three gates, where fulfilled desire turns to greed (Gita 16.21), so that the chain has a twin.

The third stream must say whether the anchor means objects are given up. It replies, with the first, that the free person moves among objects (Gita 2.64); the Lord asks for a change of rest, not a change of world.

To see the difference, take Meena, who keeps thinking about her rival's new sign.

The three advice sets do not cancel each other. They are three doors into the same room.

Where the Gita says the same thing from another side

The Lord says that passion is of the nature of craving and attachment, and binds through attachment to action and its results (Gita 14.7). When passion rises, greed, restlessness and craving appear (Gita 14.12). These are the signs of the early steps.

The sage of steady wisdom is free from attachment, fear and anger (Gita 2.56), and the seat of desire is in the senses, mind and intellect (Gita 3.40). The Enemy Called Desire takes that teaching up in full, through the rest of chapter 3.

The three gates give the chain its widest frame. Anger is desire that has been refused, greed is desire that has been fed, and both open the same way. Freed from the three, a person works for his own good and reaches the highest goal (Gita 16.22). The rajas behind them is the same passion that the chain describes in the mind.

The chain and the three qualities

The Gita traces the chain to its ground in the qualities of nature. Passion, which binds through craving and attachment (Gita 14.7), brings greed and restlessness when it rises (Gita 14.12). The Lord also says what each quality gives rise to: knowledge from the quality of light, greed from passion, and negligence, delusion and ignorance from the quality of darkness (Gita 14.17).

Set beside the chain, this says something the two verses leave unspoken. The first half of the chain, dwelling, attachment, desire and anger, is the work of passion. The second half, delusion and the loss of memory, belongs to the quality of darkness. So the chain is also a slide from passion into darkness, and the way back is by the quality of light. When the light of knowledge shines through all the gates of the body, that quality is strong (Gita 14.11). A person who feels the first stirrings of dwelling can ask what feeds the light and what feeds the heat, and give more to the first.

The chain in the epic: Duryodhana in eight steps

The tradition tells the whole chain in one man. These are the epic's account, set against the stations of the verse.

The story shows what the verses say plainly. At no point does anyone take his intellect away. It goes by steps, and he is surrounded by people who could have helped him at the early ones.

Objections and replies

If the chain is a law, how can anyone be free?

It is a law of the unanchored mind, and the Gita names those who are free. The person who moves among objects without attraction and aversion finds tranquillity (Gita 2.64), and the person who bears the surge before leaving the body is a yogi (Gita 5.23). The chain describes what happens by default. The rest of the chapter describes what happens when the mind is held. A river runs downhill by a law, and a farmer still irrigates a field.

Why is anger a step to delusion if angry people reason clearly?

Because the reasoning serves the anger. The angry person can plan, argue and calculate, and that is what makes the delusion hard to see from inside. The faculty the verse speaks of is the one that weighs ends, and it has stopped questioning the anger. Desire covers a person's knowledge through the senses, mind and intellect, which are its seat (Gita 3.40). A mind that reasons well toward a wrong end is further gone than a mind that reasons badly.

Does "dwelling" mean a person must not think about objects at all?

No. The free person moves among objects (Gita 2.64). The word is dwelling, not meeting. A person at work must think about work, and a householder about the home. What the verse warns of is the thinking that stays and grows attached. Meeting an object leaves the mind free to go; dwelling holds it.

Desire gives rise to anger, so why is desire called anger?

Because the Lord speaks of one energy at two moments (Gita 3.37). Desire is the wanting, and anger is the same wanting when it is refused. One verse looks at the energy, the other at its movement. Nothing is contradicted. The same fire is called heat when it warms and burning when it is blocked.

Can anger come before desire, or without it?

The chain describes the commonest road, not the only one. The sage is free of attachment, fear and anger together (Gita 2.56), and desire and anger are one enemy (Gita 3.37). Fear belongs to the same family. It is attachment to what one is afraid to lose, and so it too is cut at attachment. Where anger seems to come first, a look back finds a quiet wanting before it, such as the wish to be respected or to be left in peace.

Is the chain a punishment?

No, it is a consequence. Nothing in the verses says that the Lord inflicts the fall. The person who is freed from the three gates works for his own highest good and reaches the supreme goal (Gita 16.22). The chain and the release are both ways in which the mind acts on itself. A person who touches a flame is burned by the flame, and no one has punished him.

Questions the verses raise, answered from the Gita and the tradition

Where exactly can the chain be broken?

At every step, but with the most ease at the first. From the verses: it is the person who dwells (Gita 2.62), so the person can turn away; the attachment "arises" in him, and what arises can be let go while it is small. From the rest of the Gita: whenever the restless mind wanders toward an object, one should gently bring it back to the Self, and this return, repeated, is the practice (Gita 6.26). Arjuna says the mind is as hard to hold as the wind (Gita 6.34), and the Lord answers that it is held by practice and detachment (Gita 6.35). The verse before the chain gives the anchor (Gita 2.61). From the tradition: teachers advise that at the first sign of dwelling the mind should be turned to the Lord's name and form, so that the attention has somewhere to go.

What if the chain has already reached anger?

Bear it, and do not act in it. The Gita says that one who can bear the surge of desire and anger is a yogi and happy (Gita 5.23). It also gives the order of work: restrain the senses first, then destroy this enemy (Gita 3.41), and steady the lower self by the higher Self (Gita 3.43). Bearing is not hiding; it is the refusal to let the heat decide what is said and done. From the tradition: forbearance is counted among the highest strengths of a seeker. The story of the sage Vishwamitra shows why. His gathered merit was lost to anger and he had to begin his penance again, which tells us two things at once: anger spends even the strongest practice, and new effort recovers it.

Can desire itself be good?

Yes. The Lord says that He is the desire that is not contrary to righteousness (Gita 7.11). The sage is content in the Self by the Self (Gita 2.55), and whatever he wants is held against that contentment. A wish to learn, to serve, to look after one's family is of this kind; it does not cling, and it does not turn to anger when it is delayed. From the tradition: the one desire a seeker is told to keep is the desire for liberation, because it ends the other wants instead of feeding them. The chain concerns the desire that grows out of dwelling on objects and turns into anger.

Why is ruin the last step and not suffering or death?

Because ruin means a fall from the aim of life, which a person can reach or lose while living. The verse does not describe a punishment after death. It describes the person being lost to himself. A man can be alive, busy and well fed, and ruined in this sense. The Gita holds that even an unfinished effort is not lost, here or after (Gita 6.40), so ruin in this verse is the fate of one who has stopped striving. From the tradition: the human aim is what is lost, and the epic shows it in Duryodhana. His envy of the Pandavas' glory became anger, his anger took away his judgement, and he brought ruin on his house.

What takes the place of objects when the mind stops dwelling?

The Supreme. Even the taste for objects ceases on seeing the Supreme (Gita 2.59); restraint alone leaves the taste behind. From the Gita: the Lord asks that the mind be fixed on Him (Gita 12.8), restrained and devoted (Gita 2.61). So the remedy is not an empty mind but a mind with a worthy object, and a mind that rests there is not left hungry. From the tradition: the mind must rest somewhere, and the Lord's name and form are given as the place where it can rest without being bound.

The verses give the direction, the rest of the Gita gives the way, and the tradition gives the example and the support.

What this reading rests on

The verses are read from the site's own verse data. Where the tradition is cited, it is given as the tradition's reading, and the three streams of commentary are described without naming teachers.

Where to read next

The simple reading tells the chain through one afternoon, and the detailed reading takes the seven steps one by one. The Enemy Called Desire follows, and the path Anger and Desire carries the teaching to attraction and aversion, the next stop.