^55:42 Samadhi has been rendered into 'mind' in the above. The generally accepted significance of the term (absorption in God-consciousness produced by deep meditation) would give an equally consistent and happy meaning: Persons attached to pleasure and power cannot have perfect steadiness of mind in divine meditation.

Panegyric words of the Vedas: The Karma Kanda or the sacrificial portion of the Vedas which lays down specific rules for specific actions and their fruits, and extols these latter unduly. Nothing else: Beyond the heavenly enjoyments procurable by the sacrificial rites of the Vedas.

^55:45 The Vedas deal with etc.: That is to say, the Vedas treat of relativity. Pairs of opposites: Dvandva, all correlated ideas and sensations, e.g., good and bad, pleasure and pain, heat and cold, light and darkness, etc.

Guna is a technical term of the Sankhya philosophy: also used in the same sense by the Vedanta. Prakriti or Nature is constituted of three Gunas; Sattva (equilibrium), Rajas (attraction), Tamas (inertia). Prakriti is the three Gunas, not that she has them. Guna is wrongly translated as quality; it is substance as well as quality, matter and force. Wherever there is name and form, there is Guna. Guna also means a rope, that which binds.

^56:46 A man possessed of Self-knowledge has no need whatever of the Vedas. This does not, however, mean that the Vedas are useless; only to the knower of Brahman they have no value, as the transient pleasures derivable from them are comprehended in the infinite bliss of Self-knowledge.

^57:47 Be thou not the producer, etc.: That is, do not work with any desire for results, for actions produce fruits or bondage only if they are performed with desire.

Karma primarily means action, but a much profounder meaning has come to be attached to this word. It means the destiny forged by one in one's past incarnation or present: the store of tendencies, impulses, characteristics, and habits laid by, which determines the future embodiment, environment and the whole of one's organisation.

Another meaning of Karma often used in reference to one's caste or position in life, is duty, the course of conduct which one ought to follow in pursuance of the tendencies which one acquired in one's past, with a view to work them out and regain the pristine purity of the Self.

^59:50 Alike from vice and virtue: A follower of Karma Yoga can have no personal motive for any action. Our action without motive becomes colourless, loses its character of vice or virtue.

Dexterity of work: It is the nature of work to produce bondage. Karma Yoga is the dexterity of work because it not only robs work of its power to bind, but also transforms it into an efficient means of freedom.

^60:52 The taint of illusion: the identifying of the Self with the non-Self, the ego.