Gita 6.28

Dhyana Yoga

युञ्जन्नेवं सदात्मानं योगी विगतकल्मषः । सुखेन ब्रह्मसंस्पर्शमत्यन्तं सुखमश्नुते ॥२८॥

yuñjann evaṁ sadātmānaṁ yogī vigata-kalmaṣaḥ | sukhena brahma-saṁsparśam atyantaṁ sukham aśnute ||28||

In essence: The yogi who constantly engages in yoga, freed from impurity, EASILY touches the infinite—what once was effort becomes effortless joy.

A conversation between a seeker and guide to help you feel this verse deeply

Sadhak-Guru Dialogue

Sadhak: "Guruji, this verse says the yogi enjoys infinite happiness 'easily'—sukhena. But my practice feels anything but easy. Every meditation is a struggle. How can I reach this effortlessness?"

Guru: "What are you struggling against?"

Sadhak: "My mind, I suppose. Restless thoughts, desires that keep arising, drowsiness sometimes, other times too much energy. The meditation instructions seem simple but the execution is incredibly hard."

Guru: "Tell me—when you learned to walk as a child, was it easy or hard?"

Sadhak: "I don't remember, but I imagine it was very hard at first. Lots of falling."

Guru: "And now? Is walking hard?"

Sadhak: "No, it's completely effortless. I don't even think about it."

Guru: "What changed? Did you develop superhuman leg strength? Did walking become objectively easier?"

Sadhak: "No... I just got used to it. The neural pathways formed. What was difficult became automatic."

Guru: "Exactly. The verse says the yogi who 'constantly' (sadā) engages in yoga eventually finds it easy. The constancy creates new pathways. The difficulty you experience now is not inherent to meditation—it is the friction of unfamiliarity, the resistance of old habits. With constant practice, new habits form. What required tremendous effort becomes effortless."

Sadhak: "But the verse also says 'freed from impurity'—vigata-kalmaṣaḥ. What are these impurities, and how are they removed?"

Guru: "The impurities are the tendencies that create difficulty: desire for sensory pleasure that pulls attention outward, aversion that creates mental agitation, ignorance that keeps you identified with what you are not. These are not removed by fighting them directly. They are removed by the very practice that they make difficult. Each time you sit despite desire's pull, desire's power diminishes slightly. Each time you return to the Self despite aversion's push, aversion weakens. This is why sadā—constancy—is essential. Impurities are burned slowly, like dross from gold in gentle fire. You don't have to fight them; you have to outlast them."

Sadhak: "What is this 'contact with Brahman'—brahma-saṁsparśam? I understand intellectually that I am Brahman, but I don't feel infinite happiness."

Guru: "Have you ever had a moment—perhaps in meditation, perhaps in nature, perhaps spontaneously—when the sense of separate self temporarily dissolved? When there was just openness, presence, being?"

Sadhak: "Yes, occasionally. Moments when thinking stops and there is just... awareness. They never last long."

Guru: "In those moments, was there suffering?"

Sadhak: "No. If anything, there was a kind of peaceful fullness. But I never thought of it as 'infinite happiness.'"

Guru: "That is brahma-saṁsparśa. The contact itself is not dramatic—it is subtle, quiet, natural. The 'infinite' aspect is not about intensity but about the absence of limitation. In those moments, did you feel any limit? Any boundary to awareness?"

Sadhak: "No, now that you mention it. The boundaries seemed to dissolve."

Guru: "That boundlessness IS atyantam sukham—infinite happiness. You don't recognize it as happiness because you expect happiness to be excitement, intensity, fireworks. Brahmic happiness is more like the happiness of deep dreamless sleep—you realize its nature only by contrast when you wake into limitation again. The established yogi learns to recognize and stabilize in that boundless peace. Then it becomes constant, and then it becomes easy."

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🌅 Daily Practice

🌅 Morning

Practice 'Effortless Effort Meditation' for 20-30 minutes. Sit comfortably and begin with a body scan, releasing tension. Then establish your meditation method (breath awareness, mantra, or self-inquiry). For the first five minutes, notice the effort required—the attention you must maintain, the resistance you encounter. Don't judge, just notice: 'This is how it feels to practice with kalmaṣa (impurity) still present.' Then, for the remainder, experiment with releasing effort while maintaining practice. Don't collapse into distraction; stay present. But see if you can find a way to do the practice that requires less struggle. Ask: 'What would this practice be like if it were easy? What would sukhena (ease) feel like?' You may discover that much of your difficulty comes not from meditation itself but from trying too hard, fighting too much, expecting too little. Let the practice happen rather than making it happen. Notice any moments when it does become briefly effortless—this is a preview of the established state.

☀️ Daytime

Practice 'Constant Contact' (sadā yuñjan) throughout your day. Set the intention that everything you do is yoga—not metaphorically but actually. Walking is walking yoga: stay present with each step. Eating is eating yoga: full attention, gratitude, awareness of nourishment entering the body. Working is karma yoga: skillful action without attachment to results. Conversation is relationship yoga: genuine listening, authentic expression. The key word in the verse is sadā—always. This doesn't mean perpetual formal meditation but perpetual awareness. Can you maintain some background awareness of presence even while fully engaged in activity? This builds the constancy that eventually makes yoga effortless. Don't strain to maintain awareness forcefully. Instead, set an intention at each transition point: before starting a new task, take one conscious breath and reconnect with awareness. This gentle, consistent touching back is more sustainable than forced constant attention.

🌙 Evening

Practice 'Purification Assessment' as a weekly practice (not necessarily daily—perhaps Sunday evening). Sit quietly and honestly assess the state of the main impurities: (1) Desire (kāma): Am I less pulled by sensory cravings than I was last month? Are there desires I used to feel strongly that now have less grip? (2) Aversion (dveṣa): Am I less reactive to situations I dislike? Can I remain centered in circumstances that used to disturb me? (3) Ignorance (avidyā): Am I more frequently aware of awareness itself? Does the sense of being a separate self feel more solid or more transparent? Rate each on a scale of 1-10 compared to when you began practice. This is vigata-kalmaṣa tracking—monitoring the destruction of impurities. You will likely find that progress is real but slow, like watching a child grow: imperceptible day to day but undeniable over months and years. This gives encouragement: you are not struggling in vain. Each practice chips away at kalmaṣa, and one day—perhaps suddenly—what was difficult will become easy. End with gratitude for the process itself.

Common Questions

If practice eventually becomes easy, why do even advanced practitioners sometimes struggle? Teachers speak of dark nights, dry periods, renewed difficulties. Doesn't this contradict the promise of effortlessness?

The ease described here is about the fundamental relationship with practice, not the absence of all challenge. Even established yogis may face difficult life circumstances, physical illness, or deeper layers of karmic purification. The difference is that they face these from a foundation of stability rather than from identification with the struggle. A master swimmer may still encounter strong currents, but their relationship to water remains one of ease—they work with it rather than fighting against it. Additionally, 'dark nights' in advanced practice often involve the dissolution of subtler levels of ego that weren't visible before—this is progress, not regression. The ease Krishna describes is the background context, not the guarantee that no foreground challenges will arise.

The verse mentions 'contact with Brahman' (brahma-saṁsparśam). But if we ARE Brahman, how can there be contact? Doesn't contact require two separate things?

This is a beautiful paradox that reveals the limitations of language. From the absolute perspective, there are not two things to make contact. But from the experiential perspective—which is where the seeker lives until full realization—there IS a sense of touching, meeting, tasting the infinite. Krishna validates this experience rather than dismissing it as illusion. The yogi genuinely feels waves of bliss that seem to come from 'contact' with something vast and boundless. With deeper realization, they understand that the 'contact' was actually the recognition of what they already were—like a wave recognizing it is the ocean. But that recognition FEELS like contact, like meeting, like coming home to something long lost. Eventually, even this sense of contact dissolves into simple being. But that is the end of the journey, not a precondition for starting.

This sounds like practice leads to a permanent state of happiness. But isn't attachment to happiness itself a form of bondage? Shouldn't we be beyond caring about happiness?

There is an important distinction between seeking conditioned happiness (which creates bondage) and discovering unconditioned happiness (which is liberation itself). The yogi does not SEEK infinite happiness—they discover it as their own nature when impurities are removed. This happiness is not an acquisition but a revelation. It is not attached to because it is not separate from the Self—how can you be attached to what you are? Furthermore, this happiness is not dependent on anything, so it cannot be lost. Attachment is fear of loss; where there is no possibility of loss, there is no attachment. The yogi is indeed beyond 'caring about' happiness in the sense of chasing it or fearing its absence. But they are not beyond BEING happiness. Ananda—bliss—is the very nature of Brahman. To realize Brahman IS to be infinite happiness, not to attain it as something external.

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