Chapter 4: Jñāna Karma Sannyāsa Yoga – Renunciation of Actions through Enlightenment: Verse 33
श्रेयान्द्रव्यमयाद्यज्ञाज्ज्ञानयज्ञ: परन्तप ।
सर्वं कर्माखिलं पार्थ ज्ञाने परिसमाप्यते ॥
śreyān-dravya-mayād-yajñāj-jñāna-yajña: parantapa
sarvaṃ karmākhilaṃ pārtha jñāne parisamāpyate – 4.33
Jñāna-yajña, the sacrifice done through wisdom, is superior to the one in which materials are offered. All activities, O Partha, have their culmination in wisdom alone.
Chapter 4: Jñāna Karma Sannyāsa Yoga – Renunciation of Actions through Enlightenment - Verse 33
Ma Gurupriya
Krishna is making a summary evaluation of yajñas in general. Yajñas, he clarifies, are twofold, material and knowledge sacrifices. In material sacrifices, ghee, boiled rice, etc. are offered into blazing fire chanting sacred mantras. Knowledge sacrifice has nothing like this.
Activities are fourfold: Sensory-cum-bodily, oral, mental and intelligential. Each is superior to the preceding one. Intelligential activity tops the list. Knowledge sacrifice falls in this highest level.
Even otherwise, says Krishna, all activities, including sacrifices culminate in knowledge. For, every activity proceeds, subsists and concludes in the mind alone. The experience, knowledge and memory resulting from each performance rest with the intelligence.
Material-sacrifices have indefinite, often invisible outcome, but that of knowledge-sacrifice is immediate, like Krishna’s words imparting knowledge to Arjuna.
