वैराग्य

Vairagya is freedom from raga, the pull of attraction. A mind with vairagya still sees, hears and tastes; what it has lost is the tug that makes it run after one thing and recoil from another.

The word stands in the list of supports for a steady mind in the eighteenth chapter. The seeker keeps quiet hours, eats lightly, restrains speech, body and mind, is given to meditation and takes refuge in dispassion (Gita 18.52). The verse before it asks the seeker to put attraction and aversion aside (Gita 18.51). Dispassion is that same letting go, held as a settled habit of the mind.

The Gita does not ask for a life without objects. The one who moves among the objects of the senses with the senses free of attraction and aversion gains serenity (Gita 2.64).

Common misreading: that dispassion means disliking the world, going cold toward people, or giving up everything.

Better sense: what is let go is the clutch, not the world. A person can work, love and own things, and still be free of their pull.

The topic that places dispassion in the whole road of karma yoga is Freedom Through Action.