📿 Shloka Collection

Atmaupamyena Sarvatra

Gita 6.32 Bhagavad Gita
📖 Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 6 — Atma Samyama Yoga
आत्मौपम्येन सर्वत्र समं पश्यति योऽर्जुन ।
सुखं वा यदि वा दुःखं स योगी परमो मतः ॥
Atmaupamyena sarvatra samam pashyati yo'rjuna
Sukham va yadi va duhkham sa yogi paramo matah
आत्मौपम्येन
by comparison with oneself
सर्वत्र समम् पश्यति
sees equally everywhere
यः अर्जुन
who, O Arjuna
सुखम् वा यदि वा दुःखम्
whether joy or sorrow
स योगी परमः मतः
that yogi is considered the highest

After all the philosophy of oneness and all the meditation instructions, Krishna lands on something startlingly simple. The highest yogi is the one who feels other people's happiness and pain as if they were his own. That is it.

'Atmaupamya' means measuring by oneself. When someone else is hurting, the yogi thinks: 'If that were happening to me, I would suffer too.' When someone else is joyful, the yogi shares that gladness. This is not abstract philosophy. It is empathy — direct, gut-level, human.

Krishna calls this yogi 'parama' — the supreme, the highest. Not the one who can sit in meditation the longest. Not the one who knows the most scripture. The one who cannot see another person's pain without feeling it. That is the mark of the greatest yogi.

This shloka closes the sama-darshana section (6.29-32). It began with a philosophical vision of the Self in all beings and ends here with its most practical expression: treating others' feelings as your own.

The principle of 'atmaupamya' — comparing others' experience to one's own — appears across Indian traditions. The Buddhist practice of metta (loving-kindness) rests on the same foundation: recognizing that every being desires happiness and fears suffering, just as I do.

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