Mahabharata — Shanti Parva, Shloka 55

श्रेयो-धर्मकर्मविचारः

Inquiry into Śreyas, Dharma, and Karma

Devanagari script

शुद्धां गतिं तां परमां परैति शुद्धेन नित्यं मनसा विचिन्वन्‌ । ततोडव्ययं स्थानमुपैति ब्रह्म दुष्प्रापमभ्येति स शाश्वतं वै

Transliteration

śuddhāṃ gatiṃ tāṃ paramāṃ paraiti śuddhena nityaṃ manasā vicinvan | tato 'vyayaṃ sthānam upaiti brahma duṣprāpam abhyeti sa śāśvataṃ vai ||

Translation

ဘိဿမက ဆိုသည်—စိတ်ကို အမြဲသန့်ရှင်းစွာ ထိန်းထားပြီး ထိုအပြစ်ကင်းသည့် အမြင့်ဆုံး ပန်းတိုင်ကို မပြတ်မနား ဆင်ခြင်သူသည် မလွဲမသွေ ထိုပန်းတိုင်ကို ရောက်ရှိမည်။ ထို့နောက် မပြောင်းလဲသော အနေအထား—ဘြဟ္မန်—သို့ ရောက်ကာ ရယူရန် ခက်ခဲသော်လည်း အစဉ်တည်မြဲသော ထိုအမှန်တရား၌ တည်ငြိမ်စွာ တည်နေ၏။

Word by Word

• {'śuddhām': 'pure, stainless (accusative singular feminine)', 'gatim': 'goal, course, state of attainment', 'paramām': 'supreme, highest', 'paraiti': 'attains, reaches', 'śuddhena ... manasā': 'with a purified mind', 'nityam': 'always, continually', 'vicinvan': 'reflecting on, investigating, contemplating', 'tataḥ': 'then, thereafter', 'avyayam': 'imperishable, unchanging', 'sthānam': 'abode, station, state', 'upaiti': 'approaches, reaches', 'brahma': 'Brahman

• the absolute reality', 'duṣprāpam': 'hard to attain', 'abhyeti': 'comes to, attains', 'śāśvatam': 'eternal, everlasting', 'vai': 'indeed, truly (emphatic particle)'}

Speaker

भीष्म उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Bhishma
• Brahman

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

Steady contemplation with a consistently purified mind leads to the highest attainment: realization of the supreme goal and establishment in the imperishable, eternal Brahman.

What is happening in the narrative?

In Bhishma’s instruction during the Shanti Parva, he describes the inner discipline and result of spiritual pursuit: the seeker who maintains mental purity and reflects on the supreme path ultimately reaches Brahman, the eternal and unchanging state.