Reading room

Kapila’s teaching to Devahūti (Kapila-gītā, Bhāgavata Purāṇa III.25–33)

Kapila

Nine chapters in which Kapila, presented as an incarnation of Viṣṇu, answers his mother Devahūti, who asks him to free her from attachment to the body and to “mine”. He expounds the Sāṃkhya principles, nature and puruṣa, the practice of yoga and meditation on the divine form, the kinds of devotion according to the three qualities, the cycle of transmigration and the fate of those who live for pleasure. Its thesis is that the mind bound to the qualities enslaves and the mind fixed on God liberates. It ends with Devahūti’s liberation.