Sthitaprajña

Sthitaprajña, “one whose wisdom is steady”, is the Bhagavad Gītā’s portrait of the realized person. Arjuna asks how such a one speaks, sits and walks (II.54), and Kṛṣṇa answers in some of the poem’s best-known verses (II.55–72): this person has cast off every desire of the mind and is content in the Self by the Self; is not shaken by sorrow nor eager for pleasure; is free of passion, fear and anger.

Two images carry the teaching. As a tortoise draws in its limbs, the wise one draws the senses back from their objects (II.58). As the ocean receives the rivers and stays full and unmoved, so desires enter the wise one and leave them at peace (II.70). The passage ends with the state it calls “resting in Brahman”, which, reached even at the hour of death, leads to the peace of Brahman (II.72).

The portrait matters because it describes liberation as a way of living, not only a state attained at death. Gandhi recited these verses every evening, and Indian tradition has read them as a description of the jīvanmukta, the one liberated while alive.