Vairagya

Vairagya (वैराग्य) — dispassion, literally “the coloring (raga) gone out” — is the withdrawing of craving from the transient: together with discrimination (viveka), one of the two wings of the classical path.

Overview

Patanjali pairs vairagya with abhyasa (practice) as the means of stilling the mind’s vrittis, and grades it up to para-vairagya — the highest dispassion, free even of attachment to the gunas and to liberation itself. The Bhagavad Gita reframes renunciation as inner: action without craving. The literary classic is Bhartrihari’s Vairagya Shataka, the “century of dispassion” whose royal author (in the legend) renounced the throne; the bhakti movements softened vairagya into “vairagi” — the wandering lover of God — making dispassion toward the world and passion for the Lord one gesture.

Significance

Vairagya is the path’s ascetic pole — the answer to the question of what to do with desire — and its graded, non-violent reading (dispassion, not suppression) is Vedanta and Yoga’s distinctive contribution to renunciation.

Verification notes

• The Yoga Sutras grading and the Gita’s teaching are canonical; the Vairagya Shataka’s attribution is traditional.
• Audited against Wikipedia (September 2026).