Bhagavad Gita - Chapter 2


Arjuna asks, "How can I recognize such a man?"

And Krishna replies:

They live in wisdom

Who see themselves in all and all in them.

Whose love for the Lord of Love has consumed

Every selfish desire and sense-craving

Tormenting the heart. Not agitated

By grief nor hankering after pleasure,

They live free from lust and fear and anger.

Fettered no more by selfish attachments,

They are not elated by good fortune

Nor depressed by bad. Such are the seers...

 

When you keep thinking about sense-objects,

Attachment comes. Attachment breeds desire,

The lust of possession which, when thwarted,

Burns to anger. Anger clouds the judgement

And robs you of the power to learn from past

Mistakes. Lost is the discriminative

Faculty, and your life is utter waste.

 

But when you move amidst the world of sense,

From both attachment and aversion freed,

There comes the peace in which all sorrows end,

And you live in the wisdom of the Self.

 

The disunitied mind is far from wise;

How can it meditate? How be at peace?

When you know no peace, how can you know joy?

When you let your mind follow the siren

Call of the senses, they carry away

Your better judgement as a cyclone drives

A boat off the charted course to its doom.

 

They are forever free who have broken

Out of the ego-cage of I and mine

To be united with the Lord of Love,

This is the supreme state. Attain thou this

And pass from death to immortality.