Suppose we are driving on a road to a destination. If the road is filled with traffic moving at a snail’s pace, we may find it tiresome to move on, but if our destination is important for us, we won’t turn away just because of the difficulty in driving.

Conversely, if we see an attractive movie playing in a theater along the road, again we won’t stop driving just because of that movie; we will move on towards our destination.

Gita wisdom urges us to have a similar purposeful focus during our life-journey. We are souls who are on a multi-life journey of spiritual evolution towards unending happiness in a loving relationship with the all-attractive whole, Krishna. During our life-journey, the pleasures and pains we encounter are like minor gains or losses. In contrast, the culmination of our spiritual evolution – eternal, ecstatic absorption in Krishna – is so glorious, so eternally fulfilling that everything else pales in comparison.

Therefore, the Bhagavad-gita (05.20) urges us to not get elated on getting the desirable or to get dejected on getting the undesirable; it urges us to remain fixed in spiritual knowledge and spiritual realization, staying free from illusion by virtue of a steady intelligence nourished by philosophical conviction. When we regularly study the Gita, we get the impetus to focus on our purpose and to not get distracted by pleasure or pain. 

Undoubtedly, life’s journey will bring dualities in our life. And some of those may be huge, in terms of promising enormous pleasure or threatening catastrophic pain. But in the long run, they won’t matter much, just as huge pleasures or pains from a decade ago don’t matter much now. What matters ultimately is the evolution of our consciousness. And focusing on that purpose is the way to eternal auspiciousness. 

 

Think it over:

  • What is the purposeful journey that helps us see our present in perspective? 
  • How can we stay focused amidst dualities?
  • What matters most in our life?

 

***

05.20 A person who neither rejoices upon achieving something pleasant nor laments upon obtaining something unpleasant, who is self-intelligent, who is unbewildered, and who knows the science of God is already situated in transcendence.

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