Bhagavad Gita 5.13

sarva-karmāṇi manasā

sannyasyāste sukhaṁ vaśī

navadvāre pure dehī

naiva kurvan na kārayan

 

“With mind renouncing every deed,

The wise find a divine joy indeed.

In the city of nine gates, residing without misidentifying,

Neither acting, nor inciting others to action entangling.”

 

Let me, my Lord, remember that my body is just the city in which I presently reside. Just as a seasoned traveler resides in different cities at different times, I, as the soul, have lived in many bodies in the past. It is simply by circumstance, determined by my past karma, that  now I happen to be in my present body.

Grant me, O Lord, this dispassionate vision of my body, so that I neither mistake it to be my identity nor seek pleasure in the bodily senses and their functional activity.

Whenever I reside in a city, my Lord, I want its basic maintenance to go on. Similarly,  I want the continuation of whatever necessary inflow and outflow is required for the maintenance of my body. But just as I never mistake the city’s maintenance and transactions to be sources of pleasure or distress, let me also never mistake bodily maintenance and its functions for  sources of true happiness or suffering.

Help me, O Lord, to reside in the city of the body without interfering with what is necessary for its maintenance and without becoming agitated when the senses functionally contact their corresponding sense objects—such as when the tongue contacts food for the sake of bodily sustenance.

Please, O Lord, help me find happiness in remembering and serving you, and not in the fleeting contact of the senses with sense objects, even if such contact seems titillating.

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05.13 When the embodied living being controls his nature and mentally renounces all actions, he resides happily in the city of nine gates [the material body], neither working nor causing work to be done.