Bhagavad Gita 6.23

taṁ vidyād duḥkha-saṁyoga-

viyogaṁ yoga-saṁjñitam

 

“Know this to be yoga, the divine connection,

From all sorrow, it grants full disconnection.”

 

My dear Lord, you want the best for me. Therefore, you provide the various paths of yoga that are ultimately meant to remove distress at its root. And that root cause is my disconnection from you.

In loving you and in being loved by you, my Lord, I can relish a joy that knows no parallel. But when I somehow start looking for substitutes for you, I set myself up for distress. Nothing, my Lord, can offer even a drop of the ocean of joy that comes from having a loving connection with you.

And the more feverishly I seek pleasure in anything other than you, the more I experience trouble, while simultaneously going further away from you. In doing so, I set myself up for even more distress.

You are so merciful, my Lord, that you interrupt my downward trajectory and offer me an alternative upward trajectory through the path of yoga. Bless me, my Lord, so that I can follow this path diligently to its culmination in loving absorption in you. When I am thus absorbed, that divine connection will drive out from within me any infatuation or inclination for worldly sources of pleasure—sources that are, in truth, nothing more than sources of trouble. 

Thus, my Lord, yoga is the divine connection that provides me disconnection from distress. Let me treasure every opportunity to practice yoga as your greatest blessing.

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06.23 This indeed is actual freedom from all miseries arising from material contact.