Bhagavad Gita 16.8

asatyam apratiṣṭhaṁ te

jagad āhur anīśvaram

aparaspara-sambhūtaṁ

kim anyat kāma-haitukam

 

They say this world is false, ungrounded,

Without a Lord, by chance compounded;

Born of desire, with no higher cause,

Driven by lust, without any laws.

 

My dear Lord, my going away from reality because of the desires in my mind is dangerous. What is far more disastrous is going away from reality because of the conceptions and concoctions of my intelligence.

O unfailing Lord, when a desire is fulfilled and the desirable is exposed as not as enjoyable as I had imagined, or when a desire is frustrated and I am forced to move on without attaining it, the spell of that particular illusion is broken—at least for some time. Even though that spell may return when the desire arises again, it is still temporarily weakened.

O inexhaustible Lord, who are the supreme guide, when my intelligence becomes attached to the unreal, it is not just a fleeting error but a hardened conception that becomes extremely difficult to dismantle. Despite being in illusion, I often feel intellectually superior to those who are not in illusion. Ultimately, however, no such intellectual construction can provide a meaningful life, and I drift toward mundane desires ranging from the trivial to the terrible.

O unfailing Lord, bless me so that I can hold on to you, gaining strength from the glimpses of peace, joy, and love that I experience in remembering you. May your mercy help both my mind and intelligence reject the unreal as unreal and accept the real as real—and most importantly, recognize you as the supreme reality, the ground of all realities.

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16.08 They say that this world is unreal, with no foundation, no God in control. They say it is produced of sex desire and has no cause other than lust.