Bhagavad Gita 16.12

āśā-pāśa-śatair baddhāḥ

kāma-krodha-parāyaṇāḥ

īhante kāma-bhogārtham

anyāyenārtha-sañcayān

 

Bound by hundreds of desire-shackles,

Falling to lust and anger’s tackles;

They seek pleasure, driven by craving,

And hoard by unfair, illegal exploiting.

 

My dear Lord, I tend to identify as mine the desires that arise inside me, yet most of those desires don’t work for me; they work on me, casting a spell that makes me act against my best interests.

O omniscient Lord, you know my inner world far better than I do. You see how impressions in my mind arise as inner propositions. You perceive the danger when I, out of naivety, gullibility, or weakness, indulge in those propositions. And most importantly, you recognize unsentimentally how my repeated indulgences make those propositions into impositions, sentencing me to their slavery. Grant me the sight to see my plight, as you see it.

O benevolent Lord, as long as I am under the spell of desires, I tend to justify all that I do to pander to them–even when I violate my inner boundaries of intelligence or integrity, or the outer boundaries of love or law. Despite such pathetic pandering, the pleasure they promise never arrives. When their spell is thus exposed and before I am exposed to their next spell, you grant me a few precious moments to see for myself how running after those desires is ruining me.

O merciful Lord, let me tap those brief moments of disillusionment with illusory desires to call out to you–urgently, fervently, desperately. Help me redirect my head and heart toward you, the supremely desirable Lord of my heart.

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16.12 Bound by a network of hundreds of thousands of desires and absorbed in lust and anger, they secure money by illegal means for sense gratification.