Bhagavad Gita 18.22

yat tu kṛtsna-vad ekasmin

kārye saktam ahaitukam

atattvārtha-vad alpaṁ ca

tat tāmasam udāhṛtam

 

That knowledge clings to one small part,

As if it were the whole in heart;

Narrow, groundless, lacking the whole,

Know this as darkened sight of the soul.

 

My dear Lord, my perception is my first tool for functioning in the world. Yet, because I want to feel secure through my perception, I sometimes reduce the world’s complexity to a simplicity that can be simplistic and self-deceptive.

O omniscient Lord, when I believe that I know fully when I know only fragmentarily, I stop seeking to know any further. Thus, I tragically sentence myself to an arrogant ignorance. Indeed, my conviction that I am right becomes the cause of my conviction into ignorance; I unwittingly lock myself into a long imprisonment in not knowing.

O merciful Lord, you try to educate me through those who appeal to my intelligence. Yet I often neglect or reject them, sometimes impudently. Even though I thus reject you, you never reject me. You then teach me through the school of hard knocks—when reality hits me because of what I didn’t care to know. Let me see that pain as your merciful intervention: a cerebral jolt to overturn my false convictions and release me from my self-imposed sentence.

O all-embracing Lord, help me appreciate how you elevate me: whenever I mistake any part to be the whole, you, being the supreme whole, break the part apart and prompt my perception to rise from the part to a bigger whole, ultimately to you.

O infallible Lord, help me focus on what you teach and feel grateful, even when how you teach it feels painful.

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18.22 And that knowledge by which one is attached to one kind of work as the all in all, without knowledge of the truth, and which is very meager, is said to be in the mode of darkness.