Bhagavad Gita 18.32

adharmaṁ dharmam iti yā

manyate tamasāvṛtā

sarvārthān viparītāṁś ca

buddhiḥ sā pārtha tāmasī

 

Shrouded in darkness, it takes wrong for right,

And sees all things with distorted sight;

Mistaking dharma for adharma’s way—

That is intelligence lost in darkness’ sway.

 

My dear Lord, whenever I feel dissatisfied, my intelligence is meant to help me determine the cause and address it appropriately. But at present, my intelligence has become diluted, even distorted by tamas. That is why it often diagnoses the very cause of my dissatisfaction as its cure, thereby aggravating and perpetuating my detention in dissatisfaction.

O omniscient Lord, you know how deceptively the forces of illusion work. Whenever I feel dissatisfied, those forces offer a prompt diagnosis of its cause: I am not getting a particular external object to which I have become attached and which I see as a source of instant pleasure. Believing that diagnosis, I overlook the vital truth: that very object has actually enticed and entrapped me in mundane consciousness. That’s how I am dragged away, and kept away, from endeavors that are more meaningful, more fulfilling, and more harmonious with your grand plans for me.

O enlightened and enlightening Lord, when I thus become alienated from you and your plans to enrich my heart with enduring meaning, that spiritual distancing is the root cause of my dissatisfaction. Even though the forces of illusion will try relentlessly to misdirect me further away from you, please protect my intelligence from succumbing to their sinister seduction.

O benevolent Lord, rectify and sanctify my intelligence so that it sees and seeks you—and service to you in various and vigorous ways—as my source of supreme satisfaction.

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18.32 That understanding which considers irreligion to be religion and religion to be irreligion, under the spell of illusion and darkness, and strives always in the wrong direction, O Pārtha, is in the mode of ignorance.