When a storm hits, it can reduce things to debris but it can also sweep away debris.

Similarly, when storm-like problems hit us, we may feel helpless and horrified as things dear to us are reduced to debris. While we can’t always stop such wreckage, we don’t have to let it wreck us – that is, we don’t have to become bitter, beaten or broken. We can instead turn towards Gita wisdom.

No worldly storm, however devastating, can damage our essence, our spiritual core. The Bhagavad-gita (02.23) states that the soul – the real me – can’t be cut, burnt, withered, dissolved or destroyed in any way. The soul is meant for an eternal life of love with the supreme soul, Krishna. Attaining that eternal, ecstatic life is the purpose and perfection of our existence.

Unfortunately, being spiritually ignorant, we become attached not to Krishna but to worldly things. All worldly things are perishable, whether by gradual deterioration or by sudden devastation. By becoming attached to temporary things, we set our hopes for happiness to be reduced to debris. In fact, such ill-fated attachments themselves comprise the debris around the soul – they are the misconceptions that wreck the soul’s longing for happiness.

When we let the Gita shape our response to life’s storms, we fervently seek Krishna’s shelter by intensely practicing bhakti-yoga. The solace and strength we experience therein confirms for us the reality of his shelter-giving potency. Coupled with our experience of the doomed nature of worldly things, this realization inspires us to redirect our attachments towards him wholeheartedly, thus sweeping away the debris of misconceptions that keep us attached to the temporary. As the debris around the soul goes away, we increasingly treasure our inviolable relationship with Krishna and gaining strength thereof respond to adversity with maturity.

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