Bhagavad Gita 11.32

śrī-bhagavān uvāca

kālo ’smi loka-kṣaya-kṛt pravṛddho

lokān samāhartum iha pravṛttaḥ

ṛte ’pi tvāṁ na bhaviṣyanti sarve

ye ’vasthitāḥ pratyanīkeṣu yodhāḥ

 

I am time, the world-destroying flame,

Arriving here with deathly aim;

Even without your arrows in play,

These warriors are doomed this day.

 

My dear Lord, among all realities, death is the most denied, the most dreaded, and yet the most definite. Nonetheless, when I learn to become conscious of you, it changes my vision of everything—even death.

O all-including Lord, you declare that it is you yourself who come as death. As you are always benevolent, your emphasis is not on how death finishes everything at the material level, but how it furnishes a portal to another level of being. Though death is destructive, it is meant to inspire me to be creative in my choices. My most consequential choice is in learning balance as I live as an eternal spiritual being within a temporary material world. This balance centers on learning how to hold on while letting go. Help me to hold on to what draws my heart closer to you, even when it feels demanding. And help me let go of what pulls my heart away from you, even when it feels tempting.

O merciful Lord, whether I live for the devotionally supportive or the devotionally disruptive is a choice I must make at every moment. If I do not become aware of how destructive death can be, I may never contemplate and confront this choice with gravity and urgency. Bless me to choose you more consciously and more creatively, so that I may relish your presence, both here and hereafter.

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11.32 The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds, and I have come here to destroy all people. With the exception of you [the Pāṇḍavas], all the soldiers here on both sides will be slain.