Bhagavad Gita 12.7

teṣām ahaṁ samuddhartā
mṛtyu-saṁsāra-sāgarāt
bhavāmi na cirāt pārtha
mayy āveśita-cetasām

 

For them I swiftly become the guide,
Lifting them from death’s vast tide;
In delivering them, I do not delay—
Their hearts in me, I clear their way.

 

My dear Lord, sometimes I feel as if I am being powerlessly tossed here and there by life’s events, as if I am a mere twig in a vast ocean. In those moments, help me remember your one gift that nothing in life can ever take away: my power to choose what I love. And ultimately, my destiny is determined by how I exercise that power in choosing my object of love.

O supreme friend, let me not misconceive love as merely something that fills me with spontaneous attraction or unshakeable absorption. Help me appreciate that this is only one aspect of love, an aspect that is largely not in my control. But love, in terms of what I give my attention to, what I cherish as my aspiration, what I make the object of my action—this is indeed within my control.

O merciful Lord, it is this volitional and intentional sense of love that you emphasize when you repeatedly exhort me to remember you. Through such remembrance, I offer you my attention and cultivate you as my aspiration. And when by your mercy, I become purified, then I will experience the attraction and the absorption too.

O supreme lover, you test my love for you by expecting from me only those those aspects that are in my control, and you grant me the taste of love for you by enriching me with those aspects that are beyond my control.

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12.07 [But those who worship Me,] …, having fixed their minds upon Me, O son of Pṛthā – for them I am the swift deliverer from the ocean of birth and death.