Bhagavad Gita 2.69

yā niśā sarva-bhūtānāṁ

tasyāṁ jāgarti saṁyamī

yasyāṁ jāgrati bhūtāni

sā niśā paśyato muneḥ

 

“What is night to the worldly, to the wise is the day,

While others chase desires, they walk a different way.

When the world is awake in illusion’s fleeting pleasure,

The sage rests serene in wisdom’s enduring treasure.”

 

My dear Lord, becoming devoted to you requires me to make a bold choice—the choice to walk a path opposite in values and purpose to most of the world. It is like swimming upstream when almost everyone around me is prodding, even pushing, me to go downstream with the current. While the mainstream culture often urges people to be different, they all drive people to seek the same old things—sensual pleasures and material treasures.The current of the world will never take me to you, O Lord.

 If I want to come toward you, I need the courage of conviction to be truly different—not in the superficial way of adopting extraordinary, and frequently extraordinarily expensive, lifestyle products; but in the truly substantial way of having desires that are categorically different from the desires most people have: having spiritual desires for you. The current of the world is nothing but the combined current of my own senses and the senses of millions like me, forming a formidable force. Bless me, O Lord, so that the current of my desire for you becomes strong enough to counter the opposite current of my mind and senses. My desire for you is weak—wretchedly weak. You alone, O Lord, can make that desire strong—supernaturally strong. 

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02.69 What is night for all beings is the time of awakening for the self-controlled; and the time of awakening for all beings is night for the introspective sage.

Let my desire for you be stronger than the world’s currents