Let tolerance increase my intelligence, not my impotence

Bhagavad Gita 2.14

mātrā-sparśās tu kaunteya

śītoṣṇa-sukha-duḥkha-dāḥ

āgamāpāyino ’nityās

tāṁs titikṣasva bhārata

 

“From the contact of senses with their objects come joy and pain,

These are time-bound, like winter’s cold and summer’s rain.

They come and go—forever they never stay,

Tolerate them all, march firm on your way.”

 

My dear Lord, I tend to get so caught up in the concerns of the body—its nourishment, its comfort, and the positions and possessions associated with it—that the emotional drama surrounding the acquiring and retaining of those things becomes the central focus of my life.

Bless me, O Lord, with the intelligence to put first things first. Help me to see the superficiality and temporality of the things related to the body and focus instead on the substantiality and eternality of the things that nourish the soul.

Let me not become indifferent or impotent. When I am dealing with those physical concerns that affect the spiritual, let me not become a passive spectator when faced with atrocity—just as you did not want Arjuna to passively accept the misdeeds of his opponents in the name of tolerance.

Bless me, O Lord, so that I can tolerate the small things in my life and thereby increase my focus on the big things. And bless me, O Lord, to not tolerate or downplay as small things the forces that drive me away from the true big things in my life—cultivating my spirituality by connecting with you and contributing to your service, even in this world at the physical level.

***

02.14 O son of Kuntī, the nonpermanent appearance of happiness and distress, and their disappearance in due course, are like the appearance and disappearance of winter and summer seasons. They arise from sense perception, O scion of Bharata, and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.