Bhagavad Gita 15.8

śarīraṁ yad avāpnoti

yac cāpy utkrāmatīśvaraḥ

gṛhītvaitāni saṁyāti

vāyur gandhān ivāśayāt

 

When the soul takes up a frame,

Or leaves a body just the same;

It bears the senses that lead the way,

As winds bear scents while they stray.

 

My dear Lord, my body is only my temporary residence during my journey as a soul through this lifetime. Yet I tend to become so attached to it that I unthinkingly adopt its conceptions of what is desirable.

O inexhaustible Lord, by that irrational illusion of what is desirable, I become locked in the undesirable cycle of repeated birth and death. I am pulled by one desire after another while in this body, and eventually I am pulled, against my own desires, out of this body and thrown into another in the next life. This lock of illusion is such that I am constantly moving and yet going nowhere, forever staying trapped in the undesirable. As I am locked into the undesirable by my own desires, I am like a prisoner who has bolted the door from within and refuses to open it.

O merciful Lord, please illuminate for me the glorious destiny you have prepared—a limitless life where I can rejoice at every moment in reciprocating love with you. Bless me to link with you first through the light of wisdom, and then lock my heart with you through the love that has been searching for you for countless lifetimes.

O supreme guide, please reveal how you are supremely desirable, so that the lock of my desire may become the key that unlocks me from all that is undesirable.

***

15.08 The living entity in the material world carries his different conceptions of life from one body to another, as the air carries aromas. Thus he takes one kind of body and again quits it to take another.