Bhagavad Gita 10.12

arjuna uvāca

paraṁ brahma paraṁ dhāma pavitraṁ paramaṁ bhavān

puruṣaṁ śāśvataṁ divyam ādi-devam ajaṁ vibhum

 

Arjuna said: You are the Supreme Brahman divine,

The supreme abode, purity sublime.

The eternal person, the primal one,

Unborn, all-pervading, resplendent as the sun.

 

My dear Lord, when I contemplate your supreme position—as far as my finite mind can grasp it—I appreciate the distinct, even unique, dimensions of loving you as contrasted with loving anyone else. While the emotion of love is a universal human longing, and I can experience it toward many things, people, or even ideas, that emotion reaches its most independent and transcendent expression when directed toward you.

Love directed toward anything else—when that thing is seen as separate from you—is misdirected love, for it becomes conditional and conditioned. It is conditional, depending on particular factors—whether the person is alive, available, interested, compatible, and reciprocal. It is also conditioned, binding me to those very conditions that sustain it; my whole life can become fixated on, even reduced to, struggling and worrying about maintaining them. That’s why loving anything other than you by seeing it as outside you is limiting, whereas loving you is liberating.

O all-attractive Lord, may my head’s conception of you and my heart’s aspiration for you unite—empowering me to seek you as the supreme reality to be realized and relished, in this moment and through every moment of eternity.

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10.12 I am the goal, the sustainer, the master, the witness, the abode, the refuge and the most dear friend. I am the creation and the annihilation, the basis of everything, the resting place and the eternal seed.