Steady Your Intelligence, Go Beyond Opposites🔗

Kṛṣṇa goes on to explain the characteristics of one who is Supreme. He says that one who is of steady intelligence, one who does not get caught in the play of opposing emotions or patterns like pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, is truly not deluded and is established in the truth, and in the Supreme.

This is actually a sūtra, a technique that Kṛṣṇa gives. If we put our attention neither on pleasure nor on pain, but between the two, we actually go beyond both and transcend the play of the mind.

What do we normally do? If we are in pain, we try to run away from it. If we are in pleasure, we try to cling onto it. Understand that both pleasure and pain are of the mind. They are based on our saṁskāras, root thought patterns from our past. They are not of the being.

For example, if we have a headache, don't try to resist it. Just witness it. As the tree is there, as the night is there, so also the headache is there. On the other hand, if we are very happy, don't try to cling onto it. Whether it is happiness or pain, just be a witness to it.

Normally we either suppress or express our desires. Suppression does not lead to elimination of that desire. It temporarily blocks access, but that desire will rise with renewed vigor again. Expression also does not mean completion. Again and again, the desire will rise even after repeated expression because we rarely experience anything with completion.