IV: 22

Chapter 4, Verse 22

"What God's will bestows,
The wise ones receive
And are contented.
Pain follows pleasure;
They are not troubled.
In success or in failure,
They are even-minded.
Their works do not bind."

Sri Aurobindo

"All dualities are surpassed and reconciled. Good happenings and evil happenings, so important to the human soul subject to desire, are to the wise ones equally welcome, since by their mingled strand are worked out the developing forms of the eternal good. There can be no defeat, since all are moving towards the divine victory on the battlefield of Nature, the field of doings which provides the framework for the evolving Dharma. Every turn of the conflict has been designed by the foreseeing eye of the Master of the battle, the Lord of works, and the guide of the Dharma."

Sri Eknath Easwaran

"The nature of life is to bring us sunshine and shadow, pleasure and pain, success and failure, and praise and censure. These inescapable dualities always surround us. When Ramana Maharshi used to tell people to go beyond pleasure and pain, they would ask, 'Won't that make us indifferent?' His answer would be, 'On the contrary, when you go beyond pleasure and pain, you live in abiding joy.' Pleasure and pain come and go, but this is the joy that abides."

Eckhart Tolle

"You don't need to be a Christian to understand the deep, universal truth contained in symbolic form in the image of the cross. This cross is an instrument of torture. It stands for the most extreme pain, limitation, and helplessness that a human being can encounter. Then, suddenly, that human being surrenders, undergoes the ordeal willingly and consciously, as expressed through the words, 'Not my will but thy will be done.' At that moment, the cross reveals its hidden face as a sacred symbol of the divine. That which seemed to deny the existence of any transcendental dimension to life, through surrender becomes an opening into that dimension."