V: 20

Chapter 5, Verse 20

"Abiding in the Self,
Calm-hearted and free of bewilderment
They are neither elated by the pleasant
Nor saddened by the unpleasant."

Sri Eknath Easwaran:

"Those rare persons who are able to receive good fortune without getting excited and bad fortune without getting depressed, who are able to treat those who are good to them with love and those who are not good to them with love, will never be deluded by the seeming multiplicities of life. When the mind gets agitated, we do not see life as one. It is the constant agitation of the mind that deludes us into believing that you and I are separate."

Paramahansa Yogananda:

"Ordinary persons do not learn from the lessons inherent in the daily cinema of life. They remain exclusively identified with the pictures, grieving or rejoicing as the case may be. Yogis who roast all seeds of selfish desire in the fire of wisdom become free. Nevertheless, not having finished the effects of past actions, they encounter in the present life positive and negative happenings, such as health and disease, flowing from past Karma. Possessing inner tranquility and the joy of spirit, they are not excited at the advent of good fortune, nor are they depressed by calamity. What do they, in their essential nature, have to do with external events?"

Eckhart Tolle:

"Do you really need to have a reactive like/dislike relationship with life? Or is that just a deep-seated mental habit that can be broken? Not by doing anything, but simply by allowing this moment to be as it is.

A man wins an expensive car in a lottery. His family and friends are happy for him and come to celebrate. 'Isn't it great,' they say, 'you are so lucky!' The man smiles and says, 'Maybe.' For a few weeks he enjoys driving the car. Then one day a texting driver runs a red light and crashes into his car, sending him to the hospital with serious injuries. His family and friends come to see him and say, 'How unfortunate!' Again he smiles and says, 'Maybe.' While he's recovering in the hospital, there is a mudslide and his house falls into the sea in the middle of the night. The next day his family and friends come and say, 'Weren't you lucky to have been here in the hospital!' He responds, 'Maybe.'

The wise man's 'maybes' indicate a refusal to judge anything that happens. Instead of judging what is, he accepts it and so enters into conscious alignment with the higher order. He understands that often it is impossible for the mind to comprehend what place or purpose a seemingly random event has in the tapestry of the whole. But there are no random events, nor are there events nor things that exist by and for themselves in isolation. The atoms that make up your body were once forged inside stars, and the causes of even the smallest events are virtually infinite and connected with the whole in incomprehensible ways. The cosmos is only apparently chaotic. The very word 'cosmos' means 'order,' but this order is not an order that the human mind can comprehend though it can sometimes glimpse it."