02.29: Life’s amazing secret

The Bhagavad-gita (2.29) indicates that wise people, on coming to know about the soul, look upon it as amazing. Their amazement is largely due to recognizing that much of what they were searching at the level of the body was always their own at the level of the soul.

They wanted to look beautiful at the level of the body – a desire that was sabotaged for many people by the looks they are born with and was sabotaged for everyone by the passage of time and the setting in of age. Yet all along as souls, they had always been beautiful.

They wanted to attract the love of others at the level of the body – a desire that was sabotaged by the rejection of some, the neglect of others and the departure of the few who fulfilled that desire temporarily. Yet all along as souls, they had always attracted the love of the most loving and lovable person, Krishna.

Their amazement is because they understand that they themselves had sabotaged their longing for beauty and love by looking for it in the wrong place: in the body instead of the soul.

When they understand that they are souls, not bodies, they are charmed by the simplicity and the profundity of life’s amazing secret: the path to happiness is not acquisition, but realization.