Chapter 4 verse 22

[Jitendra Hydonus]

That man of action is free from Karma receives with contentment whatever befalls him who is poised above the dualities who is devoid of jealousy or envy or enmity and who looks equally on gain and loss.

[Jitendra Hydonus]

The Wiseman sees the spirit everywhere. Devoid of longing for self and of any will to gratify selfish desires, he is content to receive whatever comes naturally for fulfilling the needs of his body, mind, and soul. He rises above all dualities, the manifestations of which are either good or evil; both cause bondage. Having found the unity, he has no consciousness of “me and mine” He entertains no inimical thoughts towards anyone, beholding in all the one spirit. Attaining the ultimate, he is indifferent to worldly success and failure. In performing dutiful actions for God, he is ever nonattached and unbound.

By “contentment” a Yogi displays his faith in the Lord’s power to a final good. Free of selfish desires, happy and fulfilled within himself, he automatically relinquishes the excess material baggage of unnecessary “necessities“ and egotistical strivings in favor of God-ordained dutiful actions for God imposed upon him by his body and his obligations to family, society and the world.

To attain spiritual freedom, the aspiring must also learn to free his mind from extreme sensitivity to cold or heat pain or pleasure. In Indian hermitages the true guru teachers the students not to be affected by externals, that the mind may become an altar for the changelessness of spirit. By catering to the demands of contrary sensations worldly people are unnecessarily restless— one of natures most cunning ploys to keep the consciousness ensnared. The advice in this stanza, however, does not mean that the devotee should deliberately expose himself to extreme cold and catch pneumonia, or burn himself crisp under the midday sun. He should practice titiksha ( dispassionate endurance ) even while adapting reasonable measures to remove external discomfort in the practice of titiksha evenmindedness is cultivated by will an imagination ( powerful suggestion to the mind) neutrality is attained scientifically by yoga meditation where in the Yogi learns to disconnect the ego from the sensations perceived through the mind.

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Continued...

A devotee who cannot remain calm under difficulties is still a slave of the phenomenal world and its calamitous pairs of opposites. Worldly people are constantly catering to the effects of cold and heat and other extremes, thereby increasing the bondage of the soul to the body.

The aspiring devotee must keep the soul uncontaminated from the dual consciousness natural to the body. This practice is difficult because the soul, empathizing with the finicky, sensitive bodily friend, puts on its good and bad characteristics. In order to free the soul from identification with the variable states of the body, the devotee is urged to noncooperate mentally with the misery-making dual consciousness of the body and the mind. The worldly man becomes jubilant at the advent of pleasure and depressed during the reign of pain, but the successful devotee is always inwardly calm, unaffected by the various upheavals that constitute the "normal" state of life.

During sorrow or pain, the yogi remains concentrated on his soul's bliss; unlike the worldly man, he is clever enough to retain his equanimity and joy under all favorable or unfavorable physical or psychological circumstances. He is able to sympathize with sufferers without being overwhelmed by their misery; thus, by his inward joy, he is frequently able to remove the sorrows of others. By the example of his calmness he teaches worldly people not to engage in emotional reactions.

The yogi who is not envious, who bears no enmity toward anyone but accepts friends and foes alike, does not fall into the pits of dangerous anger and jealousy. Worldly people who indulge in these scarring emotions lose not only their happiness but sometimes their bodies too, by committing murder and suffering capital punishment, or alas! by resorting to suicide.

Whether a yogi meets gain or loss in the course of performing dutiful actions, he remains evenminded. Both success and failure are bound to come at various times in response to the inherent duality in the structure of the body, mind, and world; the devotee who constantly reminds himself of his soul has little temptation to identify himself with the physical and mental phantasmagoria.

[Jitendra Hydonus]

Thanks for keeping our studies going Eric!

Chapter II verse 14 Bhagavad Gita; Cross reference to the last entry

Through ignorance, the mind of the ordinary man chooses to be sensitive to imagine itself hurt through the senses. The devotee,  therefore, should lay great stress upon a mental “rising above” cold and heat, pain and temporary pleasures. When a cold or hot sensation invades the body, when a pleasure visits or pain attacks, it tries to overwhelm man’s  mind with the idea that the sensation has an inherent power of permanence. Aware of this “trick”, man should try to adopt a transcendental indifferent attitude in his response to the inroads of all sensations.

When a man adopts a non-excitable state towards sorrows, a non-attached state toward temporary happiness, a stoicism towards irritants that rouse fear and anger and pain, his mind attains an unruffled state of poise. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

Sound familiar?

Of all the loaded words in Stoic philosophy, “indifferent” is one of the most provocative. Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus each tell us that the Stoic is indifferent to external things, indifferent to wealth, indifferent to pain, indifferent to winning, indifferent to hope and dreams and everything else. You hear it enough times and it starts to sound like these people don’t care about anything. Especially since the modern definition of the word means precisely that. But this is a dangerous misreading.
The Stoics were not indifferent in that sense at all, it’s that they were good either way. It’s not that they didn’t care, it’s that they were good either way. Does that make sense? The point was to be strong enough that there wasn’t a need to need things to go in a particular direction. Seneca for his part would say that obviously it’s better to be rich than poor, tall than short, but the Stoic was indifferent when fate actually dealt out its hand on the matter. Because the Stoic was strong enough to make good of it—whatever it was.
Think of that today, that it’s not about apathy or even a lack of expectation. It’s simply the quiet strength of not needing a preference, because you’re that strong.

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And Looking through the eyes of eastern thought instead of Greek it may be called being in tune with divine order and transcending dualities.