Live the Bhāgavatam · SB 11.23.59
Ūti· What drives us to actMental Confusion Creates Friends and Enemies
“No other force besides his own mental confusion makes the soul experience happiness and distress. His perception of friends, neutral parties and enemies and the whole material life he builds around this perception are simply created out of ignorance.”
What the purport teaches
- The soul's experience of material happiness and distress comes from mental confusion. Perceiving people as friends, neutral parties and enemies arises from ignorance.
- People work hard to please friends, defeat enemies and preserve their relations with neutral parties. Much of material life is built around these distinctions.
- These relationships are based on the material body and do not endure beyond its death. The purport calls this bodily understanding material illusion.
Try this today
Notice one person you label an enemy or a friend, and reflect on how that label depends on bodily circumstances.
Ask yourself
How much of your effort is shaped by trying to please friends or defeat perceived enemies?
Carry the question through the day, then answer it in your own words before sleep.
From Canto 10, chapter 14 onward, the translation and purports were completed by Śrīla Prabhupāda's disciples after his departure, and published by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust.