Wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita 20

The Blessed Lord said:

1. He who performs his bounden duty without leaning to the fruit of action—he is a renouncer of action as well as of steadfast mind: not he who is without fire, nor he who is without action.

2. Know that to be devotion to action, which is called renunciation, O Pândava, for none becomes a devotee to action without forsaking Sankalpa (Resolution).

3. For the man of meditation wishing to attain purification of heart leading to concentration, work is said to be the way: For him, when he has attained such concentration, inaction is said to be the way.

4. Verily, when there is no attachment, either to sense-objects, or to actions, having renounced all Sankalpas, then is one said to have attained concentration.

5. A man should uplift himself by his own self, so let him not weaken this self. For this self is the friend of oneself, and this self is the enemy of oneself.

6. The self,the active part of our nature, is the friend of the self, for him who has conquered himself by this self. But to the unconquered self, this self is inimical, and behaves like an external foe. 

7. To the self-controlled and serene, the Supreme Self is, the object of constant realization, in cold and heat, pleasure and pain, as well as in honor and dishonor.

8. Whose heart is filled with satisfaction by wisdom and realization, and is changeless, whose senses are conquered, and to whom a lump of earth, stone, and gold are the same: that Yogi is called steadfast.

9. He attains excellence who looks with equal regard upon well-wishers, friends, foes, neutrals, arbiters, the hateful, the relatives, and upon the righteous and the unrighteous alike.

—Bhagavad Gita, 6:1-9