BG 2.14
TRANSLATION
O son of Kunti, the appearances of happiness and distress, and their disappearance, are like the winter and summer seasons. They arise from sense perception, and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.
EXPLANATION
One of the most practically useful verses in the Gita. Cold and heat come and go — a wise person endures both without losing stability. Pleasure and pain work the same way. They arise, they persist, they pass. The person who has trained themselves to tolerate these fluctuations without being controlled by them has achieved something real: genuine independence from external circumstance. This verse is not a call to not feel — it is a call to feel without being destabilized. The sage who endures these pairs of opposites (dvandvas) without disturbance is described as 'fit for liberation' (2.15).