Question: The reincarnation theory claims that we are given multiple lives for cumulative learning. However, as we don’t remember our past lives, how do we learn anything from them? Answer: The cumulative learning over multiple lives is the assimilation of essential life-lessons about how to act and how to live, not the recollection of specific…
When we strive for selflessness on the spiritual path and still find ourselves tempted by selfish material pleasures, the thought that we have not yet gone beyond temptations may dishearten us. If we feel thus disheartened, we can take refuge in the encouraging insight offered by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita (5.23). Therein, he explains…
Many people feel that meditation requires some extraordinary ability to concentrate that they don’t possess, so they don’t even try to meditate. However, the fact is that all of us have the ability required for meditation, as is evident whenever we worry. During worry, we let our thoughts take us away from our circumstances to…
Atheistic scientists like Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion present specious arguments to disprove the existence of God. Let’s see how those arguments fall apart on proper scrutiny. I. The designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. If the object in nature is complex and so improbable, the…
In youth, we are mostly in a state of hurry, having so many things to do and imagining that we can bend the world to our will. In middle age, we are mostly in a state of worry, having learnt through life’s hard lessons that so many things may go wrong and fearing that we…
Many of us define success and failure in very narrow terms: when things work according to our plans, we consider that to be success; when things don’t work according to our plans, we consider that to be failure. When our plans don’t work, we often get frustrated and dejected, and start thinking of giving up….
The Srimad Bhagavatam (2.1.12) declares that how long we live is of little importance when compared to for what we live. Everyone lives for love, be it love for survival, money, sense pleasure, fame, sports, family, society, nation or whatever. No matter how fervently we love any of these objects, they connect with superficial and…
The Bhagavad-gita (2.66-67) explains that when we let ourselves forget Krishna and thereby become disconnected from him, we lose our internal happiness and so our intelligence and mind become disoriented by the winds of passing material desires. Thus disoriented, we oscillate between various desire-winds and end up getting carried away by whichever desire-wind happens to…
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story [of the big bang] ends like a bad dream. For the past three hundred years, scientists have scaled the mountain of ignorance and as they pull themselves over the final rock, they are greeted by a band of theologians…
The essential principle of spiritual advancement is an internal redirection of our thoughts from the material to the spiritual, from worldly objects to the source of all those objects: Krishna Because our mind is habituated, even addicted, to contemplating on worldly objects in the hope of getting some pleasure thereof, the prospect of giving up…
Question: Whenever we work, it is the desire for the result that motivates us to work. Why, then, does the Bhagavad-gita recommend that we work without desiring the results? Answer: The Bhagavad-gita recommends working with detachment because obsession with the short-term material results of work can deprive us of the long-term spiritual results. Gita wisdom outlines the sublime art…
In the Bhagavad-gita (11.33), Lord Krishna assures Arjuna of success in his battle against formidable ungodly forces, provided Arjuna just becomes determined to serve. Krishna’s assurance applies not only to the specific, historical battle that Arjuna fought five thousand years ago, but also to the universal, inner battle that all of us have to fight…
The world around us is subject to constant change: change that is often unstoppable, uncontrollable and unpredictable. The Bhagavad-gita (2.14-16) explains that the best way to cope with change is to focus on the unchangeable: our spiritual nature and our spiritual connection with Krishna. This focus energizes us with the confidence that no external change…
Krishna consciousness is essentially a love affair; all its doctrines and all its rituals are meant for helping us revive our love for Krishna. The doctrines can tell us why to love Krishna and the rituals can tell us how to love Krishna, but it is we alone who can choose to love Krishna. If…
Purpose for life: Krishna consciousness helps us understand that life is not a purposeless, doomed sprint from the starting line of birth to the finishing line of death, but is a purposeful multi-life marathon from the arena of death to the arena of deathlessness. Krishna consciousness brings purpose not only to our overall life, but…
Modern science operates on the principle of reductionism, that is, reducing all phenomena in the universe including human behavior, to the interactions of subatomic particles acting according to natural laws and impersonal forces. Eminent scientists have expressed that this basic scientific methodology of reductionism is itself inadequate for understanding life in its completeness. Consider the…
(continued from yesterday) Love for the heart: Our deepest hunger is our heart’s hunger for love. When we are starved of love, that starvation strangles our desire to live; love-less living soon becomes life-less living. To make life worth living, all of us offer our love somewhere, be it to a person or a possession…
When we bring Krishna into our lives by making him its center and goal, the resulting Krishna consciousness provides us three precious gifts: meaning for the head, love for the heart and purpose for the life: Meaning for the head: When we let our head bask in Krishna’s wisdom as given in the Bhagavad-gita, he…
The power of illusion often makes us mistake the means to be the ends and the ends to be the means. Even among believers, many get misled by religious materialism, and mistake the things of this world to be the ends and devotion to God to be the means to acquire and secure those ends….
Question: The reincarnation theory claims that we get our characteristics from our own past-lives karma, whereas genetics asserts that we inherit our characteristics from our parents, which is what we actually observe in the many physical resemblances among parents and offspring. Don’t these observations disprove the reincarnation theory? Answer: No, they don’t. The reincarnation theory…
When we serve Krishna lovingly, he gifts us the intelligence by which we can transform the pains of yesterday and the strains of today into the gains of tomorrow. This special Krishna-bestowed intelligence, which the Bhagavad-gita (10.10) calls as buddhi-yoga, enables us to not just go through, but to grow through, the pains and strains;…
When life makes us demoralized, we need both enlightenment (knowing what to do) and encouragement (feeling confident that we can do it) to regain our morale. Those who encourage without enlightening often end up delivering shallow, cosmetic or insubstantial platitudes. Those who enlighten without encouraging often end up delivering holier-than-thou, impractical or unappealing sermons. Lord Krishna blends…
The great diplomat Chanakya Pandita pointed out that one moment of time is more valuable than wealth equivalent to millions of gold coins, because the wealth, if lost, can be regained, whereas time, is lost, can never be regained; it is irrecoverably gone. Time is not only irrecoverable, but also unstorable. We can choose whether…
The devotional quest rests on the ability to see the substance beyond the surface, the spiritual underlying the material. This ability comes from viveka or “discriminative vision”, which is the intellectual sharpness to cut through at right angles the surface of illusion and access the substance of reality. This metaphysical rationality is missing in worldly…
When we strive to practice devotional service, the power of illusion is ever-waiting to thwart our efforts. If we are casual about our practice, this power straightforwardly drags us down to anti-devotional activities. But if we are somewhat serious, then this power subtly distracts us by messing up our priorities, by making us mistake semi-devotional…
When people desire to play a virtual-reality video game, that desire divorces them from the reality of their identity and propels them into an illusory cyber-world, where they experience artificial-virtual emotions by misidentifying with a video game character. Similarly, the Bhagavad-gita (13.22) describes that when we desire to enjoy material things, that desire divorces us…
Whenever spiritual wisdom-traditions encourage us to perform any act of self-denial like fasting on certain holy days, the purpose is not self-torture, but self-fulfillment. Fulfilling our bodily demands is necessary for survival, but not sufficient for satisfaction. Satisfaction comes only by the fulfillment of our spiritual necessity of a loving connection with the reservoir of…
Question: Why do many intellectuals inquiring about God – be they scientists investigating his existence or historians of religion researching his ancient appearances – often fail to understand God properly? Answer: Their failure results from adopting an inappropriate method that neglects the vital difference between knowing about God and knowing God. The Bhagavad-gita (7.7) reveals…
Navigating life’s journey amidst the unpredictable worldly ups and downs is like navigating a boat in dark, turbulent waters. Just as the boat would be lost without a lighthouse, we would be lost without a reliable basis for our decision-making. Most people base their decisions on four main lighthouses: Culture (everyone does it) Tradition (we…
The mystical power of the holy name of Krishna to pacify the agitated mind is expressed poignantly in the Mukunda Mala Stotra (32) as “the capacity to torment the tormentors of the mind.” When we strive to live virtuously, we often find our minds tormented by various ungodly forces that instigate us toward vice. Resisting…
(A Bhagavad-gita perspective on current scandals) Time and again, we see talented individuals with a promising future ruining their prospects by succumbing to immoral temptations. Blinded by the hope for quick gains, they throw away their integrity and end up disgraced and dispossessed of their careers, left to regret lifelong their momentary indulgence. What impels…
Often, only when we are put into circumstances where Krishna is all that we have that we realize Krishna is all that we need. That is why Queen Kunti in her prayers to Lord Krishna in the Shrimad Bhagavatam (1.8.27) addresses him as akinchana-vittaya, the treasure of the pauper: it is only when we lose…
When Maharaja Yudhisthira asked this question to Lord Krishna, the gist of the Lord’s reply in the Shrimad Bhagavatam (10.88.8) is that material adversities are often the essential, unavoidable means to make his devotees aware of their spiritual prosperity. The eternal, unchangeable reality is that our relationship with Krishna – and our remembrance of Krishna…
The Bhagavad-gita (17.15) explains that speaking the truth in a way that is beneficial, pleasing and non-agitating is the discipline of speech. Those who neglect this verbal discipline risk speaking harsh words that can break hearts and wreck relationships. The internal scars caused by such thoughtless words are often severe and sometimes incurable – especially…
The Bhagavad-gita (2.62-63) describes how giving our attention to any object stimulates overpowering internal irrational desires that impel us to self-defeating behavior. This universal psychological principle of “catching us by catching our attention” is exploited to the hilt by the advertising industry. Advertisements impel us to impoverishing shopping sprees and injurious indulgences by provocative depiction…
Question: Spiritual wisdom-traditions often glorify forgiveness as a virtue, but isn’t it impractical and foolish to forgive someone who repeatedly hurts us? Answer: When someone hurts us, forgiving that person is our best response. But often our indignant emotions make us overlook the subtle but vital line that differentiates forgiving a person from trusting a…
Just as the weapons of mass destruction can wreck thousands of bodies, the weapons of mass distraction – the mass media – can wreck thousands of minds. The mass media keeps our mind distracted aimlessly and endlessly, thereby destroying our internal capacity to go deep into anything. Lord Krishna tells in the Bhagavad-Gita (10.41) that…
Daily Thought provides condensed nuggets of insight gleaned from the Vedic wisdom-tradition and re-presented in an idiom and style that resonates with contemporary needs, interests and concerns. Although the Vedic (Indian) wisdom-tradition has provided some of the loftiest philosophical insights in the world, most contemporary people – both Indians and non-Indians – find it difficult…
Our happiness depends not on our valuables (what we have), but on our values (what we do with what we have). The seventh canto of Shrimad Bhagvatam describes how the demoniac monarch Hiranyakashipu, despite having more valuables than anyone else in the universe, was internally bankrupt because his values of extreme ego-centric hedonism made him…
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