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08.09 – Remembrance of Krishna’s immanence brings resilience on our march to transcendence
We naturally think of those close to us. People can be close physically or emotionally. Because our senses perceive the physical reality around us, our thoughts easily go to those in our physical proximity. And we think of those emotionally close to us spontaneously, even if they aren’t close physically. Rarely do we realize that…
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08.14 – Seek not moments of devotion; seek momentum in devotion
In an elevator, what gets us to the destination quickly is the motion of the elevator, not our emotion during the elevation. Bhakti-yoga is like an elevator that takes us to the topmost summit of spirituality. It can grant us smoothly and swiftly, as the Bhagavad-gita (08.14: sulabhah) indicates, realization of Krishna, the highest manifestation…
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08.15 – The world is a hospital; be hospitable to the doctor
Patients admitted in a hospital know that the doctor’s counsel is essential for their recovery. If some patients were inhospitable to the doctor, we would be appalled by their irrationality: is this a mental hospital? Yet, might we ourselves be acting like those patients? Gita wisdom indicates that the disease of misdirected desires afflicts us….
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08.08 – To end our forgetfulness, let’s first commit to end our forgetfulness of our forgetfulness
We may sometimes become discouraged in our spiritual life: “I keep forgetting Krishna repeatedly even after practicing devotional service for so long. Is my practice of any use?” Yes, it definitely is. Because it ends our forgetfulness of our forgetfulness. And that’s the only way to progress towards ending our forgetfulness. When we drive a…
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08.15 – We can’t change the nature of nature, but we can change the nature of desire
“And they lived happily ever after.” This is the common end of most novels and movies. That is the dream of all of us, isn’t it? Puzzlingly, the Bhagavad-gita seems to puncture our dreams. It declares (08.15: duhkhalayam ashasvatam) the world has two essential characteristics that are the polar opposites of the “happily ever after”…
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08.08 – Leave no space to space out
Doing anything worthwhile requires attentiveness. A sportsperson has to be on high alert to perform in the sporting arena. This need for attentiveness applies all the more so in spiritual life, wherein we strive to do the supremely worthwhile thing – attain eternal love for Krishna and thereby do the highest good for ourselves as…
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08.07 – Feed the heart a healthy diet, not a deadly diet
Just as we grow externally by the food we eat, we grow internally by the dreams that we cherish. The current culture fills us with dreams that are either trivial or sensational. Trivial like our favorite sports team winning a world championship – what difference is that going to make to the quality of our…
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08.16 – Life takes off when we understand how soon life takes us off
Suppose we have a hired car for a day with us and need to go a long way to reach our destination. The more time we spend in tarrying and sightseeing, the less are the chances that we will get to our goal before our time runs out. Isn’t life like that too? We are…
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08.15 – Beyond the love that hides to the love that guides
Parents sometimes hide their financial or familial problems from their children out of love. But there are times that make such a love harmful, not helpful. As when a child is suffering from a serious disease and needs to cooperate in a demanding treatment plan. Krishna manifests this kind of love in the Bhagavad-gita (08.15)…
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08.07 – “Now and then” or “from now on”?
We all have had hobbies. Things that we do ‘now and then’ after we have dealt with the more serious, pressing and unavoidable aspects of our life. Many people treat spirituality also as a hobby – something they do as a change, as a stress-reliever, as a pious recreation. Given the rampant and strident materialism…
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08.07 – Are we changing the world or is the world changing us?
Gita wisdom enables us to make sense of the world as it is – and as it can be. The world is as it is, filled with immorality and perversity, because people have forgotten the treasure of happiness that lies in their own hearts and are desperately seeking pleasure in outer things by all possible…
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08.07 – Let our potentials – not our problems – define us
Our materialistic culture pits us in constant competition against others. Such exposure may make us feel that we have a lot of problems, “I don’t look cool; I don’t talk smart; I don’t work fast.” If we let such problems weigh on us mentally, then we may start feeling inferior and insecure. To gain relief,…
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08.19 – Material existence: Linear progress or cyclic process?
Most people are materialists today primarily because our mainstream culture makes us believe that life at the material level can be progressive, that we can make things better materially. This belief is so deeply ingrained in our culture that we hardly ever examine it, or even notice it consciously. However, this belief is not reflected…
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08.15 – Is paradise something we will create or something we were created into?
Many technologists feel that hi-tech appliances will gradually provide necessities and luxuries for more and more people. Thus, they posit that we humans will create a technological paradise on earth. In radical contrast, many environmentalists feel that nature provides for the needs of all its inhabitants through its delicate and intricate harmony. We were created…
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08.07- Striking a deal between the extraordinary and the ordinary
As spiritual seekers living in a material body and a materialist culture, our lives have two sides: the spiritual and the material. Given that materialism is the common or ordinary way of living in our culture, our material side becomes our ordinary side and our spiritual side becomes our extraordinary side. Both these sides require…
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08.16 – Double Empowerment for Destination Eternity
Eternity is a universal longing of all life – human and sub-human. This longing can be discerned in all species through the ingenious and indefatigable efforts they make to live for as long as possible. However, because everything material is by its very nature temporary, no species can live forever at the material level. Does…
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08.07: Let’s make our Krishna-connection our steering wheel, not our spare wheel
For us as aspiring devotees, the demands and desires of our material life press on us so insistently that our devotional life gets pushed to the background of our consciousness. We subconsciously treat our Krishna-connection like a spare wheel for the drive of life: “It’s important; I need it – but not right now. If…
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08.07: Bhakti takes us beyond the naughty and the knotty.
When we embark on our inward spiritual journey towards Krishna, our mind and intelligence pose significant and distinct roadblocks. The mind blocks us with naughty desires and the intelligence, with knotty doubts. Bhakti removes both these roadblocks, as indicated in the Bhagavad-gita (8.7): mayy arpita mano buddhir mam evaishyasy asamshayah. Here’s how bhakti works its…
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08.15: Are we shooting the messenger instead of pondering the message?
In the past, dictators would routinely shoot messengers who brought bad news. Today, the shooting is replaced by labeling. Authentic spiritual teachers often find themselves at the receiving end of this trend of labeling. Many people frequently tag them as pessimists whenever they mention the Gita’s message (8.15) that this world is a place of…
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08.07 – Scared of the Sacred?
Some of us may be held back in our spiritual quest by the subconscious apprehension that the advanced, sacred states of spiritual realization may be too difficult to attain or sustain. We may fear that the constant devotional remembrance of Krishna, as recommended repeatedly in the Bhagavad-gita, may be too unrealistic to attain. And even…
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08.20: Death is a nightmare from which we have the power to wake up
The Bhagavad-gita (8.20) directs our attention to another realm of existence that is free from the mortality that mars our material realm. We find the thoughts of our mortality hard to stomach because our insides recoil and rebel at the prospect of annihilation of our existence. We try to evade the death sentence that hangs…
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08.07 – The dynamic interplay of the ‘here’ and the ‘hereafter’
The Bhagavad-gita (8.15) declares the world we live in – the here – to be a place of temporality and misery and so deems the spiritual world – the hereafter – as the destination that the intelligent should aspire for. But the Gita’s actual message is connection, not rejection: the connection of the here with…
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08.07: Bhakti integrates our emotional and rational faculties
People whose emotional faculty is predominant tend to be hotheaded. People whose rational faculty is predominant tend to be coldhearted. Integrating both these faculties in a healthy balance is one of the greatest challenges for leading a productive and fulfilling life. The Bhagavad-gita (8.7) guides us toward achieving this balance when it urges us to…