02.11-2.30: A dramatic and majestic expansion of our conception of life

Is life a doomed journey from a station called birth to a station called death with a bit of pleasure and a lot of pain sprinkled between?

Most of us may have never thought of our own lives in such stark terms. But this is the unvarnished reality of life at the material level. Of course, the materialistic culture specializes in covering it with countless varnishes through television, movies, amusement parks, and gaudy gadgets that fill our mind with fantasies for worldly enjoyment.

However, these varnishes can’t change the reality that all our struggles to lay our hands on worldly enjoyment will be rendered futile when death lays its hands on us. Our frenzy for material enjoyment is undercut by a nagging sense of existential despair, a gnawing feeling of the utter meaninglessness of it all in the face of our inevitable mortality.

Gita wisdom liberates us from this despair and meaninglessness. It reiterates our innate feeling that we are meant for much more than casual destruction by a bug or a bang. Right at the start of its profound message, the Bhagavad-gita (2.11–2.30) logically and philosophically establishes that we as souls are spiritual and eternal beings.

The resulting expansion of our conception of life is dramatic and majestic:

Dramatic because we understand that the bodily pleasures and pains that worry us so much are insignificant when seen in the light of the reality that we have had many such bodies, and that we as souls are forever secure, beyond all bodily upheavals.

Majestic because we understand that we can reorient our desires from matter to Krishna and thereby attain a meaningful and majestic destination: eternal life in loving harmony with Krishna in his supreme abode.