3 Six characteristics of bhakti – How bhakti removes distress & brings auspiciousness

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Tasmai Shri Gurave Namaha Namah Om Vishnu Padaya Krishna Prashtaya Bhutale Shri Mathe Bhakti Vedanta Swami Iti Namine Namaste Saraswati Deve Gauravani Pracharine Nirvishesha Shunyavadi Pashyatya Desha Tharine Vancha Kalpata Ruhyascha Kripa Sindhupya Evache Patitanam Pavanebhyo Vaishnavebhyo Namo Namaha Jai Shri Krishna Chaitanya Rabhu Nityananda Shri Advaita Gadadhara Shri Vasadhi Gauravakta Vrinda Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Thank you very much for coming today. So, is this audible to you? Thank you. So, we'll continue our discussion on the characteristics of pure devotional service, but within this we'll be focusing more on the principle of karma and in that sense this will be you could say almost like a stand-alone class so those of you who have not attended the previous class can also understand this, although we'll draw some points from the previous classes.

So, I'll talk about three broad things today. First is, what is karma? Then second is, the relationship between karma and suffering and distress, the problems that we face in our life. And a third will be the relationship of bhakti with karma and suffering.

So, this is a subject this topic is in one sense both abstract abstract in the sense that it's a conceptual subject karma, it's a concept Krishna says, it's gahana karmanogati it's not so easy to understand. At the same time it is a very immediate subject for us in the sense that it is something which affects us. We all face different challenges in our life and we all need resources for dealing with those challenges and how much will our bhakti help us in that? How much should we even expect our bhakti to help us in that? These are questions that naturally come up within us.

So, let's start with first understanding the principle of karma. Now, at a basic level karma means that whenever there is an action there will be a result of that action. That's the basic principle of karma and this does not require any complex philosophy to understand.

It is both natural occurrence in the sense that this is how we see things happen. That if I put my hand close to fire, I feel heat. If I eat cold food then I get some cold.

So, the idea that actions produce results this is just a constant natural occurrence. Say, a child comes back from school and the child has got a black eye and a broken nose. You say, what happened? The child says, nothing happened.

No, not nothing happened. If the effect is there, some cause must be there. So, it's a natural occurrence.

Not only is it a natural occurrence it is also the basis of science. There would be no science possible if there would not be some connection. Science does not use the word action and result.

It uses the word cause and effect. So, the idea is that when Newton saw an apple falling, what made this apple fall? So, there would be no science possible if there would not be any correlation between cause and effect. And it is also an aspect of human training.

As parents, when we train our children or in an office when there is a new employee if you do something proper, you get more results. Say, if a player is selected for a sports team if they perform well, then their place becomes more secure. They are maybe promoted to a higher round maybe higher level team.

So, we train people also that way. That if you do the right thing, you will get better results. If you do wrong things, then even the present resources that you have may be taken away from you.

So, in this sense, this basic aspect of karma does not require any philosophy to understand. It is just universal. However, the problem comes because of exceptions or seeming exceptions.

Exceptions means there are times when there are actions but there are no results. Or, there are times when there are certain situations that come in our lives when we don't seem to deserve them. And we don't seem to have done anything to get those kinds of situations.

So, this is where things become complicated. So, if we are thinking of karma simply as action leads to reaction then there is no need for Krishna to say gahana karmanogati. The way karma works is very complicated.

It is gahan. It is not so easy to understand. The problem comes because it is not just a one-to-one correlation all the time.

What do you mean by that? See, we all may remember times when we worked a lot but we did not get a commensurate result, a proportionate result. You know, maybe we studied a lot for an exam and the marks that we got were very poor. Or, maybe we worked very hard for a project and somebody else gets the recognition, somebody else gets the reward.

And our role is downplayed. So, it happens that we may put in an input of 100 and we may get an output of 10. And this feels extremely unfair.

There are some people, we do so much for them. We do one thing, second thing, third thing, we try to please them. And at the end of it they barely acknowledge what we have done for them.

Sometimes it may not even be 10, it may be minus 10. Like we do 100 things for them and they only criticise us for the 101st thing that we did not do. So, such things can seem very unfair for us.

And yes, at one level it is unfair. However, if we are honest with ourselves, we can also think of times when we did something worth 10 but we got a result worth 100. Maybe sometimes we prepare very little for an exam but what we studied comes in the exam and we do well.

Or sometimes we just join a team and we do a little work in the team but the team does some very impressive project and we also get the credit for that. Like say, I think in the 2011 World Cup which we had, India won the World Cup. There was one player, he didn't play a single match.

All the time he was in the reserve. But still his picture comes in the World Cup winning team. So, what happens is, sometimes we may not do anything but still we may get the credit.

So, you could say life is unfair but you could also say it is fairly unfair. That means that sometimes it is unfair in a negative sense but sometimes it is disproportionate where we get more than what we deserve. Like even our relationships, some people they are just so kind and helpful to us although we don't pay much attention to them.

We all can think of people who, at least some people in our lives, who went out of their way to be kind and helpful to us. So, in that sense life works both ways. So, why does this happen? Because, when we talk about action and result it is not necessary that the result will come only from the present action.

Sometimes it may happen that there may be a minus 90 coming from the past. Something negative comes from the past because of which we have put in a lot of effort but the result that we get is very less. In contrast sometimes it may happen that we may have a plus 90 from the past and that's why the result we get may be much more than what we deserve based on what we have done immediately.

Now, this idea of past actions contributing to present results is not a very unfamiliar or unreasonable idea. Say, if two players or two people pick up an instrument may be a drum or a brudanga and they start playing one of them is playing for the first time another has put a hundred hours of practice in it. Now, both of them start playing and so the present action is same.

Both of them may be trying to put in the same effort same concentration. They are putting in effort attentively. But for the first person for the second person when they play mrudanga they will say more.

For the first person they will say no more. The first person may say it is difficult and people may say, yeah, it is difficult to hear. So, what has happened is why the present action is the same but the result is different because there have been past actions.

So, the idea of past actions contributing to the present results that we get it is not so unfamiliar even in relationships. If I am polite and friendly with someone, I would expect that person to be polite and friendly with me. But if I am polite right now but if I have been rude a hundred times in the past then although I am polite right now, that person may still be cold with me.

So, it is that our past actions that also contribute to the present results. So, if I have been cold ten times in the past with that person then I may have to work that much more. So, there is a negative of 90 coming from the past and I will have to clear the negative only then I will start getting something positive here.

So, the idea of past actions determining present results is not something entirely unfamiliar. So, the only key philosophical point that comes over here is how much past the actions can go. So, this is where the concept of soul and reincarnation helps us understand that there are actions that may come from the past also and they may contribute to what we get in our present situations.

So, if we consider this is our lifetime then at the starting point in our life we get so we can say that we carry some past karma reservoir which is there for us over this life and we get a big installment of that at our birth say the kind of family we are born in, the country we are born in, maybe the kind of economic situation that is there in the family or the country where we are born in the kind of genetics we have which may determine our IQ and at least a significant level of our abilities, even our complexion so that is something which we get at the time of our birth or somewhere around that. So, again this initial installment of karma can also be both a combination of positive and negative and often we may focus on the negative you know, I did not get this or this happened to me or things went wrong I was born in a place which was poor or I was born in a place where there are not so many opportunities for this or that somehow our mind tends to remember the way life has treated us worse than what we deserve but there are times when life has treated us better than what we deserve also and we don't tend to remember that unless we make a conscious effort to do that so, you may notice that I need crutches for walking so when I was one, I had polio basically my parents, my mother, my father is in a travelling job my mother took me to the local doctor to give some polio vaccine so we were living in a small town in Maharashtra and she was told that we should get this vaccine and polio has more or less been eliminated now polio vaccine is fairly effective but somehow because it was a fairly small town so, there the clinic was not very competent and the fridge in which they had kept the vaccine the power supply for that had got somehow cut off so, the germs reproduced much more and then the vaccine so the vaccine when it was given to me, instead of preventing polio the dosage was so much that it ended up causing polio so I was just walking normally and one day I fell down and I could no longer walk after that so of course I don't remember all this later my parents told me about it but one of my first memories of this is when I was probably around two and a half, three or something like that so some distant relative had come to our home and she was consoling my mother saying that it's so sad that your son got polio and I remember my mother speaking in a very clear confident voice whatever he lacks physically God will provide him intellectually now I don't know at the age of two and a half three what my mother saw in me and why she spoke that and she passed away soon so I didn't get to ask her about it but the thing was that somehow it stayed in me and then as I grew up I couldn't play outdoor sports like other kids could play but when we started studying I started noticing that I could understand things much faster I could remember things better I could speak things more clearly and then somehow it struck me that I didn't now I am speaking it consciously and I don't know when that became crystallized as a thought in my consciousness but somehow it came in the background and I found that I didn't do anything by which I deserved to need support for walking but at the same time I haven't done anything to have a better memory and a better intelligence than others so from the starting point yes life may treat us negatively in some way but life also treats us positively in some ways so the point here is that karma can work in both ways and the key principle in understanding karma is it is a very positive emphasis the emphasis in understanding karma like when Krishna tells Arjuna that you should do your karma many places he talks about this his emphasis is Arjuna has to face a terrible situation he trained so that he could fight against enemies he trained in archery but now he has to fight against Bhishma and Drona what did I do to deserve this I don't want to fight against them it's like say somebody trains in the Indian army and then there is some conflict and you have to fight against your own commander or your own boss it's a terrible thing so basically the emphasis in karma is that our actions always matter at what we do it always matters even when they don't seem to matter sometimes we may be very kind and polite with someone and still that person continues to be rude and unreasonable with us what is the use of being kind and polite with this person and let me also become rude now how exactly to deal with unreasonable or rude people that's a different issue but the point is our kindness is not going waste what we do matters but sometimes if we are going through some phase of negative karma then the results may not manifest immediately so I am doing something positive but because of the negative phase of that karma from the past negative karma I may not get the results but we should not become discouraged and think what is the use of doing anything our actions always matter and the whole purpose of the Bhagavad Gita is therefore choose your actions wisely if my actions matter then let me choose the actions that will matter the most somebody may say I study and still I don't get good marks in my exams so better let me not study I just spend all my time watching TV well maybe that is the way in which we are wasting our time now so I may decide if I can't study in this particular area maybe I should study in that area that we can choose and decide so our actions always matter now to take this forward many times when we get some let's focus on the positive and we will talk about the negative also positive means when we get some success in our life so that success is not just the result of our present karma so you may say I got this job and all of you are here you probably have more financial security than people who work in India and you come here you may say I worked hard, I am competent in my job I am hardworking, that may all be true but there are many other people who are just as competent and hardworking but you may say I got a lucky break or I got this thing clicked or that thing clicked so what is that? that what we call as a lucky break is actually some past karma working positively for us so basically whenever there is success most often success is a result of present karma plus past karma now the exact role that may vary for some people say somebody is extraordinarily talented in a particular field some students may just have an extraordinary memory sometimes on YouTube India has got talent or Britain has got talent there are kids 3, 4, 5 years old just so phenomenal at music for some people the past karma may contribute 90% and the present karma may only contribute 10% for some people the present may be 90% and the past may be 10% but the point is past and present both contribute to the results so now what applies to the positive also applies to the negative when we face problems in life so sometimes the problems may be because of our present actions and sometimes the problems may be because of past actions say suppose somebody doesn't very carefully think before investing money somewhere and there it's a bad investment and they lose money then we could say that is a bad decision by me right now so that's largely because of present actions but I know one devotee friend in America he was working in a software company and he decided to become an entrepreneur he started his own small business and he started it just before COVID and because of the COVID lockdown he just lost all the money he had to invest in buying property, he had to pay taxes he had commodities so now you could say was that a bad decision well how much can you say it's a bad decision because who could have foreseen a pandemic which would cause a global lockdown so here in this case that particular financial difficulty that he faced was largely a result of past karma so basically the situations that we face at present they are in general due to an unpredictable combination of present and past karma so how much the present karma might be contributing how much the past karma might be contributing it's difficult for us to understand so let's consider four possibilities there is present karma and there is past karma now the present karma can be positive in the sense of being good and it can be negative in the sense of being bad and similarly the past karma can be positive or the past karma can be negative now what does this mean suppose there is a particular bank in a city and a huge amount of cash has come in that bank and somehow that news doesn't remain secret but goes out and now 10 thieves decide to rob that bank now 10 of them may plan to rob the bank but only one of them is successful so why is one of them successful and others are not successful so their success, that one person's success is because of some past good karma so you know you need good karma to even do bad karma successfully so Hitler is considered to be one of the best orators of the last century, he is a terrible person by his past karma by his past good karma he had great oratory capacity he had some past positive karma by which he was meant to become a leader but then by his present negative karma he ended up becoming a terrible misleader there have been many many terrible people in the world and there have been many people who slaughtered people Genghis Khan when he conquered Europe he is supposed to have annihilated almost one fourth of the population of Europe but he was travelling across many countries and he killed people but Hitler and the holocaust which happened at the first time in the history of the world that industrial efficiency was brought to mass slaughter killing people, you know if you kill people you have to bury people or you have to burn people, you have to do something at here just put them in gas chambers it's a very efficient way of killing people it's brutal, but the point is that even for somebody to get success in doing bad karma they may need some positive karma from the past so if you consider among these four situations or four quadrants now the best is where a person's past karma is positive and the present karma is positive that means they work they work for some good cause and when they work for some good cause they get not just some good result but some great results so somebody may be a researcher and they develop some medicine which cures some terrible disease or somebody makes some song which is their musical ability which inspires a lot of people with patriotic sentiments or devotional sentiments or whatever so there are great poets who have composed some great compositions so the best is where we have positive karma from the past and negative karma positive past karma and positive present karma now the worst situation is this the worst? Not really see if the person has negative karma from the present then they are going to do bad things but if they have negative karma from the past their bad things will not lead to much bad results because say like somebody may want to become a terrorist and blow up blow up a big building but something goes wrong and the bomb blows up before they reach the building and they only blow up nothing else happens so what happens is it is less harmful they may try to do some bad actions but the bad actions may not have much results so many bad people try to do bad things it is not that every bad thing they do succeeds so actually where the past karma is positive and the present karma is negative this is the most dangerous thing that means the person is doing bad things now but that person has a stockpile of past positive karma so they may be able to do bad things now their actions will lead to results but they may not lead to results right now so somebody might be a terrible ruler a dictator and they have 1000 units of positive past karma so then they will use all that to hold on to their power and to keep doing bad things they will get the results but they may not get much results in this lifetime at all so actually this is the deadliest combination now if the present karma is positive and the past karma is negative now this is difficult but it is not necessarily bad that I am doing some good things right now but I don't get the results I don't get the recognition, I don't get the rewards so this is where actually we need gyana to understand what is happening and to pass through this phase so if we consider the Pandavas the Pandavas were virtuous for a long time and yet one after another their father passed away and then they were persecuted by the Kauravas in so many different ways now of course we can say they are pure devotees and karma doesn't apply to them but we can use this as an ethical framework for understanding so we understand that they had to go through a lot of negative phases and then finally when the negative phase ended then they got the positive phase so here when we are going through a phase of difficulties so is it a child's crime because of present karma or past karma laughter so it is the child's present karma or the speaker's past karma laughter but suppose some child is crying and then at that time the speaker starts yelling or screaming at that person now what is going to happen now the child crying is a disturbance but if the speaker yells and screams then at the end of the class the audience is going to remember how the speaker behaved laughter the child crying will be forgotten so what happens is our present karma can sometimes make the problem far worse so the idea is that even when certain situations come in our life our present karma does make a difference even when it doesn't seem to make a difference so now this what I mentioned the past karma stockpile that we have if we consider our lifetime then we all say destiny is fixed so this is we all have a certain stockpile of karma from the past that is going to come to us and we could say that stockpile is fixed but while that stockpile may be fixed how it is going to come in our life is not necessarily fixed so what do I mean by that say to some extent at the start of our life we get some major installment of that karma and then say may be during the course of a lifetime somebody lives 60, 70, 80 years may be they are meant to face 4 big problems may be they get some terrible disease may be some loved one passes away may be in their business somebody betrays them, somebody cheats them and may be they meet with some accident so each of these can be a very difficult situation to pass through but imagine if all 4 of these happen simultaneously that would be almost unbearable so our past karma might be fixed and that may come upon us but that does not mean that our present karma does not matter so I will explain in 2 different ways how our present karma matters say suppose somebody is going to be cheated in a business and because of that cheating they are going to lose a lot of money it is a terrible thing to happen but suppose that person during the course of their life you could be cheated in a business you could be cheated in a family relationship but during the course of that life if that person has been polite, kind, helpful now may be the cheater will use that to exploit them even more but if they have been polite, kind, helpful with people in general then when they are cheated others will be ready to help them you are a good person, this bad thing happened to you but on the other hand if by past karma they are meant to be cheated but if in this life they are rude, cunning they just use and throw people then when one person cheats them the way they have acted in this life will mean that nobody else will come to help them so we may not be able to change the fact that we might get cheated but how we are able to deal with that cheating that will be determined by our present actions so sometimes when you say that destiny is fixed now yes, what happens sometimes when we take from Shastra one statement and we absolutize that statement without considering other statements so for example it is said that by destiny our happiness and distress are fixed so it is said in scripture so there is a statement like that in 7th canto, 1st canto now what does this mean practically does it mean that if by destiny when we say by destiny is fixed and by that by destiny our happiness and our distress are fixed so if we say this is one statement and there is two through this statement but along with that scripture itself tells us so when we indulge in sensual pleasures indiscriminately excessively we suffer so can if say by our destiny our happiness and distress are fixed can we increase our distress in this life what do you think can we increase our distress of course we can see if somebody starts taking alcohol and they become alcoholic then that is in the morning I talked about suffering that is avoidable and suffering that is unavoidable so that if somebody is drinking and then they get some disease that is not due to past karma isn't it so say if on a cold night somebody takes a dozen ice creams and they enjoy the taste at that time but the next morning throat is terrible in the previous night they were saying ice cream and now they say ice cream now they scream in pain now if they have a terrible throat is it because of past karma yes but it is past night's karma not past life's karma so the thing is that our present actions do matter so our present actions they do matter in the sense that just as we can increase the distress that will come because of our present actions similarly from our present actions we can also increase to some degree the happiness so our present actions also matter Gita says for example if you live in Satvaguna we will experience greater happiness so let's consider an example suppose because of some past karma somebody is meant to get some terrible disease now they are meant to get some cancer cancer is probably an example of a disease for which we don't know the cause we don't know what exactly is the cause so suppose somebody is meant to get cancer now if in this life they have generally tried to live healthy eat good food, do some regular exercise have regulated habits then one way of looking at it is what is the use of living healthy still got cancer, life is so unfair but another way of looking at it could be that because this person lived healthy their chances of recovering are greater because of that on the other hand if somebody has always been eating a lot of unhealthy food somebody has always been very unregulated in their whole life and they get cancer then their chances of recovering might be very less so the point I am making is our present actions do matter so in general when we are going through difficulties can we know whether the difficulty has come because of present karma or past karma what do you think well I am amazed by your confidence so we can say we can know to some extent isn't it so we can analyze, we can observe that ok if this person is very upset with me now have I done something to upset that person maybe I am not aware of it I was in UK I was staying at one devotee's home and he told me tomorrow is my wife's wedding anniversary I said what do you mean your wife's is it not your wedding anniversary he said I don't believe in all these things that was like a red signal for me and then after that he had been a devotee and started practicing bhakti and his wife had been introduced to bhakti through him so then he was telling me that actually you know my wife doesn't support me in my bhakti, she doesn't understand what I am doing and he said you know I think it is because of some past bad karma that I have got such a disagreeable wife I said wait a minute then I was staying at their home so I was taking lunch and started talking with very intelligent, very reasonable and she started telling that many things it is natural for a husband to take certain responsibility to do certain things and this devotee he was being a bit too transcendental and his wife was upset because of that so now I told him Prabhu it is best when we face problems never to jump to past karma right in the beginning so if we are having problems first look at is there something I might be doing because of which this is happening now it is very rare, it is possible but it is very rare that a problem comes because of 100% past karma only that I have done absolutely nothing and still this person is against me it is possible there is sometimes racial prejudice religious prejudice, regional biases so you just belong to this community this community is a community of cheaters, selfish people and just because we belong to that community we are labelled in that way so that can happen but generally speaking it is best when we are facing some problems to think how I may have contributed to this problem and is there something I can do to deal with it to fix it, to improve the situation so basically when we face difficulties it is best to start with minimal assumptions minimal assumption means that say whenever we face problems start with the most logical explanation say if I am speaking right now and suddenly you are not able to hear what I speak the first explanation could be that maybe this mic is not working the other explanation could be maybe the sound system itself has collapsed other explanation could be that the whole audience at one moment everybody has become deaf some mysterious virus has come and made everybody deaf other explanation could be that I have got some attack or some disease by which I am moving my mouth but no sound is coming now if somebody starts are these possible maybe the mic is not working, the sound system is collapsing they are possible but generally what happens is a sign of intelligence intelligence means in nyaya nyaya is vedic logic so in nyaya it is said whenever we are looking for an explanation when we are looking for explanations it is best to start with what is drushta and then go towards what is adrushta drushta means what? visible so start with more visible or immediate causes so an action can have a range when a particular situation comes in our life it can have a range of causes but best to start with the immediate cause and when the immediate cause doesn't work then move towards a more remote cause so most immediate cause could be did I accidentally turn off the power switch of this next immediate cause could be has the battery become discharged third could be maybe this mic has become spoiled if right in the beginning I say oh if I am not able to speak to you some terrorists have attacked and the power supply has been destroyed because of that why are you panicking why are you going towards such explanations so the philosophy of karma is not meant to reject the immediate explanation it is meant to explain situations when the immediate explanations don't work so immediate explanations are also valid but they may not always be valid so that's why start from the drushta and move towards the adrushta sorry start from the drushta and move towards the adrushta so till now I have spoken about karma now let's move towards bhakti so the basic point here is that our actions do matter there is past karma but how much the past karma matters in a particular situation is difficult to know it is possible that a particular problem has come because of past karma but let's not assume that right in the beginning so now when we practice bhakti so there is our when we talk about karma how is karma affected by bhakti so that is the question that we will discuss and this is a big question but again it is not that we have an answer that is because these concepts themselves are complex and subtle the answers are also subtle but we can try to understand broad principles now as I said karma itself can be past and present so quite often we tend to focus on the past karma and how much of my past karma will Krishna remove but first of all the problem with this is the past karma is itself unknown to us so we may have a thousand units of past karma and Krishna may remove 900 and only 100 may remain but 100 will still remain now for us the 100 may seem very bad why is this happening? It shouldn't have happened to me it may be that just before we came to bhakti we were going through a phase of good karma and then when we start practicing bhakti we start going through a phase of bad karma and then we start chanting Hare Krishna and my problems in my life started increasing so is Krishna causing these problems to me? No, not at all so it's like when we go to the whole dimension of past karma first of all we don't know how much is the past karma and we don't know or we can't know how much that is going to be removed so Krishna does say I'll remove but it says but the sarva papebhyo is this is the second sarva sarva dharman parityajya mam ekam saranam vraja so in one sense Krishna is reciprocal to the extent we become pure devotees to that extent the karma influence may go away but because the past karma is unknown it's best to tolerate it whatever it comes so it's not that Krishna is not helping us but it's just that how Krishna is helping us we don't know suppose we inherited some debt because suddenly our parents or somebody in our family passed away now that if we don't know how much debt is there and because that person is a relative they even they say you don't have to pay all the debt there is 25 lakhs you just give 5 lakhs 5 lakhs is also such a big amount in this case what happens is because we don't know how much is the past negative karma so for us it's difficult to know what Krishna has done and if we start expecting that ok in my life because I am practicing bhakti there will be no problems then that is an unrealistic expectation there is some karma which is not very likely to change if somebody is say 4 and a half feet and that is because of past karma it's not that they become 6 and a half feet that is not going to happen so certain kind of karma is not going to change but when it comes to our present karma now our present karma is affected by two things it is affected by our knowledge the kind of knowledge it's not just knowledge it's not jnana it's buddhi it's intelligence and not just our intelligence it is affected by our buddhi and it is affected by our vritti our tendencies so by our past karma we all have certain tendencies say for example somebody may be short tempered now all babies when they are small they cry but some babies cry as if they will bring the whole house down their crying is screaming at the top of their lungs we can say it's good karma they have powerful lungs but they cry so much is not such a good karma now sometimes some babies may also have more anger than others and as they grow up their anger comes up a little bit more so we all have certain karmic tendencies we all sometimes know that something is good for us our intelligence tells us this is good and this is bad but still something from inside prevents us from doing that thing we are just not able to do it so what bhakti will do for us is krishna will handle the past karma but how exactly he will handle and how much is our surrender because of which he is reciprocating all these are very difficult to know so rather than worrying so much about the past karma we focus on the present karma and the more we start practicing bhakti our buddhi becomes strengthened bhakti strengthens our intelligence we start getting a clearer and clearer understanding this action will be beneficial, this action will be harmful and that clarity itself is helpful remember that morning I talked about if somebody is sick two people may be sick but one is undiagnosed and is being untreated the other is diagnosed and being treated so when our intelligence becomes strong that basically makes us like a patient who is being diagnosed and as the patient is being diagnosed that means we at least understand this is the disease and this is going to worsen my situation this is going to improve my situation now we may not know 100% but we do know to a significant extent and that itself gives a significant amount of help without see without that adhyatmik jnana without that jnana anjan our situation is like somebody has put a cloth on our body and we can't see anything and we are being punched one punch comes from the front, one comes from the back we can't even deal with, we can't even protect ourselves we can't fight back, we can't do anything so that state of suffering is far greater so when we get the jnana that itself leads to a lot of decrease in suffering but bhakti doesn't just provide us the jnana bhakti, the vritti it becomes purified so we all have desires if we are not practicing bhakti our desires tend to be very self centered, very selfish but the more we start practicing bhakti our desires start becoming more selfless more service oriented so what happens by this, the lust, anger, greed they start decreasing first of all we understand more clearly that anger is bad say lust is bad see the propaganda in today's world is such that many people think that discover your passion they are not talking about finding your job people think that increasing their sensual desires that will lead to more happiness people watch so many things which titillate them, stimulate them, agitate them but then that causes more suffering that causes so much more craving because they just don't know suppose somebody is never drunk and has no interest in drinking they pass by a bar they don't feel any agitation but somebody who is drunk, each time they pass by a bar they have to fight against it that causes so much trouble, so much distress so just knowing what is the right thing to do and being freed from the unhealthy desires that itself decreases suffering substantially so when Krishna says tadami buddhi-yogam tam so that buddhi-yoga is a very important thing and this if we focus just on this blessing I will conclude with one last incident to illustrate this point that if we just focus on this point that right now, by Krishna's mercy I know what is the healthy choice and what is the unhealthy choice that does not necessarily mean that in every situation we know exactly what is the right thing to do but we have a broad compass we may not have an exact path in this situation what should I do but we have a broad compass and that itself is a big relief so after Krishna spoke the Bhagavad Gita after Krishna assured Arjuna aham tvam sarva-pape bhimokshe shyami after Arjuna said yes I surrender to you karishye vachitnam tava after that when the Kurukshetra war happened Arjuna faced a devastating loss on the 13th day what happened? Abhimanyu was killed now Abhimanyu dying itself is terrible for Arjuna but what made that even more terrible was his own personal sense of failure see what the Kauravas did was on the 13th day they did not form the Chakravyuha right in the beginning they had some other military formation and then they arranged that there was a king Susharman he challenged Arjuna and in that challenge he diverted Arjuna away so they went to a different part of the battlefield and they started fighting over there and then once Arjuna was diverted then quickly the Kauravas reorganized and they revealed the Chakravyuha formation and then there was no way for the Pandavas to penetrate it so then Yudhishthira asked Abhimanyu to go inside Abhimanyu went inside and unfortunately he was trapped and he fought heroically but then the Kauravas unfairly ganged up on him and 6 of them together attacked him and eventually killed him that evening when Arjuna came back normally when the warriors would come back there would be celebratory music welcoming them back that day when Arjuna was coming back he had fought heroically against the army of Susharman he had destroyed many many soldiers and it was a long day he was tired he was fairly successful still he felt an uneasy sensation within him and as he came close to their tents their camp he noticed there was absolutely no music there was a somber silence over there and normally when we meet people people greet, nod their heads, smile on this day no one was ready to even meet Arjuna's eye and a pit started forming in Arjuna's stomach Arjuna started wondering what has happened what has gone wrong and then he remembered that in the heat of the battle he had heard someone scream far away, the Kauravas had formed a chakra view he had been so busy fighting against the army of Susharman it had not registered him at that time he had not paid much attention if something had been an emergency he would have been called he thought like that he was a chakra view formed what happened has Yudhishthir been abducted if Yudhishthir had been abducted surely I would have known I would have been informed so the only person who knew the chakra view can be broken that is Abhimanyu but he doesn't know how to come out has something happened to him he is charged with his horse racing towards the central pandal and as soon as he entered in the pandal there was an arrangement and each warrior had their particular throne as soon as he entered first his eyes went to Yudhishthir he saw Yudhishthir was there then his eyes went to Abhimanyu's throne and that was empty his eyes just didn't want to believe what they were seeing desperate hoping against hope that what he was seeing was not the reality he again looked back more carefully at Yudhishthir and he saw that there were tears streaming down Yudhishthir's eyes Arjuna just collapsed and he started crying Abhimanyu Abhimanyu Abhimanyu and he started thinking fire on me I went in the pursuit of glory and because of that I was not there to protect my son surely when Abhimanyu was in his last moments he must have called out to me he must have called out to his father why was I not there at that time Yudhishthir got up from his throne heavy steps slowly he walked up to Arjuna and he slowly told Arjuna what had happened so as Arjuna heard his grief started changing to anger and then he latched out at Yudhishthir at Bhima he said are all your weapons just ornaments could not one of you protect my son shame on you so when he spoke this this is a past karma coming in the middle of some present karma now so at that time for Yudhishthir he was already in distress and Arjuna's words were like whiplashes both Yudhishthir and Bhima so Krishna came up to Arjuna and pulled him into a side hug and he said in this world adversities come upon everyone the wise and the unwise the difference between them is that when the adversities come the unwise act in ways that make things worse whereas the wise act in ways that make things better oh Arjuna look at the faces of your brothers due to the death of Abhimanyu they are in agony they are in pain just as you are please don't speak words that increase their pain this jolted Arjuna out of his stupor he was just in so much pain just lashing out trying to do something about it and that's when as Arjuna heard the story again recollected it, he started thinking that actually his brothers had made a reasonable plan that Abhimanyu would go inside and they would follow him but Jaidrath had come in the way therefore Arjuna decided Jaidrath needs to be punished and then the next day while the Pandavas celebrated on the 13th day the 14th day was their reverse defeat it was not just that Jaidrath was killed but the fact that the entire army of the Kauravas could not protect one warrior from one opposing warrior that was morale shattering it's like one football player the whole team is designed to stop that football player from getting to the goal and if that football player effortlessly gets to the goal if our whole team can't stop it, what is the use of even playing so it became like that so the point is that even Arjuna faced distress and Krishna did not go into any particular past life philosophy explaining why this happened past life karma what has happened, that happened ok this has happened now, let us see what we can do about it so basically when we talk about if we are practicing Bhakti now Bhakti, yes it means remembering Krishna it means loving Krishna but Bhakti essentially means service attitude Bhakti means Seva Bhav now what does the service attitude mean that we understand we understand that Krishna is our well wisher that Krishna wants the best for us Krishna wants things to be better for us so if we are servants of Krishna then that means we also act in a mood of service to Krishna to make things better so what this means is that Krishna is our well wisher so Krishna wants the best for us so then our service attitude would mean ok now the situation has come what is the best I can do in this situation now we may say I don't know what is the best ok, we may not know what is the best but can we know what is the worst like say if there is some relationship and we are trying everything and still that relationship is not improving I don't know what I can do about this but maybe we can know what I should not do isn't it, if we just for 10 minutes remove our verbal restraint and just speak whatever is there in our mind and heart relationship cultivated over 10 years can be destroyed in 10 minutes that doesn't mean we suppress our emotions but we all know that certain things will make the situation worse so with whatever buddhi we have ok now the situation is there Krishna what can I do that will make things better if we have that service attitude Krishna will guide us and the conviction that comes from practicing bhakti is that say that there are many many aspects of bhakti and shraddha and all those things the most important aspect of practicing bhakti is that basically Krishna is on my side this is the faith that we need to get see basically when we are functioning in the world I am here and there is some force beyond me we may believe in god we may not believe in god we may believe in nature whatever we believe in now with respect to this there are only 3 factors that this is for me this is against me or this is apathetic to me doesn't care for me so ultimately whatever exists beyond us either it doesn't care for us so to a large extent the scientific world view is largely materialistic everything happens just according to physical laws so there is no god it may call it atheistic but the idea is there is no god that cares for us it is apathetic now some people may think that god is my enemy that is a very dark way to live in but basically if we are practicing bhakti we will see so many stories of so many devotees who face such difficulties Prahlad did nothing wrong and yet he suffered so much at least at external level but what happened is through it all by remembering Krishna he did not suffer so much and eventually Krishna protected him so basically what happens is if we can get this faith that Krishna is on my side therefore I will be on Krishna's side so Krishna is on my side therefore I will choose to be on Krishna's side I don't know exactly what is Krishna's plan but Krishna I want to serve you Prabhupada asked what is the best prayer we can offer he said to pray to Krishna please give me the strength to serve you whatever be the situation I face please give me the strength to serve you so if we have that attitude then we will get the buddhi and small steps we take by which gradually we will be able to improve things now some amount of improvement may happen in this life for us some amount of improvement may not be seen in this life we will be purified and we will go beyond this world to Krishna but when we function in this way basically the past karma reservoir may not change but the present karma we can change and we can ensure that no matter how dark our present may be by trying to serve Krishna we can make our future brighter and that is a power that every one of us has so that is the faith Krishna says if you become conscious of me you will pass over all obstacles by my grace going back to that medicine metaphor the world can hurt us in many ways but when we practice bhakti what happens is for us Krishna becomes bigger than the world so what this means is that the world has much power to hurt us people can hurt us, the environment, the weather can hurt us our own body can hurt us but what happens is we understand that greater than the world's power to hurt is Krishna's power to heal and it is this faith that the practice of bhakti increases more and more for us and that is how the problems of our life even if they come they do not disturb us so much greater than the world's power to hurt is Krishna's power to heal that is how bhakti decreases our kleshagni and it helps us shubhda, it helps us create a brighter future for us the kleshagni happens because although these problems are there, Krishna is with me I am not alone in this big bad world Krishna is with me and I will choose to be with Krishna so understanding this Krishna is on my side this will lead to the kleshagni suffering does not just come because there are problems when we feel I am in these problems and I am alone and nobody cares for me nobody even bothers whether I exist, whether I live or die that is when the suffering becomes far more but when we understand Krishna is on our side that klesha decreases and shubhda once we choose to be on Krishna's side then yes the present may be dark but by Krishna's mercy the future will be brighter so I will summarize what I discussed I discussed four main points first we talked about the principle of karma how karma is not just a philosophical concept it is like a universal observation it is the basis of science it is also the basis of human training the only difficulty that happens is that it is not always just action and result it is often there is the present action and there is the present result but there is also the past action that is playing a role and sometimes the past action might be negative and that is why the present result might not be enough as much as we expect so basically karma works in a complex way but still the important thing is our actions matter that is the key take home from the principle of karma that what I am doing right now it matters, if I am doing good the good will result in the future if somebody is doing bad that will lead to bad even if that is not manifested now then we discussed the concept of destiny is karma fixed? yes destiny is fixed but how destiny unfolds how it manifests in our life that is not fixed I discussed how somebody may be betrayed and cheated in this life but how they live in this life may decide how much support they get when they are cheated so that is why we discussed this pendulum that present karma and past karma so it is best if the present and past are both good then we have right decision the most dangerous is when the past karma is positive and present karma is negative because they will create suffering for themselves this is bad but the person is not so harmful now this is something which we need to learn to tolerate I am going through some difficult situations but they will end and for that purpose then we discussed about how does bhakti affect our karma bhakti and karma we discussed that so basically there is past karma and this is unknown so it is best not to worry too much about this so except that Krishna is doing something for my benefit with that karma but the present karma that is the most important thing so our present action is shaped by our intelligence and by our tendencies and Krishna strengthens our intelligence through bhakti and then he purifies our tendencies and by this what happens is we can start creating a brighter future and that means I took the story of Arjuna and Abhimanyu to illustrate that essentially when we talk about bhakti bhakti means sevabhau and sevabhau means that if Krishna is my well-wisher then let me see how I can if Krishna wants the best for me how can I do my best how can I play my part in Krishna's plan so basically Krishna is with me and therefore I will be with Krishna so to the extent we understand Krishna is with me our klesha will decrease and to the extent we choose to be with Krishna the shubha in our life will increase the world can hurt us in many ways but rather than worrying about how and why the world is hurting us we turn toward Krishna and Krishna's power to heal is always greater whatever karma may get us to whatever karma may get us to Krishna will get us through thank you very much do we have time for questions or should we take tomorrow so so what we can do is this was because there are multiple concepts to discuss over here so the class went a little over time but if you have questions you can note down the questions and maybe tomorrow instead of going to the future characters of the bhakti first we will address the questions and then we will move forward there can be many different questions and I will try to address them as much as I can but it's a very important and practical topic so I would like to devote some time so if you have questions please note them down and we will continue tomorrow thank you very much what about karma Krishna Krishna will get us through really because Krishna is always on this side Krishna is always on Krishna's side so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so.