How can we avoid taking shelter of something temporary that gives us relief?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Yeah. So, whenever we get relief in something temporary, the tendency is to again go and go and take shelter of that again and again.
Yeah, I understood. So, see the temporary shelter can be a means to go towards the eternal shelter. Or the temporary shelter can become the replacement to the eternal shelter.
Now, which will happen will depend on our own intelligence. If our intelligence is not spiritually guided, if we are not studying Shastra regularly, if we are not spiritually training our intelligence, then we will just simply be satisfied with material solutions. Actually, we are not, we are not, the material solutions are not solving our problems.
We will think, yes, not now, but in the future they will solve. Or anyway, later I will see, I will talk about spirituality later. Let me just be satisfied with this and go on with my life.
So, in general, the fundamental difference between our material needs and the spiritual needs is that the material needs are specifically felt as specific material needs. That means, when I am hungry, I feel hunger, which prompts me towards food. When I feel thirst, I feel a particular sensation in my body, which prompts me towards water.
However, when there is a spiritual need, often the mind tricks us and it misdiagnoses it. So, many times when there is some existential dissatisfaction, when I am dissatisfied or frustrated with something deeper in my life, I try for some easier palliative. Many times, people overeat, not just because their tongue is uncontrolled, that could be one thing, but people overeat because something is hitting them internally.
They are worried about something and food becomes the immediate source of comfort. So, when food is taken not as a biological need, but it is taken out of a need for a material thing for living in this world. Although they are temporary, we need them.
Food can’t solve our problems, but we need food, we need house, we need money. But the problem is, if we are not perceptive enough, if not careful enough, we will think that the material solution itself will give us a lasting solution. And in the pursuit of that, we will actually aggravate the problem.
So, food is needed. But if I take food, not for biological sustenance, I take food for psychological shelter, I will keep eating more and more and more and more. And eventually, I will eat so much that I can’t eat anymore.
And then I won’t get that psychological discomfort that is there, that anxiety that is there, whatever is hitting me up, that is still going to eat me up. But now, I have overeaten, I have spoiled my health, I have added to my fat, I have created another set of problems. So, to understand that we need our intelligence.
So, it is only through the intelligence that we can recognize the need for spirituality. See, the physical needs, we don’t need much intelligence to recognize. When I am feeling cold, that I need a sweater.
I don’t need to study Bhagavad Gita to understand that. It is simply a biological need which immediately we recognize it. But when we don’t have spiritual knowledge, then that which is a spiritual need, we misdiagnose it to be some material need.
And which material need we misdiagnose it to be, that will depend on our specific conditions. That will depend on whatever it is that we may have taken shelter of. If some person is alcoholic, they may think there is no problem that can’t be solved by drinking alcohol.
Just drink and forget, all your problems go away. And the problems don’t go away, they are still there and they are going to come back in bigger forms. But that is how they have got that conditioning because this is the way to solve the problem.
So, it can be alcoholism, it can be overeating, it can be over-earning. Now, money is essential for security. But some people just make money their sole sense of security.
I need to have more money, more money, more money, more money. But ultimately, money cannot comfort us. If I am distressed, money cannot speak sympathetic words to me.
Money cannot speak encouraging words to me. Money cannot help me in the ultimate matters of the heart. And money itself cannot help us to grow spiritually.
So, material things are essential for functioning in the world. But when we think that they will give us lasting shelter, when we take them as functional needs, they are valuable, they are essential. But when we take them as replacements for our spiritual needs, then they themselves aggravate us.
Prahlad Naras says in the Bhagavatam that, says, that which I think is the medicine, that actually becomes a bigger distress, and becomes a bigger problem. And therefore, he says, So, he says, my dear lord, thinking I like this, I don’t like this, I don’t want this, I want this, like this thinking, I have been craving and slaving for so many things. But ultimately, when I get those things also, they think they bring their own distress.
Therefore, my dear lord, I just don’t want to anymore chase after things according to what my mind says. He says, Please engage me in your service. Please instruct me how I can serve you.
That is what he is praying for the intelligence. So, the intelligence to serve Krishna is the way to getting lasting shelter. And by studying Shastra, that intelligence becomes strong.
And then we recognize the role of temporary shelters, but we don’t let the temporary shelters replace our quest for the eternal need. Does that answer your question?