When we don’t get an intimation of our death as did Parikshit how should we practice bhakti?
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Transcript
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so Parikshit Maharaj and Prabhupada they got signals that their life is going to end and they devoted themselves wholeheartedly to Krishna so what do we do in our lives because we may not get a signal like that see the point is not that we postpone bhakti till the moment of death rather there is the practice of bhakti in a way we are doing our worldly duties and we are practicing bhakti and there is a practice of exclusive bhakti so even Bhishma Pitamah when he starts his prayers to Krishna in that 9th chapter of the 1st canto of Srimad Bhagavatam which is my thoughts are going in many different directions till now now I am going to withdraw all those thoughts and focus them only on your lord so for us in the routine course of our life we what we need to do is we need to everyday have some time when we focus exclusively on Krishna that is our sadhana we have our puja, we have our japa we have our swadhyay that is the time we try to exclusively focus on Krishna other times we do our duties we try to remember Krishna as much as possible and by this by steadily focusing on Krishna in some part of the day Krishna becomes more and more focused in our consciousness and as Krishna becomes more and more focused in our consciousness becomes more of a presence in our consciousness then we come to the foreground we can remember him more and more even when we are not directly focusing on him so once one devotee he heard a class how we can die at any moment and he came and after that the class was given by somebody else he came and asked me if I start thinking that I am going to die today I will not feel like going to office should I stop going to office what should I do now he said actually the bhakti philosophy the philosophy that we are going to die the point of it is not to make us paranoid I may die any moment it is not that I have to live in constant fear is this room going to fall down am I going to get a heart attack that is not the point the point is to direct our consciousness from the material to the spiritual the point is not to just constantly live in fear of death the point is to recognize that death is not just a possibility it is an inevitability it is going to come and I need to direct my consciousness from the material to the spiritual level and there is a process for directing that consciousness from the material to the spiritual level so I should practice that process determinately and that process involves a balance of material and spiritual life vidyam cha vidyam cha yas tad vedo bhayamsara avidyaya mrityuntheertha vidyaya mrityuntheertha the Isha Upanishad says that material knowledge, spiritual knowledge both we need so avidyaya mrityuntheertha while functioning in this world while navigating this world we need material knowledge so material knowledge means knowledge of how to earn a living knowledge of how to deal with people knowledge of how to manage our finances knowledge of how to manage our health all this material knowledge Isha Upanishad says avidyaya mrityuntheertha that this material existence which is a place of death we will cross over this by material knowledge we will know how to navigate in this and then vidyaya amrutam vishnate and by spiritual knowledge we will attain eternal existence therefore vidyam cha vidyam cha both we need so during the normal course of our life we we remember that death can come at any time but that is not meant to make us paranoid we understand that because death is an inevitability therefore let me focus on the process that will take my consciousness from the material level to the spiritual level and I practice that process wholeheartedly does that answer your question? any other questions? yeah please