How can we have steady faith that Krishna cares for us?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
we have steady faith that actually we are that krishna cares for us that we are present in krishna scheme of things there is often a misunderstanding about expectations when we want to appreciate krishna’s love for us we have to understand the language of love so for example if say i am in a foreign land say i go to south america where people speak i don’t know spanish and then somebody starts pointing something somebody’s pointing to they’re running towards me they seem to have raised their fists and they’re about to i think they’re about to attack me and then i get alarmed i try to defend and they’re very very big person so i how can i defend so i just duck and then i find that that person was shouting at me and they didn’t attack me there was a thief behind me they’re warning me about the thief and they’re attacking the thief so i couldn’t understand that because i did not know their language so actually they were expressing their care for me i thought they’re threatening me so what happens is that if we don’t understand the language we cannot understand the care also so when it comes to krishna we often expect uh we see how do we know that krishna cares for us we basically have certain expectations we pray to krishna for certain things and those things are fulfilled then you think yes krishna cares for me if those prayers are not fulfilled you think krishna doesn’t care for me so that sometimes our prayers not being fulfilled we make us feel that krishna doesn’t care for me but you have to understand that in this material world actually krishna cares this material world itself is a place of finite things so the very nature the very finitude of the material world implies that not all desires of everyone can be fulfilled there’s one devotee whose child was chanting and he stopped chanting indian devotee and then they took him to this spiritual master and he asked why did you stop chanting he asked him so he said you know there was an india pakistan cricket match and i prayed to krishna that india should win but pakistan won so i decided to stop chanting so then this spiritual master said just like you were praying to krishna that india should win there’s a boy like you in was praying pakistan should win said he prayed more than you so the point is that if we expect that whatever material arrangements should be made and the making of those material arrangements we see that alone as a sign of krishna’s love for us in our love then our faith in krishna will always be insecure because the material level sometimes things will work out sometimes things will not that is just the nature of the material world so philosophically we understand that there is krishna’s there is there is god’s omnipotence and there’s god’s omniscience when you pray to krishna that krishna please do this for me now we are accepting that krishna is much more powerful than us i can’t do this but krishna can do this for me so we are forming a relationship with krishna but the terms of that relationship are krishna it is your power and my intelligence now i have this problem and i want this problem to be solved and this is the way to solve the problem i can’t do it so you do it for me so when we do when we we approach krishna with this mood my intelligence and your power actually we are half trusting krishna we are trusting krishna as strength but not his intelligence not only he is stronger than us he is wiser than us he knows better than us what is best for us so if we trust him fully yes krishna i don’t know why this is happening but please give me the strength to serve you prabhupada has asked what is the best prayer that we can offer to krishna prabhupada said this please krishna give me the strength to no matter whatever happens so when we have this mood we’ll find that krishna has some plan for us there is a basic difference in which how in about how we look at our life and how krishna looks at our life see we look at the present and we plan for the future krishna looks at the future and plans for the present that means to give a simple example say if a child has pain and the child goes to the doctor and expects that my pain should be relieved and the doctor gives injection so pain is increased what does the doctor do actually no but a doctor is seeing the future you know there’s a disease and this disease will actually aggravate so the doctor is seeing the future and planning the present i give this injection future pain will decrease so if we understand that krishna’s intelligence is greater than mine then we will not be so insecure when things seem to go wrong in our life and even if we need certain things it’s not that krishna will not provide them see what happens there are desires and there are needs so sometimes krishna does fulfill our desire fulfill what we need but we expect it to be done in a particular way so now suppose a child goes to a child is hungry and goes to a orchard and there is a there’s a mango there’s apple tree over there and shakes the apple tree and says oh god please let this apple fall i’m hungry and the apple shakes and shakes no apple falls what is this is apple is not falling but in the near neighborhood there’s a mango tree and without any shaking the mango falls over there the child is fixated on the apple i will think oh i did not get it the child thinks you know actually i’m hungry i need some food and this mango is also food so then the mango will fulfill the need so like that now when we feel that we need something in our life and we expect that need to be fulfilled in a particular way so faith at one level is certainty but another level faith is also openness to possibility that means faith is certainty in the sense that if i pray to krishna krishna will bring about good in my life but how that will be krishna will fulfill the underlying need but if we have a preconception this is what krishna should be doing for me he’s not doing this what is the use no faith also means openness to possibility okay okay i have this need but how is it fulfilled i am thinking it should be fulfilled in this way but maybe it is going to fulfill in some other way so that openness to possibility comes when we have the service attitude krishna i am your servant whatever happens i want to serve you please guide me how can i serve you so with that mood if we move onwards then you’ll find that krishna will bring about even if bad things happen in our life but krishna will bring out good through the bad also so at our level how do we experience krishna’s love krishna’s presence that is first of all we have to have philosophical knowledge when a small baby is born the baby doesn’t even understand that actually that there’s somebody called somebody is my mother and she loves me for the baby she’s just crying and then the baby’s mouth is placed near the mother’s breast and the baby was saying oh there is some nice object and from this some nice objects are coming and suckling it as the baby starts growing then the baby starts recognizing oh this is not just some source of some nice object actually a person over here and the person loves me and then gradually then the baby start understanding that this is my mother mother cares for me now suppose it’s a very cold night and at time the baby is shivering the mother says that the baby is shivering and the mother comes and puts a blanket on the baby a nice comforter and the baby stops shivering so now the baby’s eyes are closed and the baby is not woken up literally speaking and in that sense the baby may not even notice the baby is not consciously open the eyes and seeing that oh my mother has come and mother put the comforter over here but just the feeling oh i was cold earlier and now i’m feeling soothed i’m feeling cozy i’m feeling warm that means even with the closed eyes the baby is this mother must have come she must have put a blanket over here so similarly for us right now our eyes are closed and we can’t see krishna so we even if krishna is right next to us he’s right next to us in our own hearts but we can’t perceive him so in the situation when we try to remember krishna we may be trembling and suffering because of the distresses of material existence but if we just strive to remember him we chant his holy name they try to hear his katha they take his darshan we hear his kirtan we try to do some seva and become absorbed in him in that absorption itself they’ll be released even if the problem remains still that absorption will lift us up the problem is there but the problem won’t trouble us so much because our consciousness is comforted by krishna’s remembrance and for us now wherever we are in the world whatever be the predicament we are in we can actually experience relief if we just turn our consciousness towards krishna if we absorb our consciousness in him then we experience the relief from that relief the devotee infers although i’m not seeing krishna krishna is here and krishna is offering me shelter therefore the whole process of krishna consciousness now it’s not just a set of rituals i chant mahamantra or i come and hear some classes all that is important but the purpose of it all is to make our consciousness attached to krishna so all the devotional activities that we do if they become the practice by which we make our consciousness attached to krishna then no matter what difficulty we face in our life actually our consciousness will become attached to him and amidst those difficulty also we’ll be able to experience relief and that relief that we experience amidst difficulty that will be actually the greatest conviction for us that krishna is for real and the relief that krishna offers is for real in the past in a similar situation i was in i would have crumbled i would not have been able to bear it at all but now the same problem is coming but i’m able to i want to go on with my life i’m able to face it how is that happen because krishna is giving me shelter so in this way if we have proper philosophical understanding then we will be able to always feel krishna’s presence the very absorption that we get in remembrance of krishna the taste that we get in the remembrance of krishna that itself is krishna’s reciprocation for us at our level of conscious and gradually by this by appreciating krishna’s reciprocation at this level by learning to serve krishna by staying fixed in the practice of bhakti our eyes will see the baby’s eyes open and the baby sees the mother next to her like that as our spiritual eyes open then we see that krishna is always there with us till then we regularly need to hear scripture and see through the eyes of spiritual knowledge through shastra chakshu krishna’s presence and krishna’s benevolence in our life thank you very much you