Since something I built my life on collapsed I have started hating God – what can I do?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
our life has not become something which we build our life on if someone was suddenly taken away and then if you start feeling that God is someone who is out to hurt me how can I deal with this feeling of animosity I needed someone to blame I would say that there are natural human emotions that come up and we don’t have to necessarily feel bad or guilty about those emotions coming up in the Mahabharata there is a description of how Arjuna’s son Abhimanyu was insulted by cowherds and after Arjuna breaks down he starts so he breaks down and he just he leaves his brother and tells Krishna also Krishna you knew why didn’t you tell me what happened to Abhimanyu Krishna had some time to defend himself Krishna doesn’t blame him back Krishna just comes to himself so now why things happen the way they do it is a very complicated frame of view that it is in the Srimad Bhagavatam there is an incident where there is a cow and a bull and bull is being beaten by an aggressor that aggressor is actually Kali and the king Parikshit comes over there and he stops that, he chastises that aggressor he turns to this cow and bull and he asks them what is the cause of your suffering they say this is a very special, you saw he was beating me, he asked me what is the cause of my suffering and the bull replies, the bull is actually dharma personified, the cow is mother earth, so the bull says the cause is some people say it is just the nature of the world, some people say it is just you, some people say it is karma, some people say it is the grahas, it is astrological planets, so in this way the cause is very difficult to understand and Parikshit at that time says you are very learning and he says that actually those who blame others for wrong end up in the same destination as those who perpetrate the wrong this doesn’t mean that the victim and the criminal are at the same level, the criminal will definitely get the karmic reaction his point is that if we just see the immediate causes we just reduce our analysis to some pat causes pat answers, things don’t work so well, so it is obvious when Parikshit is asking him the question what is the cause of your suffering Parikshit has also seen this king hitting him this aggressor hurting him so he is actually testing the philosophical understanding and he answers that I don’t know the cause so firstly in this world whenever problems come the problems come not because of God, the problems come in spite of God the problems come not because of God, they come in spite of God, what does that mean that he doesn’t want us to suffer he is the cause of our suffering he is the cure for our suffering now where exactly do the problems come from walk along I think left so the simple fact is that we all have free will and by our free will and by other people’s free will certain things happen in certain ways we may devote ourselves to someone we may form an image that person just lets us down we may focus on a career and somebody else cheats us and then we lose the opportunity in this case God he is not he is not responsible for people’s misusing their free will the most dramatic example of this is how in the story of how before the war took place Krishna himself Krishna himself went as Shantidevi he sought peace he was ready to offer the Pandavas he was ready to offer the most accommodating terms to the government and still Krishna rejected that and Krishna said now war is inevitable so Krishna himself went there and he sought peace he was ready to offer the most accommodating terms to the government when the will of God is not powerful so God is powerful but by his own arrangement he is giving people freedom and sometimes people misuse their free will and sometimes in the past people misuse their free will and somebody’s reaction may come because of that so at this stage in our life it is often extremely difficult to know what is the cause of the suffering but one thing is for sure if God wanted to cause us suffering why would he limit it he could just destroy us why are we even alive if a malevolent being see when sometimes we ask why do bad things happen to good people you could turn around the question why should they happen no why should there be a correlation at all no why should there be a correlation at all see normally we experience in the course of our life if I do good I do get good results if I do bad I do get bad results if I do bad I do get bad results so now the very fact that there is a correlation between cause and effect that is what leads to the question when that correlation doesn’t seem to be present isn’t it so the very fact that the exception seems so jarring to us underscores that it is standard and that’s why the exception becomes jarring to us so the you know if god was malevolent then there would be no good in this world there is definitely good in the world there is bad also but there is good also so it’s difficult for us to to understand the exact cause of why something happened but to think that because god is evil and god wants to hurt us that is that can definitely be challenged simply based on the facts of our life now if you just look at the world around us there are so many people who are probably suffering more than us and you know if god had wanted us to suffer he could have made us suffer much more or you also see that there are many people who are doing well in life so why is god not hurting them so god is not the cause of our suffering there are various factors which may circumstantially bring about some suffering what we can experience is that if we strive to connect with god whether it is through coming to some spiritual programs praying chanting the mantra chanting and doing mantra meditation whatever be the problem we will find relief so basically in life there are causes and there are purposes if we start looking for the cause of problems why did this happen? why did this happen? our knowledge is limited we can’t know the causes of problems but whatever be the cause cause means where something came from purpose means where something is taking so the purpose of everything in this world actually is to take us closer to god to help us find the supreme shelter in him a shelter that is not shaken by no matter whatever goes wrong in this world so that’s why i said god is not the cause of our suffering he is the cure for our suffering so at this stage it may just not be possible to understand why that happened but it’s not because of god and what you can find is if you strive to practice bhakti yoga according to your capacity try to connect with him whatever be the problem you have the relief that you get from it will be tangible so the feeling of animosity towards whatever unknown thing has caused this, that’s just natural but just because it’s natural doesn’t necessarily make it real nor does it make it desirable I may naturally get angry at someone but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to beat that person so we use our intelligence to reason with ourselves I feel like beating this person I’m not going to beat this person so like that you use your reason to overcome this natural animosity and if you strive to either study the bhagavad gita to come to the spiritual program try to chant the holy names you will yourself experience relief and that relief will slowly start bringing the conviction within you that god is not against you, he is with you and what is out there god who is in here will help you to deal with it better ok thank you