LIGHT acronym – 5 Meditations on Diwali

[Diwali talk at Krishna House, Gainesville, USA]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
And I’ll speak today on the theme of the festival of light as Diwali is known. So I’ll talk about five reflections. Am I audible behind? Audible there? Okay.
So I’ll talk of five reflections using the acronym light. L-I-G-H-T So the basic storyline Diwali is not just one festival. Diwali is a set of festivals and there are many different stories involved in it.
So you just heard the story of how Krishna was tied and that festival of the Lord being tied by the love of his devotee that we celebrate by offering a lamp which many of us will do at the end of this session. Diwali is more widely also known as the time when the lamps are lit to welcome the Lord. See here when we offer the lamps this is to, the Lord is present and we offer him a present.
That is the lamps which we offer him. Whereas when we decorate our houses with lamps that is more an invocation or a welcome. Okay.
It’s more of an invocation or a welcome where the residents of Ayodhya invited and welcomed Lord Ram back after his heart-wrenching 14 years of exile in the forest. And they lit their houses, their paths, pathways with lamps to welcome him back. So that is commemorated through the lighting of lamps.
So I’ll talk about five aspects. So first L is Love. Love is the deepest longing of the human heart.
And there are thousands of movies, thousands of novels. Most of them talk about love. How the longing for love is sometimes fulfilled, sometimes frustrated.
And if we look at the basic storyline of the Ramayana and we look at the typical storyline of a Bollywood movie. We’ll see many similarities. There is a hero, there is a villain, there is a heroine, there is a villain.
The villain has an evil eye towards the heroine. And there is a confrontation between the hero and the villain. So, what do the similarities signify? Actually, the Ramayana is talking about a spiritual reality which exists at a higher level and descends to this level.
Ram is an avatar. Avatar means in Sanskrit that is avatarati iti avatar. One who descends to this world from a higher level of reality.
So, the human heart’s longing for love is meant to be eternally fulfilled at the spiritual level of reality in relationship with the Lord and in relationship with everyone in relationship with the Lord. He is the centre and around him all long relationships of love attain their perfection. That is demonstrated when he descends to this world.
So, the Ayodhya Vasa says their love for Ram is signified by their spontaneous and massive celebration by lighting the lamps on their streets and outside their houses. So, love, this festival is about love. How we welcome a loved one back into our hearts.
Not just a loved one, this is one with a capital O. He is the supreme loved one. And the Ramayana is Itihas. Itihas means it is a genre of literature which is based on historical events.
At the same time, it is not just simply giving factual history. The enduring appeal of the Ramayana is because it is teaching timeless values which can inspire and guide people at all times. So, from that universal significance we understand that Ayodhya is like the human heart.
And God is present in every heart. But his presence is not manifest to most people. Sarvasya chaaham hrudisannivishto In the Bhagavad Gita 15.15 Krishna says that He is present in the hearts of all living beings.
Naaham prakaashya sarvasya Yogamaya samavrata Krishna says in 7.25 that I am not seen by everyone. So, although the Lord is present, we don’t see him. And this festival of Ayodhya, festival of Diwali, where the Lord returns to Ayodhya is also meant to remind us that we want the Lord to reappear in our heart.
So, just as the Yodhavasis welcome the Lord by lighting lamps, so we too want to light the lamp of devotion, of love that is directed towards the Supreme, Bhakti, which will invoke his presence in our hearts. Now, light is the acronym I am taking, so I is intelligence. Love is a very powerful force, but it can also be very powerfully misleading.
That’s why it is said that love is blind. So, sometimes in the name of what we feel as love, normally when we talk about the word love, we usually talk about it in terms of romantic sense. The love of a male for a female or a female for a male.
But love is present in many relationships. And in all these relationships, love can uplift, but love can also degrade. And why was Ram exiled at all from Ayodhya? It was because of love which was unintelligently manipulated.
Whose love was that? Kaikeyi. Kaikeyi, she was a devoted mother. And actually she was not just a mother for Bharat, she was a mother even for Ram.
And when she first got the news from Manthara that Ram is going to be coronated as the next king, she was delighted and she gave a jewel necklace to Manthara. She has never brought such good news to me. Thank you.
This is your award. And Manthara flung it down. She says, you stupid woman.
You don’t know what is happening. Everything that you have treasured is being seized away from you. And told him that if you don’t do something to protect your son’s rights, then he will be not only deprived, he will be dispossessed.
He may even be destroyed. Once Ram becomes the king, he may send Bharat to the forest or he may send Bharat to the other world. This was complete nonsense.
Ram and Bharat loved each other. But somehow it was her love for her son that made her act against another son. Not only against another son, stepson, but against her whole family.
So love always has to be guided by intelligence. She was so self-righteous. She, even when her husband begged her, the king to whom everybody offers tributes, Dashrath, fell down at her feet.
Please, if you want Bharat to be the king, let him be the king. But don’t send Ram out of the forest. Out of the forest.
I can’t live without him. But she had been manipulated by Mantara and she believed that if Ram were in the kingdom, Bharat would not agree to become the king. And even if Bharat somehow was persuaded, the people would not allow.
So Ram has to be sent to the forest. It was only, so she was completely convinced that she was doing this for her son. But her son was actually simply, or her conception of her son was the projection of her own insecurity and her own ego.
She, although she was the youngest queen, she had been the privileged queen because Dashrath loved her the most. And she felt that if Kaikeyi, Kaushalya’s son becomes the king, then I will lose this privileged position. Kaushalya will get that position.
But she was not consciously even aware of this. She was thinking, I am doing all this for Bharat. It is only when Bharat came back and he heard what had happened, his mother told him that I have arranged so that the kingdom is waiting for you now.
Bharat just was aghast. What have you done? You cannot be my mother. You must be the goddess of destruction incarnated in our family to destroy our whole family.
That was when her bubble of love burst. The imaginary Bharat that she had thought of and the real Bharat, when they confronted each other, the imaginary Bharat was completely dissipated. So like that, she lived with great regret.
What have I done? Exiled my own son. Someone who was like my own son, I caused my husband to die. But by that time it was too late.
So love is a great force, but love needs to be directed by the intelligence. And if it is not directed by the intelligence, it will be misled. Mantara is not just a historical character.
Mantara had her own axe to grind. What was her axe? She was a hunchback woman and because of that sometimes she would be the butt of some friendly jokes from others. But when Kaikeyi became the favourite queen and she was the favourite maidservant of the favourite queen of the king, so in the royal staff she got a privileged position.
And now because she was such an important person, nobody dared to joke at her. She felt that if Kaikeyi loses her position, then I will lose my position. And so to protect her position, she manipulated Kaikeyi.
So love is actually a very powerful force. But just like there was a Mantara at that time, there are many forces in today’s world who are out to manipulate our tender emotions. In fact, to a large extent, the advertising industry.
It subsists by creating insecurity among people. If you don’t have this, then nobody will look at you. If you don’t buy this, if you don’t wear this, if you don’t look like this, if you don’t have this.
So it actually aggravates the insecurity within us. So our love is very precious. It’s meant to be directed properly.
But if we are not intelligent, then it will get manipulated. So, intelligence is very important so that our love is directed wisely. Otherwise, love can make us very vulnerable and manipulable.
And in today’s world, especially, there are many, many forces who are out to do that. Just like we have a big festival, Diwali. In the Christian tradition, there are many festivals.
But one of the most popular, which has become universalised, is the Valentine’s Day festival. Now, actually, at that time, what happens is, the whole celebration, most people don’t even know who sent Valentine, what he did. But it is just used to manipulate people to sell products, to get things commercialised.
So that’s just one example. But there are people who are out there who want to exploit our tender sentiments. And unless our intelligence is strong, love can be what misleads us.
It can even destroy us. Oscar Wilde was a British poet. And he said that, fashion, he said, fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to change it every six months.
So everybody wants to look fashionable. But then, the same thing that is fashionable now, after six months, it’s old fashioned. And somebody who wants to be fashionable, there is no insult more unbearable than being told you are old fashioned.
So this is how people are exploited. So much money is spent. So we have to use our intelligence to direct our love.
Otherwise we will be manipulated just as Mantra was manipulated. And that which is very dear to our hearts, that we may drive away under the spell of some idea, which later on we turn out, it turns out is false. Third G is guilelessness.
Guilelessness means, guile is deception. Guilelessness means there is no deception. When Ram came back, initially Bharat had actually gone to the forest and he had gone with the whole army begging Ram to come back.
And when he refused to come, he told Ram, Ram, please give me your, what did he ask for? His slippers, his padukas. Yes, his slippers he asked. I will carry them on my head.
Today if there is a succession battle between two brothers, if one of the brother gives his slippers, the other brother will take and beat his brother with his slippers. So, Bharat was so devoted. And yet Ram, when he was coming back, he thought, people change.
After living for 14 years in the position of the emperor, Bharat may have become attached. And if he has a desire to continue as the king, I will not take the kingdom from him. And he, in order to test what was Bharat’s consciousness, he sent Hanuman in advance.
And Hanuman went and Ram told him, when you get, when you tell the news, see, what is the reaction of Bharat. Sometimes, when we suddenly get a news, an unguarded reaction comes up. Suppose, say, we are envious of someone and we hear something bad has happened to them.
Sometimes, the devilish side within us feels happy. And then we conceal ourselves. We put on a civilised mask.
No, I should not look happy. Oh, I am sorry to hear that. Actually, our heart is happy.
So, Ram wanted to see at that time what is the reaction of Bharat. And when Hanuman came there and Hanuman told Bharat that I am the messenger of Ram and Ram has sent me in advance. He said that the 14 years of exile is over and he is soon coming back.
Bharat just came back to life. He became jubilant and he said, Oh, monkey, are you a monkey or are you a godsend angel? Whoever you are, you have given me such a great news. He said, I will give you whatever gifts you want.
He said, I will give you a village, I will give you property, I will give you land, I will give you treasure. He said, when is Ram going to come back? Seeing this spontaneous, heartfelt joy, seeing the complete guilelessness of Bharat, tears came to Hanuman’s eyes. He realised that Bharat’s devotion to Ram was no lesser than his own devotion to Ram.
And he told Bharat, Blessed is your devotion that you have no desire to usurp that which belongs to your brother. He will surely come back soon. So similarly, when we try to practise bhakti, when we want to become devoted to God, why should we become devoted to God at all? Because we at our core are eternal.
We long for eternal love, eternal life, eternal happiness. Most of the movies, they end with H-E-A, happily ever after. Now actually speaking, there is no ever after in this world.
Everybody has to die. The Bhagavad Gita tells the exact opposite about the nature of the world. It’s not happily ever after.
It says, Dukkhalaya Mashashvatam. This world is a place of distress. It’s temporary.
And yet we long for lasting life and lasting love. Why is this? That is because at our core, there is the soul which is eternal. Everything around us is temporary.
Even the huge mountains. Couple of weeks ago, I was narrated in the Rocky Mountains. So, huge mountains, but even they are not eternal.
The twin towers, they look imposing. But even they are not eternal. Nothing in this world is eternal.
If we were simply products of the world around us, and in this world, there is nothing that lasts forever. Why would we at all have a desire to live forever? Why would we have this idea that we want to be happily ever after? If there is a child born in an African tribe, where they have never even heard of anything beyond that tribe. And one day, this child tells his mother, Mummy, I want pizza.
Mother will say, Where did you hear about a pizza from? There is nothing in the circumstance that would ever give a desire for pizza. So, similarly, in our circumstance around us, there is nothing that is eternal. So, why would a desire for eternal life at all come within us? That comes not from our externals, but from our internals.
At our core is an indestructible soul. Krishna says in 2.17 in the Gita that the soul is eternal and it pervades the body with consciousness. So, this eternal soul longs for eternal love.
So, we as souls are eternal, God is the Supreme Eternal. We have many relationships in this world and these are important. And all these relationships are meant to help us develop our eternal relationship with the Supreme.
So, that when we have a sincere desire to welcome the Lord in our hearts and just as Bharat, he did not want anything else. He simply was holding the kingdom, maintaining it so that Ram would take it. So, when the heart’s desire is for the Lord’s grace, for the Lord’s blessings, for the Lord’s mercy, for the Lord’s presence ultimately, then that is when the Lord manifests in the heart and then He enriches our heart.
That brings me to the fourth point. We are discussing what acronym? Does anyone remember? Light. So, H is the next one.
H is hope. All of us, we live in a world where there are hundreds of discouraging things that can befall us and they do befall us. So, hope is the fuel for the heart.
Just as a car needs fuel to move on, hope is similarly a fuel for the heart. Now, what is this hope to be based on? When we look around at the world, sometimes good things happen, sometimes bad things happen. Actually, it’s not sometimes.
Movies may say, Kabhi Khushi, Kabhi Gum. But actually, if you look at the sum total, there is much more gum than Khushi. I used to write it in Times of India in the speaking tree column.
So, when they started this, now there are many Indian newspapers which have spiritual columns. But speaking tree was the first column that started. So, I talked with the editor.
I asked, how did you get the idea of starting this column? So, she gave me a fascinating answer. She said, most of the news is about death, destruction and deception. This person cheated, this was a scam.
Oh, this was destroyed over there. This person died. She says, most of the news is that which will agitate people’s mind.
She says, we wanted one place, at least a newspaper reading which will pacify people’s minds. So, actually, we all get agitated. So, where do we get hope from? If we look ahead, there is anxiety.
Because we don’t know what the future holds. If we look behind, often there is lamentation. Oh, this went wrong, that went wrong.
So, what do we do? In the present, often there is a lot of burden. I have to do this, I have to do that. How am I going to manage it? So, the Ramayana guides us to lift our vision up.
Don’t just look behind, look ahead. Look up. At our level, things may appear to be going wrong.
But, there is a higher plan at work. There is a higher plan, which is ultimately for our best. It’s not that everything that happens is good.
In world, bad things happen. But, everything that happens can be for good. That means, even from the bad, good can come.
So, there is another way of looking at the world. So, if a child is lying on a mother’s lap, and a mother is sewing something. The needle is going up, coming down.
And the child is looking at the cloth, there is some embroidery happening over there. Child looks from below, child doesn’t see anything. It’s just a chaotic jumble of thread patterns.
But, child just waits, and the needle keeps going up, going down. And then eventually, the mother turns it around. And he says, that’s a sock for the child, with his name written on it.
So, what seemed to be like a disorderly pattern, from the child’s perspective, was an orderly pattern. So, like that, for us in our lives, many things may seem to be going wrong. But, we all need hope.
And hope can just come, I’ll be able to do it. I will do it. That can come from our own self and our own strength.
But sometimes, life presents us with such problems, that we get crippled by it. But, if we understand, that there is a higher plan in the world. Normally, if we have simply a materialistic world view, we can think of situations only in two terms.
Things are in my control, or things are out of control. Things are in control, yes, I feel good. Things are out of control, I feel worried.
But, there is a third understanding, that things may be out of my control, but they are not out of control. There is a higher plan that is there. And we will see that uncertainty has always been there in material existence.
Throughout history, there has been uncertainty. But in today’s world, there is far greater anxiety, than was there in the past. Psychologists talk about something called as anxiety epidemic.
Why is there so much anxiety? Because, we see things only horizontally, not vertically. We don’t look up. And we think that I should be able to control things, and if I am not able to control things, everything is a mess.
So, we need the education by which we can look up. Mayadhyakshena Prakruti Suyate Sacharacharam The Bhagavad Gita Krishna says, everything is working under my supervision. So, God has a plan for every one of us.
And, we need to have that hope. So, in the Ramayana, although Ram himself is present, there is so much distress that happens. Sita is abducted, the Ayodhya Vasis are in distress.
When the Ayodhya Vasis are in distress, Ram has gone to the forest, there are dangerous predators in the forest. Whether Ram will be able to come back also, they don’t know. But they have hope.
Bharat has hope. Ram will come back. And Ram does come back.
So, even if there is darkness presently in our life, still we need to know that there is a light of a divine plan that will soon be revealed. And by that, we can keep hope. That brings me to the last point.
T is Transcendence. Transcend means to go beyond. Unfortunately, the figure of Ram has been highly politicised in India with the whole controversy of building a temple of Ram.
Now, yes, building a temple is good. But more than building a temple, what is important is fulfilling the purpose for which a temple is to be built. That purpose is raising human consciousness.
The purpose is actually to raise human consciousness to the spiritual level. And temples are meant to facilitate that. Not just temples.
No, religious structures of any religion. That is the purpose to raise human consciousness. So, if we get very caught in the structure and forget the purpose, then what happens is that which is transcendental is brought down to the worldly level and becomes politicised.
This should be done. This should not be done. Our purpose, Lord Ram’s purpose in descending to the world is ultimately to raise human consciousness.
To transcend our situations. To learn to see life from a higher perspective by which we can discern the patterns. Sometimes, we can get so caught in life’s daily ups and downs.
This is going wrong. That is going wrong. I have to fix this.
I have to fix that. How will I deal with all this? So, it can seem like a burden that there are so many things to do. But, what the process of Bhakti Yoga offers us is an opportunity to transcend.
To rise above. Suppose there is a two-story building and in the upper level, there is air conditioning. In the lower level, there is no air conditioning.
Feeling very uncomfortably hot. Now, if we turn on a fan, we try to open the windows, but still not enough air is coming. It’s still cold.
What we need to do is just rise up. Just go to the upper level. At the upper level, if we go, we’ll feel comforted.
We will feel cooled. And then, even if we need to come back, we come down and do the work. So, ultimately, the Ramayana, the Bhagavad Gita, they talk about events that happened over here.
But, they are also talking about realities that transcend this world. So, defining understanding in the Indian wisdom literature is that reality is two-level. There is material and there is spiritual.
At the material level, inevitably, sooner or later, problems will be there. And you may try to deal with the problems, but sometimes the heat becomes unbearable. So, we need to rise to the first level.
So, the process of Bhakti Yoga is not just some religious ritual. Oh, go to the temple and clap hands and do certain things. No.
Actually, Diwali, for most people, is simply about noise and food. Isn’t it? Blow firecrackers and eat a lot of food. It’s good, but that’s not what it is, essentially.
The essence is, it’s an opportunity to remind us that there is a higher level to reality. And in the house which we are staying, there is another level which we have not explored. To our own selves, there is a spiritual dimension that we have not explored.
So, these are reminders and opportunities to rise to a higher level of consciousness, to experience a higher reality. At the spiritual level of consciousness, we experience peace, we experience joy, we experience strength, we experience the divine. And when we experience this, then we become strengthened.
We become strengthened by which we can better face life’s ups and downs, whatever they may be. So, we rise upwards to a higher level of consciousness through the practise of bhakti. Just now, we will be performing some kirtans.
Now, kirtan is where we use spiritual sound of mantras as an elevator for our consciousness. As the mantras are sung, as the mantras are chanted, we let the sound enter into our consciousness. And our consciousness enters into the mantra.
Just like when we enter into elevator, the elevator moves up. Similarly, our consciousness enters into the sacred sounds that raises our consciousness up. And we will ourselves experience peace, strength, joy.
And that experience is profoundly empowering. The purpose of bhakti is to give us experience of that divine who is beyond the normal scope of experience for us. And the experience that reality has is higher dimension.
We rise up so that we can deal better with what lies down. And as we become more equipped, more confident, more composed to face whatever life sends our way, knowing that there is a higher side to us which is indestructible. Ultimately, when we light the lamps in Diwali, we want to light our inner world with spiritual knowledge by which we see that there is a higher level to ourselves.
There is a higher level to reality. And we are invited, we are facilitated to rise to that higher level. And when we do that, that gives us the empowerment to face whatever life sends our way.
So, I will summarise quickly what I spoke. So, I spoke today about the acronym light to explain five meditations about Diwali. So, the Ayodhya Vasis welcome Lord Ram by lighting the lamps.
And similarly, we welcome the Lord into our heart. So, L was what? Love. And love is the deepest longing of the human heart.
And we all want to love and be loved. And Diwali is a festival where the love of the Ayodhya Vasis was expressed through their setting up this festival by lighting lamps. And when we long for a love, we are actually longing not just for a temporary love with somebody else, somebody in this world.
We are longing for an eternal love. And that eternal object of love is the Supreme. That is Ram.
That is Krishna. And it is Him we want to welcome into our hearts through the process of Bhakti. What was I? Intelligence.
Love is a very powerful emotion. But it can be, if it is manipulated and misled, it can make us do terrible things. Just as it was Kaikeyi’s maternal love when misdirected, she thought that she was protecting Bharat.
But she was destroying, hurting everyone else and she was hurting Bharat also. So, love can put us in a bubble of imagination which is totally disconnected from reality. So, we need to have our tender loving emotions guided by a sound intelligence.
Otherwise, just as there are Mantharas who are self-interested out to manipulate Kaikeyi, there are agents in this world who are out to manipulate our emotions and make a business out of them. What was G? Guilelessness. So, guile is deception.
So, Ram came back when he saw that Bharat really wanted him to come back. Bharat was delighted by hearing the news. Not that Bharat wanted to hold on.
Similarly, the Lord is to come in the heart. He comes back when he sees that we want him there. Why should we want him there? Because he is the object who will give us eternal shelter and strength.
It is in learning to love him that we will become strengthened and joyful. So, our longing for love comes from our core. That’s why we long for everlasting love.
Happily ever after. We long for that because we ourselves are eternal. Just like an African child suddenly asks me for a pizza.
A desire. Where is it coming from? Nothing in the world around us is eternal. Our desire for the eternal comes not from the world but from the core.
And H was? Hope. In life, many things may go wrong. And if we just look at the world horizontally, soon we will become hopeless.
This is going wrong. This person did this. That person did that.
We need to look up. And we need to see that there is a higher plan. For the child, the needle is just moving up and down in a random way.
But from above, a pattern is being shaped. So, similarly, we may think from the materialist’s perspective that things are in control or out of control. And when we think they are out of control, our anxieties multiply.
But, when we see the higher understanding that it is out of my control, it is not out of control. Then, with that hope, we can persevere. Just like the Ayodhya Vasis persevered through the 14 years and then Rama returned.
And T was? Transcendence. Sometimes, sometimes we get too caught in externals. Like Rama’s figure has been politicalised today.
Build this temple. No, don’t build this temple. No.
More important than building the temple is fulfilling the purpose. That is to transcend. To raise the consciousness to transcendental level.
And that is based on the understanding that reality is two levels. Material and spiritual. At the material level, when we experience distress, hope is just an abstract emotion.
All things will work out right. But transcendence means we see that things are already right at a higher level of reality. So, when there is extreme uncomfortable heat, at one level, we go to the higher level.
There is coolness. There is air conditioning there. So, when we learn to see things from a spiritual perspective, by raising our consciousness to the spiritual level, we experience peace.
We experience strength. And bhakti yoga is a process that offers us an elevator to get that experience of spiritual reality. Of the supreme spiritual reality.
God himself. And the holy name, the sacred spiritual sounds, they are like ladders. They are like elevators, rather.
Which raise our consciousness to the spiritual level. And thus, when we transcend our worldly situations, then we can better deal with those situations. Because we don’t feel threatened.
We are strengthened by our inner security and with maturity we can deal with the externals. So, when we see from this transcendental perspective, even when things are going wrong, I’ll conclude with this meditation. It’s one thought.
Now, when we are down to nothing, we should know that God is up to something. When we are down to nothing, God is up to something. And that enduring hope is what we want to light in our hearts by lighting the lamps at Diwali.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. Thank you so much, Prabhu, for that awesome, inspiring class on Diwali.