Can we see everything that happens as Krishna’s mercy that he is giving us our own bad karma for making us take shelter of him?

Answer Podcast

Thank you so can we see that whatever is happening bad things our own karma karma karma karma karma karma karma karma karma karma it’s very very difficult to know in the and to expect someone to do that at that time it’s not easy there is no evidence in the Mahabharata or the Ramayana when Sita is kidnapped nobody tells her whatever happened was good see the kidnapping as the lord’s mercy nobody tells us that this world is filled with monstrous evils and in fact I was in UK there was a court case filed by atheist to declare belief in god belief in a good god as immoral he says that it is an insult to the gravity of human suffering to make people believe that there is a good god he says therefore this belief should be deemed immoral horrible suffering in this world if you actually go and see a mother whose 6 month old baby has got a disease by which from the very moment of birth till it dies at the age of 6 months constantly screaming you tell that mother god is good this is your karma getting exhausted monstrously insensitive to even talk about such things when and these can also be devotees the kind of problems we may get in life we can’t even imagine that and people who are going through those problems it’s not easy it’s not easy the kind of suffering if a woman is raped tell her that it is your own karma getting exhausted did anyone tell Sita that you must have been a demon in your previous life Krishna comes to meet them in the forest and Draupadi breaks down and says Krishna I deserve your protection I am your friend I am your relative I am your devotee and I called out to you but still a terrible thing happened so Krishna doesn’t tell her how dare you doubt my I will come and stop it at all costs he says there was a demon who attacked Dwaraka and I was caught in saving Dwaraka from that demon as soon as I came to know I will immediately come oh Draupadi the grievous wrongs that you have gone through they will not be erased your offenders will be punished which we have to we have to practice spirituality that is emotionally healthy not spirituality that is emotionally unhealthy so making somebody who is going through great pain somehow trying to make them stink and this is Krishna’s mercy it’s not possible I was in Brisbane no not Brisbane Sydney I don’t know Brisbane I was in Brisbane and there I just arrived in Brisbane and that I was going to have a big satsang program 300-400 people were there and just before that one of the congregation leader you have works at that time we have to see what works we cannot take a holier than our attitude it’s your own karma coming to you karma may be an intellectually satisfactory explanation karma is not an emotional it is it is not that Krishna what we have to say is that in this world bad things happen we don’t know why they happen but Krishna is there with us to help us to deal with whatever bad things happen later on if they are in a proper situation then we can help them come to terms with it and what you are saying can make sense at that time but it won’t make sense at that time when should Prabhupada when he had that severe altercation and he told his wife choose tea or me then his wife drank a cup of tea and Prabhupada walked away but the devotee Prabhupada went to one of his god brothers ashram and his god brother writes there is a book written called our day of Prabhupada says that for several days Prabhupada was chanting chanting chanting and his god brother Prabhupada at his ashram says Swami was agitated at that time agitated means it’s a major decision if you have a family you have lived with and you have to give it up it’s a major decision and Prabhupada did that in the final pastime in the TKG diary he describes how Prabhupada’s last days were Prabhupada had a very excruciatingly terrible disease and the disease went on for a long long long time so Tamar Krishna Maharaj writes that one time Prabhupada started new medicine ayurvedic medicine and things were looking up and he seemed to be curing and then one night it was just two three days it was going up and then one night everything collapsed and Prabhupada became worse than earlier and then at that time Prabhupada asked why is this happening now does that mean Prabhupada doesn’t have faith in Krishna at that particular point why is this happening does Krishna want me to leave this body and go or does Krishna want me to stay in this body and continue spiritual service should I take treatment or should I not take treatment so even a pure devotee may get that question so we can’t suppress our emotions simply through intellectual philosophizing there is a time for grieving and there is a time for healing and if you don’t give yourself the time for grieving then healing cannot take place suppose I have got a fracture in my hand when I have a fracture if somebody tells me Prabhu you are not your body you are the soul just continue working everything will be alright and I can’t lift anyway my hand is a fracture but if I don’t give my hand time to heal it will become worse but if I have given it 2 weeks 3 weeks 4 weeks whatever doctor told and after that also I don’t exercise my hand then it will never heal there is a time for letting it rest and there is a time to exercise it also similarly when something terrible has happened at that time there is a time for venting the emotions there is a time for grieving and unless that grieving is allowed the emotions will stay all choked now it keeps grieving all the time it doesn’t learn to grow through it then it’s a problem even in the past when Dashrath passes away Pandu passes away there is a nationwide period of mourning that is described Bhagwatam also says that after the Kurukshetra war gets over all the Pandavas they grieve for the deceased ones so grieving is not a bodily attachment even if somebody else has a body and their soul has gone to another body because we are connected with that person at a bodily level and their loss is something which you have to process so this kind of speaking can be extremely emotionally unhealthy emotional wounds are as real as physical wounds just as we won’t expect a physically fractured person physically fractured hand to to lift weight similarly we can’t expect emotionally wounded person to just frisk away the wound and move on while they are wounded we can’t minimize that wound everything is Krishna’s mercy the first thing that person you are not Krishna’s mercy for me right I need someone who understands me not someone who lectures to me when bad things have happened what are we to do bad things happen to someone we are to be there with that person to help them deal with the bad things to think that anyone deserves to suffer is the beginning of depersonalization is the beginning of impersonalism a devotee doesn’t feel that nobody should suffer we should not think that anyone deserves to suffer if they have some karma that is between them and Krishna we have to see what is my dharma how can I best help this person we start thinking about karma like that we can become terribly insensitive if a baby is crying should the mother think oh the more the baby cries the baby’s past karma will get exhausted mother is to think how can I what is my dharma my dharma is to console my baby when the fourth canto Pruthu Maharaj citizens come to him and tell him that oh we are afflicted because there is drought over here he doesn’t say it’s all Krishna’s mercy see it as your own karma he works as a king to help so we should first and foremost be an instrument of Krishna’s love then we can be an instrument of Krishna’s wisdom if we try to be an instrument of Krishna’s wisdom before being an instrument of Krishna’s love we will simply come off as judgmental Sri Prabhupada cooked for the hippies he washed the plate of the hippies served them they saw that Swamiji really cared for them and then when he spoke you are not the body you are the soul they were eager to hear so there are times when we should be definitely instruments of Krishna’s wisdom so we have the example of Chitraketu yeah Chitraketu Maharaja was attached and he spoke to him and became enlightened but he already had a great reverence for the sages he already had philosophical knowledge in the background and he was reminded at that time whether if we do it it has the same effects I don’t know I have seen many many devotees burned out because of this kind of attitude so if this devotee who told me his spouse had committed suicide and another devotee came to him good you are free from material entanglement that may be true at one level but that is not the time normally when someone commits suicide there is a huge problem called a survivor’s guilt all those who live they feel guilty did I do something because of this person committed suicide and you have to process that it is like without understanding what emotional situation a person is in we bring a truck of philosophy and run it over them it just injures people all the more so when people are distressed first and foremost adversity has struck someone first be an instrument of Krishna’s love help them tell them I am here with you I am not here to lecture you I am here to cry I knew one devotee he was very young and passed away so one of our senior devotees went to meet their family and they were just blasting Krishna he dedicated his life to Krishna and he passed away like this so Brahmachari just heard it he did not speak any philosophy he said whatever is your anger it is justified just bring it out there is a time when people need emotional healing and at that time if you do philosophical lecturing it is violence so first and foremost be an instrument of Krishna’s love so later on as I said eventually you will be able to see it as Krishna’s mercy we may ourselves be able to do it others may be able to do it but trying to tell people to see Krishna’s mercy when they may even be doubting the existence of Krishna it happens it happens I know one devotee one devotee mataji one devotee couple they they were preaching very nicely and they had three miscarriages and naturally if they started preaching if they had a child then the preaching would go down so the third time when they had a miscarriage this mataji told me I felt so angry with Krishna Krishna you want your preaching more than my baby that’s why you are taking my baby away from Krishna now at that time losing your baby is Krishna’s mercy she is questioning Krishna at that time and it’s understandable for a mother we men we can’t even understand it to carry a life in one’s own womb and then to lose that it’s a we are going to horrendously misrepresent Krishna and alienate a lot of people from Krishna so when people are hurt we are there to help them heal their hurt not lecture how not lecture how God is good one of my friends who was atheistic he was a Christian who became an atheist and now he has become a devotee he said when I face problems and I will go to my pastor why is this happening he said the whole pastor’s mood was not to help him the whole pastor’s mood was to get God off the hook don’t blame God for this I didn’t feel that pastor was trying to help me at all he became atheist because of that so one of the greatest reasons I am speaking this so strongly because this is the strongest criticism of the Abrahamic religions against Hinduism Hindus have no sense of compassion because they don’t believe in karma they feel that if a person is poor they are suffering their own karma so they stay rotting in poverty somebody is born in low caste you are born in low caste you stay degraded we do not have anything like this thousands and thousands of people actually have left the Vedic path because of the insensitivity exhibited by followers of the Vedic path in the name of karma in the name of karma so I was there at one not there one devotee who was there at a at a place where a big calamity had happened a natural natural disaster had happened and the devotees went there and devotees where people had lost their homes people had lost their family there was one young man he had two sisters a father mother he just lost everyone and there the devotees gave a lecture on how everything is our karma everything is our karma that was the village over there some devotees gave a lecture over there it was like after that lecture like 97% of villages converted to Christianity this person is coming and telling us we are responsible the Christians are coming and giving us relief so if we use karma as a tool for making people deny their feelings then we are doing terrible violence I will conclude with this point I was in Texas and there one atheist had written on the car bumper oh god please save me from your preachers so I