The Problem of Pain – Materialistic, Abrahamic and Dharmic explanations

[Sunday feast class at ISKCON, Adelaide, Australia]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
5 minutes.
Hare Krishna, thank you for coming today afternoon, today I’ll speak on the Bhagavad Gita 8.15, the topic will be the problem of pain, the problem of pain, why does pain exist in this world, so the Bhagavad Gita 8.15 is, maam upekte punar janma dukkha lema shashvatam naapnuvanti mahatmanah samsiddhim paramamgatah Krishna says, those who devote themselves to me, they attain my eternal abode and do not come to this world, which is distressful and temporary, so now I’ll talk this in three broad parts, first is, we look for a material explanation, materialistic explanations for why pain exists, then we look for philosophical or spiritual explanations, and then we look for, look about practical ways of addressing or dealing with pain, so let’s begin first with the materialistic level of reality, which is where most people are at, and if we consider that nobody likes pain, and generally anybody and everybody would like to avoid pain as much as possible, but still pain keeps coming upon us, now why does pain come like this, if we look at a functional, there is functional materialism and then there is philosophical materialism, functional materialism means, where people just seek material pleasures in life, and they don’t think much about philosophy, but philosophical materialism is where people think that matter is all that exists, so functionally on a day-to-day basis we always try to avoid pain and gain some pleasure, and generally when the people are asked, why there are so many problems in life, people say that’s the way it is, life, there are problems, and then there are pleasures, and the problems will make your pleasure sweeter, the world is a place of duality, sometimes happiness, sometimes sorrow, so this is the nature of the world, now we might say that yes, pain makes pleasure sweeter, and it can be true at a functional level, but does that make pain a virtue or a necessity, it’s a rationalisation by which we somehow reconcile with the existence of pain, if pain were necessary to make pleasure sweeter, how many people voluntarily go and embrace pain, till now everywhere that I invested my money, it just kept growing, so now I’ll deliberately invest my money in a place where it will all crash, and when I lose my money like that, after that when I gain money it will be sweeter, I have been healthy for so long, actually health has become boring, so I will jump under a train and fracture myself, and then after that when I become healthy I’ll feel better, so nobody does that, so this idea that pain makes pleasure sweeter, that might be functionally true, but that is a way we are reconciling, resigning ourselves to the existence of pain, we are not actually necessarily pointing out to pain as a virtue, so why does pain exist at all, that question remains unanswered, now if we go at a level of functional materialism, we don’t get an answer, okay that’s how it is, people say it’s your bad luck that you are having this problem, and can’t do much about it, so now if we go at a level of philosophical materialism, actually it’s where matter is all that exists, it’s a serious problem, because one major purpose of medical science is to free people from pain, of course the positive purpose is to give people health, but at a basic level also to remove people from pain, in fact people don’t come to doctors primarily to become healthy, it is only when they are unhealthy, and not just when they are unhealthy, it is when they are unhealthy and they feel pain, that is when they go to a doctor, so the doctor’s purpose may be to improve health, but the patient’s purpose in going to the doctor is to become free from pain, so a major purpose of medical science is to free people from pain, and yet all of medical science has no metre, no device by which we can measure pain, we have a thermometer, we have barometer, we don’t have a painometer, so does pain even have, if you look at the materialistic world view, what is pain, does pain even have an existence, within the philosophical materialistic world view, there is, yes you could say, the hand is fractured, the hand is misaligned this way, or the acid content in the body, in the stomach is high, or this particular metric is wrong, the way it should be, it is not like that, but pain as a conscious experience doesn’t even have existence within the materialistic world view, in fact obviously pain is something we all experience, and we may philosophically analyse and rationalise in various ways, but pain is where life’s reality comes out in a very grave way for us, in an undeniable way, so therefore what is important is that, so now some people say from the atheistic perspective, where evolution is not just seen as a theory, but it is seen as an ideology that explains everything, they say actually pain simply exists because pain, through pain, unwanted bodily features, unwanted bodily disorders, living beings, unwanted things are eliminated, so pain is an evolutionary eliminator, that’s what they say, that through that, say if a deer can’t run fast enough, it tries to run fast, it feels pain, but it can’t run onwards, eventually it is caught and is killed, so pain indicates an evolutionary dysfunctionality, and that’s how it eliminates, so it’s an evolutionary virtue they say, where the nature of the world is that it’s survival of the fittest, and one organism lives on another, and that’s why pain is just a part of the existence in this world, but still that doesn’t explain, we say okay that is the way the world is, but there is an observation and there is an explanation, so the observation even if you give a name to it, okay, it is because survival of the fittest is there, that’s why there is so much struggle and that’s why there is pain, okay, but that’s not an explanation, okay, why is the world fashion in such a way, that there is so much struggle, so at the material level although everybody is trying to remove pain, there is no real explanation for pain, but often atheistic people use the presence of pain as a very strong argument to say that there cannot be any good God, that there is so much suffering in this world, then how could there be any good God, and it’s not just suffering, it’s indiscriminate suffering, it’s not just bad people suffer, even good people suffer, so when good bad things happen to good people, then they go through unbearable pain, people say this proves that there is no God at all, but we could turn this question around and within a strictly materialistic worldview we could ask, okay, you’re saying that bad things happen to good people and therefore God doesn’t exist, okay, but before that let’s ask a fundamental question, why should bad things not happen to bad good people? What do you mean? Good things should happen to good people, bad things to bad people, why? If everything that exists is running simply based on unguided natural forces, then there should be no correlation between action and reaction, anything should happen to anyone, so the very fact that we expect good things to happen to good people and bad things to happen to bad people, the very fact that we expect a cause-effect correlation, why should that cause-effect correlation be present at all? Why? Within the materialistic worldview everything is happening by unguided natural forces, so good things happening to bad people, say there is a herd of deer which is running and a lion chases the deer and the lion pounces on one deer and not another deer, now why this deer and why not that deer? The lion thought that I could catch this deer better, faster, okay, but why? They say it’s just chance, now if it is all chance, then why point out the lack of cause-effect correlation? If everything is by chance then why say that, okay, why are bad things happening to good people? And functionally nobody lives by this chance doctrine. Now how, is there any parent who will grow up and raise their children telling, you know, in this world everything runs by chance, whether you study or don’t study, what is going to happen to you by chance, now whether you clean your room or don’t clean your room, you know, how your room will be by chance, whether you brush your teeth or don’t brush your teeth, whether your teeth stay good or not, it is all by chance. Even atheists don’t train their children like that, isn’t it? So, at least at a functional level we train our children, you know, you behave like this, you’ll stay healthy, you eat healthy food, you’ll stay healthy, you eat unhealthy food, you’ll become sick, you eat too many chocolates, just your teeth will get spoiled.
So, the fact is that we do see a cause-effect correlation to some extent and there are some times when the cause-effect correlation is not seen. So, because we see the cause-effect correlation for most of the time and because we expect it to be there all the time, that when it is not there we ask the question why is it not there? Why is it not? The question why are bad things happening to good people that presumes that normally good things should happen to good people. So, if we have a big notice board and on that notice board there are many notices and one notice says everything on this notice board is, every notice on this notice board is false.
Is there a problem with that? If you have one, there are many notices and one notices, every notice on this notice board is false. What is the problem with that? This statement could also be false. If every notice is false, then even this notice is also a notice.
So, is this notice also false then? It is a self-contradictory statement. So, in logic self-contradictory statements collapse into themselves. If somebody says I can’t speak a single word of English, well you already spoke seven words.
So, when we point out why are bad things happening to good people, therefore there is no God. No, if you are saying there is no God because bad things are happening to good people, that means you are actually asking, you are presuming that there is a cause-effect correlation and then you are asking why is the exception there. But we turn the question around and ask what is the basis of the presumption.
So, within the worldview of atheism everything becomes relativistic. If everything is by chance then there is no reason for this pointing out why are bad things happening to good people. Often atheists point out how certain religious practises are illogical.
Oh, you worship a stone, you do this ritual, you do this, you do that, it’s also illogical. But actually they say this has no meaning. But within the atheistic worldview nothing has any meaning.
Because life itself is meaningless. Life itself is, we somehow are like parcels of protoplasm who somehow came alive for some time, we flap around for some time and then we die. So, atheism, materialism, what it does is it inundates us within an ocean of meaninglessness.
Then to point out, oh, why is this meaningless, why is this meaningless, the whole worldview is meaningless. So, basically I won’t go into a refutation of atheism over here. The point here is that the problem of pain at a material level has no answer.
Now, there are, within the religious explanations there are broadly two different kinds of religions. You could say that the Abrahamic religions which is Judaism, Christianity, Islam and then there are the dharmic religions. Dharmic religions are Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism.
So, these have certain fundamental differences. Now, the Abrahamic religions hold that actually there was original sin because of which everybody is suffering. So, Adam and Eve sinned against God by eating the forbidden apple and because of that sin has transmitted down to everyone like a genetic defect.
And because of that sin all sufferings come up. Now, this is one explanation. But then there are several issues with it.
You see, the pain is because of that. But now the problem which we have with pain is not just the presence of pain. It is the difference in pain.
What is our problem primarily is not just the presence of pain but the difference in pain. That, ok, if everybody were poor, ok, we would just resign ourselves to it. But some people are poor and some people are wealthy.
If everybody were mediocre looking, ok, but some people have outstanding looks and some people have outstandingly poor looks. So, it is not just the presence of pain, it is the difference in pain. And the idea that there is some original sin because of which all of us are contaminated and because of which all of us are suffering, that doesn’t explain the difference in pain.
That doesn’t explain why different people go through different pains at different times. Also, another problem is that in the Abrahamic religions, the idea is that only humans have souls, humans will be elevated and liberated. So, if pain is a reaction to sin and the solution to that sin is to be saved by Jesus, that can be done only by human beings.
So, there for a long time there are many Christian philosophers and scientists who resisted the idea that animals have consciousness. Because if animals have consciousness, then animals have pain. And why should animals have pain? They don’t have souls and they cannot have committed the original sin.
Now, animals also go through a lot of pain. It’s not just when they are sick and they have diseases, but sometimes in animals, the wilderness animals get wounded. Now, we sometimes live in cities and we may idealise the forest and the jungles, such a peaceful place.
Yes, there is serenity at one level, but in the jungle there is also brutality. There is a very deadly struggle for existence. So, why is pain present among animals also? So, within that worldview that there is an original sin because of which everyone is suffering, this difference in pain and the prevalence of pain in the animal world is not explained.
Because ultimately, again, animals do have consciousness. Sometimes people say, okay, you know, actually vegetarian people, you eat vegetables and meat eaters eat meat, but you cut vegetables, you kill vegetables, we kill animals. What is the difference? There is a big difference in terms of the magnitude of pain that is suffered.
Animals have much more developed nervous systems. And that’s why they suffer far more pain. A simple thought exercise we could say, say if tomorrow your child comes and says, you know, our teacher has said that we are going for a field expedition to a farm where we will be seeing harvesting.
Now, would you need to let your child go there? Certainly. Yeah, it’s education. You can see harvesting.
Whenever harvesting happens, the crops are blooming and people come and cut. It’s a mood of celebration. But tomorrow, if a child came and said, you know, we are having a field expedition to a slaughterhouse to see how animals are killed, which parent would allow children to go? So, we intuitively know there is a difference between say cutting crops and cutting animals and a big difference.
So, there is pain in the animal world also. And why this pain is present is very difficult to understand within either the materialistic worldview or the religious worldview, which says all pain comes from original sin. Now, going further, if you look at the dharmic traditions, the dharmic traditions, if you consider primarily the Bhagavad Gita as a central book in dharmic traditions, the Bhagavad Gita explains that the question of pain is actually very difficult to answer.
But there can be multiple levels of explanations. Now, some people take the dharmic explanation in an oversimplified way. And they say all your problems are because of your past karma.
Now, this is, this has to be carefully understood. It is not a simplistic explanation. If somebody, say, on a cold night, they eat a dozen ice creams.
And then they wake up in the next morning. Previously, they were eating ice creams. And in the next morning, they say, ice cream.
They start screaming in pain. Now, if their throat is terrible, is that because of past karma? Okay, past karma, past night’s karma. Not some past life’s karma.
So, basically, the idea that suffering is because of past karma, that has to be understood a little carefully. See, the principle here is that there is a cause effect connection. And when there’s a cause effect connection, we all need to move forward in life, understanding why things are happening the way they are happening.
So, as I said earlier, we all operate based on our understanding of cause effect. And generally, in our day to day life also, we try to look at bigger and bigger pictures to understand things, if the smaller picture doesn’t make sense. Say, right now, we are sitting, and suddenly the light goes off.
And you immediately look and say, okay, has that light stopped working? You could look at one explanation. You could first look at, has somebody accidentally switched off, turned off the switch? So, that is one cause of it. Why did the light go off? Because somebody accidentally turned off the switch.
Another explanation could be, okay, the switch is on. So, that is one small cause of a connection. The other loop you could put it in is, okay, maybe that bulb got spoiled.
Maybe the bulb and its time duration expired. Okay, that could be another explanation, another loop in which you could put that. Another loop you could put it is, okay, maybe the electric power supply has got cut off, because of which we are not having power.
Now, you could say, okay, the electric supply has got cut off. Is it that somebody stepped on the wiring on the way to my home, and it is only my house? Or is it in the whole locality? Or it could be that there is a power plant, and the power plant, the terrorist was attacked and exploded the power plant. And because of that, the whole area is submerged.
So, now, normally, whenever we look for an explanation of something going wrong, we look at the most immediate explanation, or the most apparent explanation, most obvious explanation. And when that explanation does not make sense, then we like try to put it in a bigger context, bigger context, and a bigger context, and a bigger context. And generally, we try to make sense of things by placing them in the appropriate context.
So, now, as I said, these are not contradictory. It could be because of the switch going off, it could be because of the bulb going off, it could be because of the power going off. It could be because of the power plant going off.
Anything, any of these could be possible. So, similarly, when we face any issue in our life, so, the first level of explanation is, just look at causes in this world. If somebody is, somebody has got a poor throat, or that throat has become sore, that’s, did you eat anything inappropriate? When you find an explanation that level, that is good enough.
And no need to move forward. And when a problem can be fixed with explanation at that level, it should be fixed at that level. Say, if a thief robs a citizen, and a citizen goes to the king, I’ve been robbed.
And the king says, oh, you’re robbed by your past karma. That’s ridiculous. You, what is, actually, I was robbed by the thief, and the king is responsible to rectify it.
So, if there is a pain which is at an immediate level, we need to rectify it at an immediate level. And work has to be done to rectify it at an immediate level. But sometimes, there is no explanation for it at an immediate level, or there is no solution for it at an immediate level.
That means, say, in a house, there are four people staying, and one person gets malaria. Now, you could say, more or less, all of them are eating the same food, all of them go to the same gym, all of them have reasonably similar health. You may say, okay, why did they get malaria? Because mosquito bit them.
But then you will say, why did the mosquito bite only this person, not other three people? Well, maybe the mosquito bit all the four people, but this person had low immunity. But then, why, if all of them are having similar health, similar exercise, why low immunity? Sometimes, the obvious explanations may not make sense. Then we have to understand that, okay, this person got malaria, maybe it is because of some past karma.
Because of past karma, they have to go through some phase of bad health. So, why this particular person, why not some other person? So, when the immediate explanation doesn’t make sense, then we expand the context to a bigger frame. And this is where the Bhagavata’s understanding of the soul and its reincarnation comes into the picture.
That the frame of reference is not just to this life, but it is beyond this life to previous lives and future lives also. So, just if somebody has a credit with a supermarket chain, and then they say, whatever I will purchase from you on credit, at the end of the month, I will pay you. Now, somebody goes to that credit, goes to the supermarket and buys something worth $2.
And then they get a bill worth $500. What? I bought $2, why $500? Because what they are being charged for is not just based on what they paid immediately. It’s a bigger frame, it’s a one month frame.
So, similarly, the one explanation from the dharmic perspective is that when we get sufferings, it could be because of our recent actions, or it could be because of our remote actions. So, if we can explain things at the level of recent actions, then we need to explain and we need to address them at that level. If things can’t be explained at the level of recent actions, then we move back to remote level.
And understand that this is because of some remote action that it has happened like this. Now, this is a explanation that can I said earlier, why the difference in pain, the idea that because of original sin we are suffering, that can’t explain the difference in pain. But you understand the difference in pain is because of difference in karma from the past.
And the suffering in the animal world is also because of the animals are also souls. They have also lived in the past as human beings. And they have also done some karma.
And by that karma, they may sometimes suffer. Last year, when I had come to America, Australia, I had gone to a walk. So I am here, I saw near a park, some website, I think it was in Australia, or maybe in America, it’s called register your dog.com. So this is in case your dog is lost, then you register it here will it will then be some kind of label number put in this code and you can found and got it.
I was thinking in India, even human beings are not registered. So you could say that a dog in Australia lives far more comfortably than a dog in India, a street dog in India, especially now why the difference again, the big difference. So the difference is again karma.
So the problem of pain can be much more reasonably explained by considering the bigger circle of karma. Now still, there is no exhaustive explanation. Why? Because we don’t know what karma because of which we are suffering when.
And that’s why there is a certain amount of humility needed whenever we ascribe any suffering to any particular cause. Generally, I’ve never seen anywhere in scripture, if somebody is suffering, other people tell them that you are suffering because of your past karma. That is just never done.
When, for example, Draupadi is being dishonoured or Draupadi is dishonoured by Dushasan and Duryodhana and others, nobody tells Draupadi that actually, you know, you must have been somebody like Dushasan in your previous life, you must have dishonoured a woman and that’s why you’re being dishonoured. No, you see, from this life’s perspective, it is a terrible thing and it needs to be stopped. So this brings me to the first point I spoke was within materialistic worldview, how there is not a very reasonable explanation for karma.
Then I talked about within the theistic worldviews, the idea of one lifetime with one original sin doesn’t explain things as reasonably as a multi-life cause effect connection as explained to karma. Now for us, now this brings me to the third point, the last point of the classes. Most important thing is that how do we deal with it? Why something is happening is important to know to the extent that we can deal with it.
So, for example, if we consider mosquitoes, if we consider malaria, then we understand, OK, if mosquitoes are biting, then we should try to protect our environment so that there are no mosquitoes. And then the incidence of malaria will go down. But there are some diseases like many forms of cancer for which the specific cause is not known.
Now, there is a difference between cause and mechanism. We know the mechanism by which cancer occurs in the body or cancer spreads in the body. Although we do not know the specific cause, why cancer comes to one person, not to another person.
So then what do we do in the medical field, even though we do not know the precise cause of cancer and everybody has their favourite, I use the word ideological hobby horse. Ideological hobby horse means every people will say, oh, cancer, it is because of sedentary lifestyle. Oh, cancer, it is because our food is so contaminated nowadays with chemicals.
Cancer, it is because our air is so contaminated. Cancer, it is because you’re talking so much on the phone. So the vibrations from the phone are coming.
Now, all of these could contribute partially or maybe none of them. We don’t know. So sometimes when somebody has their, like some people like to ride a horse, they have their pet horse which they like to ride.
So similarly, different people have their own pet ideological horse. So whenever any problem, they just ride on that horse, just see, this is because of this, this is because of this, this is because of this. Now, the scriptures resist such simple explanations.
In the Bhagavatam, there is a very revealing or perplexing incident, depending on how you look at it. And Parikshit Maharaj in the first canto is travelling around his kingdom because he has heard that the dark age of Kali is spreading its influence. And he goes around and he sees most people are engaged in devotional activities.
They’re glorifying Krishna and Krishna’s devotees and very happy. But then he comes to a particular place where a cow and a bull are being ruthlessly beaten by a person dressed in black who looks like a king. And Parikshit Maharaj immediately takes out his sword and chastises that person.
That person shrinks back in fear. And then he turns towards that cow and bull and he asks them, what is the cause of your suffering? This is a ridiculous question. Can’t you see this? This man was beating me.
That’s why I’m suffering. So his question might seem insensitive at best or insensible at worst. But you see, he asks this question still and he’s an intelligent person.
And the bull answers the question. The bull says, actually, different philosophers say there are different causes of suffering. Some people say it is past karma.
Some people say it is just material nature. Some people say it is kala. Some people say it is just all suffering is in the mind.
Some people say that suffering is the will of God. Hearing all these different philosophers, we are confused about the cause of suffering. And then we say, why don’t you tell? He is beating you.
So his answer might seem also perplexing. But after that, Parikshit Maharaj’s response is even more amazing. He says, Bravo! You by your answer have shown that you are really wise.
Why are you wise? He says that you are not blaming anyone for your suffering. So the point over here is, it’s a very instructive point, that when we face suffering, we certainly want to find a cause for the suffering. Now, as far as the bull and the cow are concerned, Parikshit is already going to address that cause.
He’s already pushed the attacker behind. He’s going to punish the attacker. That immediate cause is addressed.
But he, the whole mood of the Bhagavatam is to go beyond immediate causes. To look for deeper causes, to look for deeper explanations. And therefore, when the bull does not obsess over the immediate explanation, then that’s where there is wisdom.
That’s where there is wisdom. And that wisdom is what Parikshit Maharaj appreciates. So for us today, when we face pain, it could be different kinds of pains, whatever it is.
When we face pain at an immediate level, we need to work for it. Say, if we are sickly, maybe we can eat healthy food, do some exercises, take some proper medicines to become healthier. If we have financial security, we can work to get a better job, get better training, get better financial advice and planning so that we can get more financial security.
At an immediate level, we need to work. But we don’t have to limit ourselves to the immediate level. Because at an immediate level, one pain will go, but another will come.
The nature of the world is, it’s like waves coming. We resist one or we deal with one wave, the next wave will come soon. So we deal with it at an immediate level, but we don’t restrict our endeavours to at the immediate level alone.
And this is where Bhakti wisdom comes in. That what the Bhagavad Gita explains is that at a fundamental level, the problem of pain points to incompatibility. This is like the biggest framework, as you put it.
What incompatibility? That we long for happiness and the world gives us pain in so many different ways. Why is that? If you look at our own body, the body itself, the ways in which the body can give pleasure are limited. Each of the senses gives us some pleasure.
Maybe you touch something soft, you get some pleasure. You see something beautiful, you get some pleasure. So you could say all the senses can give us pleasure.
But what about the internal organs? Is there any way your liver or kidney can give you pleasure? There’s no way. But can the liver and kidney give us pain? In many ways. So overall, if you look at this, we all want happiness and we are in a situation, we are in a body and in a world where the ways in which you can get pain is far greater than the ways in which you can get pleasure.
So why is the situation like this? It’s because of a fundamental incompatibility. The Bhagavata explains that we are spiritual beings. We belong to a spiritual level of reality.
Currently we are at the material level and in the material level pain is inevitable. So the ultimate solution to pain is to raise our consciousness from the material level to the spiritual level. So when we practise Bhakti Yoga, when we chant Hare Krishna, when we come to the temple, when we worship the deities, when we associate with devotees, by all this, we are raising our consciousness to the spiritual level.
And while dealing with pain at the immediate level, we don’t reduce our efforts to deal with pain only at that level. We spend some time, necessary time to deal with it at that level. But along with that, we invest significant amount of time to raise our consciousness to the spiritual level.
And by that, we will be able to address pain at the ultimate level. And the material and the spiritual don’t have to be seen as contradictory. The material and the spiritual are both complementary.
Both are complementary. I’ll conclude with one example over here. Let’s say when a patient is sick and is in pain.
At that time, the doctor will give some, say, antiseptic if there is an infection to remove the cause of the infection. But if the patient is in pain, the doctor will also give an analgesic, something to deal with the pain. Now balanced treatment will have both the antiseptic and analgesic.
Now, from the doctor’s perspective, which is more important? Antiseptic, because that is what is going to cure the patient. Now, from the patient’s perspective, which will seem more important? The analgesic, isn’t it? I think this medicine is so expensive, I take it and nothing happens. This medicine is so cheap, I take it and pain goes away.
So now, that’s why the doctor’s perspective and the patient’s doctor’s purpose and the patient’s purpose are the same. The doctor and patient’s purpose are the same, but doctor’s and patient’s perspective may be different. From the doctor’s perspective, antiseptic is more important.
From the patient’s perspective, analgesic is more important. Similarly, for us, we have material needs and we have spiritual needs. So, our material needs are like analgesics.
So, we need food, we need clothing, we need shelter, we need financial security, we need health, we need social position. All these are required. Now, if we don’t get them, it causes a lot of pain.
Just like if there is no painkiller, there is pain. But, if we get them, there is no freedom from pain. There is only relief from that pain for a short while.
Some people say, what is the use of discussing all this philosophy? There are so many hungry people, just go and feed them. Yes, it’s definitely important to feed hungry people and we also do it. Millions of people are fed by hungry people, also by the Krishna Consciousness Movement.
But, important thing is, okay, hunger is a problem. But, these hungry people are in distress. But, are all the well-fed people happy? No.
So, it’s important, no doubt. The material needs are important, food is vital. But, ultimately, it’s like a painkiller.
So, we need it, but we can’t be consumed only by that. We can’t think that just taking the painkiller will be enough. We need the painkiller and we need the medicine.
The antiseptic is Krishna Consciousness, is Bhakti Yoga, by which we raise our consciousness. When we raise our consciousness spiritually, then we are not only addressing the problem at the ultimate level, but sometimes there are some material problems for which no painkiller works. Generally, when there is a disease, pain medicine may be given.
But, sometimes the disease is so bad that no matter how much pain medicine is given, it doesn’t work. So, pain will be there. So, similarly for us, we all will face problems in life and there is no pain medication to deal with the problems.
Say, there is uncertainty. Will I lose my job? There is uncertainty. No, my child is not behaving properly.
There is anxiety, there is worry. Now, for these, there is no painkiller. There is no way to deal with it.
For these, what do we need? We just need maturity. So, I was saying that Krishna Consciousness, Bhakti Yoga is like the antiseptic. But, Bhakti Yoga can also act as analgesic at times.
How is it analgesic? Say, we have a problem. Normally, we think that I have to deal with this problem. Many of us may feel that I want to practise Bhakti, but I don’t have time for it.
There are so many things to do in life. Yes, it’s true. We all have a lot of things to do.
But, our time is not just taken by our activities. Our time is also taken by our thoughts. And, sometimes our thoughts don’t lead to any productive activity.
There is activity, there is thought and there is time. We usually think of our schedule in terms of activities. I have to do this activity, this activity, this activity.
And, my day is full. But, our time is taken not just by the activities, but by thoughts. Thoughts and activities are related.
If I have to do an activity, I have to think about it. But, no, often we think about things beyond the activity that is to be done. Say, if there is uncertainty about our job.
What activity can we do? Ok, I can work at it. I can do my job responsibly. I can build my profile.
But, beyond that, I can’t do much about it. But, what happens? We keep thinking about it, keep thinking about it. So, if you consider the graph of time versus problems, generally, if we don’t think about a problem at all, the problem will hit us unawares.
And, that’s bad. So, we have to think about it, so that we will be more prepared for it. Generally, the more we think about a problem, our preparedness increases.
So, it’s like the graph is linearly moving upwards. But, it doesn’t linearly move upwards infinitely. Beyond a particular point, it flattens.
So, if we think about a problem, we are able to deal with it better. But, if we keep thinking about the problem, after some time, it just flattens. The more we think about it, we don’t come to any solutions.
And, after that, that graph goes down. The more we think about the problem, the more we feel overwhelmed. Like a fan, the fan moves round and round and round.
When the fan moves round and round, it cools the environment. But, when our mind moves round and round and round, it heats us up. So, what we need to do is that, when our mind is overthinking some issue.
How do we know we are overthinking? Last time, when I had come, I gave the whole class on overthinking. But, simply, when by thinking, we are not coming to any productive understanding. We can say that by this time, now it’s overthinking.
So, we all need a satisfying object of thought. Where we can direct our thoughts. If we don’t have a satisfying object of thought, we will be thinking of unsatisfying things.
And, we will be increasing our pain. So, the pain is there at a physical level because of a problem. Say, somebody has got a fracture.
That is a pain. Somebody keeps thinking, why did I get this fracture? Why did I get this fracture? My friends are going out and enjoying. They are all active and I am suffering.
Now, that thinking will increase their pain. But, if they have a satisfying object of thought, Okay, I have got this fracture. I will deal with it.
If I need some rest, I will take some rest. But, let me hear about Krishna. Let me sing about Krishna.
Let me direct my thoughts constructively towards something. If we have a satisfying object of thought, then that will offer us relief. From the overthinking of the mind and the increase in the pain that comes from the overthinking.
So, in this way, actually, we may say there are different satisfying objects of thought. But, Krishna is the most satisfying object of thought. Why? Because Krishna is also purified.
When we think about Krishna, we also become purified. Our mind’s agitating forces within them, the impurities go down. And thus, when we think about Krishna, we can rise above the problems.
So, the problem of pain, the ultimate solution to it is becoming absorbed in Krishna. When we become absorbed in Krishna, to the extent we can deal with the problem, we will deal with it in a mood of service, in a mood of contribution. But, to the extent we can’t deal with it, we will absorb ourselves in Krishna and rise above the problem and tolerate it.
If we learn to fix our mind in Krishna, then we may have to live with pain, but we won’t have to live in pain. Pain may still be a part of our life, but pain won’t consume our life. We may have to live with pain, but we won’t have to live in pain.
So, that is the conclusion of the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna doesn’t tell Arjuna that this world is dukkhalaya, this world is a place of distress, so stay distressed for the rest of your life. That is not the mood of the Bhagavad Gita.
Krishna gives him the bhakti wisdom by which Arjuna becomes pacified. Sthito smigata sandheha, become peaceful. So, similarly, whatever be the pain in our life, if we learn to direct our consciousness towards higher spiritual reality, towards Krishna, we will find that the pain will become manageable.
We will be able to live with the pain. And not only live with the pain, we will grow through the pain in our spiritual understanding and spiritual realisation. So, I’ll summarise.
I spoke on the topic of the problem of pain. And I spoke three main parts. First was that materialistic explanations.
At a functional level, people say that, oh, pleasure and pain are just there in the world. And pain makes pleasure more enjoyable. But nobody lives like that.
Nobody deliberately goes to embrace pain so that pleasure will become more enjoyable. So, that is not an explanation, that is a rationalisation. So, then we talk about functional materialism.
At the level of philosophical materialism, if matter is all that exists, then pain doesn’t exist at all. Because pain is not a physical reality. So, there is no painometer which medical science can measure pain as a conscious experience.
So, at a material level, if you say that, oh, everything happens by chance, then some people are lucky, some people are unlucky. But that is not the way even materialists or atheists train their children. They train their children to be responsible, to do good things so that they will get good results.
So, why is this pain there? At materialism, there is no explanation for that. Now, materialists may use this to refute religionists and theists to say that because bad things happen to good people, there is no God. But we could turn around and ask that why should bad things not happen to good people? Why should there be any correlation between cause and effect? Within materialism, if everything is happening by unguided natural forces, there is no reason for any kind of correlation.
So, if all announcements on this note are false, then even that announcement is false. So, materialism makes itself claim to point out illogic in religion, but materialism itself has no basis for logic. Because there is no need for any logical correlation in materialism.
Then we look at religious explanations. Within that we look at the Abrahamic explanation that suffering is because of, pain is because of the original sin. Now, it could be, but then the problem is that why is there difference in pain? Our problem is not just with the presence of pain, but the difference.
Why do some people suffer more, why do some people suffer less? If all of us have got pain as a result of sin which has come as a genetic defect within us, then why the difference? And then that sin is done by humans who can be redeemed, but then why is there pain in the animal world? And animals also suffer terribly. And that’s why we would not mind our children going to a harvesting festival, but we won’t let our children go to a slaughterhouse. So, then we look at the dharmic explanation that every action, we could place it in bigger and bigger frameworks to try to understand it.
If the power, if the light goes off, has somebody switched off the bulb? Has that bulb stopped working? Has the power supply gone off? Has the power plant been blown up? Different levels of explanations. So, the principle of karma is action-reaction correlation. And if somebody has got a bad throat, a sore throat, first look at the recent karma.
Did you eat something bad, inappropriate? If there is no explanation at the recent level, then we go further back at a remote level. And the understanding that there is a soul who goes through many lifetimes that expands the frame to before this life and beyond this life. And then look at, so when somebody is suffering, you should never jump to the remote explanation when the recent explanation will work.
So, if there is an immediate explanation, an immediate solution, we work at that level. So, if a patient is having some suffering, the doctor look at the immediate cause and work at the immediate solution. But if this doesn’t work, then it’s reasonable to look at a bigger picture.
And then I discuss ultimately that this might be a reasonable explanation, but most important is the solution. So, what is the solution for pain? We talk at one level, at an immediate level, our material needs are like analgesics. They are required and we need to put new attention to address them.
But that is not enough. We also need the antiseptic. The antiseptic is, the Bhagavad Gita explains, pain points to an essential incompatibility.
That we are spiritual beings who are joy seeking and the world is material and temporary filled with distress. So, the ultimate solution to pain is to raise our consciousness from the material level to the spiritual level. And that is done through Bhakti Yoga, through the various spiritual practises across different traditions.
Now, Bhakti Yoga is like the antiseptic and material thing that we do is like the analgesic. So, sometimes we may come to God only for the analgesic, but God may give us the antiseptic. It’s like from the doctor’s perspective, both doctor and patient’s purpose is the same to free the patient from pain.
But the patient is concerned more with the analgesic, doctor is concerned more with the antiseptic. So, sometimes if we even pray to God and the pain doesn’t go away, we shouldn’t think that God doesn’t care. Rather, there is something else going on.
And then I concluded that sometimes for some situations, analgesic may just not work. When there is uncertainty, insecurity, at that time, we have to, instead of just thinking more and more about the problem and making it worse, what we do is we think adequately so that we are prepared to deal with it. Then after that, we direct our object, direct our thinking towards the satisfying object of thought.
And Bhakti Yoga connects us with Krishna, who is not only a satisfying object of thought, but also purifying object of thought. And the more we practise Bhakti Yoga, the more our mind will become attached to Krishna. Our thoughts will habitually move towards Krishna.
And thus, even amidst distress, we, by directing our thoughts towards Krishna, won’t aggravate our pain. So we may have to live with pain, but we won’t have to live in pain. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna. Is there any question?