If our love is finite, how can it help us reach the infinite?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Krishna’s love for us is infinite. And the love that we experience in the world, the material love, can it reach the infinite? Can it be directed toward the infinite? So basically, we have two kinds of relationships.
We have a vertical relationship with Krishna and we have a horizontal relationship with others. And in our relationship in this world, there are times when we do experience love. When a mother has a newborn baby, mother does have love for the baby.
And Prabhupada says that’s the closest we get to selfless love in this world, the mother’s love for a child. And in the Dhruva Maharaj’s pastime, Dhruva Maharaj’s mother, Suniti says to him that whatever love I can offer you, millions of mothers like me can’t offer you as much love as Vishnu can offer you. Now what this means is Vishnu’s love is so great.
But another point of this is that he is not considering her love as false. If this love were false, if it were zero, then millions of times of zero will also be zero. So the love we experience in the world is also real.
But it is like a drop. It is like a drop in the sense that what happens, the same person who loves us, sometimes two people, they say they are in love, they fight against the world. I can’t live without you.
They fight against the whole world. And then after few months they say I can’t live with you. So the love just disappears at times.
And even if it doesn’t disappear because of this, our life spans are finite. Love will end at that time at least. So we do experience enrichment even through our horizontal connections.
We don’t deny that. But we don’t get captivated by that and we don’t limit our love to only that. Some people spend their whole life searching for horizontal love.
We definitely need loving relationships in this world. But even if we get wonderful relationships, even if we don’t get wonderful relationships, the horizontal relationships are never going to last. So we need to focus on developing the vertical relationships.
So you can consider that there is an ocean, we are in a desert. And suppose in the desert there are some drops of water which are here which take us to the ocean. Some drops of water just keep us in the same distance from the ocean.
Some drops of water take us away from the ocean. Now we are here, we can each drop shoot a person. So we might experience love in the association of devotees.
Those are like drops which take us towards the ocean. The more we bond with devotees, the more that will take us closer to the ocean. Now there might be some people who are not just non-devotees.
They are non-devotees, they are anti-devotees. They are completely against all devotional relationships. And we may also be loving.
But that love is like drops which take us away from the ocean. So we need to be careful about those kind of relationships. Not that we necessarily reject them.
If you want to form them, better avoid them. But if you are already in that kind of relationship, then we don’t get completely captivated, controlled by that. So our capacity for love is finite.
But Krishna can accept even our finite love and He can reciprocate with that. So when we try, Krishna says, In 9.26 He says, Even if you offer me a fruit, a flower, a leaf, or even a little water, I accept it. If it’s offered with love.
So Krishna wants ultimately our heart. And He doesn’t necessarily want infinite love. He just wants our love.
So we try to practice bhakti with whatever capacity we have. And we try to offer our love to Krishna. And till we experience Krishna’s love, we need horizontal relationships also.
And we try to get that need for love fulfilled in a way that is devotionally harmonious. That doesn’t take us away from Krishna. Does that answer your question?