Wisdom Munches 14: Krishna’s Love Conditional or Unconditional

Transcript

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so is Krishna’s love unconditional or conditional so is it unconditional or is it conditional what do you think unconditional conditional to our surrender both are the safest answer anyway but actually it’s not that simple so I’ll talk about three points about this about Krishna’s love and I’ll use an acronym Das that this is hopefully this can inspire us to see that to become a better servant of Krishna to be a better Das and see that this service is not out of force or fear that is a service out of love of course if we don’t become Das then we remain that is the opposite of Das those who refuse to serve Krishna they remain tormented by their mind and senses that is that keeps us unfortunately sad so hopefully we can take this journey we all are sad because of various things but we can try to become a better servant of Krishna and find fulfillment therein so I’ll talk about Krishna’s love first of all Krishna’s love is unconditional it’s unconditional in the sense that Krishna loves us or rather Krishna’s you can put it Krishna’s love for us it is based on who he is not who we are it is he who is the all loving parent he is the all loving lord and because of that his love is based on who he is it is just like a parent cares for all their children even children who are disobedient or disruptive so Krishna’s love is based on who he is and that is why is so in this sense we could say it is unconditional at the same time love is not a one way street if love has to be meaningful there has to be some reciprocation without reciprocation love doesn’t really have much meaning it is unrequited love and it is unfulfilling so while Krishna’s love is unconditional but there are some more things that are there love can be one way in one sense one person can love the other person without the other person reciprocating but then that is not the basis for a loving relationship so it is incomplete we could say love has to be two way it has to be reciprocal so that’s where points come in once Prabhupada was asked this question do you love all your disciples equally and Prabhupada said yes but then he also added if somebody comes forward to take responsibility I reciprocate so here that brings us to the first point of D Krishna loves everyone however there is a difference of degree how people respond to him how people reciprocate with him there is a degree over there but the important point is degree not category see we may differentiate this is a devotee and this is a non devotee from Krishna’s perspective every soul is ultimately his devotee so for Krishna there is no rigid differentiation between devotee and non devotee how is that differentiation going to be basically Mahaprabhu gives multiple definitions of who is a devotee one who has even once chanted the names of God is a devotee one who regularly chants the name of God second time he uses the definition third time he says one who is constantly immersed in remembrance of Krishna that is God devotee so we could say even with respect to devotee it’s not one definition but for devotee definition we could have multiple definitions