How to love intelligently – Lessons from Ramayana

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so I is intelligence we need intelligence to know what is love and what is not love, why? because we see Kaikeyi acted she thought she was acting out of great love somehow she was misled into believing that Ram’s coronation would mean Bharat’s deprivation, even Bharat’s destruction, that’s what mantra misled her into believing and she thought Bharat is my son, I have to protect him, I have to protect his interests and she believed everything that she is doing was for Bharat and everybody reviled for the horrendous demand that Ram be exiled and especially when Sita, the tender princess put on tree bark, everybody’s heart in Ayodhya broke but Kaikeyi’s heart had become so hard that nothing penetrated into it, so she thought she was doing all this because nobody was understanding her side of the story, thought that I am doing all this for Bharat, Bharat is the prince, he should become the king and why are they not understanding I am doing all this for Bharat so she actually did it out of, she thought she was doing it out of love, so we often do wrong things but we rarely do wrong things so confidently and aggressively as when we are convinced that we are doing it for a right cause normally if somebody kills, they might have some hesitation they might have, you know, killing is wrong how can I take somebody’s life like this but if somebody is misled by an ideology it might be say ideology of religious extremism where people start believing that this person is is is blaspheming our sacred conceptions and then killing him is a sacred duty, so people kill righteously and they celebrate I did something glorious and this is not just religious ideology, there can be atheistic ideology also during communism 100 million people were killed more than any other ideology is killed throughout human history they are killed righteously for the sake of prosperity, for the sake of the poor that was the reason given, so we never we never do wrong as aggressively as when we think we are doing it for a right cause, so even when we are loving something we need our intelligence to evaluate is what I am doing right is my love rightly directed so Kaikeyi thought it was love so I said that to illuminate our heart we need love but what do we mean by love, what is actual love, for different people love can mean different things and extreme level as I said terrorist think they are loving God or loving their religion but they are killing people, so similarly Kaikeyi thought she was loving Bharat but she was causing havoc in her kingdom, she caused the death of her husband, it was when Bharat came and Bharat’s intelligence was sound and Bharat told Kaikeyi what have you done he was aghast that Kaikeyi that his own mother could do something and he was even more aghast that his mother was thinking that she was doing all this for his sake and he was most appalled to think that that she was thinking he would be pleased by all this, he said you can’t be my mother you must be the goddess of destruction incarnated in our family to destroy our whole dynasty when he spoke some jolting words that was the time when Kaikeyi’s intelligence awakened and she realized what a horrible thing she had done, she had an imaginary Bharat in her mind Bharat is appreciating all that I am doing for him but the real Bharat came and not only disapproved but actually lambasted her then she came out of her stupor so what is love and how it is to be expressed that requires intelligence he told exposed to Kaikeyi how she was terribly misled and she had been terribly, her actions had been terribly misery causing so that’s what brings us to next point of I, intelligence shows what is love and what isn’t so quite often selfishness and various forms of exploitative ideas can also take the mask of love and that’s why we need scriptural understanding, we need to develop our intelligence to know what is love and what is not love Krishna says through shastra learn what is to be done and what is not to be done, Krishna talks about buddhi that was 1624, in 1830 Krishna talks about buddhi, intelligence in goodness and he says that that buddhi which understands that is that is the buddhi in goodness which knows what is to be done, what is not to be done what is to be feared and what is not to be feared what will cause bondage, what will cause liberation so in the name of love we might end up entangling and binding ourselves so we need intelligence for that purpose so here we see there is a hard break Dashrath is begging please don’t go, how can you go like this stay at least for one day and Ram says that if I have to go why should I stay, you know one more day will simply mean one more day of agony and then eventually the same thing has to be done so let me leave right away and Ram remained very sober and grave and he ensured that things that were bad didn’t become worse he didn’t act like a victim, he didn’t protest how unjust life is to me his love was shown at this stage by concealing his emotions nowadays love is associated very much with effusive displays of devotion, displays of love so public display of affection is quite common, in some culture that might be the norm but there are times when love is shown by expressing emotions and there are times when love is shown by concealing emotions, so Ram was shocked, Ram was Ram was himself shattered by what had happened, of course he is the lord and nothing happens to him but in terms of the Leela, whatever emotions he was going through, he didn’t show them because he didn’t want to make bad things worse over there so his love was shown by his being very calm, he was calming everyone else, everybody was saying this is so unjust he was saying no, it’s alright just 14 years will go like 14 days and I’ll be back soon, please don’t make a big deal out of this so that is Ram’s blissfulness so Ram is now going out and when he was going out he was leaving, the light of Ayodhya was leaving as he left, Ayodhya started becoming darker and darker not physically darker, the sun was there but the sun in their heart, who was the son of their king was leaving and as he was leaving there was nothing that they could do Ayodhya became like a ghost town hardly any activity, even if people went around their activity they were just so lackadaisical, they just didn’t feel like living so that is what unfortunately happens when our love is misdirected when we start loving the things of this world more than the lord of the world, then we unwittingly exile the lord from our heart and there are many mantra like people who will incite us to love the things of this world the whole advertising world the whole materialistic culture is glamorizing, get this you will be happy, buy this, get this and as our minds become filled with images of enjoying this and possessing that and doing that, then gradually all those impressions start filling our heart and there is no place for the lord left over there and then the lord leaves, so that is how it is if the lord is present in our hearts so the lord can be exiled if we are not using our intelligence and we need intelligence to invoke the lord’s presence back in our hearts