When NOT to see God’s hand in our life (Ramayana life-lessons)

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
We’ll continue our discussion on the broad topic of how to respond to wrongdoing. So, when people do wrong actions towards us, how do we respond to them? So, yesterday, I talked about three main points. First, we talked about the concept, how the same event, particular event can be placed in multiple causal frames.
That something can be attributed to an immediate cause, some bigger cause, some bigger causes like that. Then we talked about the context. Intelligence means to see, place things in proper perspective.
Now, proper perspective means the perspective that enables us to practice Dharma. And then the contemplation that we do, especially when we are on the devotional path is that buddhi yoga. We want not just intelligence, but the intelligence to establish a connection with Krishna.
So, in a particular situation, how can I serve Krishna? So, we are discussing this based on the Ramayana, how Lord Ram treated Kaikeyi differently and Ravan differently, because the context was different with respect to Kaikeyi. He said that it’s a past life. It’s destiny that she is acting like this with Ravan, considered Ravan responsible and punished him for that.
So, now let’s move on. Today, I’ll talk about Krishna consciousness. So, Krishna conscious vision, a Krishna conscious vision of everything.
What does it mean to see a spiritual vision everywhere? That means see Krishna as the cause of everything. Or you can put it. Let’s put it another way to make it symmetrical.
See everything as caused by Krishna. And the other is see everything as an opportunity to serve Krishna. To see everything as an opportunity to serve Krishna.
So, Krishna consciousness does not necessarily mean this all the time. But this definitely is true. Let me explain the examples.
Like yesterday, I had given an example when the Rathkart collapsed in London. Raghupath said it is not due to poor engineering. It is not due to your poor devotion.
It is due to poor engineering. So, it is not that Krishna caused the Rath to fall. So, what exactly is going on over here? What are we trying to say? And why does this matter? So, when bad things happen, when people hurt us, what does it mean? So, if you consider Sita was abducted.
Now, we say not a blade of grass moves without the will of the Lord. That is true. So, if Sita is abducted, is that also the Lord’s will? If it is the Lord’s will, then why does the Lord make so much endeavour to try to correct what has happened? So, here it is important to understand what does the word will mean.
The word will can have many meanings ranging from intention to permission. Upadrashta anumantacha bharata bhokta maheshwara Krishna in the 13th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita clearly mentions that he is the permitter, anumantacha. He doesn’t say that he is the cause of everything.
That now it is sarva karana karanam we can say that Krishna is the cause of all causes. That is true sarva karana karanam. But that does not mean he is the cause of all effects.
What is the meaning of this? That when Sita is abducted, ultimately everybody’s every power comes from the Lord. As Prahlad says to Hiranyakashipu, when Hiranyakashipu asks, what is the source of your power? How dare you challenge me? How dare you oppose me? Where are you getting this power from? So, at that time, what does the Lord reply? That Vishnu is the source of the strength of everyone. He is the source of the strength of my strength, of your strength, even the sense of strength of Brahma who is the source of your strength.
So, that means Ravan, his strength to abduct Sita also comes ultimately from Ram. And in that sense, if Lord Ram does not give him the power, he cannot do anything. At the same time, so when we say will as permission, if the Lord does not allow something to happen, it cannot happen.
So, if Lord Ram had not allowed Sita to be abducted, she would not have been abducted. So, here there is the spiritual world, there is the material world. Now, in the spiritual world, there is the Lord, say let’s consider Ram over here.
And then Ram descends to this world as an avatar. Now, the Lord as Ram is omnipotent. Now, within Leela, he doesn’t, he’s not always exhibiting, manifesting his omnipotence.
Just like Krishna in the Damodar Leela, he manifests his omnipotence initially by not letting the rope tie him no matter how much Yashodavai ties it, tries it, and then he lets himself be tied, but then he can’t untie the rope. So, when he’s not letting the rope tie him, he’s showing his omnipotence. Omnipotence means his capacity to do anything.
Potency is power. Omni is all. All power means the capacity to do anything.
So, he’s showing his omnipotence there. Suddenly, he stops showing his omnipotence. And then again, he starts showing his omnipotence when he’s a small child, but he drags a mortar, which is itself quite heavy.
And he drags the mortar so forcefully that a giant tree comes down. So, basically, what we are talking about here is that when the Lord may choose sometimes to manifest his omnipotence and sometimes not manifest. But when we are talking about things happening in our lives, so the Lord may not always manifest his omnipotence.
In fact, most of the times in the material world, the Lord does not manifest his omnipotence. Sometimes he does. So, from the perspective of not Leela, but Tattva, the Tattva and Leela.
Now, Tattva is the philosophical truth. The Leela is the pastime. Leela, omnipotence is sometimes manifested.
Omnipotence is possessed by the Lord. It is not that the Lord is ever non-omnipotent. He is always omnipotent.
He always has all power. So, he always has all power, but he sometimes manifests, sometimes doesn’t manifest. Now, this may seem a little confusing, but I’ll try to make it simple soon.
The point is that when the Lord and Krishna or Ram, who I want to say that Krishna, when something happens in this world, it is not that he is causing it all the time. So, say here is little Prahlad and here is the monster Hiranyakashipu. Now, at one level, we could say the Lord, Vishnu exists above everyone in the spiritual domain.
But other level, we can also say that Vishnu is the source of the power of everyone. So, Hiranyakashipu’s power comes from Prahlad, from Vishnu. Now, when Hiranyakashipu decides to attack Prahlad, so at that time Hiranyakashipu cannot attack Prahlad if he does not have power.
If Lord Vishnu wants, he can take away all his power immediately. But when Hiranyakashipu is attacking, it is not that Vishnu is attacking Prahlad through Hiranyakashipu. No, rather Vishnu appears there as Narasimha in a far bigger form and he attacks Hiranyakashipu and he punishes him.
So, the point I’m making here is that the Lord is the ultimate cause of all causes. If you go back over here, cause of all causes, not the cause of all effects. So, here what do I mean by this? The cause is Hiranyakashipu’s strength by which he’s attacking him.
So, Hiranyakashipu’s strength, it comes from Krishna. But the effect is Hiranyakashipu’s attack on Prahlad. This is not coming from Krishna.
This comes from Hiranyakashipu himself. It is his free will. It depends on him how he uses his free will.
So, it is not that Vishnu or Krishna or Narasimha Dev is attacking Prahlad through Hiranyakashipu and then he’s protecting him. When Draupadi is being disrobed, it is not that Krishna is entering into Dushasan and is attacking Draupadi. Absolutely not.
It is Dushasan who is misusing his free will and now Dushasan cannot misuse his free will if Krishna does not give him strength. So, in that sense, if we use the word cause as the capacity to do something, cause as capacity to act, and effect as the action itself, then the capacity to act always comes from Krishna. But the action itself may not come from Krishna.
The standard example that is given in the Vedanta Sutra and other places is that if we consider the rain and vegetation. So, the rain is the cause of all causes in the sense that without rain, there is no vegetation. But the specific seeds that are there in the ground, that will be the cause of all effects.
That means what vegetation grows where. So, Krishna’s will is like the rain. Krishna’s will is like the rain and our free will is like the seeds.
So, why is all this important? That when bad things happen to us, when Sita is abducted, Sita does not think, oh, you know, I am the consort of Ram. How did Ram let me be abducted like this? She does not blame Ram. When bad things happen to us, it’s so easy for us to blame God.
Why did God not protect me? Why did God not stop this? But Sita does not do that. She maintains her faith in Ram and she sees that Ram will come and protect me. Ram will come and rescue me.
Ram will come and his love for me will become manifest for me even if right now I cannot perceive his presence and his love directly. So, if we are to maintain our faith, we don’t see Krishna as the cause of everything all the time. We see Krishna as everything is an opportunity for service and that is ultimately arranged by Krishna.
And ultimately arranged by Krishna. So, that means that sometimes some bad people may do some bad things like Dushyasan did something terrible, but that was an opportunity for Draupadi to surrender to Krishna, surrender and take shelter and thereby demonstrate to the world the glory of her devotion. While that is true, that does not mean that Draupadi or what she is doing is in any way or what was done to her was Krishna, was willed, was desired, was intended by Krishna.
Let me give two examples of from our practical life now, why this could be a problem. So, what could be a problem? To see Krishna as the cause of everything. This can actually affect our Krishna consciousness negatively because that is not always true also.
So, for example, I was in Europe and one European couple came to meet me and the Mataji looked very, very sad and then they told that they had had four miscarriages. It’s terribly distressing to hear that and then she said that, she was a Western Mataji, she had said that before she had been introduced to Bhakti, she had had an abortion. That’s not uncommon in the Western world, even in India it’s not uncommon nowadays.
And she said she heard in some class by some devotee that, you know, if you kill a baby that Krishna has sent you through abortion, Krishna will never let you have any babies. But she was saying, you know, how long will I keep having miscarriages like this? When will Krishna end this punishment? Will he never end? So, I told her, first of all, no, Krishna is not a person who extracts punishments like that. Whoever said this, I haven’t seen any Shastric Praman like that, that if you commit abortion, you will not have a child.
There are so many thousands and thousands of people who have done that, unfortunately, tragically, and they do have children. So, these kind of categorical statements are themselves highly questionable. But more importantly, whenever something is happening like this, we have to look at the immediate cause, not the ultimate cause immediately.
Like I said, look for the Dhrishta explanation before the Adhrishta explanation. So, when there is a miscarriage, the Adhrishta means, the non-visible explanation is, it is a reaction to abortion. Is that possible? Maybe, but that is Dhrishta explanation is, is there any biological cause? Is there any biological factor at all? So, I asked her husband, he said, yes, there are some issues and we are trying to get some treatment for it.
So, I said that, don’t see Krishna as the cause of this. Now, we say, isn’t Krishna ultimately controlling biology also? Mayad Dakshina Prakriti. Yes, of course, that is true.
But it is not that Krishna is personally or intentionally orchestrating everything that is happening at the material level with a particular, everything has a particular reaction to a particular action. There is a principle of karma and karma is a principle of, it works at a material level and the judge decides that some action should have some reaction. That is not that the judge has a personal agenda against a particular criminal.
No. So, the point is, we need to look at the biological factor. So, if I am giving a class and say, right now, the Zoom connection goes off.
Should I start thinking, oh, you know, maybe Krishna doesn’t want me to give a class because Krishna thinks I am not qualified. Like say, I couldn’t come to Calgary. Now, should I think that, oh, because I am so sinful, so I got a reaction.
The reaction was that my leg got injured. And if I am so sinful, then that means I am not qualified to speak about Krishna. So, let me not speak about Krishna.
So, is Krishna saying, first of all, when that particular thing happened, is it that Krishna is sending, first of all, if I slip and fell, so this is a common sense explanation we need to look at. Was there some water? Was I attentive and did I not notice the water? How did I slip and fall? There is no need to raise everything to the level of Krishna and then bring Krishna into everything. You say, but isn’t that Krishna consciousness? No, I’ll talk about what Krishna consciousness is later.
That, say, one devotee was telling me, today I have learned that I should chant attentively. Okay, how did you learn that lesson? Say, I did not chant attentively in the morning today. And when I was going for office, my car broke down.
So, I was worried about my work in the chanting time, so I couldn’t chant. And I reached also late, so my work became problematic. So, Krishna punished me by making my car break down.
Really? Then I asked him, did your car have any problems? He said, yeah, actually, I have not taken it to a mechanic for a long time, there is the cause. So, is Krishna a vengeful God waiting to catch? Hey, you did that wrong, I’m going to punish you now. Krishna is actually a loving God, not a punishing God.
Krishna is always watching, but he’s watching not to catch us whenever we go wrong. Whenever we do, hey, you did this wrong, now I’m going to punish you. That is not the mood of Krishna.
Krishna’s mood is to catch us whenever we fall. This is like a mother and a small child. If the child is learning to walk, the mother is very carefully watching how my child is taking some steps.
And the child slips and falls, the mother will run forward and catch. So, the mother is watching the child, but the mother doesn’t get a joy, hey, you did that wrong, now I’m going to punish you for this. That’s not the mood of Krishna.
It’s a horrendous misconception of who Krishna is. So, to the extent we keep this in mind that Krishna is a loving God and whenever something is going wrong, yes, there is, what can I learn? So, what can I learn? Okay, that rather than, can I learn to chant well? Okay, that’s a good lesson to learn. But also a lesson to learn is that if my car requires servicing, I cannot neglect the servicing.
I have to do the servicing. So, if I slip and fall, and that’s because I have some water I didn’t notice, if I’m walking, I should notice where there’s water. So, the point is that we cannot bring Krishna and hold Krishna responsible for the things that happen because of some intermediate causal factors that can make people very averse to Krishna at times.
So, other example, these are, we have multiple examples just to illustrate the same point. There was one devotee. So, how is all this related to the Ramayana? In the Ramayana, although Sita was with Ram and somebody will say that God is supposed to protect everyone, God could not protect his own wife.
So, why should I even worship such a God? Did Sita think like that? Why did she not think like that? Because she understood that in the material world, things happen particular ways, and the Lord did come and rescue her eventually. So, bad things happen to everyone. And the relationship between the bad thing that happens to us and God’s supreme controllership, it’s a mysterious relationship.
It’s not a very straightforward relationship. And that’s why we can’t arrive at simplistic conclusions. So, another example to illustrate this point that, okay, let’s take an example of how a wrong lesson could also be drawn from scripture.
So, within scripture itself, Duryodhana in the Mahabharata, even Ravana himself thought like this. When Ravana was told that Ram is actually Vishnu, don’t mess with him. Now, Ravana’s reasoning was, if he’s Vishnu, how could I have abducted his wife? The fact that I succeeded in abducting his wife means that he cannot be Vishnu.
Well, that is wrong reasoning. That is, okay, Vishnu may give you some power for some time to do some things, but Vishnu also gives us the intelligence to evaluate whether what we’re doing is right or wrong. So, just because some result works out right in the short run does not mean that God wanted us to do that thing, that our other God is not involved and God is supporting us, something like that.
That’s a wrong conclusion to arrive at. So, I was in Alachua. Alachua is a place in America where a lot of senior Prabhupada disciples are living.
So, I met one devotee over there. He said, I took a break from bhakti for almost 25 years and then, of course, the last 15 years he had been practicing. Before that, for 15 years he had been practicing.
So, I asked him what happened. So, he said that when he was there in the temple, he was living full time. Then after Prabhupada departed, he decided to move out of the temple.
Then he got married and he got married to a woman who was not a devotee and she was sometimes interested in bhakti, sometimes not interested in bhakti and she was a little emotionally disturbed. And then one day he came back home and to his horror, he found that his wife had taken her life. She was completely shattered.
He called 911 and everything but it was too late. And then he called the devotee in the temple where he had been regularly connected. He said this has happened.
Now, that particular temple leader, he had been in touch with him and the temple leader told him that, no, she was just a distraction in your bhakti and Krishna has removed the distraction. See this as Krishna removing the distractions so that you can focus on your bhakti. And a devotee even said that when Narada Muni, Narada Muni was a small boy, at that time his mother was very attached to him.
And so Narada Muni was able to pursue spiritual growth. But when a snake bit her and she passed away at that time, Narada Muni started focusing on spiritual growth and he left his home. So see it like that.
Now, he told me that he became so disgusted, he was already distressed, he became so disgusted. Don’t you people have any humanity? I don’t want to have anything with a group like you. So the devotee who told him might have been well-intentioned.
But there’s a serious problem, many problems first of all. First is that there is a big difference between an accident that somebody dies because of something like a snake bite and somebody taking their own lives. So when somebody commits suicide, there’s always the survivor’s guilt.
And you know, did I, could I have done anything to stop this person from taking this extreme step? And especially if one is a life partner and that relationship is often emotionally charged relationship. Or worse still the survivor’s guilted, did I do anything that pushed this over the edge? So to equate a death by accident with a death by suicide, and then to try to extract, oh, you know, Krishna has made this arrangement. This is a horrifying misapplication of Krishna conscious philosophy.
It is at that particular time, the soul has departed from the world. Now, how can that soul, whatever be the circumstances soul has departed, how can that soul’s journey be facilitated? You know, how can the person who is traumatized by that, how can that person be supported? That is what should be important. So we don’t see, now did Krishna cause that person to commit suicide? Obviously not.
Krishna never tells anyone to commit suicide. If a person decides to end their life, it is that person who is doing it. And rather than seeing that person either as a victim or a wrongdoer, we need to just see, now this terrible, this terrible action has happened.
How can we make the, what can we do about it now? So sometimes if we bring Krishna as the cause of every situation, that can be a big problem. Because we don’t really know. A person has committed suicide, has Krishna caused that? Well, we can say Krishna didn’t cause it, Krishna allowed it.
Okay, Krishna allowed it. That is true. But if that person did that decision, what was the cause of that decision? Isn’t that also a relevant factor to be considered at a particular time? So the reason I’m making is that every situation, to be Krishna conscious in all situations, means that, going back to the first part that I made, that see Krishna as the cause, everything has caused by Krishna.
That is a questionable assumption, questionable inference. It is everything as an opportunity to serve Krishna. That is true.
But how exactly to serve Krishna in that a person has to use their intelligence. A person has to understand, what am I to do right now? What exactly is the situation? What exactly is the problem? And what can I do to solve the problem at this particular point? So if we start seeing everything as caused by Krishna, then either our own heart will go against Krishna or people’s hearts will start going against Krishna. And we may well be philosophically also quite seriously wrong.
But to conclude this point, when there is distress in this world, this is the last point I’ll make and then you have questions. So distress and Krishna, distress or you can say adversity and Krishna, what is the relationship between these two? So there are three ways this relationship can be there. One is Krishna is the cause.
The other is Krishna is the cure. And third is Krishna is the comfort. So Krishna as the cause is questionable.
Krishna may or may not be the cause. Sometimes our own mistake may be the cause. Sometimes when devotees are driving very fast, and they may meet with an accident.
Does Krishna cause that accident? No, that devotee caused that accident. So once one devotee was driving me and he said, it’s going to be way, way too fast because we were late for a bus. I said, Prabhu, please drive carefully.
He said, no Prabhu, we’re driving for Krishna’s service. Krishna will protect us. I said, yes, Krishna will protect us by giving us the intelligence to drive safely.
If we drive above the speed limit, one of my friends said that when you drive above the speed limit, Krishna leaves the car. You know, we can’t say Krishna is the cause when something else could be the cause. So is Krishna the cure? Certainly.
Krishna is the ultimate cure. Whatever be the specific reason for having trouble, the more we go closer to Krishna, ultimately we’ll be freed from distress. When we are in Krishna in the spiritual world, there will never be any distress.
Is Krishna the comfort? Yes, he is the comfort also. Now, so when we are in trouble, we can’t remember Krishna. We can chant Krishna’s name.
We’ll get some comfort. We can hear some bhajans, kirtans. We’ll get some comfort.
We’ll get that comfort always. Maybe, maybe not. It may not be always, but it will be there.
So the point is that we need to see Krishna consciousness means ultimately Krishna is the cure. But Krishna may not always be the cause. And is Krishna the comfort? Well, sometimes, yes, Krishna is the comfort.
Sometimes we may offer the practical things also. When somebody is in distress, somebody lost a loved one, you go and chant Hare Krishna, you’ll feel better. Okay, that may be true.
But if they need some help, okay, we have to perform the last rites, we have to do this, we have to do that. At that time, we can offer service to them and our service will be the way we connect with Krishna. So we see that’s why the focus is on see everything as an opportunity to serve Krishna, not necessarily that everything is caused by Krishna.
So why a particular thing happens may be very difficult to know. But that in every situation we can serve Krishna, that is an eternal truth. And we focus on that truth and thereby we grow in our lives.
So I’ll summarize what I discussed today. I discussed three main points. The key point was relationship between Krishna and distress in the world.
So the first point I discussed is that Krishna is the cause of all causes, not the cause of all effects. This is the cloud is the cause of all vegetation, but the cloud is not the cause of the specific vegetation, the rains are the cloud or as you can see, the cause of all vegetation, but not the specific vegetation that grows a particular place. So when we say nothing happens without Krishna’s will.
So Krishna’s will, that word can range from intention that Krishna wanted something to happen. It could also mean Krishna’s permission that Krishna let something happen even if he didn’t want it to happen. And then the second point is that whenever we are looking for cause, cause of something that we look for immediate causes, not necessarily the ultimate cause immediately.
And now don’t ascribe everything to the ultimate cause. The focus is ultimately nothing would happen without Krishna. We focus on how I can serve Krishna in this situation.
That is what should be our focus. And that’s where everything is an opportunity to serve Krishna. Now, is that opportunity personally directly arranged by Krishna or is Krishna expert enough to use somebody’s misuse of free will to create that opportunity? That depends.
I think it’s an opportunity to serve Krishna. So now how exactly we serve Krishna, that’s up to we have to use our intelligence, buddhi yoga. So Krishna and distress, when you’re talking about this, we don’t necessarily assume that Krishna is the cause of the distress.
We understand that Krishna is ultimately the cure for all distress and that’s why we take shelter of Krishna. And immediately amid distress, can Krishna be a comfort? Yes, he can be, but that can be done by giving the holy name, by giving some practical service, by just being there to offer emotional support. There are many ways.
So if our focus is on serving, then we will be able to best understand how to function in particular situations. Thank you very much. Are there any questions or comments? There is a question from a devotee.
Thank you for a wonderful lecture. As practicing devotees, we obviously do not want to hold on to hurtful things or bad things that have happened to us. But if there is no apology, no accountability or no responsibility that comes from the individual that hurt us, then how do we practice detachment and let it go? How do we find solace and understanding that Krishna is watching and surrender unto him that justice will be given? Is it not that Krishna has played out certain situations for that person to act out in such a way so we can learn something? Thank you.
The important principle over here is, I think that this connection has gone off over here. So if we are focusing on, if that person, like say, I am here, this person is here, Krishna is above us all. So now if this person has hurt us, now what do we do? Now that depends on how best we can see Krishna.
So if that person is not ready to take responsibility or change, then we have to decide, how do I move forward? Basically for us, we first appreciate that every situation is an opportunity for us. We appreciate that every situation is an opportunity where we can, we can have an opportunity to say that I met Krishna in this situation. M-E-T.
M means mitigate, E is emigrate, and T is tolerate. So all three options are there, but they are within the purview of service to Krishna. So when Abhipishan was living in Lanka, he knew about Ravana s sinful activities, but he continued staying there and he tolerated that because he was doing his own dharmic activities over there.
He was practicing bhakti. But at a particular time, when Ravana s actions went to such an extent where he had abducted Sita and the whole kingdom of Lanka was threatened because of that abduction, then Abhipishan tried to mitigate. When mitigation didn t work, then Abhipishan emigrated.
Emigrated, he went to Lord Ram s side. So Abhipishan did all these three things in relationship with Ravana. So initially he was, then just before the war, he tried to mitigate and then finally he emigrated.
So the idea is that there are different ways in which we can serve Krishna. And each one of us has to find out which is the best way we can serve Krishna. Srila Prabhupada at different times did different things.
When he had a temple in the League of Devotees in America, in Jhansi, and some of the people who were supporting him went against him. And what did he do? He just walked away from the temple. He said, I don t want to spend my time fighting this war.
But then, was that all that he did? When he was staying in the house of Gopala Garhwal in Butler, Pennsylvania, he couldn t, in the same fridge in which he was there, he was keeping his bhoga, there he had meat. He told it and he apologized, I m giving you only one thing, you can t do much, but then think nothing about it. He tolerated it.
And then, but when the Juhu temple was to be built, at that time, we consider, when the person tried to take the money and steal the land, Prabhupada said that he will have to, that Mr. Nair, he said he will have to go over my dead body before he can steal Krishna s money. So, Prabhupada migrated from Jhansi, he walked away from there, he tolerated in Butler, Pennsylvania, and he mitigated in Juhu, Mumbai. So, a devotee s mood is every situation we see as an opportunity to serve Krishna.
And then we decide how best we can serve Krishna in that particular situation. So, we don t see Prabhupada thinking too much in his life that, oh, this must be my past karma, this must be my past karma, but focus is on how can I serve Krishna in this situation. So, when his, if you can look at it in Prabhupada s dealings with his family also, if you want to see for that matter.
Prabhupada with, if you consider, you know, Prabhupada with his family. So, initially, they were not supportive of his bhakti, but Prabhupada in his grihasta life, you know, he worked very hard, grihasta phase, he worked very hard, they were not interested in, they were pious people, his wife was pious, but they were not really interested in the missionary kind of preaching bhakti that he wanted to do. Prabhupada said, okay.
Prabhupada tolerated it and continued his own preaching. But then, when he found that eventually they were not at all interested in bhakti as he was getting, he was, he was beyond 50, he felt that he had done his immigration, then he took sannyas. He just decided that enough is enough, he emigrated from there.
But then later on, when ISKCON had been well established, and his son came to meet him, and he said, we are in big financial trouble. Now, Prabhupada offered some support. As an acharya, he made some will, he made some arrangements so that his family could be supported.
But unfortunately, what happened was his family, after Prabhupada departed, they did a court case against ISKCON. They’re saying that everything that belonged to Prabhupada was, was actually their property because Prabhupada, it was owned by Prabhupada. And they tried to claim everything for Prabhupada, but then the devotees had to fight a case against them.
So, so basically, we have to use our intelligence to see how best we can serve Krishna and not get too caught in the specific cause of something. Is it by caste karma? Is it because of Krishna? Okay, however, this has happened, the cause is not as important as, okay, what can I do right now? How can I move ahead? Just like sometimes, when it has been, when in medical field, people use a particular, say that this is a particular disease. Now, they do not know a particular, when you say flu, it can have many different causes, or even a set of symptoms are caused by a particular disease.
Is it caused by this particular thing, that particular thing? We focus on the cure. To whatever extent we understand the cause, we understand the cause, but we focus on the cure. Like cancer, there are a whole genre of diseases where we don’t know the cause.
But to whatever extent we know the cure, we work on the cure. The same way, don’t fixate too much on the cause. Yeah, so another question over there.
Cause, learn if possible, but the cure is the primary focus. So, that’s the point over here. Now, there’s a question is, how does karma work to try the cause of all causes? Well, karma is a principle governing the world like gravity.
So, if I take this pen and I drop the pen, the pen is going to fall. Is this pen falling because of Krishna or is it falling because of gravity? Well, both. Gravity wouldn’t exist because despite of gravity, gravity wouldn’t exist independent of Krishna.
And just because I am a devotee of Krishna doesn’t mean I can say that gravity should not act on me. No, gravity will still act. So, a devotee does not deliberately defy karma, thinking that because now I’m a devotee, I shouldn’t care for karma.
Karma is a material principle governing the world and that material principle is under Krishna’s jurisdiction. So, when it says that bhakti freezes from karma, that means a devotee is no longer within the material jurisdiction primarily. But that does not mean material factors don’t affect a devotee.
That just means that a devotee’s consciousness is also fixed on Krishna, that a devotee’s conscious won’t be swerved by those material factors. It’s like we can’t be naive and simplistic if a devotee jumps off a 50-story building. Can a devotee say, oh, you know, gravity should not act on me because I’m devoted to Krishna, because I’m chanting Hare Krishna.
If you’re really intelligent enough to chant Hare Krishna, then be intelligent enough to not step off that building also. Isn’t it? So, like that, if we are really intelligent, we’ll be intelligent enough to practice bhakti and we’ll be intelligent enough to avoid bad karma also. And if we can find out some immediate cause for a problem, we fix that problem.
We don’t artificially think that Krishna is bhakti or Krishna and karma. How do they work? If I am here, say, what is the relationship between the two of them? The relationship is if I am here, I am in the material world where it is the domain of karma. But Krishna is the meta circle that contains all the circles.
So, Krishna can intervene when he wants to. It’s like, say, if you are working in a company, person is in a team in a company, but that person is also the son of the owner of the company. So now, then, can the owner of the company intervene if that person gets into trouble with the team leader? It’s possible.
But if the person is responsible, that person will actually function within the team. OK, there’s a team leader. This is what I’m expected to do.
I’ll do it. So, like that, a devotee functions harmoniously wherever the devotee is. A devotee doesn’t demand that Krishna artificially intervene and protect us.
OK. Any other questions? There is a question from a devotee. Lord Rama wanted to keep small things small and for family harmony left for Vanuvas.
Arjuna also wanted to keep it small and for family harmony was not willing to fight. But Krishna suggested otherwise. So, how to understand these two situations differently? The situations are different because the offender was one time, Kaikeyi did a one-time offence and she regretted and repented and reformed.
Duryodhana was not a person who had in any way repented or reformed. Duryodhana’s wrongdoings were only increasing more and more and more. And if Arjuna had not fought against Duryodhana, all that Duryodhana would have done is, he would not have let the Pandavas live in peace.
He would have attacked everyone who had supported the Pandavas. Arjuna’s not fighting would not have prevented the war. So, even if he had called off the war, even if, say, he could have got Bhima to stop fighting the war, which is very unlikely.
But even if he had, suppose, got Bhima to stop fighting, would Arjuna have forgotten, would Duryodhana have forgotten all the people who had allied with the Pandavas? Like now there’s a war going on between America and Russia. Let’s say it’s Ukraine-Russia, but it’s all Ukraine won’t be able to fight unless America is supporting it. So, say tomorrow there is a peace.
So, if one side just unilaterally decides to stop the war, is it that the other side is going to forget who all supported them? And if that one side is like Duryodhana, Duryodhana will remember and torment and destroy everyone who supported his opposites. And eventually, Arjuna will regret that, oh, because I didn’t fight, all those who supported me had to suffer. So, basically, when somebody is a repeat wrongdoer, then that person has to, strong action has to be taken against them.
Okay. Any other questions? There are a couple of questions in the chat. Can I read out? Yeah, please.
When one faces rejection, either career or from loved ones, they try to reason out, friends, family, try to look for reasons. But in this process, a self-doubt is implanted in the person’s mind, thinking it is because of me, it happened to me. My question is, how do we know that what one has done to you is what we deserve? I don’t think we need to get into this whole zone of what we deserve.
The fact is that in life, bad things happen to everyone. For some people, more bad things happen. Some people, maybe less bad things happen.
Then you can say that for all of us here in America or Canada, for the bad things that are happening that are not as bad as, say, what is happening to somebody in Israel or in Gaza or in Ukraine, I mean the war zones. But that does not mean that whatever is happening bad, there’s no bad thing happening in Russia, America or Canada or wherever else. The fact is that bad things happen to everyone.
And rather than thinking that I’m getting only what I deserve, we don’t want to be karma conscious. We want to be Krishna conscious. And maybe karma consciousness is a part of Krishna consciousness, but it’s only a part.
It’s not the whole thing. This is Krishna consciousness. Within that, we can be karma conscious.
That’s one factor to consider. But the most important thing is to actually be Krishna conscious. That means, okay, whatever has happened, okay, maybe somebody betrayed me, maybe I made a mess of things.
Whatever has happened, still Krishna is in charge. Krishna will guide me. Let me focus on serving Krishna.
And if I focus on that, things will work out in due course. But that should be our primary focus, that let me try to serve Krishna. Let me focus on the service of Krishna.
So we need to know that Krishna never abandons us. If Krishna had wanted to abandon us, why would Krishna get us this far? We all have achieved certain some things in our life, whatever it is, even actually the world is such a dangerous place. Even survival itself is an achievement, whatever be the age of each one of us.
There are so many people who die before they get to our age also. So even survival is an achievement at one level. So if we have achieved some things, that means that we have survived, we have achieved something, that means that there is, we have worked, we have done some work, we have done some things right, and God has also worked for us.
So God has not brought us this far to abandon us now. We focus more on, okay, what is the door that Krishna is opening for me? How can I serve Krishna in this situation? You know, what resources do I have? And from there, we move forward. We need this buddhi yoga I talked about.
At one level, it gives us some air to breathe. Sometimes we feel so suffocated and crushed by life that we just feel I can’t, I can’t even survive. So air is, we look at what abilities we have, we look at what interests we have, we look at what resources we have, and based on that, we find some door that is open and we move forward from there.
So Krishna has given us, Krishna will never abandon us. He will give us some ability, some interest, some resource with which we can move forward. Okay, any other questions? Guruji, on karma, there’s a follow-up question.
If someone’s karma is so bad that he cannot have connections to Krishna to be good? Well, yeah, I saw that question. If somebody will not be able to connect with Krishna in particular ways, but that doesn’t mean they can’t connect with Krishna. Somebody maybe circumstantially, say, have a job where there’s no temple available, no devotees available, but they can always connect digitally.
They cannot go physically to a temple, they can attend classes online, they can connect with people through virtual means. Somebody may have to have a, may have a family situation where they may have, they may be financially very challenged position, but somebody may be so sick. So every situation can create certain limitation, but the limitation will be to for particular forms of, the limitation is not to bhakti itself.
Okay, thank you. Thank you, Guruji. One last question.
Rama is worshipped for killing Ravan for the abduction of Sita, but a man will be jailed for doing the same. The question is not clear. What does it mean? Like, I think they’re basically saying that it is a crime to kill someone, like because right now if someone kills you.
Okay, okay. So Ram is the Martian guardian of society. Ram is like the king.
Just like when the police shoot a criminal, when the army kills an aggressor, that’s not considered a crime, that’s considered glorious. So we should not take the law in our own hands if we are ordinary citizens, so that we cannot replicate the exact thing that the Lord did. The principles we learn in the Bhagavad Gita tells Arjuna to fight.
Now does that mean that every one of us have to fight today to follow the Bhagavad Gita? No. At least we don’t have to fight a physical war. We had to fight an inner war against Anartha, that’s fair enough.
But the principle is that the specifics don’t apply necessarily, but the principle applies. The principle is that we do our duty, we do our dharma, we do our dharma in a mood of service to the Lord. So the application will vary upon time, place, circumstance.
The scriptures, they have, you know, what we can call as a, to study the scripture, there is something called a ladder of abstraction. That means there are specifics given in scripture and there are universals. And so, and then there are specifics that apply today.
So this is like a ladder. So we go up this ladder, we understand the universal principle, and then we come down the ladder and we look at how that principle applies today. So for example, Prabhupada does this and in the scriptures, there’s a description of yajna being performed.
So Prabhupada says yajna is like tax in today’s world. So the idea of tax is different, yajna is different, but it’s a correlation. So Prabhupada takes a principle that we belong to a larger whole and we have to contribute to the larger whole because we’re taking certain things from that whole.
So we have to look at the specific principles. Prabhupada, for example, in the 15th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, it is said that So there the list that is given, the spiritual world is not illuminated by sun, moon, or fire. Now Prabhupada gives those three and he also adds electricity over there.
Now somebody may say electricity is not mentioned over there. So why is Prabhupada adding electricity? See Prabhupada is going from the specific to the universal. Universal is that the spiritual world is self-luminous.
It is not dependent on any external source for light. So now in today’s world, what are the external sources of light that people are familiar with? So one of them is electricity. So Prabhupada is translating the specifics from that level to the specifics at our level.
So the specifics are not to be replicated, but the universal principles are to be understood and then we apply the specifics in our life.