How to face adversity (Ramayana life-lessons) 

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Chaitanya Chandra Prabhu will be moving to Kurukshetra. Hare Krishna. I’m grateful to be with all of you today.
I’ll be speaking on the Ramayana today. And we’ll try to approach this Ramayana to learn some life lessons. Basically, I’ll take this talk in three broad steps.
One is, I’ll talk about the significance of suffering. And then we’ll talk about responding to suffering. And then we’ll talk about rising beyond suffering.
So, we’ll focus on these three steps and we’ll talk about this particular pastime. Thereafter also, tomorrow we’ll continue the series afterwards. But at this stage, let’s begin.
So, the Ramayana is both a spiritual story of the Lord’s descent to the world. But simultaneously, it is a spiritual world and there is a material world. And the Lord exists at the spiritual world.
Ram, Krishna, all of them exist at the spiritual world. From there, they descend to this world. But this descent is called as the Avatar.
And the purpose of this descent is twofold. One is to establish Dharma in the world. Dharmasamsthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge.
Krishna talks about this in 4.78. Dharma here basically means order. And we accept order in this world. The world always goes towards disorder.
And the order has two aspects to it. There is the individual order and there is the social order. Social order means that society is organised according to what today we might call law and order.
So, this is where the Lord comes to. Paritranaya sadhuna vinashraya ca duskrtam. That He empowers the virtuous and disempowers the vicious.
But along with that, the Lord has another purpose. That is to inspire. Avatar is the divine descent.
God descends to inspire the human ascent. He inspires us to raise our consciousness. To ultimately develop Prema.
To develop pure love for God through Bhakti. And to attain His eternal abode. So, this Krishna talks about in the next two verses 4.9 and 10.
Where He says that. So, that means when there is terrible problems in this world, the Lord comes to fix those problems. However, if we consider this to be material world, the Lord comes at a particular time.
He establishes dharma. So, what this means is that if we consider there is a cloud above. And from the cloud, rains come.
So, these rains are like the avatar. When the rains come, at that time, there is relief from any drought that might be there. But the rains are there only at that particular time.
What about after that? The rains come and go. But on the ground, there is a lake that is formed. That lake is like the Leela Smaran.
The Lord as the avatar will come and go. But when the Lord is the Leela Avatar. The opportunity for the Leela Smaran.
The opportunity for remembering the Lord. Instead, the lake is there long after the rain has stopped. Like that, the Lord is there even after He has departed from the world.
In the form of the Leela that He has performed. And that Leela, we can remember. And by that remembrance, we can be elevated.
So, what does Leela Smaran do? Leela Smaran does many different things. At one level, it provides us satisfaction. It’s sweet, it’s uplifting, it provides us joy.
At another level, it also provides us guidance. Guidance about how to live in this world. Especially when Lord Ram descends to the world.
We will focus on Ram Leela. If we hear the Leela today, there is joy in hearing the past tense. But along with that, there is also guidance available.
And this principle of guidance that we focus on today. The Bhagavad Gita in 8.15 tells us something about this world. It says the world, the universe in one sense.
We use the word universe in the general sense. The universe is a university of adversity. Adversity means problems, difficulties, distress.
And distress is there. So, the Gita uses the word dukkhalayam. But the point is dukkhalayam doesn’t mean you are full of distress.
It is full of unhappiness. You live unhappy. That is not the point.
Just like in a university. Sometimes, if somebody, I am currently in America. Americans have this SEAL programme.
There are very trained soldiers who defend the country. But they have a very difficult dream. You may have seen in movies, somebody joins the army of the country.
And they have to go through very rigorous training. There are difficulties. But when they go through those difficulties, they are graduating.
They are joining an elite squad. So, the universe is like a university of adversity. And in this university, when we go through that, we will all go through adversity.
Because that is just the syllabus. So, everybody will go through adversity. Just like everybody in a university will go through the exams.
But a few among all those will actually grow through adversity. And those who grow through this, they will actually graduate. So, graduate means they will attain the Lord.
They will attain eternal life. They will attain real happiness. So, in the Ramayana, every book has its driving purpose.
But the Ramayana’s driving purpose is to demonstrate dharma. To demonstrate the behaviour of an ideal person. To demonstrate how an ideal person behaves.
And that is demonstrated through the actions of Lord Ramachandra. So, Ramachandra, he is God. And when we say he is God, that means he is all-powerful.
Being all-powerful, everything should be possible for him. But when he descends to this world, he acts like a human being. And as a human being, he also goes through adversities.
Just like all of us might go through. But he sticks to dharma when he goes through adversities. And by sticking to dharma, he is able to demonstrate to us how to face adversities.
I was asked this question. If Lord Ram is God, then how could God not protect his own wife? If he cannot protect Sita, then how can he protect us? Well, that’s a wrong question to ask. Why a wrong question to ask? It’s a logical question.
But the point is, it is not that Lord Ram could not protect Sita. It is that Lord Ram is demonstrating that even when he faces adversities, if you look at Lord Ram’s life, when he is born, it is said that somebody might be born with a golden spoon. That means he is born in a royal family.
He is born as the eldest of the dynasty. He is born as an extremely powerful king. When he is born in that way, everything seems to be going right for him.
And he is the favourite of everyone as he grows up. He is talented. He is dedicated.
When you consider today’s life, a kid is very talented. He is first in class. That kid is loved by everyone.
It’s like a dream trajectory that a kid is going on. And then he gets married. I’m skipping over some details because we want to focus on certain things.
Married to a princess, not just a princess. She’s both beautiful. And she’s also virtuous.
So his life seems to be going on a dream chart. And then after that, he is selected or he is about to be coronated. So till this point, it’s like a dream chart for him.
Everything seems to be going in the right direction. He is going to be appointed the next king. Suddenly, from nowhere, it seems as if a terrible thing happens.
A terrible, terrible thing happens. What happens? So his life is going in one direction. But suddenly, he is exiled.
And he is exiled for no fault of his. In today’s world, you cannot even think of what exile means. Because there is no such thing as exile.
There are no forests in which to exile someone. But exile is not really a punishment. The nearest you might get to in today’s world might be somebody is deported.
Say you are living in Canada. And because of some reason, the government deports you. But then at least, if most of you are Indians, then you can go back to India.
If you are from some other country, you can go to that country. That means we have a home out there. But exile is such a severe punishment.
You cannot go out with anything at all. You cannot go into the forest. You cannot go into some other country.
You want another freedom. Sugri invites Ram to come later to his kingdom. Ram says, I have to stay in the forest.
So among the various punishments that are there. Execution is considered to be the worst. And exile is considered to be just one lower.
Execution is life taken away. But exile is everything except life is taken away. Everything except life.
And in some ways, everything is taken away like this. Many people would think that the better you take my life away also. What is the point of living? In one room, his kingdom, his future prospects are taken away.
He becomes a poverty stricken person. There are many different kinds of wrongs in this world. The wrongs that can happen to us.
They fall in two broad categories. There is adversity. And that’s why I use the word.
The university of adversity. But actually worse than that is atrocity. Now, adversity is more natural.
If our home is next to a flood, next to a river, and the river gets flooded. And our home gets covered with all the water and we have to move away from there. That is adversity.
But suppose some terrorists blow up the dam. And that’s why the water gets flooded. It’s atrocity.
Atrocity is intentional. It is done by some other person. This is caused by nature.
Among these two, adversity and atrocity. Atrocity is actually much more difficult to bear. And among these three, atrocity and betrayal.
That is even more difficult to bear. Atrocity means that we have some enemy. Like right now between Israel and Hamas, there is a terrible war going on.
And the two sides have been enemies for a long time. And say one side commits a terrible atrocity against another side. It’s still terrible.
But it’s understood that these people are enemies. They’re going to do this. But say somebody who’s a close friend of ours.
And that person suddenly turns against us and stabs us in the back. It could be literal, it could be figurative. It’s extremely painful.
There are a few things as painful as that. And among all the wrongs, Lord Ram, this is what he experiences. That for no fault of his, suddenly his sister, sorry his mother, his stepmother Kaikeyi, she says Ram has to be exiled.
Now in one sense, at this point, how could this happen? That’s the question that comes up. How could this happen? This is the question which comes up when there is adversity. And when there is atrocity, how could anyone do this? How can any human being do something like this? So sometimes when we’re in war zones, sometimes we hear very barbaric scenes.
How could anyone do this? But here it is, how could you do this? How could you do this to me? Sometimes somebody, a sibling, a relative, a friend, they do something extremely terrible to us. And this question can be completely devastating. So in general, everything that I want to speak about how we deal with things.
The nature of this world is that I said adversity is going to befall everyone. We use a softer word for this. You can say it is grievance.
Grievances, everybody has some grievances. Oh, you know, my boss is not treating me properly. My wife or my husband is not treating me properly.
Now from grievance, there can be two distinct trajectories a person can go on. Everybody is a university of adversity. That’s what we’re talking about today.
So grievances is something which everyone will have. When we consider Lord Ram, what he had was a grievance of the kind which few people will ever experience to be betrayed like this. On the moment of the greatest joy, suddenly somebody turns around and takes everything away from you.
At least if Ram had antagonised Kaikeyi in some way, it would have been different. So from grievance, when one goes down, one can go towards vengeance. So vengeance means revenge.
You did this to me. I am going to put my life’s mission to destroy you. And then if vengeance exists, there are many movies about this.
You did this to my family. I’m going to destroy you. And movies, vengeance can seem quite entertaining.
But in real life, it can be very destructive. Now from vengeance, at least vengeance is targeted. Now these words might seem a little complicated, but I’m just trying to have a rhyme.
So grievance, vengeance, and then last is malevolence. Malevolence means it becomes indiscriminate. A person becomes an ill-wisher of everyone.
Indiscriminate. It’s not targeted. It’s the ill-wisher of everyone associated with something.
So this is the trajectory Krishna describes in 16.11 to 15 in the Gita. That everybody has some reason to feel dissatisfied in life. But there are some people, they start going on a dark, dark track because of that.
So now if you consider, I will not contrast here Ram with Dravid. Because that is often done. And we understand that Ram is virtuous and Ravan is vicious.
But let’s compare Ram here with Duryodhana. It’s a different epic, but I have a specific reason to do this comparison. What happens is, as I said, Lord Ram was about to become the king.
And suddenly he is exiled to the forest. Now for Duryodhana, what happens? He is born as a prince and is expected to become the king. And then suddenly the Pandavas come back home.
And because Yudhishthira is slightly older than Duryodhana, then Duryodhana’s claim to the throne becomes uncertain. When the claim to the throne becomes uncertain, what happens? He goes to the extent where he immediately decides to destroy the Pandavas. And he is barely a teenager when he makes a conspiracy to poison Bhima.
Some people say that with Duryodhana, that he was a good person and Shakuni made him bad. Well, no, not really. When Duryodhana arranged to poison Bhima, it was all on his own.
Shakuni had not yet come into the picture directly. So it is not that Duryodhana was good and Shakuni made him bad. That Duryodhana was bad and Shakuni made him worse.
So what happens is that first he tries to kill Bhima. When that doesn’t succeed, he decides to burn all the Pandavas alive. And when he burns all of them, he also decides to have their mother killed.
Shakuni had never been anything but kind. Even from Kshatriya standards, women are not to be harmed. So what happens is that his moral compass is completely removed.
Even when people are killed, the most painful form of death is through burning. Because when somebody burns, a bullet or a knife just goes into one part of the body and it destroys the body. But burning means the entire skin, pain is felt all over the body.
It is the most painful form of killing among various killings. So Rama, for example, his throne was taken away. Duryodhana, his throne was only threatened to be taken away.
There was no certainty that Yudhishthira would take away his throne. But what he did was he went down this path. Vengeance and Punishment.
Now we all have some grievances. And we can think, this person did this to me, therefore I am going to destroy this person. And once we get rid of that, I will destroy this person because this person is causing problems.
We will destroy that person, but then always our mind will find somebody else. Oh, this person is the problem. Let me destroy that also.
Let me destroy that also. Let me destroy everyone connected with that person also. So most of us may not go down such a dark trajectory, but we quite often stay caught in this direction.
That’s how most of us will stay trapped. And a few of us may go down towards malevolence also. But Rama demonstrates a different trajectory.
What is that? From grievance, there is tolerance. And from tolerance, there is transcendence. I’ll explain what this means and then that will be the second half of the final part of the class.
So what does tolerance mean? And how does Lord Rama exhibit this tolerance? Sometimes tolerance is mistaken to be passivity. Oh, whatever you are doing, I just tolerate passivity. But that is not equal to passivity.
Why is it not equal to passivity? Because tolerance is not just letting people walk over us. Tolerance essentially has two big aspects to it. There is basically keep small things small.
And how do we keep small things small? We keep big things big. So basically one and two. And they are two distinct components, but they are also related.
That means we keep small things small so that we can keep big things big. And when we keep big things big, keeping small things small is easy for us. So in the case of Lord Rama, how did he exhibit tolerance? So for him, the kingdom itself was a small thing.
For him, in that case, the family harmony, his duty to his father. These were the big things. That’s why when Dakshat called Rama to his palace, at that time before the coronation, when he entered into the room, immediately he could sense the tension between Dakshat and Kaikeyi.
Sometimes we enter into a room, the atmosphere itself seems to be so tense or so cold. Just by being there, we feel as if all the oxygen from our air is going away. Rama doesn’t go away.
He could sense the tension. And Dakshat Maharaj was so shocked by what Kaikeyi was demanding, by what he had to do. He just couldn’t function, couldn’t speak any words.
But that became a calm. Now, what can I do for you? And when he spoke this, it was Kaikeyi who spoke in a very cold voice. Based on a promise that your father has made to me, he has given me two blessings.
You will go to the forest for 14 years and that will become better. The natural human condition. But what did Lord Rama do? Lord Rama did something.
He said, Kaikeyi, I always thought of you as my mother. And I thought that you also treated me as your son. Today, it causes me great pain to know that you never really thought of me as your son.
If you had seen me… Now, Kaikeyi became tense. She was expecting Rama to criticise her for what she was doing. But instead, when Rama spoke, it was such an insignificant thing as a kingdom.
Why did you even have to go to my father? You could have told me and I would have immediately given the kingdom to you. Kaikeyi was not expecting to hear this at all. So, within his Leela, was he shocked? Was he distressed? Yes, he was.
But he did not let his feelings come in the way of his duty, come in the way of what was the right thing for him to do. It was his responsibility. And then, Lakshman was enraged at this time.
Lakshman said, When we are angry, we want to find somebody to blame. The king has become blinded by lust for his youngest wife. And therefore, he has no idea what is right and wrong.
We should fight against such a king. And at that time, Lord Rama said, I was with Maharaj. Oh, Lakshman, don’t speak words like this, expressing opinions.
You don’t know what is the reality. I could read on Dashrath’s expression that it was not infatuation that was motivating him. It was obligation.
He was bound because he had given his promise to Kaikeyi. Lakshman was still very angry. How come he had never heard such a promise till now? And even if he had given his promise, how could Kaikeyi ask this from you? When you have that, how can you do this? Lord Rama said, Oh, Lakshman, don’t speak bad about Kaikeyi.
She loves me. Can’t you remember how she used to love me? Her love for me was like the Ganga flowing constantly. Sometimes what happens is, say when we are going through life, so if I am here, and then the person next to me over here, and now this person, this is me, and this person is being cruel to me.
Now we may only look at this person, and how is this person acting like this, we may think. But what Lord Rama is doing is, Lord Rama is taking the memory backwards. This is the past version of this person.
And what people are in the moment, is not necessarily who the people really are. So Lord Rama is trying to decrease Lakshman’s anger by telling, don’t think of just how Kaikeyi is acting right now. Remember who she is, and how she has acted in the past.
Lakshman is still very angry. And he takes Rama’s metaphor only and tries to turn it against. That is what I can’t understand.
If her love for you was like the flowing Ganga flowing, Ganga dries up in one minute. That is when Lord Rama states, when we can’t understand what is happening, when we can’t make sense of the things that are happening, he says it is best to attribute it to destiny. That’s why I felt it is not Kaikeyi acting, it is destiny acting through Kaikeyi.
So basically, generally speaking, say when I do an action, we get a result. So if we do an action worth some 10 units, it’s positive 10, we expect a result of positive 10. But say if I do an action, which is 100 positive, and then the result I get is a thousand negative.
You may say, I did so much good and why am I looking terrible like this? So what Lord Rama is saying is, at this time, we need to look at our past. Maybe there is something from our past that is coming, and that is combining the present action. This is destiny.
So Lord Rama is saying that, so this is not Kaikeyi doing, it is destiny doing. Now destiny may be acting through Kaikeyi. Lord Rama is trying to see a bigger picture.
He’s trying to see a higher picture over there. So Lord Lakshman is still not accepting this. And Lakshman says, it is only cowards who accept injustice to be destiny, and succumb to it.
Heroes fight against injustice. What is happening to you is injustice, and you must fight against it. So this time, Lord Rama emphasises what is in his path.
He said, for me, the most important thing is my duty to my father. As a service to my father, I was going to climb the throne. I was going to become the king.
And as a duty to my father, now I am going to fall. So here, in the sense of duty, or the sense of responsibility, that is what Lord Rama is emphasising. Now, when I said that, from grievance, there is tolerance.
Tolerance means keep big things big, and keep small things small. So even when Lord Rama went to the forest, sometimes, you know, we may accept, or somebody has done something bad to us, but internally we are so resentful, that we want to hit out at that person, we want to hurt that person. So we may bad mouth that person to everyone.
But Lord Rama told everyone, the citizens were coming with him, or complaining about the viciousness of what has happened to him. Lord Rama said that, now that I am going away, my father will need your support more than before. Please support him.
You can serve me, you can please me, by maintaining harmony in the kingdom, and serving my father. Be with him to support him in this moment of great distress. The normal tendency, is just feel sorry for ourselves.
Oh, something so bad has happened to me, something so bad has happened to me. But nowadays, as we know, that there’s a lot of mental health problems. Mental health problems can be, by various causes.
But, there is this one very common, or common denominator, for mental health problems. Excessive self-obsession. That means if I am only thinking about myself, and my feelings all the time, this is almost a sure predictor of unhappiness.
I’m always thinking, oh, you know, this person did this to me, and that person did that to me, and that person did that to me, and life did this to me. It’s always thinking about ourselves. That is a sure formula for unhappiness.
So Lord Rama’s focus, is not on what has been done to him. He’s showing by his focus, he is taking away everyone’s anger. Even when, he comes to meet him, and Bharata goes back with the Padukas, and that’s when Lord Rama, pulls Bharata over and says, don’t blame Kaikeyi for what has happened.
She was only an instrument of destiny. So he tries to avoid, any kind of animosity between the family at all. So he’s not thinking about himself, he’s thinking of a purpose bigger than himself.
That’s how the unhappiness can be removed. So now, so what is he doing? He’s tolerating. Now, how is tolerance possible? I said, even there is grievance.
We can keep small things, small tolerance, that is through transcendence. Transcendence means, that we transcend, we go beyond. We can go beyond suffering, by having a higher purpose for our life.
By pursuing a higher value in our life. So Lord Rama, the higher value for him was, that, okay, I need to take care, I need to do my duty, as a son, as a member of a family. This tolerance, so the grievance to tolerance, comes through intelligence.
Okay, what is the big thing? What is the small thing? I’ll keep the big thing big, I’ll keep the small thing small, but transcendence comes, by taking responsibility. When we are taking up responsibility, that, what does responsibility mean? When a bad thing has happened, rather than resenting why the bad thing has happened, we focus on, how can I make things better? Now that this has happened, what can I do, to make things better? And this, is the move, essentially, with bhakti. Service attitude, means that we understand, that, the Lord has a plan for our lives.
And, because there is a higher plan for my life, let me see how I can participate in this plan. So this particular trajectory, does this mean that people can, behave with us, people abuse us, people exploit us, and still we tolerate? No, no, that’s not the point. You see the same Lord Ram, now we say he dealt in one way with Kaikeyi, that means he has tolerated her, he didn’t try to hit back at her.
But his dealing was another way with Ravan. When Ravan abducted Sita, he did not think, oh, this is my destiny, let us stay abducted. He did not say that, okay, he did not, he was not passive.
Why in both cases, the important thing was, a sense of responsibility, a sense of duty. What is the right thing to do in this situation? So, even with respect to Ravan, Lord Ram, did not go in the direction of vengeance and malevolence. Why not vengeance? Because he did not destroy all of Lanka.
He gave Ravan many chances, return Sita, we can avoid the war. And then eventually, sometimes when one country wins over another country, it destroys the entire country completely. But, Lord Ram did not do that.
After Ravan was killed, he appointed another person from Lanka, Vibhishan as the commander, as the king over there. So, it was not vengeance, it was not malevolence at all. The point is, Ravan was not ready to change, was not ready to reform.
Whereas, for Ravan, he was a habitual wrongdoer. He was someone who was doing repeatedly again and again wrongs. Kaikeyi was occasional, not even occasional.
Actually, just a one-time wrongdoer. So, Lord Ram just tolerated. Now, in the case of how he dealt with Ravan, again the purpose was his duty.
So, I had to protect my wife. But, that does not mean I will go about destroying all the Rakshasas. Only those Rakshasas who were stopping me from doing my responsibility, Lord Sita, I will punish them.
he had to punish Ravan. So, it was not out of vengeance at all. You did this to me, so I’m going to do this to you.
Not like that. It was, what you did was wrong, it will stop. If you stop doing the wrong, then there will be no punishment for you.
But, if you insist on doing the wrong, then you will have to be punished because the wrong action has to be stopped. So, here, what did Lord Ram do? We’ll try to summarise this in three broad points. And, for us, in our life, and that will be the concluding part of the talk, that how do we go up, instead, from grievance, towards tolerance, and then transcendence.
How do we go on this journey? So, I’ll talk in a chronic act. A, is acceptance. What do we accept? That distress, is unavoidable.
Everybody is going to face distress in life. For some of us, it may come from a family, some of it may come from colleagues, some of it may come from labour, some of it may come from politicians, some of it may come from neighbourhood criminals, terrorists, whatever it is. Or, it may come from our own health issues.
Distress is unavoidable. And, that is what Lord Ram also demonstrated. He is God, but when he descends to this world, then he goes through distress.
And, as I mentioned, it is the distress of the magnitude, which few of us will ever have to suffer through. So, accept that distress is unavoidable. That means, when we make decisions, if our decisions are based on avoiding, or escaping distress, then we are constantly looking for shortcuts.
Those don’t work. Don’t be constantly looking for, which is the path of least trouble for me, I’ll take that path. Because, in life, trouble is unavoidable.
This does not mean that we just have to live passively with trouble. That brings us to the next part. He is cultivating.
Cultivate a purpose, so meaningful, that it raises us above distress. We can’t avoid distress in life, but, we all can find a purpose for our life. And, that purpose can make distress bearable.
So, decisions need to be made based on, cultivating a higher purpose. Now, we all may have some purpose in our life. We may not like our job, but, the job pays well.
We think, okay, I don’t like this job, but, I’m going to take care of my family. I’m going to get some financial stability, therefore, I’ll take care of this job. So, the job is distressful, but, the purpose is what anyone has to maintain, to, to tolerate the distress.
To, make the distress bearable for us. Now, that is good to have that kind of purpose, but, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Vedic scriptures describe that, Artha, Artha basically means, meaning, and purpose. Or rather, meaning that comes from purpose.
The word Artha has, you know, literally, that is meaning. But then, there are four Purusha Arthas. There, the Artha refers to, purpose.
What is life meant for? So, meaning, that comes from purpose. When we have purpose in life, there can be many Arthas. So, for example, somebody is starving, food is the Artha of their life.
If there is no food, they cannot survive. And after some time, maybe money is the Artha of their life. Can I need money, so that I can move forward? That’s all important, but, you know, we need to rise beyond.
Like this, there is a hierarchy of Arthas, and then there is what is called as the, Param Artha, or Paramartha. And the Paramartha, is the Lord. It is Ram, it is Krishna.
It is His service, that enables us, to move forward in life. So when we focus on the service of the Lord, that is the Paramartha. Why is it the Paramartha? Because everything that we seek as Artha in our life, it may be taken away from us.
My Artha, might be to, earn money so that I can take care of my family. Good Artha to have. But, we are eventually going to grow old, and, we are going to be taken away from our family.
Sometimes we do something so much for our family, and the family doesn’t appreciate what we are doing. We start thinking, why am I doing all this? But there is one purpose, that is never going to be taken away from us. That is the Paramartha.
So, we may earn money, we may take care of our family, we may do all these things, but we see, that ultimately I am doing this, in a mood of service to the Lord. That all other sources of meaning in our life, they are all coming from, and they are subordinate to the Lord. So, when our mood in life, when our driving purpose is, Krishna, I want to serve you.
Whatever happens, Krishna, I am your servant. I want to serve you. If that focus is there, then what happens by this is, if you consider this is our experience.
In our experience, there is some distress. I am drawing this as a red line. Is this visible to you? I mean, here also it is not visible.
It is visible, Pooja. Okay. So, this is distress, in our life.
Now, we can’t avoid distress in our life. It is going to come. But when we cultivate a purpose, is this line visible? A green line? Yes, Guru.
So, when we cultivate a purpose in our lives, if there is no purpose, then our experience goes in one way. If there is no purpose, then that distress itself, completely fills our experience. We can’t think of anything beyond.
Oh, my life is filled with misery. This person has done this to me. That person has done this to me.
But when there is purpose in our life, then that purpose fills our experience. And then even if distress is there, that distress becomes more. So, for all of us, now for Lord Ram, through Kaikeyi’s actions, there is a bigger purpose that was fulfilled.
That he went to the forest and eventually fought with Raavan and he freed the world from the terror of Raavan. So, similarly for us, now how was Lord Ram able to pursue that purpose? Because he stuck to his responsibility. Our responsibility means, not some predefined idea of duty, but what is the right thing to do? What is the thing that can make the situation bad? I don’t want to make it worse.
What can I do to make things better in this situation? So, that attitude, cultivate a purpose that makes the stress irreversible. So, if we can find whatever situation life has put us in, we think, okay, what can I do to make things better? Krishna had some plan for my life. What can I do in the mode of service to Krishna? How does Krishna want me to act so that I can make things better? That is cultivate.
So, accept, accept, cultivate. And the last part is transcend. Transcend means, in terms of Bhagavad Gita, this accept is, this word is Dukhalaya, 8.15. Cultivate a purpose that makes the stress irreversible.
11.30 And transcend is 18.58. Transcend means what? We go beyond. Transcend distress by immersion immersion in the Lord. Immersion in the Lord means we turn away from this world.
We turn away from this world and we focus on Krishna whether we are chanting the holy names, whether we are praying to Krishna, worshipping the deity, coming and hearing satsang. By this, what happens? We are talking about this transcend. So, normally, if we practise immersion in Bhakti, immersion means we go deep into Bhakti.
We absorb ourselves in Krishna. So, our normal experience is this is the world and the people in the world, this person did this to me and that person did that to me. And then this small thing, okay, this small thing is God.
The world is the real big thing and God is a small thing. Okay, God exists somewhere but this small thing acts as a really big problem. But if we immerse ourselves in Bhakti, if we do our sadhana properly, we really connect with Krishna and what happens is the world becomes small and Krishna becomes big for us.
And when Krishna becomes big and the Lord becomes big, the world becomes small for us. Then the world’s problems don’t appear that much. And then I just said, okay, in this world, things will go up, things will go down.
Sometimes happy, sometimes sad. But Krishna is always there with me and because he’s there with me, I can stay connected with him and I can go through whatever difficulties may come. We all may have this experience, sometimes we may be disturbed by something and we come to the temple, we come to satsang, we participate in some kirtan.
It’s almost all that tension that is there in our mind, all the anxiety that is there, it just goes away. It just decreases, it doesn’t appear so much trouble into us. How it happens is by the practise of Bhakti, especially by immersing ourselves in Bhakti, not just chanting as a ritual, but actually immersing ourselves in Bhakti, by that, we understand that the world is not as big as Krishna.
Krishna is bigger than the temple security. So whatever suffering is there, it has to be transcended by immersion in Krishna. In that way, each one of us can, by learning to act, we can follow in the example of Lord Ram, we all can graduate to the university of adversity to ultimately be united with Krishna in this world and ultimately beyond this world in the eternal abode of Krishna.
Well, so I’ll summarise what we discussed today. So I discussed broadly four points. First was the purpose of Lord Ram or purpose of avatar in general.
That is at one level to establish Dharma in this world. It is also to show as the path of Dharma to go through the world and or beyond the world. Like you remember I drew the diagram, the divine descent.
It’s to establish Dharma here, but it’s also to inspire the human ascent. So Lord Ram comes to demonstrate how to graduate to the university of adversity. That university of adversity.
Everybody will face adversity in life and Lord Ram faced the worst adversity. It’s not just a bad thing happening. It’s a bad thing done to us.
That is worse and a bad thing done by a trusted person, by a person whom we trust and love. That is the most difficult to bear. That’s what happened to Lord Ram and that’s how we dealt with it.
We discussed that and that connection. This is the unhealthy trajectories that grievance will be there for everyone and some people from grievance go towards vengeance and from vengeance they go towards malevolence. I will hurt you because you hurt me and I will destroy everyone connected with you.
This is a very dark path. You don’t want to go on this path. The alternative path is that when there is grievance from there we go upward towards tolerance and from tolerance we go towards transcendence.
So we saw how Lord Ram, tolerance what does it mean? Tolerance has these two steps. Small things we keep them small and we keep big things big. So for Lord Ram the big thing was to serve his family, to maintain hard work, to do his duty.
When a bad thing has happened how can I make sure it doesn’t become worse and the transcendence was through that to his tolerance he was able to serve a bigger purpose. The bigger purpose was that he was able to rid the world of Ravan. Ravan was eliminated not because Lord Ram wanted to take revenge but because Ravan was not ready to change.
Kaikeyi was ready to change so Lord Ram did not punish her in any way. What does this mean for us? It is because of the Akronic Act. We all can go on this path from grievance and tolerance to transcendence he was accepted that distress will be there in everyone’s life.
So don’t make decisions only based on how we can minimise the distress and cultivate a purpose that will make the distress bearable and for all of us we can have different purposes but there is the paramar, the supreme purpose that is I am a servant of the Lord and how can I serve him? And then finally we transcend transcend by immersing ourselves in the Lord by regularly practising bhakti by which we are reminded that that the world is not as big, the Lord is much bigger and when we remember that the world’s problems don’t appear that much bigger then what happens? Even if we are going through distress our purpose of serving the Lord fills our mind and the distress becomes bearable. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Thank you so much Guruji, thank you very very much it was an amazing wonderful class and we have the temple all full packed, jam packed and everyone was just stunned to see how wonderfully you have explained we would also like to thank Prabhuji by loudly chanting Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Ram Hare Ram Ram Ram Hare Hare Prabhuji, because of certain time constraints we would like to do the question answers tomorrow in case any devotees have questions it is difficult to manage here also, so we will do it tomorrow and then we can take the question answers Yeah, I just simply mentioned something that, two things, that this particular part of why did Lord Ram deal with Ravan differently and Kaikeyi differently? When people hurt us, there are different reasons why people hurt us and how to deal with different people who hurt us that’s what I will be discussing in the next two sessions Now what made Kaikeyi do a wrong thing? What made Ravan do a wrong thing? And why did Lord Ram respond differently to them? So basically when people hurt us, how to respond? That will be the theme in the next two sessions and so please if it is possible, you can join online and we will continue the discussion at that time Much of what I spoke today is in my book, Living the Ramayana which is there available, if any of you want, you can have that.
There is also a calendar with 366 codes. This is different from the calendar which I had bought previously. There are new 366 codes.
These are all based on the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita and they can help us put the Gita’s wisdom in a short post, in proper and quick application in our lives. So hold our plans lightly, hold our Lord tightly We often do the opposite The detachment is not absence of emotion Detachment is absence of domination by emotion So don’t look on Facebook, seek shelter in Facebook There are codes like that inspired by the Bhagavad Gita Each of these is inspired by one verse. These are all available in case any of you would like to have it.
Thank you so much Hare Krishna The books are being displayed at the back in the store So you all can meet me whoever would like to have a look at the book, please see me behind So there we’ll have the display book as well. Thank you very much Hare Krishna So another huge round of applause for Sree Chaitanya Prabhu Prabhu has been not feeling well so he couldn’t travel But still, despite his ill health, he has come online. So we are really very grateful to Prabhuji and we also hope to see him tomorrow and on Tuesday too.
Hare Krishna So on behalf of Shri Shri Radha Madhav Roshri Naji, Shri Shri Gaur Nidai we welcome you to our Sunday feast at the festival Any family coming for the first time please raise your hands if you are here for the first time Anyone here for the first time please, many devotees at the back please give a big round of applause for everyone for coming here for the first time Like I said, we also welcome from Lebanon a big round of applause for her We also welcome Narendra Avajla Narendra Avajla is nominee for Skyview writing So we’d like to welcome him and if anybody has any questions, Prabhuji will be at the back, so you can ask him any questions So just give him a garland Thank you Prabhuji So if anybody has any questions, Prabhuji will be at the back, so you can ask him any questions And they are also doing a radio marathon on Festival of Colours on 25th and 26th on the Festival of Colours day and at the Protax office So they will be doing a radio marathon for raising the fund for our temple