When Scriptural Explanations Seem Like Excuses … HG Chaitanya Charan Das

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so today morning we are coming to the conclusion of the discussion between Uddhava and Vidura and there is remembrance of the Lord going on and in general the remembrance of the Lord is very relishable the pastimes of the Lord are extremely sweet and Kula Shekhar Maharaj says Sukha Taram Aparam Na Ja Tu Jaane Hari Charana Smarana Amrute Na Tulyam he says the remembrance of the lotus feet of the Lord is like nectar there is no nectar like it in fact it’s not just like nectar, no nectar is like it so it’s incomparable and yet the Chaitanya Charita Amrita describes so I’ll be using this as a white board to write and draw certain things so nectar the Chaitanya Charita Amrita indicates can be paradoxically of two kinds you can have sweet nectar and you can have bitter nectar now the very idea of nectar we would think it implies it is sweet but how can there be bitter nectar the Chaitanya Charita Amrita gives the example of hot sugar cane juice it is extremely sweet so you can’t stop drinking it but at the same time it is so hot that you can’t tolerate it so basically there is a fundamental contrast between spiritual life and material life and sometimes we face it this world is people say no there is pleasure in this world also we say no it’s maya but people who are in maya don’t think it is maya we think that’s the pleasure, that’s the purpose of life that’s what they are driving for they think this pleasure is the purpose of life Krishna parodies them by saying we have ascertained it there is no question about doubting it there is one European philosopher who said the problem with the world is that the wise are doubtful and the foolish are confident so those who are pursuing material pleasures sex, wealth, power, prestige they are completely confident if I just get this I will be happy and those who are pursuing Krishna does Krishna really exist, will Krishna protect me so this is the situation the wise are doubtful and the foolish are confident totally sure so what happens is in material life what we experience is like poison but even poison sometimes is bitter and sometimes it is sweet so when the poison is sweet it is still poison now why is it poison because it is making us forget Krishna and when we are forgetting Krishna we are going away from reality and even if that dream is temporarily pleasant but it is still getting us into illusion so just as material life can have duality it can sometimes be enjoyable but in one sense we could say bitter poison will make us want to stop drinking sweet poison will make us want to drink more and more so that’s why many people turn towards God in distress but do we stay with God in happiness that is also a significant test if not a bigger test so anyway the point is that just as there are both sides in material life there is pleasure but the foundation is because there is forgetfulness of Krishna it is illusion similarly in the remembrance of Krishna because there is connection with Krishna that is nectar but within that also there is there is duality, it is a transcendental duality but it is there, just like the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition we have love in separation and love in union, there is duality in one sense but the foundation is in both cases the devotees are absorbed in Krishna so the remembrance of Krishna comes in many different flavours there is sweet nectar and there is also bitter nectar so now why am I talking about this right now because this particular narrative that is going on is very much like bitter nectar that’s why there may be Bhagwat Kathas practically nobody does Bhagwat Katha on the destruction of the Yadu dynasty we’ll do on the Gopi Geet, we’ll do on the Krishna’s Kali Adhaman Leela Govardhan Leela, so many other pastimes because this is painful this is distressing and not only it is distressing to hear about the destruction but it can also be disruptive of the faith so we will try to process this part so this bitter nectar when there are pastimes which are difficult to process difficult to understand, Prabhupada gives an example that or rather Bhagavatam gives an example, Prabhupada elaborates on it that fire occurs in the forest like that this conflict occurred between the descendants of the Yadu dynasty and they were all destroyed so we will discuss basically I’ll start from something like playing the devil’s advocate and then we’ll move towards more and more into Shastra to understand the spirit so when something like this happens in spiritual life there is an explanation sometimes somebody gives an explanation, hey why were you late and then that person gives an answer that’s not an explanation, that’s an excuse so now quite often what one person thinks is an explanation the other person thinks it’s an excuse so you could say on one extreme there is an excuse, there is an explanation and there is an excuse and now how do we differentiate that so excuse is something which we give when we don’t have an explanation I know I was talking I was talking I was staying at one devotee’s house there is a parent and they have a teenage kid so the teenage kid had done something very very irritating to his parents so the parents were saying so he was saying I have an explanation, he says no you are young and your hormones are running and you have no explanation he says that was my explanation so now is that an explanation so there is always a dispute is something an explanation or an excuse and two people can sometimes never agree on that but in spiritual life there is one more dynamic and that is experience in spirituality we are ultimately seeking the experience of God bhakti bhakti is a process that gives us experience of Krishna and that is what matters the most in the Brihad Bhagavatam when the journey of the Gopakumar is described at that time Sanatana Goswami while narrating it says that Anubhav or experience is the highest Pramana we talk about Pratiksha, Anumana, Shabda as Pramana and of course they are important at the same time he is talking from the perspective of Gopakumar he goes to the spiritual world he experiences Vaikuntha, he experiences Yodhya he experiences Dwarka and then finally he feels Vrindavan and Vrindavan Krishna is the highest and the most attractive and in that context Sanatana Goswami is saying that this experience is the ultimate Pramana, it is the ultimate confirmatory test so ultimately this is in our tradition the highest Pramana now that doesn’t mean other things are not important explanations are important but these are three different things so we will today try to understand the difference between these three things and we will see how we can seek an explanation we will try to see how to identify and avoid excuses how to seek an explanation but how to seek most the experience of Krishna because that is what our ultimate purpose and perfection is so if we move forward now here what has happened is extremely disturbing I just gave the Hindi Bhagavatam class a couple of days ago in theology the study of God there are two questions which are very difficult to understand in western philosophy from the time of Plato and others these are called as natural evil and moral evil natural evil is basically why do bad things happen to good people and this is a perplexing question now in our tradition we have the explanation of karma and yet if you see in the Bhagavatam that is not the explanation that is constantly being trotted out, it’s not just used as a one catch all explanation for all suffering if you see actually the Bhagavatam’s analytical frame is much deeper than karma but that is one explanation why do bad things happen to good people but what is often even more problematic is why do good people do bad things in fact in one sense we could say that both both challenge our faith in God but in the first case why did God let this happen depending on our philosophical world view did God make this happen or did God let this happen whichever way it is, but why did God let that happen even if we say it’s let Krishna says I am the permitter that’s disturbing but in general for most people their faith in God is based to a large extent on their faith in those who represent God that’s why in our tradition also the key sign of spiritual advancement from Kanishadikari to Madhyamadhikari is appreciation of the value of devotees the value of association so it is an association that we get faith that yes, God exists there are two different things God’s existence and God’s relevance when I was introduced to bhakti I started talking with my relatives so one of my uncles, he said I believe in God he is happy there, I am happy here so why do I need God as such well, I did want to say in India I still have conservative, so that I could say you are not going to be happy for very long I didn’t say that to him but the point is that the world is a place of ups and downs so God’s existence is important to know of course but the relevance of God’s existence why does it matter that we learn primarily in the association of devotees not just in terms of philosophy but also in terms of experience that God is it is through the association of those who are devoted to God that our conception of God evolves you could say evolution in the conception of God so initially we think of God as the fulfiller of desires ok, if I pray to God, God will give me this God will give me that and Krishna appreciates such people also Krishna says in 7.16 there are good people coming to me but then from this point 7.16 when we go to 7.19 that is so Vasudeva Sarvamiti God is not just the fulfiller of desires He is the fulfillment of desires that means that God doesn’t just give me blessings He is not just a source of blessings God himself is the greatest blessing that if Krishna’s presence starts manifesting in my heart if that starts enriching my heart then there is no greater enrichment that is possible so this we understand primarily by associating with those who are seeking God as the ultimate fulfillment of all desires many of the people who met Prabhupada who later on became leaders in our movement they came from a Judeo-Christian background they all had some familiarity with the conception of God and religion but many of them said it was more like a ritual religion the total devotion to God making God like the centerpiece of our life not the showpiece of our life I worship God also Prabhupada would sometimes joke having a Guru is like a fashion it’s like you know this is my chandelier this is my car, this is my dog and this is my Guru so like that God or Guru sometimes they can just be showpieces in people’s life but Prabhupada was a person for whom God was the be all and end all Krishna was the center, the fulcrum, the pivot of his very existence and that was what drew people India is a remarkably pious country among various countries in the world of course religion is having a resurgence to some extent but I saw a cartoon recently an American is asking an Indian why do you people worship so many Gods and the Indian replies because we believe in backups that’s philosophically completely off but the idea is with Krishna we understand we don’t need any backup Vasudeva Sarvamiti he is everything for us so that evolution in the conception of God that comes primarily by the association of devotees and that’s why when somebody who is a devotee or whom we see not just as a devotee but an exalted devotee they do something bad that is very disruptive to our faith so this is where this particular pastime where the Yadus they get drunk and they fight among each other and there is a drunken brawl in which they destroy each other that is very disorienting how could that happen so I look over some of the explanations that are given and I was talking with one devotee he was going through some difficulties in his spiritual life and he was telling me now that I read script Shastra I see that there are no excuses this is simply an excuse this particular thing this is a standard logical error giving a metaphor is not explaining a cause just like fire occurs in a wood, in a forest like that this occurs just by giving a metaphor you are not giving an explanation it doesn’t explain anything and he was saying that if they could not be destroyed it happened by Krishna’s will Krishna could have died in any other way why did Krishna have to kill each other it’s not that all Kshatriyas have to die in a battlefield only they can die gracefully Dhruva Maharaj didn’t die that way he was a Kshatriya, he sat down in meditation and the vehicle of the Lord came, the Vaikuntha airplane came why couldn’t that have come this is no explanation at all this is just an excuse the excuse argument can run both ways atheists often say that God is just like a crutch for you you people are weak you people are weak and that’s why you imagine a God so that you have some father figure to protect you so God is just a psychological creation well maybe but the psychological creation argument runs both ways you are an atheist you don’t want to believe in God so it is your psychological need to create the argument that God is a psychological need isn’t it a psychological need, everybody has psychological needs so how do you prove just because there is a psychological need does not prove whether the actual reality is there or not isn’t it so I was telling this devotee you were reading the same scriptures before and you were reading for many years at that time you found them nourishing so I said with all due respect generally whenever somebody says with all due respect what they are going to say after that is not very respectful so I said with all due respect you need to search your heart is it that you are looking for excuses to give up your Krishna consciousness you have been hurt you feel betrayed by what happened I empathize with what has happened to you but if you are looking for excuses then Krishna will give that to you Krishna is a desire fulfilling tree if we want reasons to come closer to Krishna Krishna will give those to us if you want excuses to stay away from Krishna, Krishna will give those to us also that is the meaning of a desire fulfilling tree and this is one thing which I learned early in my childhood many of you noticed that I need crutches for walking so I had polio, I was just walking normally one day and I fell down and I couldn’t walk after that it recovered a little bit and at least I have some mobility now so my mother told me my father used to mostly travel so my mother used to take care of me we did some therapy, some exercises and then I tried to walk, I had a brace and I would say it’s very painful, I can’t walk so my mother would say that you have to be honest with yourself I don’t know how much pain you are in if you use the pain as an excuse for not walking then you will never learn to walk but if you are not able to walk, I am not going to force you but you will be immobilized if you use it as an excuse so be honest with yourself so yes, everybody will have limitations and challenges at a physical level, at an emotional level, at a spiritual level now are we going to use that as an excuse that is something which we have to honestly investigate so the excuse argument could run both ways you could say this is an excuse because you don’t have an explanation why Krishna did something like this and this is your excuse that you want to go away from Krishna now what what would differentiate an excuse from an explanation now the point is that the Bhagavatam itself gives us in general when we want to differentiate between the two it’s very difficult to differentiate this in isolation when a particular person gives a particular reason if that is all that we are hearing if somebody comes late and they say no, I was caught in traffic and now if we are meeting them for the first time everybody gets caught in traffic at times but somebody who knows them every time they get caught in traffic so after sometime that particular explanation becomes a tired trope it’s telling it again and again so if somebody is using the same explanation again and again then we would start saying maybe this is an excuse now you should know that in the city the traffic is like this and you have to prepare in advance so in general this differentiation cannot be made in isolation it has to be made in context when a person is giving a particular answer or scripture is giving a particular answer then what is the overall body within which it is being spoken so if a person is normally very responsible and competent and then they make a mistake and you say I’m sorry this happened that happened ok we could accept that as an example it happens sometimes but that’s the context so context is the bigger picture and the bhagavatam itself while it gives multiple explanations especially in the 11th canto it gives us the bigger context the bigger context it says is if you look at the movie from this past time to the other part of it that Krishna is hit by an arrow and then he leaves a material body behind apparently and his life ends over here so if you look at it from a literal perspective a wound on a leg is not fatal it’s rarely fatal nowadays of course in Hollywood movies nobody dies there’s all these parallel universes and this and bionic chips and the villains keep coming back again and again so that’s a different thing but generally it’s like sometimes even the hero there are bullets going all around them, there are bullets going through them so nothing is happening but here Krishna was with Arjuna and Arjuna was shot by hundreds and thousands of arrows many of them hit Krishna in all parts of the body and they didn’t injure Krishna much and how did an arrow that just hit his leg and different people also hit arrows with different forces it was just an ordinary hunter over there it was not like some big warrior whose arrow would have a severe wounding capacity that arrow hit the leg and then why would that cause Krishna to in double quotes die if Krishna Bhagavatam gives the example that Krishna went to the abode of Yamaraj and most people they go to the abode of Yamaraj they don’t come back and they don’t go willingly isn’t it? Krishna went willingly and he came back from there not only did he come back, he brought someone back from there and that is extraordinary so that is the power of Krishna how could that Krishna who could go to Yamaraj and counter Yamaraj’s authority be pierced by a mere arrow so there has to be something more going on over there so in general if you go back to the principle of karma so the idea is there is action and there is some result reaction you can say, action leads to result so the general principle of karma is if somebody does an action worth unit 5 they will get a result worth unit 5 but if somebody does action worth 5 and they get a result worth 5000 now what it means is that there is something more going on over there that means this particular result is also of some previous action what is happening at that point is also due to some previous action, that’s why if somebody seems to get angry with us for no reason don’t get too angry with the instrument of your own karma the idea is that if we have not done anything to set the person off that means it is some past karma coming to us that’s what when Lakshman is enraged at the exile of Ram I just came from Ayodhya beautiful darshan of Ramlala is there and they are now building 108 temples around the main temple 4-5 main temples all the major pastimes of Lord Ram will be depicted over there so the Ayodhya Vasis generally their sentiment is they don’t like to depict the exile of Ram they focus on his pastimes there and even they depict exile as heart breaking but the point is when that happens Lakshman is enraged and he says initially he is angry with Dashrath he was just he is controlled by his wife he is carried away by lust, he is not fit to be a king and Ram says I was with Dashrath and he said whatever is being done there is no infatuation there is only a painful obligation over there he said that you know these promises that he had given to Kaikeyi we never heard about these promises how did they come up just now only Ram says did you claim to know everything about what happens between our parents when we are angry we need someone to be angry at so then Lakshman’s anger shifts from Ram to Kaikeyi Kaikeyi you have nothing but respectful and good to her how could she have done like this Ram says don’t criticize her you know that her love for me was just like my mother’s love it was like the flowing water of Ganga pure and unceasing Lakshman is still angry, sometimes anger makes people eloquent so he says that’s what I can’t understand how did the Ganga dry up in one night and then Ram replies that’s why when I heard this heard these words from her I understood this is not Kaikeyi speaking this is not Kaikeyi’s doing this is the will of destiny this is the will of destiny and the point is Lord Ram is telling us when within the immediate context we can’t figure things out there is something bigger going on over there there is something from a past life coming and ultimately it’s destiny now of course Lakshman is still not satisfied Lakshman says only cowards accept injustice as destiny heroes fight against injustice you should fight don’t just passively accept destiny so that time Lord Ram replies for me I am not just accepting destiny I am doing my duty as my duty to my father I was ready to step upon the throne as a duty to my father I will now go to the forest so he was not simply passively caving into destiny otherwise when Sita was abducted Ram could have said oh it’s my destiny I accept it no he didn’t because it was his duty to protect his wife so he did that so the point is that when something is happening when it doesn’t make sense in the immediate context we have to look at the bigger picture and the bigger picture can be seen at multiple levels so any event that is happening see if an event is happening you could have multiple levels of causes for it say right now I am feeling cold maybe I am feeling cold because the AC is behind me maybe I am feeling cold because I am wearing not warm clothes enough maybe I am feeling cold because I am not used to this weather maybe I am feeling cold because I have got fever there are multiple explanations now which explanation should be focused on which level of explanation that requires intelligence if I start feeling cold and say oh you know it’s all global warming and climate change and we are all doomed well ok but what are you going to do about it look for an explanation that is constructive for us that helps us to do something so there are multiple explanations for the same event so we have to see we have to look for the level of explanation that helps us move closer to Krishna that is the key principle Krishna says I will give you the intelligence by which you can come to me and then when I am when we are trying to practice bhakti devotionally so Satsvarupa Maharaj writes in one of his books that when one senior leader had some difficulties and he went down so they were very disturbed and he said I was thinking he was such a powerful leader and he would give such classes how could he have done this this this thing and we talk with Prabhupada Prabhupada said Maya is very strong and we need to be very careful so Prabhupada did not make it personal why did this person do this now you could go into the specifics and we could try to find out what exactly happened with this person but Prabhupada took an explanation that is at a much bigger level and that is what is actionable for us Maya is dangerous Maya is very powerful we have to be careful so we have to see which level of explanation is helpful for us and focus on that level of explanation so now when I say which is the level of explanation the Bhagavatam does not deny over here that they got drunk as it says that their consciousness got disrupted so that is the cause they drank and then they got disrupted they got they went mad so now sometimes people say how could Yudhisthira Maharaj have gambled how could the others have drunk if they drink if they gamble then why shouldn’t we well that is the exact opposite of the lesson that the Bhagavatam is telling us even a person of Yudhisthira Maharaj’s caliber when he gambles the mania of gambling can be so much that it can draw him in also so if a person of his caliber can get captivated then what about us therefore we should not gamble if people of the caliber of the Yudhisthira can get so violently destructively disoriented then what about us so the lesson is the Bhagavatam does not downplay or deny that level of explanation they got drunk then the Bhagavatam also gives the explanation that they had offended a Brahmana and that is why the sages and that is why they got a curse but the Bhagavatam does not highlight that explanation it says now if you go to Jiva Goswami he gives so if we consider this event the Yadus self-destruction now there are various explanations for it one of it they just got drunk and fought drunk and brawl it was it’s a fact but how could they do something like that then you could say it was the sages curse that destroyed their intelligence then beyond that it is said it is the lord’s will now there is one more explanation that Jiva Goswami gives that he says this is Asura Mohan Leela Asura Mohan Leela means that this is a pastime to bewilder the demoniac and he gives the example of the Mohini Murthi in fact that is a metaphor which Vishwanath Chakra Thakur uses repeatedly he says Mohini Murthi is Vishnu but the effect of Mohini Murthi on the demons was that their illusion increased generally we say attraction to the lord will take away our illusion isn’t it the more we are attracted to the deities the less we will be attracted to mundane beauty generally attraction to the lord takes away our illusion but in this case attraction to the lord was their illusion now how does that happen well that happens because of their particular mentality their mentality was trying to, they were exploitative and the lord played into their fantasies they got caught over there so the point is that the lord is who he is and ultimately anyway we connect with the lord is beneficial but if somebody doesn’t want to surrender to the lord then even a manifestation of the lord can take someone away from the lord it may not take somebody towards the lord I remember in my early days of bhakti I had invited my relatives, I was staying in the Juhu temple I was in Pune but I had come to Mumbai so I had invited some of my relatives and I was talking to them of bhakti and I was explaining things to them and then after they left I called them and asked how was your visit, oh it was a very productive visit for us very good I said what was productive, he said we just moved into a new house and we were trying to decide what furniture we want to buy so in the Juhu guest room the furniture that we saw that’s the kind of furniture we want to buy so they were not attracted to anything else okay that’s the video of Kalpataru if that’s what you want is what you are going to get so ultimately yes the lord is there but what we want that’s why the difference between excuse and explanation it ultimately boils down to what do I want do I want a reason to go towards Krishna or do I want an excuse to go away from Krishna and that brings me to the last part so the point is that whichever explanation whichever level of explanation helps us to move closer to Krishna that is the level of explanation we seek to accept so the lord does asurmohan because some people want to be deluded and then the lord has this kind of past times so whichever level of explanation satisfies us we take that and sometimes what if no explanation satisfies us then at that time Juhu Goswami explains that reason in general Prabhupada uses the word intelligence for buddhi in most western philosophical circles the word used is reason reason and rational thinking reason is meant to be our minister it is not meant to be our master minister is someone whom we consult Juhu Goswami says that if with our buddhi we can understand everything about Krishna then it is not Krishna who is supreme it is our buddhi which becomes supreme so in principle itself if we accept that god is supreme that means there will be some things about god that we will not understand with our intelligence and being willing to accept that is itself a part of our devotion so we may have great intelligence and there may be other devotees who have greater intelligence than us and talking with them may help us get some more acceptable explanations but in principle we have to accept that maybe there are some questions I may not get answers to now is this an excuse? well if that is the answer we give for every question then it is an excuse for example the word achintya achintya should not be like a philosophical white washing tool an explanation for everything some devotee gives a seminar, we should do japa very attentively and then they do that japa, you say that devotee is sleeping why is that devotee sleeping? oh it is achintya well we don’t want to offend that devotee but there are things which we need to seek explanations for, we can’t just say everything is achintya so that’s why if we start using the achintya too much then that will start seeming like an excuse generally Jiyugoswami uses achintya for a very specific purpose he uses achintya for what? there is two scriptural statements both are true and both are apparently contradictory so the ultimate reality has formed the ultimate reality does not have formed so how can these two be reconciled? that is achintya achintya is not just a tool to explain away anything that we can’t explain so the principle of achintya is that there are some things which will be beyond our intelligence we could say that as we grow as we study scripture our intelligence will keep growing true spiritual growth will lead to our intellectual growth also but still Krishna will always remain bigger than our intelligence no matter how big we grow there will be always things which will be beyond our understanding so we accept that but that doesn’t mean everything is beyond our understanding there are many things for which we get answers right away in the first day of our spiritual life we get answers to so many questions and as we keep studying we keep getting more and more answers but there will always be things that we don’t know so that is the role of humility in fact humility is not just chanting or bowing down to devotees I would say in the spiritual path intellectual humility is extremely important that means accepting that some things will be unknowable that we may never get an explanation that satisfies our intelligence this is not an excuse for not seeking explanation this is not an excuse for not trying to give satisfactory explanations if we are preachers if somebody asks questions we should be humble and don’t ask questions that’s not what we should be doing but there are some things what is important is that whether we get an explanation or not we can still experience Krishna the process of bhakti is such that even if some question is troubling us we chant Hare Krishna, we participate in kirtan we take darshan of the deities we experience something higher in our life and that experience is what we seek the most in fact when an explanation doesn’t satisfy our head the experience can still satisfy our heart so when we are troubled why did this happen, why did this devotee do like this we come in front of the deities and pray to Krishna we pour out our heart to Krishna, we call out to Krishna and we experience we experience some upliftment, some enrichment some connection, some sense of presence, power whatever we want to say there is some element of the mystical that we experience when we practice bhakti we may not necessarily use the word mystical but we experience something higher and that’s what keeps us going so we don’t let the need for an explanation come in the way of the experience of Krishna and normally the idea is knowledge this is the part of explanation I’ll conclude with at 4.39 the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says that faith will lead to knowledge and ultimately that will lead to the supreme peace so quite often we say that it is knowledge that will lead to faith you study more your faith will increase there is truth to that but here Krishna is taking a different hierarchy he says faith will lead to knowledge Krishna I don’t know what is happening I don’t know why this is happening but I have faith you have some plan when Prabhupada is in America or he is about to reach America he composes the what is he doing at that time he says you must have some plan otherwise why would you bring me to this terrible place so Anuman Prabhupada is doing it, Anuman is speculation speculation is not the right word here Prabhupada is making an estimate, drawing an inference Krishna in my old age so many things could have gone wrong but you have brought me here God has not brought us so far to abandon us now we may be facing a crisis right now which can seem life’s ending but we have all been through many challenges in our life it is Krishna who has brought us this far that Lord who has brought us this far is not going to abandon us now that is what Prabhupada is saying, you must have some plan otherwise why would you bring me here so that is Shraddha and Prabhupada says that Shraddha is make me dance like a puppet so the idea is then Prabhupada tried out various things Prabhupada tried in Butler Pennsylvania there he was treated like a curiosity object not like a philosophical teacher if it had been the age of social media the people in Butler, Swamiji has one selfie with you they are not interested in hearing from him people want to have a selfie, not know the self so Prabhupada moved to New York then he went to and that is where he got people something worked eventually so if we have that Shraddha then the Jnana about how to keep moving towards Krishna when to seek an explanation, what explanation to accept when to put aside an explanation and just keep moving towards an experience sometimes the way to the heart is through the head sometimes we have to just bypass the head and go to the heart so whichever works we focus on the experience and that is what gives us the conviction Krishna is still the Lord and I still want to stay connected with Krishna and maybe in future some of the questions that are not answered we will get some answers for them which will be more satisfactory but whatever happens we don’t let our head, our logic, our reasoning faculty become our master we don’t let the head take the charge and close the door to Krishna, you have not got answer to this so you don’t go to Krishna anymore we take advice from it, sometimes we accept the advice sometimes we don’t accept the advice we focus on connecting with Krishna and using the head in a way that helps us connect with Krishna this particular event, I don’t have an explanation for this but there are many other things in my life that I have understood through the Krishna philosophy and that is what draws me forward we are not being intellectually negligent but just being intellectually humble and we keep moving forward making sure that our journey towards Krishna goes on steadily for us we are hearing this thousands of years later, Vidura heard it at that very time but what did he do, he didn’t become disoriented I thought Krishna is gone and he couldn’t protect his own family his own family fought and killed and he didn’t do anything what is the use of worshipping Krishna, he didn’t think like that he took deeper shelter of Krishna he went to Maitreya, heard from him and became more enlightened and then he came back and even enlightened Dhritarashtra so the Mahajano yena gathaha sapanta and Vidura is not exactly among the list of 12 Mahajanas but still he is also a great soul and we can learn from his example of how he processes this event and make sure that he keeps moving towards Krishna so I will summarize I discussed broadly the difference between explanation, excuse and the need for explanation in Bhakti or the role of explanations in Bhakti so the first point I discussed was about there could be nectar that is sweet and there could be nectar that is bitter so this particular leela is like bitter nectar the Yadudvaha leela is now, why is there this kind of thing well there is duality, transcendental duality in the spiritual domain also and then we discussed how do we know the difference between if somebody says this is an excuse well it runs both ways you could say this is an excuse because you don’t have an explanation you could say because you want an excuse to go away from Krishna is belief in God a psychological crutch well disbelief in God can also be a psychological crutch just saying something as an excuse is no way to actually evaluate what we need is to know what is an excuse we can’t see in isolation that particular argument alone, we have to see it in context when a person gives a particular explanation a particular reason, so we have to look at their history similarly when we are looking at the philosophy we just look at one thing, look at it in the big picture and then we evaluate and then we discussed about how the same event can have multiple levels of explanations so when I do an action worth 5 and I get a reaction worth 5000 then that means something more is going on so we have to look at the bigger picture our philosophy gives us many bigger contexts in which we can put things so when a bigger picture is required now which explanation to accept that is where we understand Buddhiyoga the key to do Buddhiyoga is Krishna says that you use your buddhi to do yoga that means you seek the explanation that inspires you to stay connected with me to become closer to me so we see the explanation that is devotionally favorable and then we talked about intellectual humility that the principle is while we can seek answers and we should but ultimately our intelligence will always be less than Krishna and accepting that some things may not be ever answered that is what we need to accept so that our logic, our reason it is our minister, we take advice from it it is our minister we don’t make it our master and that means sometimes the head is the way to the heart for us and sometimes we put aside the head and we just go straight to the heart that is in the heart that we experience Krishna so the process of bhakti works whether our head gets some explanation or not we focus on that experience staying connected with Krishna, Krishna has not brought us this far to abandon us now lets stay connected with Krishna and in due course either we will get an explanation for what has happened or we will come to peace with even the lack of a satisfactory explanation thank you very much, Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Hare Krishna so you spoke about desires and you said desire is not the ultimate fulfillment so we should not kind of put only our desires to Krishna so can I link desire and surrender because when we depend on our parents we just keep asking them for everything so can we approach Krishna so the question is can we desire from Krishna to help us surrender to him see again desires are not a problem ultimately desiring faculty is what is innately given to us and Krishna has not given us our desiring faculty so that we suppress it but Prabhupada had a desire his Guru Maharaj told him to preach in the western world Prabhupada did that in 1970s when Prabhupada came to India he said my Guru Maharaj wanted me to preach in the west I have done that, now I want to preach in India, now you help me in doing that now Prabhupada’s desire was not independent of his spiritual master’s desire he wanted to consolidate the mission we have higher devotees in the west but they need some spiritual foundation in India so you help me in that, it is a continuation of that so if our desire is favorable to bhakti then certainly we can pray for that Prabhupada says in the third canto that a devotee desires to see Krishna but a devotee does not demand to see Krishna so having desires is not only normal I would say it is necessary bhakti is not just about giving up desires it is about giving up material desires but it is much more about taking up spiritual desires there were many of Prabhupada’s godbrothers with all due respect to them some of them were lifelong renunciates some of them were much more scholarly in a literal scriptural or linguistic sense than Prabhupada what distinguished Prabhupada among many things was his burning desire to fulfill the desire of his spiritual master so actually desire desire is a great asset on the spiritual path greed is the qualification of getting Krishna so yes certainly we evaluate whether a desire is favorable for our bhakti and if it is then definitely we can pray for the fulfillment of that desire but we don’t make our bhakti conditional to the fulfillment of that desire does it answer your question? thank you thank you for the class my question is about proper discrimination proper? you mentioned at the beginning the three types of pramans of which experience is the highest we have the famous morning walk with Prabhupada when Prabhupada asked how do you know Krishna is god different devotees were saying different things because I feel it and Prabhupada said yes that’s correct yet in other places we find that Prabhupada says common sense is always faulty and we should just take Shastra so my question is how do we know when and it’s also that past time where some thief was running away and the person who was chasing the thief came to that sage and the sage told the truth because the shastra said that you shouldn’t lie and on that basis he had to go to hell you follow? so the point is that how do we know when we have to follow the scripture rigidly and how we have to use our common sense the difference between a detail and a principle ok yeah see this is what makes life complicated that sometimes we say scripture is like a manual for life I nowadays prefer the word guide book not manual because manual literally means the device manual you press this button this will happen you pull this lever this will happen life is not that simple so for instance scripture is a guide book it’s a guide book for us even if you see within scripture itself in the first canto of Bhagavatam itself when Arjuna has to decide what to do with Ashwatthama at that time there are two sides Bhima on one side and Yudhishthira on one side and Krishna is with him but Krishna does not give him an answer and Arjuna has to deliberate and decide so my small understanding is that actually Krishna is preparing Arjuna to be independently thoughtful soon that is 1.7 in 1.15 that’s the 7th chapter of the first canto Krishna has departed what is Arjuna going to do at that time and that time Arjuna is devastated initially but then eventually he remembers the words of the Bhagavad Gita and he calms himself down so it’s not that life is going to give us ready answers it’s not that also that we have to make our intelligence like Google or chat GPT every situation comes up we find some reference oh this reference is so I should be doing this it’s good to have references but they are references they are not instructions which reference to apply now for that we need to use our own intelligence the purpose of scripture is not to replace our intelligence it is to reinforce our intelligence it is our intellectual responsibility to decide what to do and we will make mistakes sometimes but that’s how we learn and we grow so in particular situations what to do when we pray we study scripture if we have devotees around us whom we can consult we consult them and then we make the best decision that we can if we develop an ethos of outsourcing responsibility for decision making to someone else and that’s not a very healthy way to function we can definitely if our spiritual master is there it’s a big issue we talk with our spiritual master but in general I have talked with many spiritual masters who are now at a stage where they are planning succession so then the whole mood is that the spiritual masters train the devotees to think and decide for themselves they don’t just become the direct decision givers sometimes that’s required but overall that doesn’t seem to be the overall ethos so yes there are no black and white answers and it’s a whole gamut of resources we consult our own experience, we consult our heart we also consult our head, we consult other people other Vaishnavas and based on all this we look at scripture ourselves and then we come up with a path and in general sometimes people say this is following Prabhupada this is not following Prabhupada, now of course there can be things which are completely contrary to Prabhupada’s teachings but following Prabhupada in my small understanding is not just one line it’s like a broad circle and within that one person can be on one side and following Prabhupada, one person can be on the other side and following Prabhupada so it’s more like that’s why mood and mission sometimes we bring those two words together but they are separate Prabhupada had one mission to bring people to Krishna Consciousness but he had many different moods one mood was build temples another was distribute books, another was cow protection another was devotee care he had so many moods that he emphasized at different times so depending on individual person’s bhava within the broad mission of Shila Prabhupada different devotees may take up different moods and that’s what practically happened with our various leaders in our movement and similarly when you talk about Krishna’s will Krishna’s will doesn’t have to be like a one thin line if you do this only then you are doing Krishna’s will it’s an overall direction it’s like an express way and different people may choose different lanes we ourselves may change from one lane to another now that does not mean if I am taking a U-turn I am staying on the same lane no, there are clearly things which will take us away from Krishna but as devotees it is not, we have to understand that Krishna is not something like a diabolical god he is not saying if you don’t follow my will you are going to go to hell and I won’t tell you what my will is it’s not like that not that Krishna wants us to do something and deliberately hides that from us Krishna’s overall mood is that it’s an expression of love that Krishna wants us to love us love him and then do our actions as an expression of that love for him so when there is that loving service attitude in the heart then we will use our intelligence we will use our scriptural knowledge we will use the association of devotees just like if we love someone, if we have a child and where should the child take education we try to decide that in a loving relationship there is a gamut of resources we use my concern for the child, maybe the expert the child’s desires this university is good, this university is not so good so like that, the essential point of doing Krishna’s will is that we have that deep service attitude and then we act Arjuna himself says I’ll do your will at the end of the Bhagavad Gita but if we see what happens after that when Arjuna is fighting a war it is not that before shooting every arrow Arjuna is asking Krishna Krishna do I have your permission to shoot this arrow should I shoot here or there Krishna lets Arjuna be his own person now when there are major decisions to be made definitely Krishna gives advice to Arjuna sometimes Krishna intervenes directly but Arjuna doesn’t become a lesser of a person by his surrender to Krishna he becomes more purposeful so that’s why we don’t have to be confused certainly you are concerned that we don’t want to be sentimental so we don’t want to be too sentimental we don’t just want to be simply rational and not consider sentiments so we have a gamut of resources and we use all of them in 10.8 it says Buddha you use the rational faculty that the great devotees surrender to Krishna with their rational faculty and with their emotional faculty it’s a gamut of resources all coming together to help us decide how to move closer to Krishna I hope that answers the question so thank you very much