Problems are like burdens whose weight increases with the attention we give them Gita 18 58

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
Problems are like burdens whose weight increases with the attention we give them. Suppose we were carrying some weight, and we found that as we were carrying it, it started becoming heavier and heavier and heavier. Now if we wondered, is this just my feeling? And we weighed it, initially say it was 10 kg, and now it has become 20.
What has happened? How is this weight increasing? We would want to either get rid of that weight or at least check, I mean stop the process which is making that weight increase. Otherwise we will be just burning ourselves too much. So the problems in our life are this kind of burdens.
That means that whenever we have a problem, it is like a weight on us. And that’s understandable, that we all have responsibilities that we need to take care of. At the same time, what do we do to move forward in our lives so that those burdens don’t become bigger? Quite often we’ll see that if we keep thinking about a problem, we keep thinking about it, and then it just becomes more and more confused and vexed and exhausted, and thus the problem’s burden seems much heavier.
A simple example would be that if we are trying to solve some problem, we just need to sometimes stop thinking about it. So if we are doing some maths problem late at night, and we are struggling and getting nowhere, we take good rest, wake up in the morning, and then we look at it, and with a fresh eyes, with a fresh mind, we are able to deal with it, and we solve it immediately. So now this is not just physical freshness or mental freshness.
It is also the perception. If we are irritated and exasperated, we can’t fix things properly. And knowing that the more we think about a problem, the bigger it will become, we need to know when to stop thinking about it.
Of course, we can’t not think about the problem entirely, because that will leave us utterly unprepared. But thinking about problems brings clarity up to a particular point, and beyond that point, it takes away clarity. Therefore, we need to be conscious of what stage we are at.
And when we start recognizing that our thinking is not leading to any problem solving, but is only leading to problem aggravating, we need to stop thinking. And for that, we need to have a satisfactory object where we can redirect our thinking, an object to which we are already inclined and even attached. And that object, the best such object is Krishna.
He is the Supreme Lord. He is the supreme controller, and He is the supreme benefactor. So when we become conscious of Him, we’ll find that the weight of the problems will become lesser.
If we become conscious of Him, instead of staying conscious of our problems, we’ll find that the problems won’t burden us that much. And by connecting with Him, as we start gaining strength, we will be and insight, we’ll be able to solve that problem or at least learn to more prudently live with that problem. And that’s how we need to not overburden ourselves about problems by learning to direct our attention toward Krishna and not let it be caught in the