To be nice is not to be naive it is to be free from the control of vice Gita 16 02

Transcript

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Thank you Hare Krishna To be nice is not to be naive it is to be free from the control of vice nice people always finish last such sayings are often used by people to denigrate as denigrate those who are too soft and to highlight what they consider as impracticality of niceness however does this mean that in order to be successful in life we need to be rough and rude and crude no not necessarily what it means is that we need to reassess what being nice means if we think that being nice is the same as being naive that means we start thinking that if we are good then everybody will be good, if we behave well everybody will behave well with us if we don’t understand that there are people who can behave, who are wicked and they can behave in brutal ways and even people who seem gentlemanly also have snakes inside them and those snakes can come at any moment and bite so we can’t be naive if we are naive we will be exploited and can even be destroyed so nice simply means that we are not under the control of wise that means we are not under control of anger, we are not under control of vindictiveness, we are not under control of envy but we are we are respectable and responsible Krishna talks about the godly people in the 16th chapter text 1, 2 and 3 and there he describes in text 2 ahimsa satyam akrodhas tyagah shantir apaisunam dayabhuteshvaloluktvam mardavam reer achapalam so he describes ahimsa non-violence satyam they are truthful akrodhas they are not short tempered they are not angry tyagah shantir apaisunam they are peaceful they are ready to let go of things when necessary apaisunam they don’t delight in finding faults they are averse to finding faults dayabhuteshvaloluktvam dayabhuteshu they are compassionate to others aloluktvam, they are free from greed and mardavam reer achapalam mardavam, they are gentle they are modest and then achapalam, they are steady so it’s interesting here when Krishna is bringing all these virtues all these can seem to be like soft virtues, but then Krishna tells Arjuna just a few verses later masu chahasam padam daivim abhijatau sibharata that Arjuna you are born with godly nature so Arjuna’s godly nature did not mean that he was naive, when the Kauravas were exploiting and were trying to exterminate annihilate their whole all the Pandava brothers, not Arjuna was naive Arjuna was strong Arjuna was wise Arjuna was shrewd so when we have to consider niceness we have to redefine it as different from whatever our preconceptions that might equate nice with naive when Krishna describes the ungodly people he describes them primarily as being controlled by vice being short tempered, being violent being abusive, being arrogant so the idea is that anger can also be a power if it is directed properly and in the appropriate occasion so the Pandavas fight when required and that is not impelled by anger and that is not considered violence because it is for the purpose of dharma so if we are controlled by anger then we will get angry even when we don’t want to if we are naive then we can’t get angry even when we need to so when we are not controlled by vice then we can be nice that means we can be gentlemanly and we can be firm when necessary so this balance of being nice and being free from vice this can be arranged when our godly nature comes out and our godly nature comes out best when we connect with god Arjuna is a devotee and thus he can be free from vice and be nice thank you