Are we meant to face our destiny or to fulfill our destiny?
Answer Podcast
Hare Krishna.
Are we meant to face our destiny or to fulfill our destiny? Answer both. Here we are referring to destiny in two different senses. Destiny, philosophically speaking, refers to the sum total of our past karma whose reactions have not yet come upon us.
So, those reactions are going to come upon us and that is our destiny which we have to face. So, sometimes we may do good but get some bad reactions because it’s not just the reaction, that particular action that we are getting, but the reaction to some other action from the past is also coming upon us. So, in that sense, if bad things happen to us, even when we are trying to do good, that we see as destiny and that is something which we have to face.
But along with that, destiny also refers to something which we are meant to achieve. This sense of destiny is more a conversational sense and not a philosophical sense. So, for example, if somebody has a great talent, somebody has phenomenal musical sense since childhood or since early childhood itself and then that person grows up and becomes a musical maestro, then it is said that they have fulfilled their destiny.
So, by our destiny, we have been given certain gifts, certain talents and using those talents to make a worthwhile contribution is, in one sense, fulfilling our destiny and that is something which we all are meant to do. Now, some of us may feel, I don’t have any special talents, so what destiny can I fulfill? Actually, our material talents can lead to the fulfillment of some destiny at a material level in terms of getting some fame or making some contribution in this material world. But we all have a spiritual destiny which every one of us can fulfill.
We are at our core souls and the soul has the potential for eternal life and eternal love. The soul is a part of the whole God and the soul learns to love the whole purely through the evolution of its consciousness in the course of this life. Then the soul can attain eternal life and eternal love by graduating from this temporary material world to the eternal spiritual world for a life of ecstatic reunion of love with the all-attractive Lord.
So, that is the spiritual destiny which we all are meant to fulfill and through multiple lifetimes and multiple species we are evolving towards that ultimate destination. If we can practice the process of Bhakti Yoga diligently and direct our love towards our Lord through the such practice of Bhakti Yoga then every one of us irrespective of whatever destiny may have given or not given to us every one of us can fulfill our spiritual destiny and attain eternal life and eternal love. Thank you.