Bhagavad-gita insights for holistic health

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Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Summary

Holistic health begins from within, bridging ancient spiritual wisdom from the Bhagavad-Gita with modern concepts of emotional and physical well-being.

• Defining Swastya (True Health): The Sanskrit word for health (swastya) derives from swa sthita, meaning being firmly situated in one’s own true situation and identity.
• Overcoming Decision Fatigue and Stress: Like Arjuna’s battlefield crisis, modern stress often stems not just from high workloads, but from difficult decisions, unclear priorities, and conflicting life demands.
• Functional vs. Fundamental Identities: While temporary functional identities (career, gender, parenting roles) frequently shift and cause anxiety, recognizing our fundamental identity as an eternal soul brings lasting peace.
• Aligning Identity with Action: Through the practical paths of karma yoga, jnana yoga, and bhakti yoga, individuals learn to clear misidentifications and harmonize their daily duties with their spiritual nature.
• Balancing Diligence and Dependence: Mental health is achieved by balancing personal diligence (taking full responsibility for what is in our control) with spiritual dependence on a higher plan.
• Integrating Immersive and Inclusive Devotion: A truly balanced life harmonizes immersive bhakti (dedicated personal practice and prayer) with inclusive bhakti (serving Krishna by fulfilling everyday life roles and responsibilities with care).

Full Transcription

OM GYANATI NIRENDHASYA GYANANJANI SHALAKAYA CHAKSHU RUHMIL TAMYENA PASMAI SHRI GURUVE NAMAHA NAMA OM VISHNU PADAYA KRISHNA PRISHTAYA BHUTALE SHRI MATE BHAKTI VIDAMTA SWAMI ATINAMINE NAMASTE SARASWATI DEVE GAURAVANI PRACHARANE NIRVISHESH SHUNYAVADI PASHCHATYA DESHATARINE VANCHAKALPATARUDASHCHA KRIPASINDHUBHYAYI VACHANAM PATITANAM PAVANIVYO VAISHNAVIVYO NAMONAMAHA SHRI KRISHNA CHAITANYA PRABHU NITYANANDA SHRI ADVAITHA GADADHARA SHRI VASADI GAURAVAKTA VRANDA Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Hare Krishna happy to be here with all of you it’s it’s a laudable that there’s a excellent devotee care initiative happening here and i’m happy to be a part of it and i’ll speak about the bhagavad-gita from the perspective of how it is related with our health i’ll connect with those aspects of the gita’s teachings which relate with the concept of care and health so now generally when we use the word health in sanskrit the word is swastya swastya swastha now this comes from the sanskrit swa this comes from sanskrit swa astitaha so sthita is situation and swa astitaha means situated in one’s own situation so swa one’s own to so when is one healthy when we are in our own situation so in one sense the key to health and then ultimately towards the so health means to be situated in our own situation and care is that which enables us to move towards health care promotes health so for example there’s health care specifically which refers to generally refers to physical health care you can have mental health care but in general the idea of care is meant to promote health it’s like parents take care of children and a basic level of taking care of children is that the children are healthy so now in the bhagavad-gita itself we start if you consider the 18 chapters of the gita um so if you see the start of the gita especially around 128 to 30 arjuna is exhibiting symptoms of breakdown it is basically an emotional and even a physical breakdown physical breakdown is he’s saying that i can’t i can’t hold on to my bow and arrow bow primarily he’s saying that my skin is burning what does this indicate if i consider the body to be like a tool there’s something seriously wrong with it it’s not functioning and then in 1873 arjuna says that he says i am peacefully situated now so in one sense the gita restores arjuna’s functionality arjuna has become emotionally and physically dysfunctional but by hearing the message he says in other words i am well situated i am self-situated i am so the gita in one sense the gita’s journey it restores arjuna’s health health in the sense of first it restores arjuna’s emotional and physical we can say the physical health or he didn’t have a sickness over there but physical health was a result of a breakdown sometimes arjuna’s initial symptoms can chapter one symptoms can be compared with stress and well that is true we often think of stress as being caused by having too many things to do and yes that is true at one level that if you have too many things to do it causes stress but what causes even more stress is actually having too many difficult decisions to make say if we have we have a very busy week we have 100 things to do and then that can cause a stress but then that is not that difficult okay we just decide this i can do this i have to delegate to someone else this i have to delay or postpone and nobody expects us to do to be at two places at the same time so we understand so too many things to do that stress is manageable but too many difficult decisions to make so suppose we have to make a decision now should i relocate from this city to that city okay then if i should i take a house here or there should i put my children in school or that school you know should i have this size house or that size house now when all this all these decisions are to be made each of these decisions is an important decision and in these kind of decisions it’s rare that it’s like we have a clear rarely clear that this is the this is the right decision and this is the wrong decision it’s more like maybe this is a good decision and that is a better decision or sometimes it’s like this is a bad decision that is a worse decision so when we say difficult decisions that means a decision is relatively easy if it is good and good versus bad then it’s not a difficult decision difficult decision is versus it’s good versus better and we are unable to decide which is good versus better sometimes it is bad versus worse that means sometimes we are in a bad situation say we just lost a job and that is itself and we are in a vulnerable situation we have to take another job maybe it’s not the kind of job we would like to take but we have to so it’s a it’s which is the less worse situation so when we have this kind of difficult decisions to make that is when we get overworked mentally so Arjuna was faced with such a difficult decision he had a dharma sammoha he had his kula dharma on one side according to his kula dharma he should not fight because he has to protect his family and then he has a kshatriya dharma the warrior kula dharma means don’t fight kshatriya dharma means fight so what should among these two things should he fight or should he not fight that is a question that has no easy answer for him there is good on both sides and there’s bad on both sides good on both sides is that if he does his kula dharma his family is protected if he does kshatriya dharma his kingdom is protected his kingdom is protected from unrighteous people vicious people in fact so what to do that is a dilemma and their dilemma can be so crippling so for all of us when we talk about health sometimes sometimes just our health goes down because of factors beyond our control say there’s a pandemic and we get infected you know there’s this but sometimes we may have either misplaced or confused priorities misplaced means that something higher something more important we are treating it as less important and something less important we are treating it as more important and confused means we’re just not sure what is more important what is less important say we have a urgent meeting in our office make or break meeting for our career and that time we come to know that there is some issue with our child in school and the principal has called us obviously i should go to my and be there for my child the principal has called me but he said oh but i need my job if i lose my job what will i do so i said your time do i do my duty as a parent first or do i do my duty as a professional first there is no easy way to resolve this and it’s not that somebody would decide that no right now this meeting is so important i just cannot leave that doesn’t make them a bad person maybe their priorities are misplaced maybe their priorities are confused or maybe just not clear in that situation so this is the situation which brings a lot of stress see our mind gets stressed not so much as i said because of having a lot of work to do it is having a lot of unclear or unproductive work to do see if you are doing some hard work you know okay i have to complete this project and i’m doing this this this if you are doing that then the mind is busy we may get tired but we don’t feel so stressed we get immersed in it but when you’re doing one thing and you think maybe i should be doing the other thing will be doing this or this that this or that and in that situation the stress becomes far greater much much greater actually so how does the gita resolve this stress for arjuna that is the key question and for all of there are many aspects to which we we need to take care of our health but especially if you don’t want inner inner volatility inner fragility inner breakdown then we need not just values values are important but a hierarchy of values values essentially is what we can say what is important that is essentially about values but hierarchy is what is how important so this is important to that this degree that is important to that degree so that is hierarchy of values so we need not just so arjuna had values arjuna was not being cowardly and say i will not fight at once in the bhagavad-gita first chapter does arjuna mention that i will that i’m afraid of dying that’s not what caused the hesitation so i started with swastika what the bhagavad-gita says is that if we are to be situated in our own situation then that means we need to understand our identity and we need to harmonize our activity with our identity to the extent we are doing like this when these two are taken care of then we are self-situated the identity is more in terms of conception who do i think i am and action in terms more of activity or contribution what am i doing if i say i’m a proud patriotic indian and then if i look at my life and activities and i’m doing nothing for india i say i’m a krishna devotee and i look at my daily schedule and there is nothing that i am no activity connected with krishna that i’m doing there’s a mismatch over there so when our identity and our activity are aligned with who we are that’s we are self-situated and that is the state when we can have peace so the whole journey of the bhagavad-gita in one sense can be traced in these two activities to restore arjuna to swastika what arjuna says krishna focuses on helping arjuna to understand his identity and then to align his activity with the identity so now with respect to the question of identity there are there are multiple schools of thought about identity one school of thought is that we have no fixed identity that there is nothing unchangeable about us everything is just a matter of nurture so for example now in america especially and in canada and there is this whole issue of transgender where some people say that you know i feel like a girl may say i feel like a boy and then is within two three psychological settings psychologists confirm that and then often these kids are subjected to irreversible body transforming body mutilating surgery so the idea is that you have we have no intrinsic identity we are just who we think we are so if i nurture the idea that i am a girl a boy may nurture the idea that i’m going the boy becomes a girl now there are kids who nurture the idea that i am a cat i am a monkey now are you going to do surgeries to get them to so uh so are we going to do that obviously it’s not possible also and the other idea is that there is no change in identity possible that means our identity is determined by nature so for example in the pre-modern societies a person’s identity was more or less determined by their birth in india i say if somebody is born in a particular caste then in a particular family then that was their identity you are a viewer you are a priest you are a warrior you are a business person you are a farmer like that and this was not just in india in the west also it was like that if somebody was born in nobility they would be considered nobles they would be aristocrats and somebody was born the i work sir for lay people or peasants whatever and there was no possibility for a person to change their identity if you are born in born as a farm worker that is how you will be throughout your life so in the past the debate was much more towards nature you have no cases where you change your identity and now it is much more towards nurture so what the gita says is that that it is both nature plus nurture but the gita says nature refers to not just biological nature but also spiritual nature and nurture refers to not just present life but also past life so gita takes this whole discussion to a much deeper level so why is the identity important because going back to the earlier example of say if we are a parent and our child has got some emergency in school so depending on i if i identify myself more as a parent and forget the job i have to go but if i identify myself more as a professional okay then yeah you know maybe some that can wait so what do we identify ourselves with more so arjuna was confused should i identify myself with my kula my dynasty or should i identify with my profession with my varna so for arjuna it was a conflict between kula or varna and krishna resolved this conflict by saying that the identity is multi-level that we have many functional identities and then below that we have a fundamental identity so our functional identities be based on our gender our education our nationality our profession our our salary somebody high a middle class upper middle class lower middle class like that so it could be based on our complexion somebody’s fair dark it could be height weight so we have many identities which are there at a functional level and each of these identities has its importance but below these identities is our fundamental identity and if we situate ourselves only in a functional identity ultimately the gita says we cannot be peaceful because none of the functional identities are permanent all functional identities are temporary so if i identify myself primarily as a parent suppose somebody is identified as a family as a mother and my response to my children is my most important responsibility it’s good nowadays parenting is often devalued especially third fourth generation feminism which is often women that know that marriage and motherhood are simply traps which will prevent you from growing in your career it’s a very distorted understanding life has multiple dimensions so somebody say identifies only with their their role as a parent but then what will happen is it’s important to identify oneself as a parent to take that responsibility but the children will need us much more when say they are newborn when they are babies when they’re smaller children when the children becomes teens when the children become adults but they don’t want the parents to be hovering over them all the time i need my space they may love us but still they need their space so if the children get married and go to their own homes or they have their jobs elsewhere and if one’s identity is solely as a parent but then who am i if i don’t have any children to take care of that functional identity as a parent is temporary similarly somebody identified themselves only as a professional okay i’m a software engineer i’m a doctor i’m a lawyer whatever then what happens when sometimes the profession itself goes down sometimes when some professions are no longer like lucrative sometimes we lose some abilities by which you can do some profession somebody is a surgeon and they the accident means they lose their hands what are they going to do after that somebody is a sports player and they become too old to perform in sports then what is their identity so all functional identities are temporary so for us if we are to be internally peaceful and healthy taking care of ourselves so care means that we may identify with our functional identities but it is much more important that we identify with our fundamental identity otherwise the functional identities are always flickering so krishna tells us you know what is our fundamental identity is there something to me beyond my gender beyond my bank balance beyond my salary beyond my job beyond my relationships yes krishna says that core that fundamental identity is that we are atma we are souls and the soul doesn’t exist in isolation the soul exists in relation the atma is a part of krishna so for us we understand that this is our fundamental identity and then we align all our functional identities in relationship with that fundamental identity so i am i am a soul who is a servant of krishna and then in my service to krishna i am a parent in my service to krishna i am a software engineer in my service to krishna i am i am american i am indian i am a male i am a female whatever so our fundamental identity becomes the foundation for us and what happens is if you are identifying only with the functional identity say i am here and my one functional identity puts me in one direction it is pulling me and another functional identity pulling me in the other direction not just another different direction but an opposite direction then it’s it’s just agonizing what should i be doing but if you understand that ultimately all my identities say i am here and all my identities are ultimately meant to link me with krishna so functional identity one i’m doing this for krishna i’m doing this for krishna i’m doing this for krishna then if we understand this then what happens for us is there is a harmony in our life and we can decide okay what is more important for my service to krishna at this particular situation and accordingly we make the decision so what the gita does is it starts with the question of identity it establishes to arjuna that you are the atma and then the question comes up is it that you tell somebody you are the soul and it’s done now each identity you know identity has two aspects to it you know identity has to be um recognized and then it has to be realized what is the difference between recognition and realization that see our identity is based on a part of who we are say for example a newborn child the child doesn’t even know the mother exists it’s just some nice soft substance from which something nice juicy comes and i like that but later on then i start understanding okay this is this is my mother this is a person who loves me and she’s called mama she’s called mother whatever it is recognition and then you understand that okay i am the child i recognize okay i am the child is the mother and then a child means the child needs to act in relationship with that mother and that means okay mother tells me to do this i should do this so for us recognizing we are atma this is a matter of philosophy we study and we understand but realizing that we are atma that is a matter of practice so then i started about so astita to be well situated means that we basically have our identity and our activity in alignment so how do we do this krishna talks about three ways about bringing up bringing about this alignment with the identity and activity that is through karma yoga through bhakti yoga and through gyan yoga and these correspond to the three main divisions of the bhagavad-gita and all three in one sense are meant for one purpose if you want to understand the gita’s flow say this is a bull’s eye somehow i don’t like the word bull’s eye such a brutal image that it’s like bull’s eyes as a target so why do you want to hurt a bull and why do you hurt a bull in the eye if somebody says i’m going to shoot you i’m going to shoot you in the eye shooting the eye doesn’t kill but it hurts terribly the eye is a very vulnerable part of our body so in the past it was life was much more brutal in many ways so but anyway let’s use the word bull’s eye we use a simple target so if somebody can hit that target with an arrow now they’re expert but if somebody is really expert they can hit the target not only from the front but they are at an angle and from there also they hit the target from another angle also they hit the target and that will require a lot of expertise so krishna has one purpose in the bhagavad-gita and that is to guide arjuna out of his confusion and that so that is the target that is the bull’s eye and krishna hits the target in multiple ways he hits the target by analyzing through karma yoga by analyzing through gyan yoga and by analyzing through bhakti yoga through all of these he brings the gita to the same conclusion now i won’t go into all three of these modes of analysis in detail but let’s put it this way that the gita actually has a slightly more sophisticated way of understanding it is like so as i said one understanding is that the gita has first six chapters are about karma yoga the next six chapters are about bhakti yoga the next six chapters are about gyan yoga that’s that’s a fair enough understanding but there’s a more precise understanding you can say that actually if you consider karma yoga to be here gyan yoga to be here bhakti yoga to be here so how it is is that the gita in the first six chapters about going from karma yoga to bhakti yoga in the last six chapters it talks about going from gyan yoga to bhakti yoga and in the middle six chapters it’s simply describing bhakti yoga and it describes bhakti yoga itself at multiple levels so the whole point of the gita is krishna is not starting off the gita to explain karma yoga to explain bhakti yoga to explain gyan yoga to arjuna see for example if somebody has cancer now we may offer them if we are doctors we may offer them multiple treatments they say okay this is you can do chemotherapy you can do natural therapy you can do this therapy that therapy now at that time our purpose is not to give them an exhaustive explanation of chemotherapy or radiotherapy or natural natural therapy or whatever our purpose is to give them that knowledge which will help them treat their disease so when somebody has got cancer they don’t have to be given a given a course material and expect them to do phd in chemotherapy that’s not at all required or relevant similarly krishna in the bhagavad-gita is not starting off with the purpose okay i’m going to teach karma yoga i’m going to do bhakti yoga i’m going to do gyan yoga he’s addressing dilemma and in addressing arjuna’s dilemma krishna outlines various processes as means to address his dilemma so let’s see how he does it so the atma the idea that we are souls can be realized in different ways and among various processes krishna says that the bhakti yoga is why because bhakti yoga brings us to the full level of because we are not just souls we are souls in relationship with krishna and karma yoga helps us to realize that we are souls gyan yoga also helps us to realize we are souls but these processes in themselves don’t help us to realize that we are also eternal parts of krishna meant to be in a loving relationship with him that is what bhakti yoga alone does and that’s why bhakti yoga is like the fullest therapy sometimes some medicine some treatment this is okay you’re in the hospital you will get free from the infection but then after that you go to convalescent home then you go somewhere in a peaceful place and you we will remove the infection from your body but the body’s recovery of natural strength that will that you have to do somewhere else you go somewhere else so like that what karma yoga and gyan yoga they do is they remove misidentification that’s like that’s like removing germs removing infection from the body and that’s important that’s essential for health but bhakti yoga what it does is it removes misidentification but it also restores real identification restores our real identity for us that’s like recuperation recuperating health recuperating our vitality so okay the germs are removed but still the body is weak you go to the convalescent home then you recover over there so bhakti yoga does both bhakti yoga alone does both and that’s why krishna in the bhagavad-gita emphasizes bhakti yoga so much so coming back to the context of the i’ll make two more points and then you can have a few questions that in the gita what krishna does is that krishna tells arjuna that there are many things many ways in which he could decide what he’s supposed to do as you can see is this kula dharma important kshatriya dharma importance your highest dharma is your sanatana dharma is your eternal function eternal function is that you are my part your soul and that’s why 1866 is about this sarva dharman parityajya mam ekam sharanam vraja so mam ekam sharanam surrender to me alone now that does not mean that all the other dharmas are rejected the way arjuna surrenders to krishna is by fighting the war so like earlier i said that here if you go back that our functional identity is used to help help us connect with krishna to help us act according to our fundamental identity so in that particular situation krishna tells arjuna that you are meant to serve me so your sanatana dharma is best performed in this particular situation through your kshatriya dharma let me say for example in our moment when the book description was very emphasized even now it’s emphasized the books were very emphasized at that time some of the temple leaders told devotees that that just even young mothers they were told just go out and distribute books and there is one common caretaker for all the small children in the community and that one person would take care and everybody all other young mother girls go to distribute books and then when prabhupada came to know about it prabhupada said no no he said you are your children not ordinary children they are like vikuntha children you should take care of them taking care of children is as important as worshipping the deities if not more so prabhupada said that in this you may be a book distributor you are a mother so your sanatana dharma your role as a devotee can be performed much better as a mother than as a guru student at that particular time there will be other times when yeah you you can serve krishna better as a guru student so there could be other times when krishna and arjuna could have served krishna better by doing his kula dharma so now when we do one duty for krishna does that mean say when arjuna is showing his kshatriya dharma is he neglecting his kula dharma it’s not neglecting it is subordinating krishna tells arjuna that you are thinking that that if i fight if i do my kshatriya dharma if i fight and i have to kill my relatives i have to shoot arrows at bheeshma and drona and they will be how can i cause them such pain how can i be the cause of their death krishna tells arjuna you are seeing externally just as you are not seeing your identity you are not seeing their identity also they are so means when you are thinking bheeshma you are thinking bheeshma’s plight his plight is painful situationally because of your physical arrows when you shoot it at them that will shoot if you fight but krishna says that actually what is true is his plight is because of duryodhana’s verbal arrows duryodhana is constantly suspecting and taunting bheeshma says you are partial to the pandavas you are not dedicated enough to my cause you are not fighting to their full potential and for a kshatriya this is extremely difficult to bear the idea that their their character is questioned their commitment is questioned so those verbal arrows are far more painful and he has to bear those arrows because you are because you are because he’s obligated to fight on the side of the duryodhana but if you fight then he will be liberated from that situation once he’s liberated from that situation because he’s a virtuous soul because he’s a devoted soul he’ll be elevated and he’ll go to a better destination so even your kula dharma your concern for bheeshma that will also be addressed if you serve me and when arjuna understand this so sarva dharma paritaja doesn’t mean that give up all dharma and become adharmic it means take up that dharma which is in alignment with our sanatana dharma which that dharma which enables us to do mahamikam sharanam vraja and this way when we understand that we are in harmony with krishna say in life there are things which are in our control and so there’s some things in our control and there are things which are beyond our control so dharma has both these aspects for the things that are in our control there is diligence we take up responsibility and with those do those duties very wholeheartedly as arjuna did when he chose to fight with fight on behalf of krishna but along with that there is dependence for the things beyond our control there is dependence and this is the understanding that will bring us peace of mind that way that we that will situate us in who we actually are and that is how we will actually become peaceful peaceful not just by expecting the removal of outer conflict but peaceful by aligning ourselves with who we really are so krishna has a big plan for the world and in krishna’s plan i have also a place so let me do my part in krishna’s plan and krishna will take care of other things it is this understanding this inner conception that will actually situate us in sound health and peacefulness and confidence as arjuna was situated at the end of the bhagavad-gita so i’ll summarize i said the bhagavad-gita can be approached in many different ways one way is we approach it as a guidebook for swastika how we can be situated in our natural positions arjuna was physically and emotionally dysfunctional at the end of the gita so from 1.30 to 1873 is a journey towards health through harmony harmony in the sense of arjuna becomes aligned with who he really is in that connection second point i discussed was how gita talks about our identity as multi-level identity so we have many functional identities below that we have a fundamental identity and our functional identities are temporary our fundamental identity is one and eternal this function is a multiple so if we i we need to to actually be peacefully situated we need to stop identifying with our functional identities first first identify for fundamental identity and then that our fundamental identities we are souls we are parts of krishna and we are to align with krishna and use all our functional identities to align with krishna and third part i talked about is the from identity activity harmony so that means there are three ways activities is karma yoga gyan yoga bhakti yoga and among these the bhakti yoga is most recommended because bhakti yoga doesn’t just help us like in treatment removing infections it like removes misidentification but also restores health it helps a person to recuperate it restores us you know our in our real identity as parts of krishna my last part i discussed based on that is to be situated rightly that means to understand our role our place in krishna’s bigger plan so for our role there is diligence we work wholeheartedly and for the bigger situation there is dependence and it is this state of mind which is the state of emotional health based on spiritual realignment who we are thank you very much are there any questions or comments Hare krishna dear devotees you may raise your hand if you have any specific questions or any comments thank you so much for the beautiful kata prabhu it was it was so necarian especially the functional identities and fundamental identities i myself can feel that like i have now my atma so identification itself is very beautiful i realized it with your classes yesterday today thank you so much for all your katas from last two days ujjala mataji you may take over thank you so very much that inner settlement for individual harmony as we walk together in this journey of bhakti and the summary that you do at the end of your katas is unparalleled and now that i think you’re using um this handwritten one we feel like we are writing the notes but the notes is at the best as it is coming from you thank you so much yes do you do this you can talk you talked about like the karma yoga and jnana yoga they help in removing the misidentity and bhakti yoga establishes our real identity whereas jnana yoga talks about and then the in that knowledge in that light we can understand like we are atman’s but kindly elaborate how can we understand it through karma yoga how does karma yoga help us realize our identity well through karma yoga basically when we work with detachment what happens is that we start realizing that we are that we have a core that exists beyond our identities beyond our functional identities and in the process of functioning with detachment it’s like a actor is playing a role on a drama stage and that actor is very attached to the applause or the accolades or the wealth that is going to come thereafter and the actor is constantly thinking about that role but the actor does that role but the actor is not too attached to that that’s actually okay yeah this is actually a stage and i’m playing this role but i am i’m different from that so similarly for us what detachment does is this is the if you consider this is a soul this is the mind this is the body and detachment basically helps us it increases the distance between the soul and the mind it increases the distance between the mind and the body and thereby we are able to see these parts of our parts of us as different from us and that’s how it helps us realize now both gyan yoga and karma yoga they aim for the same process so gyan yoga karma yoga works more through action and gyan yoga works more through contemplation now the vivek is also awakened through karma yoga also the buddhi is developed through detachment so the idea is that this we don’t necessarily have to give up activity to realize our higher to realize to progress towards realizing our identity like somebody may say i won’t participate in this drama at all but somebody can participate in that drama but they have a little bit more dispassion they have a little more attachment and so they start saying yeah there is more to life than just the way i’m moving my hands and the way i’m laughing and the way people are clapping something bigger than i was on over here that’s how we realize it yes uh i have one question um so you said that we should determine the best method of service and follow that method of service who um tells us what the best method of service is like for told him that the best way to serve me is to actually fight in my service who tells us what our best method of service is well even for arjuna krishna did not really uh tell throughout the gita that krishna krishna’s purpose was not just to give arjuna a decision if that’s what arjuna wanted krishna wanted to do krishna would have just told arjuna in six words i am god obey me fight bhagavad gita over krishna’s purpose in speaking the gita was not to give a decision it was to train arjuna in decision making and that’s why he went through 700 verses that was the purpose that was the more important the more important person was trained in decision making and for us also we can we can connect with a guru we can have senior devotees who guide us but the purpose of a guru the purpose of a counselor the purpose of a mentor the purpose of a guide is not to form to make us dependent on them as disciples or as followers we always feel dependent on the guidance and mercy and blessings of seniors but the success of their blessings that their mercy their guidance is that we learn we become trained in the pursuit of decision making and we make decisions so yes initially we do consult senior devotees but over a period of time we learn to use our god-given intelligence and for major decisions we can always consult senior devotees but afterwards it is for us to decide how best we can serve krishna and there are broad guidelines which are given say if we consider this is the range of activity that we do so there are some which are you could say white in the sense that they are fully recommended activities and there are some which are wrong which are which are unhealthy activities which are to be given up and then to the extent we we do what is known what is known to be good for us and we avoid that which is known to be bad for us then so this you can say this is white this is black and all this in the middle is a gray zone so what is the gray will slowly become clearer with time if we align with the white and we avoid the black so black and white we generally learn from our spiritual guides we hear classes and we understand from there and then after that specifics we learn thereafter through inner revelation through experience through maturity Raghupat in the 11th the introduction lecture of instruction says that once we come to the mode of goodness then how to advance further is revealed from within okay yes krishna priyamatani Hare krishna prabhu please accept my obeisances all glorious to involve that um i wanted to thank you for the very nice um class that you gave today and my reflection is is that one that you are addressing the audience that you’re speaking with and this is very important that i was appreciating that you although you might be in a different ashram in life the same time you’re aware of the different um priorities and difficulties that people have to face in their life so i was really appreciating how you were giving um you know practical guidance from bhagavad-gita from shastra of making different different points and one point that i really appreciated having come from the um the old days in iskcon when you brought up that point about prabhat said you know that for the mothers taking care of your children is like the deity worship and so sometimes in the beginning stage of one’s devotional life they will feel so much enthusiasm which is natural and they want to take up the manobhi stone the inner desire of the spiritual master and to spread krishna consciousness all over the world but sometimes um there has to be like you were stressing that we have to know what our priorities are and then at different times we have a different service so i was really appreciating that book time that point you brought up that at one time you have a particular service and that krishna has a plan and you know those children that have been given to you they are not ordinary children and that’s that’s a very sacred um service and how you treat those children how you raise those children how if you treat them like an ashram then they can grow up and do probably a lot better service than the generation before but if you neglect the children then that causes you know they’re it’s actually offenses and it causes great difficulty so i was just very very much appreciating that you brought up that point that at different times in our devotional service we’ll have different services to do and that um and if we do those services nicely then we can go on to other things when the time is right and i also really appreciated your point about the upadis very much too because if i’m identifying all right my identity is just you know then i’m a mother then when my children go away it’s the empty nest syndrome or i’ve identified like once i was the temple president here if i identify oh i’m the temple president i’m miss new galoka then when i’m no longer the temple president then i have no identity so i was just appreciating that point that what is our identity our identity is where the nature of our soul is meant to serve and krishna will reveal to us so i i just want to tell you i really appreciate it i’m not usually on this forum but ujala had posted it and so i thought i would just jump on and and participate so thank you so much thank you i’m happy to do your service yes it’s a the proper zone example is there proper when he met the first time he said that if i had not been married i would have immediately joined the ashram but now i had a wife i had it i had a child it would have been unfair to them if i had if i had left at that time so also considered his responsibility is important yes thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you so much for bringing that point and we specifically thank you for that specific point as mentioned because uh that is the driving force for this wholesome devotee care thing to better understand bhakti and as you both were saying to prioritize the service according to time place circumstance the ashram we are in so we can practice bhakti in harmony if there is no harmony and peace in bhakti the steadiness will be too far so i think that point really defines the whole thing and if you would like to say a few words about that um you know bhakti in harmony by addressing all these aspects of health how that would take us further in bhakti and after that it was this session yeah thank you yeah i’ll make one point about that see there’s a question about how does one carry a certain dharma if a particular beauty does not align with our nicolations i think again it’s a matter of time like we may incline toward higher studies but we have family responsibilities well there are we live in a world whose structure is very different from what was in the past so in the past the people would be born in families where they would naturally have inclinations that’s ideal about an ashram system or now it’s not sometimes we have to adjust at a particular phase in my life i focus on a particular duty later on i may do some other duty even in the temple somebody is living in the temple in the ashram sometimes the project needs a particular service somebody may be more inclined towards uh studying shastra and teaching shastra but if a particular time requires that okay we have our temple is in a big crisis we have to raise some funds now we have to build a temple then that’s what we need to do iraj maha tell the story about how prabhupada told him to write but then they were doing a big pandal program and at that time iraj maharaj one he was giraj provo at that time he wanted to write which right now we want to do this pandal program so he says that you can write anytime but right now we are fortunate to approach influential people and ask them for contribution and we have a reason they will give later on we will not be able to ask so he said that he talked with prabhupada prabhupada says yes that service is important right now you can do it that now so that way i think time is also a factor rather than thinking that we can’t do what is according to our okay maybe i can’t do it right now let’s do it we don’t grow only by doing something according to inclinations we may also grow by learning a mode of service attitude and sacrifice where to do something which is important at that particular time and just to conclude this point see there are there is one conception of bhakti that this is the spiritual world this is the material world and bhakti means that we turn away from the material world and go toward krishna this is the one understanding of bhakti krishna exists in the spiritual world and the material world is simply a place of distress but other understanding of bhakti is that that krishna pervades both the material and spiritual world krishna mentioned 46 to 48 he says so we that from that being from whom the whole world emanates and from that being by whom the whole world is pervaded we serve that being by our working by working in a mode of worship so we could say that there is immersive devotion immersive bhakti where we turn away from the world to focus on krishna directly that is the time for our sadhana that is our puja for our for for direct devotional activities and there’s a time for inclusive bhakti inclusive but immersive bhakti is we turn away from the world toward krishna inclusive bhakti is we understand that the world is also included in krishna’s jurisdiction which doesn’t exist only in the temple krishna exists in our own krishna exists in our workplace and we serve krishna through our various activities in the world so there is ideally speaking we seek a healthy balance between immersive bhakti and inclusive bhakti so immersive bhakti in terms of time it will always be lesser it will be for a few hours a day or whatever inclusive bhakti will be more in time but what will immersive bhakti and inclusive bhakti both of them can nourish each other so when we immerse ourselves in krishna that gives that gives us inner stability that i am grounded in something unchanging and then we can face the changes of the world with greater step with a greater maturity with greater clarity and inclusive bhakti it gives us a sense of value of productivity we are in this world and we would like to do some things in the world it is if somebody tells us you know okay from tomorrow you’re no responsible just chant 64 rounds or 128 rounds every day you might love to do it for a couple of days or just do kirtans for six hours eight hours ten hours you might like that but after some time you’ll want to do some more things what more can i do so we want a sense that i want to do something productive in this world and when we see actually by my bhakti i can do my role as a parent better i’m more calmer i’m more caring i’m more responsible by my bhakti i can actually my mind is calmer and my mind is clearer i can do my job better but that inspires us to immerse ourselves in bhakti also in in in practicing immersive bhakti so immersive and inclusive bhakti both can be harmonized in this way thank you very much hare krishna.