Bhagavatam-daily 175 – 11.10.15 – See the frustration of our material plans as confirmation of our spiritual purpose

Shubhākutam 11.10.17 tatrāpi karmaṇāṁ karturu asvātyantraṁ ca lakṣate bhoktuś ca duḥkha-sukhayo konartha vivaśyam bhajet Here, Lord Krishna instructing Uddhava is continuing an analysis of the materialistic philosophy of Karmanvamsa or that those principles can be applied to general philosophy of materialism also. And he points out a critical limitation to materialistic attempts for enjoyment. tatrāpi karmaṇāṁ karturu tatrāpi karmaṇāṁ So, in this world, the living entity does karma, engages in fruitive activities asvātyantraṁ ca lakṣate asvātyantraṁ means that when we try to work in this world, we sooner or later realize that actually I am not independent.
asvātyantraṁ Now, how do we realize this? bhoktuś ca duḥkha-sukhayo bhoktu, one who desires to enjoy Normally, we all work to get enjoyment. bhoktuś ca duḥkha-sukhayo But unfortunately, we get what? duḥkha-sukhayo We get misery and we get some sukha also. But we do get what we don’t want.
So, if we were the controllers, then whatever we wanted, we would have got that. But we don’t get those things. And this indicates that our claims to controllership are flawed.
And at the material level, if we don’t control, then how can we enjoy? ko na artha-vivasham bhajet So, we are vivasa. We are helpless. In what ways are we helpless? Even if our normal endeavors to achieve things are successful, that we work towards gaining fulfillment, we work towards achievement, and we do succeed in getting those achievements.
But still, the fact remains that we will be caught by illusion sooner or later. Illusion in the sense that we often, at the level of our mind, we get carried away and we do things that we’ll regret later. We may get very angry.
We may speak in various counterproductive ways. Or do various things which are detrimental to our own values and interests. In this way, we all work, either intentionally or unintentionally, in ways as if it’s against our will.
Intentionally means that we are aware that I’m doing wrong, but still we are just pulled. Unintentionally means we do wrong without even realizing that I’m doing something wrong. So, and ultimately, of course, the miseries of old age, disease, and death are imposed upon us.
Prabhupada Raya speaks that nobody wants to be, become old. But in the Hindi lecture he says, Prakriti sabko chukcha buddha bana deti hai. That without any, without giving any room for protesting, material nature is forcibly ages people.
And especially in high glamour professions like, say, sports or movies, the retirement, the age by which the body’s capacity to enjoy, it peaks very quickly. So most sports people have to retire by the age of 35, 40. And that means the best part of life, their life, if at all they become successful in their careers, that ends before almost like half of their life or two-thirds of their life or one-third of their life, whatever, depending on how long they live.
So, their life ends in the middle age itself. And then mostly they have to live on the sidelines after that. So, the point is that no one wants old age, disease, and death, and yet it comes upon us.
And that itself is an indication that we are not independent. We can see the lakshan, we can see the characteristics of our being aswatantra. So, when we find ourselves frustrated in fulfilling some plans, when our plans are frustrated, rather than we becoming frustrated, we should focus not on just, oh, why did this plan not work out? We can focus more on getting the realization that actually I am not the controller.
I cannot be the enjoyer at the material level. I am a servant of the Lord and whatever happens, I will continue serving Him. And if I continue serving Him in this way, then eventually things will work out.
If I continue serving Him, everything will get balanced in the long run. And that is what my aspiration is. So, koanvartha vivashambhaje Now, a devotee’s plans may get frustrated, but the devotee’s purpose never gets frustrated.
The plans are specific. Okay, I want to do this kind of, maybe I want to do this kind of distribution, I want to share Krishna consciousness in this area, I want to do this particular thing. Those plans may not work sometimes because so many factors are involved in the actualization of anything.
But the purpose of the devotee is to serve Krishna and the purpose can never be thwarted because whatever circumstance we are in, we can always serve Krishna. So, we focus on that, gaining that realization that the purpose of serving Krishna can never be thwarted and thus we keep serving Him in all situations. And beyond the specifics of this principle, we can also look at today’s society.
And we may say that there is so much comfort that has come. We have got so many technological inconveniences, technological inventions, which counter inconveniences. So, Bhakta Sudarshan Thakur challenges this common modern myth by pointing out that maintaining the conveniences brings, causes lot of inconveniences.
Maintaining the conveniences, that means, we live in a world where there is a lot of technology and this technology certainly brings some comfort to our life. So, we can move around by cars and planes much faster than what people in the past could do. We can move around, we can communicate with each other through emails and phones much more efficiently than in the past.
And in this way, there are conveniences, but then there is pollution, there is, because of the use of fossil fuels and others, there is depletion of natural resources and there is disturbance of the ecology and there are other considerations of how sometimes people become too stressed and overall the eco unfriendliness of most technological attempts to control nature is slowly dawning upon thinkers. The common people may or may not have realized it till now, but the ecological Armageddon, the catastrophe that is heading our way is very sobering and dealing with that is going to cause a huge amount of not just inconvenience, if all the drinking water becomes polluted, if there is extensive deforestation and destabilization of the ecology, then our life itself can become at risk. So, the comforts come to a few people, by cars and out of millions of people, millions of people, maybe a fraction can use cars, but when the environment becomes polluted by that, everybody has to suffer because of that.
So, the luxuries that come are visible, but the problems that come with it are not so easily visible. The luxuries come to a few, but the problems come to all. And in this way, at a material level, the attempt to counter problems often ends up creating bigger problems.
Now, this does not mean that we don’t use technology or that we don’t try to deal with problems even at a material level, but the point is that if we stick, if we reserve all our endeavors only to material problem solving, then we cheat ourselves. We create bigger problems and we don’t get the lasting relief that is possible by cultivation of spiritual consciousness. And that is the thrust of this message, that rather than doing anything technological or in the context of Karma Nivamsa, rather than anything ritualistic, to try to improve things materially, focus on cultivating spiritual consciousness.