Bhagavatam-daily 176 – 11.10.18 – Material expertise is no insurance from misery

Thank you. … … … Lord Krishna is continuing to refute the philosophy of Karma Nivamsa and he states that … … So, the philosophy that by doing expert karma in this world, one can become happy, it can be refuted not only from the perspectives which have been done earlier that ultimately everybody has to grow old, get deceased and die, but even from this world, not just from the point of view of end of life, but even during the course of life we can observe that Karma alone is not the deciding factor in the destinies of people. … … … … … It does not happen to the Dehinam, the embodied soul that we get happiness, Sukham, when … If a person is wise, it’s not that those who are learned, they were happy, nor is it that … nor is it that the foolish are miserable.
It is not that the learned get happiness and the foolish get misery. And because we observe this vruta-anahankaranamparam, therefore it is actually anahankara, it is ahankara, it is egotism, it is just a matter of ego and it is a false argument, a waste argument of the ego to claim that just by doing expertly our activities, we will ensure our happiness. So, in general in this world we see that people say try to get education, for example, nowadays the big craze for certain careers and people pay huge amounts of money, education is also a big business and people pay huge amounts of money to get into certain careers, to get training, get knowledge in certain vocations by which they hope to get lucrative jobs.
But sometimes it happens that people who are actually not very educated, people who are relatively speaking not so learned, they become the bosses of these people who are super learned, who may have double PhDs, they may get jobs in companies where the owner might be a college dropout. Now, we may say, no, no, but the owner has some expertise, the owner has may be the emotional intelligence by which you want to people or may be the owner has some business sense and the owner has learning in some, yes, in some cases it may happen like that, but in some cases there are people who are actually not all that brilliant, but they get happiness. Now, apart from this also, this that if earning capacity is considered a success of education or the basis of happiness, then education itself does not necessarily correlate with how much a person earns and conversely or apart from that, sometimes during the normal course of life, some people who are trying to live carefully, say some people follow a lot of health routines, take diet properly and don’t eat this food, don’t eat that food, suddenly despite it all, they get some cancer and some people who live unregulatedly, they do not get any disease and they seem to go on for a long time, so why does such a thing happen, you understand that actually the way in which actions lead to consequences, actions lead to reactions is complex and although our actions are consequential in terms of in the sense that they will have consequences, but it is not that there is a direct perceivable one-to-one correspondence between action and reaction, so certain accumulated past pious credits may be responsible for a fool being happy even in this life and some accumulated pious credit, some accumulated sinful reactions may be responsible for a learned person being miserable in this life and Vishwanath Chakradakur will also give the example in this purport that sometimes even some sinful people may do some unknowing devotional service by going to a dham, by associating with holy people and because of that also happiness may come in their life, so the point is that simply insisting that by doing good karma, everything will become all right, this is something which will not turn into reality, this is something which will not happen because things don’t happen just based on our desires, things don’t happen based just on our aspirations of how we want those things to be, things happen based on lot of other factors which include how our past karmic reactions are going to manifest, so now one may argue that oh, but then that means our karma is only responsible, yes it is true, but then the point of the karma of the philosophy that we can become happy in the material world by doing good karma, that point is still not practically true for us because we all have anadi karma, that because of so much karma in the path that I have done that I have fallen into the ocean of material existence and which way will come from where and toss me here or there I can’t say, so thus we are actually in a state of great misery, we are trapped in material existence not knowing how to deal with issues and trying to make our best plans but we are vulnerable to reversals, adversities and catastrophes that can come at any moment and similarly sometimes some people hit some good luck, so this is not meant to promote a philosophy of fatalism or helplessness that nothing is in our hands, but it is meant to avoid the tempting but misleading idea that everything is in our hands, so there are both extremes that are to be avoided, one extreme is that of fatalism that nothing is in my hands and my destiny is, my fate is ruined and the other extreme is to think that everything is in my hands and if I just do things well then by well we mean materially well over, we means by well the materialistic people whom Krishna is refuting here mean by doing things materially well everything will work out, no it won’t work out and that’s why we need to practice bhakti and transcend material existence only then we can have, we can find lasting happiness otherwise that param here means only completely it is just ego to think that everything is in my hands and by the sweat of my brow I have become a big person, we may succeed in becoming big for some time and we may not succeed but the point is none of this is guaranteed just based on our endeavors alone, there are other factors which are also involved and we need to be aware of those factors that is the sanction of the lord and by considering the lord sanction we need to and ultimately recognizing that the existing at the material level is futile we can transcend material existence, we can practice the process of bhakti yoga by which to transcend material existence which is what Krishna recommends in this section of the