Bhagavatam-daily 42 – 11.07.32 – Constant learning mood heralds adventures in wisdom and devotion

In our future sessions, thank you. that I have many gurus, bahavo and actually buddhi-upashtaha, I have learned from them not by taking shelter of those gurus, but by taking shelter of intelligence, that means by my intelligence, I have learned what is worthy of learning from them, yato buddhi-upadaya and by gaining intelligence from them, upadaya, the result of that intelligence is I am almost like liberated, mukto atameeha tan shruno, mukto, like liberated, atameeha, I wander about and I will tell you about those gurus now, tan shruno, so here essentially what is happening is that through this statement, the Avadhik Brahmana is telling some very important aspects about learning in life, many times this principle of surrendering to the spiritual master, considering oneself a full infant of the spiritual master and taking the spiritual master’s instruction in life and soul, that is emphasized and that deserves to be emphasized, but such an emphasis, if it is not understood properly, then it may seem to place the whole onus, the whole responsibility for spiritual advancement and deliverance on the spiritual master itself, but the fact is our spiritual advancement is our responsibility, yes, we desperately need the spiritual master’s guidance and mercy, but ultimately it’s our responsibility, so taking up that responsibility for our spiritual growth is vital if we want to grow in our life and how do we take up that responsibility, by using our God-given intelligence, buddhipashudaha, so we want to take shelter of Krishna, we want to take shelter of Guru, but how do we take shelter of them, we have to take shelter of our intelligence, with our intelligence we understand their message and then that message we have to live, so while living that means we observe different situations and learn appropriate lessons from those situations and in that we take shelter of Krishna through our intelligence, in fact in the chariot body metaphor, the charioteer is compared to the intelligence, now significantly there’s another chariot very prominent in our philosophy, that is the chariot on which Krishna was leading Arjuna and there also Krishna is the charioteer, so Srila Prabhupada writes in a, speaks in one of the initiation lectures, early initiation lectures, that when you surrender to spiritual master, basically you make Krishna your intelligence, you hand the reins of your chariot to Krishna, that means our intelligence when guided by Guru, Sadhu Shastra becomes spiritualized, it’s Krishna who manifests through our intelligence, that doesn’t mean that anything and everything that comes in my intelligence is divine, no, it has to be evaluated whether it is in agreement with Guru Sadhu Shastra or not, definitely, but the principle is that it takes us towards Krishna, so we have to take responsibility to internalize and realize what we learn from our spiritual master and that means the spiritual master teaches us certain principles and after that we see those same principles demonstrated, vindicated, elucidated in the world, vindicated means confirmed, demonstrated means shown, elucidated means we get a deeper understanding, so devotees need to have a constant learning mood that characterizes serious spiritual seekers because devotees, we don’t reserve, we don’t restrict Krishna only to the spiritual master, Krishna’s voice speaks to the spiritual master, but in Krishna’s voice can speak through many other sources also, for Shri Prabhupada when he was so laboriously, so tirelessly printing and distributing back to Godhead magazine, at that time the spiritual masters were always spoke through a postman who said, why don’t you write books, people take magazines and throw them away, books they will keep and Prabhupada felt this was a spiritual master speaking, now that person, that postman or whoever it was might not have any connection with spiritual master, but it was just a good suggestion and Prabhupada did not just say, see it as a good suggestion, he saw it as a spiritual master speaking, so what is Prabhupada demonstrating over here, buddhipashutaha, any other person could have seen this as some suggestion coming from someone, what is your qualification to give a suggestion and you just a neglected, Prabhupada saw it as, this is also Thakur speaking, Krishna speaking, so why, because when there is an intention to serve, then Krishna can give direction to serve through any and every medium, so Krishna speaks not just through the spiritual master, he speaks through nature, he speaks through other people, he can speak even through various different people, those people may have no intention of going closer to Krishna or taking us closer to Krishna, but what they speak may well take us closer to Krishna, so we need to be at one level, so this submissive having a learning mood and seeing what Krishna is teaching through different situations, the universe itself is a university and Krishna is the teacher who is inside us, guiding us towards the lesson and who is outside also, he is controlling everything and orchestrating things so that the lessons can be learnt, so this mood of constant learning, of openness to constant learning can make life an adventure in wisdom and devotion, wisdom because we learn so much and ultimately when we understand that it is Krishna who is teaching and wisdom takes us closer to Krishna, then it becomes an adventure in devotion also and that’s how a devotee’s life becomes constantly rich, rich with wisdom, rich with devotion, so bhakti is a matter of the heart but that does not mean it is not a matter of the head, it encompasses our complete being and the head is also harmonized with the heart, so by having a constant learning attitude and taking shelter of our intelligence that means we study scripture and internalize scripture and then use our intelligence to see how scripture is demonstrated, indicated and elucidated, that is whatever scripture is teaching we see that in life, say for example scripture says that wealth does not bring happiness and then we see some famous person, some big sports star or some movie star commits suicide or some sports star gets arrested and jailed because of addiction to alcohol or something like that, then we understand how wealth and fame and such things don’t lead to happiness, so we can see the demonstration of those truths and in this way life can become a constant adventure in wisdom, in ever increasing wisdom and devotion, so how the Avadhut Brahmana learned constantly that he will now list by.