Bhagavatam-daily 80 – 11.07.70 – Choose that purpose of life which will never leave us purposeless

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Soham shunye gruhe dino mrta-daro mrta-prajaha ji-ji-vi-she kim artha-mva vidhuro dukha-ji-vitaha Here in the Uddhav Gita, the avadhut brahmana is telling what he learned from the life of the pigeon. The pigeon on seeing that his wife and his children are trapped in the net and he has no power to save them is now lamenting grievously.
Soham shunye gruhe dino Soham, I myself, soham shunye, I become zero. Gruhe, my life, my home has become empty. Dino, I am a very unfortunate person.
mrta-daro mrta-prajaha What is the reason my home has become empty, void? I am unfortunate because my wife and my children mrta-daro mrta-prajaha both are dead. ji-ji-vi-she kim artha-mva For what purpose can I live? vidhuro dukha-ji-vitaha For what purpose can I live? I am feeling great suffering and separation from them. dukha-ji-vitaha My life has become entirely miserable.
There is nothing but suffering in my life. What should I live for now? Actually, we all need a purpose for living. ji-ji-vi-she kim artha-mva At a basic level, survival itself is the purpose of life.
We can say life itself is the purpose. Living is the purpose of life. So, people, when they are too caught up, when they don’t have, they have constant anxiety about how they will get food the next day, whether they will get the basic necessities of life or not, at that time, they may not think about the higher purposes of life.
What is the purpose of living? Living is the purpose of living. And that itself is a struggle. But even in that level, when one is extremely poor and when one is struggling to barely meet the necessities of life, at that time, if one suddenly gets a very big problem, say, some devastating calamity happens, and at that time, even the loved ones die or something like that, then this question comes, ji-ji-vi-she kim artha-mva, what am I living for? We all have our own conception of the purpose of life.
So, when we don’t have any immediate, we don’t have so much anxiety about what we live for or the anxiety about the necessities of life, then we start thinking about something higher in life. And we start thinking, okay, I want a bigger house, I want a comfortable car, I want this, I want that. And those things become the purpose of our life.
But then, whatever we have made into the purpose of our life, if somehow that becomes frustrated, say, a person decides that, having a secure, having financial security, a person who has never had financial security may think that, where can we have happiness in life if I don’t have financial security? So therefore, not just financial security, but financial strength. And, not just financial strength, huge amount of finances, building which, one makes one, building that, one makes one’s purpose. But suppose, after working very hard to achieve something like this, then one finds that, because of some reason, the whole, one’s whole, say, bank balance is wiped out.
Then, the whole consequence of such a thing is that, one is left with nothing to do. Nothing to live for. I lived for this and now it’s all gone.
So, that is what has happened to the pigeon now, over here. The center of the universe, the purpose of existence for the pigeon was his family. And when the family is dead, is dying, almost dead, the pigeon is thinking, what is the purpose of my living? So now, life in this world is filled with unpredictable, uncontrollable, unescapable danger, unavoidable danger.
We can’t predict what may go wrong. When things start going wrong, we can’t either avoid it, nor can we sometimes control it. Just, the danger comes.
It’s not just danger. Danger means there is a possibility of something going bad. Disaster comes with it, but there is not a possibility.
It is an eventuality. It happens. So, either way, what we make the purpose of our life, that itself can leave us purposeless if we have not chosen the right purpose for our life.
There is a famous book written by mundane psychologists, I have found out also, and it is well said that when people face some terrible calamities, Dr. Victor Frankl wrote a book called Man’s Search for Meaning, and in which he described how he himself suffered terribly in the Holocaust. He was a Jew and Jews were subjected to reprehensible, inhuman, unspeakable miseries under Hitler’s Nazi regime in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. So, he said that in those terrible conditions, those inmates of the camps who had some purpose for living, they continued to live.
They, for example, they decided that you know, I want to I will go back and see my child, who is a baby, he will grow up and he is somewhere else, he is safe and I want to see him. And so, those who could think of some purpose, some and some purpose for their lives, they were able to live. And those who could not summon that purpose, they just, the adversities came, and the food stock became less, when diseases came, they just succumbed.
And now, the tragic part was not that those who survived, but, not those who survived because of having a purpose, but the tragic part also came later. What was heroic, surviving through all those horrible situations, that also turned out to be tragic, because say, when these people said, oh, I want to go back and see my son, grown up, and they went to their place, where they had lived and they found the war’s tentacles had reached there also, and there was no home, and there was no sign of their son. So, they had assigned some purpose for themselves, which carried them through the danger.
But then, after the danger for them got over, they found that that purpose itself had defeated them. That purpose could never be fulfilled because their son was, had become a casualty in the war, or had become lost, untraceably. So, we should not just have a purpose, we need to not just have a purpose, but we need to have the right purpose for our life, if we are not to be overcome by frustration.
And the best purpose, the ultimate purpose is to develop love for Krishna. Because Krishna is the one person who is always going to be with us. He is right now there with us in our heart, even if we don’t perceive Him.
And He is going to be there with us lifetime after lifetime after lifetime, no matter how long we stay in material existence. And of course, when we become liberated from material existence and go back to Him, we will be with Him eternally. So, the point is that loving Krishna is a purpose that can never be frustrated.
We may not be able to perform specific forms of devotional service in certain situations. We have had devotees who have, say it’s also with Russia, been persecuted. They are heart-wrenching stories.
But then, although they had no devotee association, they could not, there was no temple, they sometimes did not even have books, but still, whatever spiritual knowledge they had, whatever spiritual practices they had cultivated, through them they could still connect with Krishna and they could feel His presence and they could grow in their devotion even in that situation. So, in this way, Krishna is always available to us. And when we make Krishna the purpose of our life, then we will never face the situation, जिविशे किम अर्थम्वा, for what am I living? I am living for Krishna.
And Krishna is going to be living forever. And those who live with Krishna, live forever. Live for Krishna, they live forever.