Bhagavatam-daily 86 – 11.08.02 – Apply python’s attitude by being an optimizer, not a maximizer

Bhagavatam-daily Podcast:

Thank you bhagatam 11.8.2 grasam surishtam virasam mahantam stokameva va yadruchayaiva patitam kraseda jagarokriya ha gautam gita the brahmana is explaining what he learned from various gurus so in a long narrative he described what he learned from the pigeon now he is describing briefly what he has learned from a python ajigar so grasam surishtam virasam grasam is that which is consumed food surishtam means delicious relishable juicy and virasam without any rasa without any taste tasteless so food may be delicious or tasteless mahantam stokameva va mahantam means in a huge quantity stokam means in a very small quantity yadruchayaiva patitam yadruchaya means without any personal endeavor by destiny or eva certainly apatitam that is obtained so apatitam can also refer to like fruits fall from a tree of their own accord so like that this food just comes to oneself graset ajigaro kriyaha graset that is what one should eat grasam and graset both are related to eating ajigaro like a ajigar like a python akriyaha without any endeavor without any activity so the brahmana has adopted this ajigar vritti and actually it was this paradox that kindled the curiosity of Yadu Maharaj that this brahmana seemed intelligent was good looking and had the capacity to work and earn and yet he was inactive so that’s the first paradox and yet if he is inactive then people most people will starve but he is not starving he seems well fed so how is that possible so he is answering the question a coherent answer will emerge as a narrative flows but he said that he essentially says that actually attachment to material things causes suffering just as the bird kapota suffered so therefore I have given up attachment but then what how does one live he says I have adopted ajigar vritti and ajigar stays at one’s place and then some prey comes over there when the prey comes ajigar just takes that prey and consumes that and survives in that so ajigar basically ajigar vritti refers to not endeavoring even for earning one’s food for gaining one’s food not earning even gaining one’s food so it is considered to be a very high level of renunciation sanyasis renunciates they would go from house to house begging for alms they would go only for a finite number of house houses and they would accept whatever alms would come so there would also be limitation to their acceptance of renunciation but along with that there was also the recognition that there is no easy way out in terms of completely renouncing the body’s needs if we starve we will die so even those who renounce the world they have to do something to maintain their body so generally the standard for renunciation is to just go and seek alms from a few houses and that itself is actually to some extent humiliating not humiliating it’s purifying because one has to humble oneself it’s humbling when one has ego and that ego is attacked then that is humiliating but when one wants to consciously give up one’s ego and consciously chooses to put oneself in a position of not getting honor that is humbling so humility is false ego rejected humiliation is false ego frustrated so the renunciates humble themselves by going to the houses of people for food now in contrast the householders are trained to honor the renunciates although they are humbling themselves by coming to the house of food the householders are trained according to dharma to see that oh it’s a great honor that this person is coming to our house that person has renounced the world completely detached and by serving him we will also get credits and we will also become we will also get dharmic credits and we will also move forward in the spiritual path on which this person is so advanced so far ahead now so this is the standard of renunciation now higher than that is that they don’t even go to beg from anyone just sit at one place and they now it may seem that they are just lazily doing a thing but actually they are busy internally contemplating higher truths contemplating the spiritual truth contemplating Krishna ultimately so dajgar vritti is adopted not because of extreme laziness but because of extreme absorption within it’s not that a person is so lazy that person decides I won’t even get up and walk to get food no it is so absorbed internally oh there is so much to meditate on so much to learn so much to relish now who will bother about food so Madhavendra Puri had at a particular stage in his life adopted this dajgar vritti where he would not even ask for food people would themselves come and give some food and similarly Govind Krishna’s Babaji had also adopted this he would sit on the banks of the Ganga when he was in Mahayapur and the banks of Jammu and Navi when he was in Vrindavan and he would just sit there and meditate and instead of going for begging food he would just sometimes take some mud from wet mud from the surface of from the coast of the river and just chew on that and satisfy his belly belly’s demand for food that way now this dajgar vritti may seem impractical and impossible for us and of course it is prescribed it is prescribed for renunciates and that too for very high level of renunciates but a general principle we can learn that is that in this world we should not keep striving for material improvement so much that we forget about spiritual improvement so that means actually we can consider material improvement to be horizontal improvement and spiritual improvement to be vertical improvement so if we are constantly looking for oh maybe I can get a better house maybe I can get a better job maybe I can get a better nowadays with moral boundaries collapsing maybe I can get a better spouse or a better live-in partner better significant other or whatever like that then the culture is focusing constantly on directing all our consciousness towards horizontal change and the horizontal change seems an improvement but after some time it is back to square A because ultimately there is nothing new at the material level a new house may look new externally but after all what are we going to do inside that house same things eating, sleeping, waiting, defending so we should not let the endeavor for material improvement take up so much of our energy or that we don’t have any energy, any thought, any time left for vertical improvement so we can decide this much time is for my worldly activities and this time is for my spiritual growth for my devotional activities and that time which is for our devotional activities we ensure that we reserve that time for the devotional activities because if we don’t do so we don’t keep the time for devotional activities or we let the let the material opportunities devour our time for devotional activities then we will actually lose our spiritual opportunity and we will get nothing materially also because ultimately material things don’t satisfy and this is not just the philosophical principle even psychologists have found something similar psychologists have found that there are two kinds of purchasers Barry Schwartz in his book the paradox of choice calls about them as optimizers and maximizers so maximizers means if they want to purchase these are people if they want to purchase a new cell phone then they will search all the possible cell phones available everywhere as much as possible they will search and they will try to find the best bargain how can I get the maximum features for the minimum cost and they will keep searching searching searching on the other hand optimizers they decide ok I want a new cell phone and this much time I have to search for a new cell phone so I will search and then within this time whatever the best bargain I get I will take that so they optimize depending on the other circumstances also so maximize means just to increase one factor only optimize means to increase one in such a way that others are also balanced so now in general maximizers get a better bargain that means they get better products for lesser costs than optimizers but maximizers are actually unhappier than optimizers for three reasons first is that because they have spent so much time energy and thought in obtaining a product the expectation of that product becomes far higher and so when they eventually actually get the product and start using it there is a huge gap between the expectation and realization and that’s why they are disappointed it doesn’t live up to their expectations that’s one reason for unhappiness second is that even after purchasing it there is always the anxiety oh maybe if I had searched a little bit more then maybe I would have got something better and that way that anxiety also leads them to contributes to their misery and ultimately we will always find something which is better no matter how much you search maybe some new version comes up sometimes cost as the product becomes more popular the cost goes down or whatever if somebody finds out a new version then there is regret oh if only I had searched more I would have got that so basically the dissatisfaction the anxiety and the regret they eat away their satisfaction on the other hand optimizers may spend a little more and get less quality product but they get on with their life and in doing the other constructive more important activity in their life they get greater satisfaction the same principle we can apply rather than the Ajgar we can apply in our lives is by striving not to be a maximizer in our material life not to try to get everything the best in our material life not to seek every possible improvement in our material life but deciding that ok this is the time I have for my material life and in this I will optimize so within the time I have for my job I will do my job the best within the time I have for my studies I will do my studies the best but I will also give due time for my spiritual life and in that way we can ensure that our material improvement does not devour our spiritual growth but both happen parallelly