Cultivating the strength to let go
Today I will speak on the topic of Cultivating The strength To let go Normally we think of strength In terms of holding on Say if something is being Pulled away from us we hold on to it That requires strength Yes holding on requires strength But letting go also requires strength And In life different situations Require Strengths of different kinds In the 70s As well as in 2000 In the forest In Texas Almost similar incident Happened There was a forest fire I think we decreased the volume a little bit So when A raging forest fire broke out And the Firefighters were told They actually sprang into action They went to fight the fires And The fires Became just overwhelming They got a command from their Commanding officer Just drop everything and flee Now They had gone there To fight the fire And in a sense for the firefighters To flee from the fire Is a sense of defeat And when they realised the fire had become too big They started fleeing Now they Were told just drop everything and flee But As they were flying As they were turning away Going back where they passed They hanged on To their fire hoses They had their fire hoses Some of the fire hoses were connected to a main They had a fire hose Not much difference It made And they were just running back as the fire was Closing in on them And Something like among 15 firefighters They hanged on to those Hoses And Just as they were about to clear Suddenly the fires closed And they were burnt Now the weight Of those Equipment which they were carrying was not much But Neither was the distance Which they fell short If that weight had not been there They could have run that much faster So firefighters Were strongly told When you have to When you have to flee just drop everything And flee Because every moment Came with a price It can be life saving or it can be Life costing So at that time The firefighters heroism Is usually seen In how well, how diligently They fight the fire And that is heroism But there is another kind of strength That is required It requires strength and courage To go into the fire And fight it and extinguish it But requires another kind of strength To let go of this In our life We face different Kinds of situations And some situations We just need determination Yes I am going to do this And often in today's culture Often Those people are glamorised Who did not give up despite So many setbacks And then Yes The stories are heroic At the same time That That is not the only form of heroism When something didn't work They adopted something else So For example often the stories would have Edison Found the button Tried for thousands of times And none of them worked Finally something worked for him So now at one level there was perseverance He kept trying But at another level there was also intelligence When something didn't work He dropped it Let me try some other way Try some other way So Usually we think of giving up As a freedom But it is not Necessarily so Actually Giving up is what Enables us to take up Something else If you hold on to a thing I am determined But in that name of determination We may not Be able to hold on to something That is more important to us Modern psychologists Have found A very interesting phenomenon With respect to The importance of letting go While purchasing They found That when people Purchase things There are two kinds Of people broadly Some are called as purchasers And some are called as Maximisers The maximisers Are those people Now whatever they want to purchase They want to get the absolutely Best deal So if they want to purchase a new cell phone They want to Make sure that they have Explored all the possible options For the cell phone And then they have purchased On the other hand There are optimisers Who decide I want to purchase a new cell phone I will investigate And I will arrive at a good piece And purchase it So optimisers What they do is They decide I want to purchase a new cell phone This is the amount of time I can spend on this I will spend one day I will spend three days And by the end of it Whatever I get to, I will take it But maximisers They just want to make sure That I get the best piece available in the market Now in general Researchers found That maximisers Get greater worth For their money They get a far Better piece A significantly better piece Whatever product they are getting But Although they get Better worth for their money They are not happy Why is that? If they got a better worth for their money Why is it that they are not happier? Two reasons First is Even after purchasing the best product They are always Haunted by the fear Maybe if I had explored more I might have got something better So no matter how much time They spend Maybe I would have got something better And that way That fear Of having not got the best deal Eats away Their happiness And second is That they Have spent so much time and energy In getting the product That they have Tremendous expectation on that product And yes the product may be good But ultimately It doesn't live up to that expectation See Our Frustration is a function of Expectation The more expectation we have The more likely we get frustration So because they have invested so much thought and emotion In getting that product They think it must be great And even the last line Problem comes up They get exasperated They get irritated They get frustrated So Now Among the optimisers and maximisers Although maximisers Get a lot of money They don't get a better state of mind The state of the things They get little better But the state of their thoughts Is not good So in life We all So for example what do the optimisers do In the context of our discussion After a particular amount of time They let go Yes I want the best product that I can But I have spent enough time on this Now let go Especially in today's world Letting go The skill of letting go is vital Because We have so many Choices for everything Just go to purchase a toothpaste And there are 100 brands of toothpaste Just go to Purchase jeans There are 500 types of jeans available So now if we just get caught In choosing Choosing Now yes we say I have freedom I have freedom to choose Whatever I want At one level Yes it's empowering The capacity oh I have so many options To choose from But it's not only empowering See along With Along with the freedom of choice Comes the responsibility Of consequence Along with the freedom of choice Comes the responsibility of consequence And In spending Too much time in choosing Small things We end up not having time For the big things Say for example On our phone We want to send a message So now Suppose the phone starts asking Every time we want to send a message on the phone Which font do you want? Which font size do you want? Which background tech colour do you want? Which style do you want? Now if you actually go into computers Or technology You'll find that every single thing Can have so many parameters You go into word processing Like text, word document Or something like that But there are so many settings over there Many of them we may not be even aware of Now each time When we wanted to send a text If we were asked all those parameters So much of our time Would go in just choosing those parameters That we would not have time To send the message So yes Those parameters are there The font size, font colour, font particularity They are important But the really important thing is To send the message And that's why in a device There are certain settings which are made default Like specialised needs For power users Those default settings can be changed But Those default settings Are helpful Because they help us to move on to bigger things To the more important things in life Similarly in our life Sometimes We hold on to things Or sometimes Somebody speaks Negatively about us Somebody hurts us And then Why did she do like that? How could she have done like that? We just hold on to it And Sometimes one person speaks something And after that Sometimes for weeks Months or years People just Resent Not just resenting More resenting is more passive And more active is Cultivating revenge fantasies One day I'll show you If somebody snubs me In future In front of everyone I'll snub that person And so much time goes on In that So life Is too precious To be Wasted In doing Postmortem operations Postmortem operations means That something has happened It's over now We have to move ahead in life If we don't let go If we don't learn the art of letting go We will End up underusing Our energy Underusing our time And underusing is actually the best thing that we do Quite often We will not only underuse Our time and energy We will use it and hurt ourselves More than hurting others I'll get back At that person But we will hurt ourselves more So letting go Means that Because when I say that This thing is not all that important Srila Prabhupada Who wrote the Bhagavad Gita As it is In that Bhagavad Gita in the 10th chapter He explains the definition of intelligence He says Intelligence means To see things in their Perspective To see things in their Perspective means This is this important This is this important How important is which thing To be able to see that Is intelligence And Often When we hold on to things We give small things Too much importance And big things We don't give importance Because our mind Our thoughts are consumed By that small thing And like those Firefighters that holding On a small thing As compared to life Holding on to some device Or to use some equipment Because of that they Lost their life Now we may not face the consequences As being burned to death But actually By holding on Holding on to grudges Holding on to anger Holding on to negativity By holding on We burn ourselves The fire of resentment The fire of anger The fire of revenge fantasies It burns us Much more than it burns others So now Does this mean that You know anybody can do anything to me Anybody insults me And I just permit it How is that fair? The point here Is not Whether what somebody did is fair Or not Just when we let go of something That doesn't necessarily mean That we are accepting what they did is fair What we are recognising Is that I am not going to let This person Control my life I am not going to let This person Take undue amount Of my time and energy Okay this person hurt me Now if I can set things right But I am not going to waste my time Waste my energy, waste my thoughts In all this I am not going to let go Or either planning to get back at this person Or dreaming or scheming about that It's not worth it And That's why When scripture talks about Letting go Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita Arjuna as a warrior Is a great fighter Krishna tells Arjuna Chaknoti bhaiva ilasohu Praaksharir vimokshat Kaam krodhod bhavam negam Sayuktah sa sukhina ratnam Krishna says Who is so sukhi Who is happy in life Says that person is happy Who is capable of What? Chaknoti One who can tolerate This is 5.23 in the Gita One who can tolerate The force of desire and anger Kaam Krodhod bhavam negam So here There are Different Emotions Which tempt us in different ways For example say We have Greed Greed allures us By promising possessions Oh you get this then you become happy You get this then you become happy Now anger Anger tempts us In a particular way Anger tempts us By promising power When we get angry What happens is Anger is coming to us I will show them If I get angry If I shout at them Hit out at them physically verbally When I get angry I am Goaded and tempted By anger When it says that You have power Till now you are acting powerless Now when you get angry You can show your power So anger tempts us But actually Anger Is not a sign of power Anger is a sign of weakness Why? Because most often When we become angry What are we doing? We usually End up speaking Or doing things That we regret Sometimes we get angry And we speak things Somebody else Had a phone that recorded what we spoke And then they show The recording How could I speak that? How could I speak that? I never intended to speak that Anger Can make us speak things It is like the tongue Has no bones But the tongue Can break bones So the tongue can speak things Which people can get angry with us And they can break our bones Or we can speak things Which can break people's hearts So they Under the force of the movement We might just speak and do things Which we regret later So giving in to that force is not strength It is weakness So holding on Is not necessarily A sign of strength Sometimes letting go is a sign of strength It requires When When somebody is provoking us And we are feeling angry At that time At that time to let go We call it strength And When we have this kind of strength What does it mean? It means Not that I can't do anything about this No that is That may also be true And that may also be some situation When we can't do anything about it So sometimes we may let go Because We are powerless in that situation We are just so powerless That we can't do anything so we let go But Even when we can do something About it We decide this is not important There is something much more important For me So for example we are driving for an important meeting And say somebody just drives And cuts across us At that time How dare You cut across me like this You think That person is just going some other direction I will chase that person I will give them peace of my mind I will report to the police I will have them fined But in that process If we go away Go away in that direction after them We are late for our meeting What have we served by that? Just let go Let go doesn't mean that What that person did is right It's just that We see things in proper perspective I have something much more important To do in life I have this important meeting to go for Therefore I will not bother you much about this In the Mahabharata On the 15th day After Drona falls Ashwatthama becomes furious And Ashwatthama comes charging Leading the Kauravas And when he leads the Kauravas He uses the Narayanastra The Narayanastra is extremely powerful weapon And the power Of this weapon lies in The fact that it That whatever The more it is countered The stronger it becomes So the So the Pandavas are trying to fight it And they are seeing more and more Missiles hitting them The more they try to counter The more they hit them And Yudhishthira panics Oh warriors Just leave this battlefield Let us go away We are doomed to be defeated No need to lose your life Krishna turns to Arjuna He says Yudhishthira has become panicked He goes to take the chariot to Yudhishthira He says Yudhishthira I know what to do And Krishna does He calls Arjuna He says this weapon cannot be countered Therefore All of you Put down your weapons And lie down on the ground Offer your obeisances to Arjuna Now Krishna knows That this weapon Is stronger the opposition The stronger the weapon becomes But if there is no opposition The weapon just Exhausts itself So Krishna tells everyone Just bow down Just put aside your weapons Now when Krishna says this Everyone does that Everyone except one person Who is that? Arjuna is also a great fighter But Arjuna He knows he is submissive to Krishna But Bhima is Bhima is the In a sense among the Kauravas Among the Pandavas Bhima is the most angry person When Bhima was a small child At that time Pandu and Kunti Were sitting in the forest They were sitting on top of a hill And when they were sitting on top of the hill They were talking And were talking It was a nice soothing Sitting on a cliff Nice soothing Breeze was there So Kunti nodded off She fell asleep Suddenly in the distance A tiger roared A tiger roared What happened was Kunti started off At that time Bhima was Lying on her lap So she just got up like that On a field of earth And she was sitting on the edge of a cliff So Bhima just fell down And Kunti screamed In horror Even Kunti Pandu was horrified He said rushing down The steep cliff And they started wondering What they will see When they came down When Pandu came down He saw that The rock on which Bhima had fallen That rock had broken apart And Bhima was as it is So Bhima had such strength And because of his strength Even in his childhood When he fell he broke a rock So he had such strength So for him to In any way shape or form Admit defeat Was almost impossible So when he saw Everyone bowing down He says what has happened Have all of you become cowards Why are you putting down your weapons like this Come on fight Everybody they are a little torn But then they obeyed Krishna If none of you had the courage to fight I will fight And he started fighting And now he was very heroic Very strong But the Narayanastra was far stronger It is the weapon of God himself So all its strength Started concentrating on Bhima Because he was the only person opposite And Bhima's whole body started burning Because of the effect And he was practically being burnt alive So Krishna told Bhima Bhima Lay down No He kept fighting He was burning but he was not ready to lie down So at that time Arjuna realised That Bhima is not ready So Arjuna shot a Varunastra The Varunastra Suddenly showed water on all the body of Bhima So at least that burning stopped And then Arjuna and Krishna Both ran They were on the ground itself But they just ran with their head low down And they came with chariot of Bhima And both of them jumped on the chariot and pulled him down And they pulled him down He said what are you doing He pulled him down Krishna told him Oh Bhima If this weapon could have been countered We all would be fighting it Understand that this Cannot be countered Now Bhima Had initially not at all been ready But now he had also felt The fire burning his body And he knew Although he was a fierce warrior He was also an intelligent warrior And he also knew when The odds were going too much against him Now because he had seen the power Felt the burns He also pulled down And then the Narayanasura Whistled and found no opponent It exhausted itself Similarly Sometimes in our life We face problems Which are like this Narayanasura They are just The more we try to solve them The more they become complicated Sometimes Some person accuses us of something You did like this And we try to Clarify it But that person Is just not ready to listen We try to clarify And they just make this accusation, that accusation That accusation For us naturally If somebody is being negative about us Accusing us of something which is wrong Then it hurts us We feel duty bound to clarify Duty bound to counter But sometimes The more we counter The more that person Gets energy They keep screwing This out, that out And it just becomes worse And worse So actually Sometimes just have to let go Even if this person is accusing me Of something Some people may hear it Some people may get a little disturbed I have lived my life People have seen me And if all that they have seen me throughout my life If they are ready to discount that Just based on one statement Someone has made Then those people I really don't want them to be my friends Now If those who are really Worthy of being our friends They will come and ask for us They will clarify Usually in this world The nature of the world is that Gossip is such that The more it is fuelled The more it goes And sometimes countering gossip also fuels it So usually When we are criticised When we are accused of something wrong At that time we have three broad options We clarify With that person She was thinking like this But it was not like that And sometimes if the other person is reasonable Then they accept Oh I am sorry I misunderstood I thought it was like this So it is good to go and clarify Now big problem happens When people Instead of talking with each other They talk about each other That is A and B have some issues A instead of talking with B And clarify this A tells C And then B tells D And then C tells B You know A said this about you And then D tells A And B said this about you And things just become worse Sometimes we may want to consult someone How should I see the situation But that consultation should be done with somebody Who can keep confidences So the best thing is To try to clarify Not in an angry or judgemental way Just frankly Clearly clarify And that helps Sometimes that person is not reasonable So then We have to counter them Not to them but to others But this is the reality But sometimes The more we try to counter No it is not like this So what happens It is best to ignore Some things Sometimes we are accused Of some things And if we understand the philosophy of karma We will know That there are times in our life When actually We Have been praised for something Which we did not really deserve Sometimes we do a small thing And we get a lot of praise Sometimes we do a small wrong thing And we get a lot of criticism Life works both ways Sometimes some good karma comes upon us And we get more praise than what we deserve Sometimes the bad karma comes upon us And because of which We get more criticism than we deserve But we just Let go There is an English Author George Bernard Shaw He said that I learned long ago Never to wrestle with a pig If you wrestle with a pig What happens He says You get dirty And the pig loves it It is not that We want to compare those who are Criticising other pigs Sometimes Some issues Just let go Krishna says Arjuna Just tolerate it So I will conclude with one example And then we can have some question answers So Krishna In the Bhagavad Gita says That Tamsa Tiksha Just tolerate Sometimes There are leeches If a leech catches our skin And starts biting At that time The leech we can actually feel Its tentacles going inside And sucking blood It is a very scary feeling But if you Try to pull the leech out Some leeches They hold on so strongly If you try to pull out the leech The leech will actually pull out the whole skin But If we just tolerate We can understand That leech cannot suck unlimited blood Why not Because The leech's Capacity for sucking blood is also finite So once its Tubules are full It will let go And then after that we just whisk it So like that Sometimes some problems come in our life Some situations come in our life Some circumstances come in our life Some people come in our life They are like leeches And the more we try to pull them out What happens is The worse things will come But for a particular amount of time Some trouble will come And then they will go There are two kinds of people Some people bring happiness Where they go And some people bring happiness When they go So Sometimes its just like that So we just So here Trying to pull out the leech That is a strong thing to do But just letting the leech do its work That is what is a very strong thing to do When we do that Then we We prevent the problem From occurring And where do we get that strength from That is from Our connection with Krishna From our Lakti By our Devotional connection With Krishna we understand That whatever is happening Krishna Is still in control Now when we are When we don't consider Krishna to be Very important in our life Then we think of life only in two terms Either things are In control or things are Out of control When things are in control we feel happy We feel confident When things are out of control we feel panicky We feel fearful We feel lost But when we practise bhakti yoga We chant Hare Krishna We understand the philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita We understand That things That are out Things that are out of my control Are not Out of my control Things may be out of my control But they are still in Krishna's control They are still in Krishna's control And Krishna is so expert That he can bring Good even out of the bad He can bring good Even out of the bad And therefore we just need to Keep connecting with Krishna As long as we are connected with Krishna No matter Whatever bad thing is happening Krishna will bring good out of it It's not that the bad thing is good Some things are really bad And we have to accept that they are bad But Krishna Can bring good out of the bad And for that He needs our cooperation What does our cooperation mean? Our cooperation means If the bad thing is happening We are just holding on to it Why is this happening? I'll get back at this person Then what happens? Even when Krishna tries to bring some good out of it We are so consumed by it We are so caught by it If we don't see the good For example We wanted to go to his door And suddenly somebody BANG! Smashes the door In our face Why is this door locked? I want to go to his door We start glaring and staring at the door As if our glaring at him Will burn the door down Now we are so caught In glaring at the closed door That we don't notice At some other door So Krishna, even when bad things are happening Through that bad Krishna can bring out good So therefore When something bad is happening Something is going wrong Not able to control it Just let go Let go doesn't mean That we are just becoming Irresponsible or pathetic No, sometimes responsibility Means to let go Because I understand my responsibility Not just doing this one thing I have many other things to do in my life And if Holding on to this thing is consuming So much that I am not able to do Anything else in my life Then that is not responsibility That is actually irresponsible So yes, my one particular relationship Is not working out And I want to make it work out But if it is not, then what can I do? Just put a distance, put it at a back burner And move on with other aspects of life And by Krishna's arrangement Things will work out How exactly they work out, we don't know So when When we We give One situation One issue One relationship Too much importance in our life Then that becomes Our defining centre And then that That completely consumes us But if we Put Krishna first in our life Yes, my relationships are important My profession Is important My positions are important There are many things important in my life But I put Krishna first When we put Krishna first No matter what happens I am not going to let go of my connection with Krishna No matter what happens I am not going to give up my bhakti practises For connecting with Krishna And when you put Krishna first Then that Krishna connection Helps us To get the calmness, to get the clarity Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita The 10th Chapter, 10th verse The Ghamiguddhi Yogam Tam Yena Mam Upayanti Te Says I will give you the intelligence By which You can come to me By which you can make wise decisions So when We put Krishna first In our life That will give us the intelligence to know When to hold on And when to let go To know which issues Are more important and I have to Persevere in them And which issues are not that important Let them pass And that way Whatever we do in our life Krishna says Yukta means to be connected So those who are Connected, those who are spiritually connected Satsukhinara Those people Will be happy If you become spiritually disconnected Then our mind will latch on To some small problem here, some small problem there Some issue there And we will just By holding on to that which doesn't deserve to be held on to We will unnecessarily Make ourselves miserable But if we learn to let go Of things And how do we let go of things? By holding on to Krishna first When we learn to hold on to Krishna first Then we will find That even problems Which earlier Had troubled us enormously Those problems We can deal with them With far greater calmness Far greater clarity Far greater maturity.