Does causeless mercy exist – are we qualified for it?
Does causeless mercy exist and are we eligible for it? Yeah. See, causeless mercy means that not that there is no cause for it.
But it does not it does not come because of the cause. Let me put it this way. What I mean is that suppose a beggar is begging.
Now, the beggar may beg very fervently and a charitable person may give some charity. The beggar's begging is not the cause of the charity. It is the charitable person's compassion.
The beggar may beg, beg, beg, but a charitable person is not obliged to give. So we could say that the charitable person's charity is independent of the beggar's begging. It is not, in the sense, it is not, when we say causeless, it means that there is no binding cause-effect connection.
There is no law of karma kind of connection. If you do this, this has to come. But we could say, Prabhupada also gave the other example that once he was walking in a walking by a pond and there was a person who was feeding the ducks and then there was a quacking, quacking, quacking and there was one duck quacking very loudly, very loudly and this person was feeding that duck more.
So Prabhupada said, like this if you cry for Krishna more, Krishna will give you more mercy. So now, Krishna's mercy is reciprocal. But it is not necessarily proportional.
Reciprocal means we have to endeavor. But it is not that our endeavor determines Krishna's mercy. It is not that because we have endeavored this much, so therefore we deserve this much mercy.
Krishna's mercy will come because he is merciful. There is a story in the Bible about how God's mercy is independent of us. So there is a story that it is a group of people who are unemployed and they are desperately looking for some some way to earn some food for the day.
So there was a wealthy person who came. In the morning, he was walking by. He said, you want some work? Come to my field.
You pick the field. And he said, I'll give you this money. This is a good amount.
More than worth for the day. And then that person again went by the same marketplace in the afternoon. He saw some more people over there.
And they were also working. They wanted some work. Come to my field.
I'll pay you money. And in the early evening, he went. Saw some more people again over there.
Come on the field. I'll give you some work. And when the day ended, he paid all of them the same amount.
And then the first people, we work throughout the day. And they work only for a few hours. Why are you paying all of them equally? He said, my condition with you has nothing to do with my condition with you.
When you agreed to work for me, I agreed to pay you something. So I'm paying you that. So Jesus tells the story to illustrate this point that we have to endeavor.
But it is not the amount of our endeavor that determines the amount of mercy. There is no quantitative correlation. We do have to endeavor and that attracts that makes Krishna give his mercy.
But so in that sense, Krishna's mercy is reciprocal. There is a reciprocation. We do something, Krishna does something.
But it's not proportional that I did so much, so Krishna has to give me this much. So that is Krishna's independence. So causeless means that there is no binding cause effect connection.
We could say that a person begging for help may inspire the compassion in a compassionate person's heart and they may give more charity. That is true. But that doesn't mean necessarily that that person's begging is the binding cause.
It is the giver's compassion that is the cause. Does that answer the question?