Essence of Gita 2 – Direct love towards the ultimate object

Hare Krishna so welcome back to our discussion of the essence of the Bhagavad Gita in the first half we discussed about how the Bhagavad Gita describes that love is eternal and explains that the object of love the person who loves that is the soul that is eternal and to truly love we must love the full person not just the dress of the person so the Gita expands our vision of love by expanding our vision of life both in terms of length and breadth length means that our existence doesn't begin or end with birth and death and depth means we are not just our bodily shells but we are body, mind and soul now the Bhagavad Gita's message moves forward to describe also the object of love the object of love is God, he is the supreme person, he is the all attractive, all loving friend and guide who doesn't just lie, who doesn't just sit high up in the sky in moral judgment of us nor does he sit on a pedestal like a sage on a stage, he is the guide by the side, the Bhagavad Gita describes God in intimate loving terms he is not a judge high in the sky he is not somewhere up there, out there waiting for us to do wrong and to send thunderbolts down upon us to punish us nor is he sermonizing sage who sits on a stage and doesn't know anything about the practical world, he is a guide by the side this applies both directly in the context of the Gita and also in the context of the lives of each one of us, Arjuna is a person of the world he is a warrior and God Krishna is by his side, he is on the same chariot that Arjuna is, the council the one who is a chariot here in the Bhagavad Gita becomes a councilor and Krishna as God is also the teacher of our excellence normally when a teacher teaches, the teacher is only didactic giving a long lecture the students may get bored but the teacher uses experiential learning making the children do something or asking real life questions staging dramas or bringing life into the teaching then that teaching is much more memorable sometimes the teacher may take the students to a field trip to help them gain better understanding of the subject Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita acts as the ultimate teacher with respect to experiential learning he transforms a battlefield into a classroom the two armies have assembled for war the conch shells have been blown and the atmosphere at that time is intense noisy distracting and Krishna overcomes all the distractions to catch Arjuna's attention and take him towards illumination and actually the outer battle is only the first and relatively speaking the smaller battle that Krishna has to win in order to reach Arjuna more distracting than the outer battle is the inner battle that is going on in Arjuna's heart where there is a battle between emotion and reason and emotion has caught reason in a stranglehold and is pushing Arjuna down towards confusion and delusion and Krishna by his presence and by his presentation helps Arjuna win the inner battle breaks reason free from the stranglehold of emotion and then unites reason and emotion in the quest towards harmonization and perfection so Krishna explains to Arjuna that when he acts with spiritual knowledge he can attain life's greatest fulfillment just as when the hand feeds the stomach the hand automatically gets nourished, on the other hand if the hand takes a gulab jamun and tries to scratch it, squeeze it, punch it toss and catch it whatever it does the hand cannot get satisfaction similarly we are parts of God, so the hand is a part of the body, we are all parts of God, Bhagavad Gita 15.7 mentions so so it says that we are all his parts the soul is the part of Krishna and when this is the part that refuses to serve the whole, this is the hand that refuses to feed the body through the stomach that hand itself gets malnourished, similarly when we refuse to harmonize with the whole then we injure ourselves, we sentence ourselves to perpetual dissatisfaction how is that? the mind and the senses they drag us towards this object and the next object and the next object and it's a never ending craze, we think that happiness lies in the next gadget or the next house or the next promotion or the next job, the next house even the next pounds and this way we are as if chasing a mirage where we never achieve anything substantial, in today's world where there is a rat race for getting more and more getting the better thing, what is often forgotten is that even those who win the rat race still remain rats what does that mean? that means that even if we win defeating others surpassing others even if we achieve something far better than others the force that is driving us, that is dragging us, that is tormenting us that is keeping us dissatisfied that force is not going to subside and as long as we are pursuing pleasure externally we will never find satisfaction we will sentence ourselves to perpetual dissatisfaction just as an animal searching for water in a mirage will be forever dissatisfied and that is why we see in today's world that even people who are successful people who are prosperous people who are talented people who are popular even such people end up frustrated end up depressed, commit suicide many of the most famous people from the last century, be they authors be they movie stars be they Hollywood celebrities they have committed suicide and why is that? Suicide is a complex and tragic phenomenon and it needs our sympathy if anybody is at the verge of having suicide but at the same time it also requires us to think critically a few years ago there was the tragic suicide of the Hollywood comedian Robin Williams so I wrote an article at that time after the laughter so what that means is that we may laugh on the screen for the world to see and we may even make the world laugh but what after the laughter? we normally assume that just because somebody is laughing that person must be happy but the ability to produce humor, to make jokes to do comedy that ability is just an external ability and that ability what it does is it produces mental tickling it tickles others mind and it tickles our mind but just as tickling and the laughter that comes from the tickling is not really happiness it is just superficial so similarly just if tickling were to produce happiness and that real happiness then all of us could just get perpetual tickling machines for ourselves and we would be laughing laughing and we would be happy the rest of our lives no so similarly whatever we seek externally for pleasure that is at best like tickling ourselves because just as a tickle doesn't give any satisfaction to our core, it is simply a physical sensation that produces a physical reaction with our essential being remaining untouched similarly the pursuit of external things in the hope of getting happiness that just produces some sensation and some reactions Krishna says that that which we get by the contact of sense objects that brings misery ultimately because when those sensations stimulate us they give us some pleasure, we feel happy but then those sensations pass out, they go away and they are no longer available we are craving for the pleasure but the pleasure is not available and that frustrates us so therefore the Bhagavad Gita urges us to not seek pleasure by external acquisition but to seek pleasure by internal realization internal realization means to understand our identity as God, as souls as parts of God and to relink with God so when the hand nourishes the stomach through the mouth the hand nourishes the stomach the hand ultimately gets nourished similarly when we learn to love and serve God then we too get immense happiness we get the ultimate happiness Bhagavad Gita 9.2 states that the process of loving and serving God is imperishably fulfilling is eternally fulfilling and this is the happiness the happiness of love which the Bhagavad Gita talks about is this happiness that is available to each and every one of us this is the happiness that comes when we learn to harmonize with God when we learn to devote ourselves to God so the Bhagavad Gita talks about God in terms which is very intimate Krishna is right by the side of Arjuna to guide him and the Bhagavad Gita describes that similarly God is present by our side in the hearts of each one of us in 15.15 in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna states in the hearts of everyone I am situated Krishna states and why is situated there because he loves us from the strategic vantage point within our hearts he guides us sometimes we get inspirations we get brilliant ideas for doing certain things and we don't know where those ideas came from many of the greatest breakthroughs in science many of the most amazing creative products say music or art or literature these have come out in flashes of inspiration and even those who wrote or spoke this they don't know where it actually came from the Bhagavad Gita explains that it actually comes from God so God is a living loving person present in our heart ever ready to guide us towards lasting fulfillment such is the Gita's vision of God and it is with this vision that the Gita invites us towards the world of love the Gita talks about various processes of yoga and it culminates in the yoga of love the yoga which is called as bhakti yoga where it culminates by describing sarva dharman parityajya mam ekam sharanam vraja that gives you all variety of just surrender to me Krishna says what this means is that the Gita is urging us to focus not on external useless formularies but to focus on the internal essence of love and direct the heart's love towards the supreme object of love and therein relish supreme fulfillment continue our discussion in our next session Hare Krishna.