Gita 03.16 – Without the sacrifice of chanting, our life becomes worthless and joyless

Thank you about the importance of living a life of sacrifice and connectedness with the whole cosmos and Krishna talks about this importance in the negative by talking about the futility and the folly of not doing this evam pravartitam chakram this cycle of nature that Krishna has talked about earlier that how when we satisfy the God the God satisfies us and we satisfy the God by doing our prescribed duties which involve doing sacrifice and the God satisfies by providing us necessities so those who do not live according to the cycle of sacrifice agha is life, agha is sin so they live a life of sin they live for the pleasure of their senses and those who live like this bhoga means waste so they live in vain they waste their life it is a very strong condemnatory word Krishna is using aghayor and bhogam the life is filled with sin and the life is led in vain so is there any essential difference between these two points yes both of them reinforce the negative emphasis that is there in this world don't live like this so to waste means to not do anything productive to do sin means to do something destructive so both ways the emphasis is that when we recognize that we need to recognize that we are taking from the universe and therefore we are duty bound to give to the universe if we don't do both then we will cheat ourselves that means that we will mislead ourselves by dragging our consciousness down and doing bad karma so often people think of a life as meant for their own pleasure as long as they are not causing harm to others yes, at one level that is a virtuous life but at another level our very existence itself causes harm to others when we breathe we inevitably take in some microbes and they often perish for our very survival we have to at the very least kill plants so by our very presence we even if we don't desire to do so we will cause some amount of destruction to the surrounding life that is there in the universe and to counter and to counter the negative effects of that we have to do some contribution and that contribution is yajna so now when we are chanting the holy names Krishna does later on that 10th chapter that yajna that among sacrifices, I am the sacrifice of chanting the holy names so in the chanting we offer our consciousness to Krishna so the whole principle of sacrifice is that that which can be used for our pleasure we offer to some higher cause so the holy name gives us a means by which we can offer our consciousness to Krishna and in that sense chanting becomes a sacrifice so just as the sacrificial fire offers us a means by which we can offer grains or ghee or silk or whatever to the supreme through his representatives to the particular devata and ultimately to Vishnu so similarly the role that the sacrificial fire plays in fire sacrifices that role the holy name plays in chanting and just as while doing fire sacrifices the important thing is not just to light the fire or to pour the ghee, the important thing is to pour the ghee or the grains or whatever is being offered into the fire if the pujari is so careless as to let the the priest let the sacrificial offering spill all around the fire sacrifice and not on the fire sacrifice then it goes waste it doesn't contribute to the appeasement of the gods and therefore it does not contribute to the eventual acquisition of the benefits of the fire sacrifice the same way when we are chanting our consciousness is meant to go to Krishna and if our consciousness does not go to Krishna through the holy name that means the holy name is manifesting just like the fire is burning but if our consciousness is going everywhere else then it is like the ghee is being spilled everywhere else not only fire then it's actually tragic because the ghee is anyway getting wasted but it could have been used for a particular purpose it doesn't get used so like that our consciousness wanders here and there that particular time and the corresponding energy of our consciousness gets anyway dissipated it's actually quite difficult to think in a purposeful, constructive and fruitful way about any other subject when we are doing something else such as chanting so of course sometimes our mind becomes hyperactive when chanting but most often it just wanders from one subject to another to another to another without doing any constructive thinking about any particular issue so in that sense the energy of our consciousness gets wasted and like that for those who do not live a life of purpose as described in scripture and ultimately oriented towards spiritual reality such people their whole life gets dissipated through aghayor indriya ramo so their life is centered around their senses their whole life gets wasted and at the end they are left with nothing they continue on in the samsara chakra in fact sometimes enter into deeper and darker regions of samsara where they go into greater delusion and greater distress so the solution is the determination to cultivate absorption you cannot cultivate absorption immediately but you can surely strive to cultivate absorption and as you do so then as Krishna describes in 18.9 18.9 he says if you try to fix the mind on him then actually the desire for him awakens and as the desire for him awakens, our absorption in him becomes easier and deeper and that takes us towards his towards the enriching and fulfilling awareness of his presence and his love and thereafter chanting becomes even more enriching and fulfilling eternally thank you.