Gita 07.29 – Devotion prevents our head-on collision with misery

Thank you आध्यात्मं कर्मचाखिलम् Bhagavad Gita 7.29 जरा मरण मोक्षाय जरा is old age, मरण is death मोक्षाय for gaining liberation माम आश्रित्य they take shelter of me यतं दिये ते ब्रह्म तद्विदु कृच्णम् ते ब्रह्म तद्विदु they come to know about Brahman, कृच्णम् completely properly आध्यात्मं कर्मचाखिलम् and their work becomes spiritualized so here Krishna is talking about how a healthy fear can restore us to spiritual health healthy fears are not only desirable but essential if a child does not have fear of fire then that child will be burnt and burnt again and again if a person doesn't fear an epidemic area then that person may get infected again and again or may get infected severely, unnecessarily and even fatally so fear is often vital for protecting ourselves from unnecessary danger so here Krishna is stating that जरा मरण मोक्षाय so those who fear old age and fear death and they feel this is going to be so miserable I don't want it and मोक्षाय they want freedom from that they want relief from that मामाश्रित्य and they take shelter of Krishna for that purpose now sometimes premature endeavor for pure devotion leaves us in pure illusion that means sometimes we feel that I should chant Krishna's names only for his pleasure and that is pure devotion, that is the standard of pure devotion and I want to practice pure devotion but then if we don't have some substantial devotion for Krishna then thinking of Krishna's pleasure becomes much more just a concept it just remains ethereal concept it doesn't become a source of tangible commitment or transformation and when we attempt something which is a very lofty standard, I will chant only for Krishna's pleasure and when I find that we fail to chant for Krishna's pleasure then we may gravitate to the other extreme and think what is the use of chanting only I cannot practice pure devotion but even if we can't practice pure devotion that doesn't mean that we have to leave devotion if we do that if we become discouraged in our ability to practice pure devotion and then because of that we just give up devotion, then we end up in illusion and it's pure illusion in the sense that we know the higher truth but still we are indulging in the lower pleasures because of a misconception so now here Moksha at our level ये न के न प्रकार ये न बना क्रिष्ण निवेश येथ somehow or the other we fix the mind on Krishna that means we don't bother too much at our stage what impels us to fix the mind on Krishna if we cherish Krishna as our beloved object of love and we want to love him and that is why we chant his holy name that is why we serve him, that is wonderful but the important thing is even if we don't feel like loving Krishna even we don't feel any joy in remembering Krishna even at that time we need to continue chanting and we need to continue remembering Krishna and for remembering Krishna at such times it is vital that we take shelter of him in a mood of necessity and urgency so that sort of sense of necessity and urgency can come by contemplating the miserable nature of material existence when we contemplate how we are on a inescapable unavoidable imminent collision with disaster if somebody is on a road and a car going at a high speed and the car is unjust, there is a dead end where the road terminates in a giant rock solid cliff and the car is going to collide with it and it is going to get shattered maybe even explode so that time we will be in real panic somehow or other trying to use our full force to break the car and stop so like that we are on a full force head on collision with the cliff of misery in the form of old age, disease and death and the way we stop this collision we can't stop time but we can raise our consciousness above the body and thereby minimize the impact of the collision on us just as if a person is about to collide in a car and the car cannot be controlled, if somehow the person can jump out of the car then even if the car will collide, the person will be saved, so like that if you can come out of bodily consciousness then we can save ourselves from or at least minimize the miseries of old age, disease and death and the way to come out of bodily consciousness is by cultivating Krishna consciousness in a sustained way and that essentially is what we do when we practice the remembrance of Krishna diligently diligently so Bhaktivinoda Thakur also says that one of the greatest impetuses for remembering Krishna is remembering misery and contemplating how horrible that misery was and knowing that remembrance of Krishna is the only ultimate relief from misery so that's by meditating so rather than aiming for pure devotion, we want to aim for pure devotion but rather than leaving our practice of meditation to our mood of pure devotion, we can found that practice on serious philosophical contemplation of the nature of material existence and the necessity of devotional deliverance and then we will be able to take shelter of the holy name and the shelter of Krishna in whatever way he manifests to us.