Gita 15.05 Surrender means to give up everything for Krishna – even the feeling of hopelessness

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
two verses later 15.5 in the Bhagavad Gita and Krishna is speaking here and he speaks that he says that that every one of us is filled with pride and arrogance and arrogance that causes illusion when we become free from illusion and pride we become free from the contaminating association of the modes of material nature so we stay constantly in spiritual consciousness we become we become free from selfish desire become free from duality stay equal what happens in distress at that time we can attain the imperishable destination so essentially Krishna here is talking about how to attain supreme destination by the steady practice of spiritual growth and in the previous verse he has stated that so we need to attain the spiritual level of realization there surrender to the supreme being and now in this verse he is stating how can we surrender to that supreme being we become free from the pride associated with living existence we are free from the attachment to duality so the key point over there is that we need to situate ourselves in spiritual consciousness and for that we need to avoid material consciousness so here it’s interesting that surrender is talked here more in terms of process of do’s and don’ts rather than personal relationship even a personal relationship of course involves do’s and don’ts but it’s a matter of relative emphasis from the next verse onwards Krishna will stress on the personal absolute and talk about how this is my abode that supreme abode is my abode but till he comes to the level of talking about a personal absolute the stress remains on how from our present level of awareness we can move towards a higher level of awareness by a steady practice of spiritual growth by conscious selection so vinivrtta kama kama is selfish desire vinivrtta in a special way we retire, we resign from those desires so the more we learn to retreat from the desires that plague us from the desires that bind us and the more we learn to situate ourselves in spiritual reality the more we grow the more we become purified the more we become elevated now we think of retirement usually in voluntary terms that ok I have had enough of this job now I am going to retire from it but what if someone wants to retire and the employer doesn’t want to let the person retire so normally it is that most people are fearful that my boss will fire me but what if the boss doesn’t want to fire rather the boss wants to keep the person employed and especially if the boss is getting more from the employee than what the employee is getting from the boss then naturally the boss may want to keep the employee because that is actually enabling the boss to succeed, to stay on to move towards getting a better understanding of life or a better as they say better enjoyment of life as they say that the harder you work the better the vacation your boss goes on so lust is that kind of boss we don’t enjoy when we indulge in lust rather it is our boss enjoys lust makes us a puppet, makes us a slave and makes us dance to its tune but we don’t enjoy it is our own desires which keep dominating which keep feeding themselves through our indulgences so suppose somewhere one were beating us and we keep feeding them more and more while starving ourselves and that would be the path to endless torture because the more we feed them the stronger they become and the stronger they become the more they beat us and the more we are helpless to do anything except do their bidding which is to feed them this is how our desires become compulsive and addictive that we start off with feeding those desires we think actually we are feeding ourselves but those desires feed themselves through us and then force us to feed them they weaken us and force us to feed them and this way they entangle us more and more by weakening us and strengthening themselves at our cost so when we understand this is the nature of this desire then we have to learn to say no in a categorically uncompromising way nothing doing I am not going to indulge in this of course giving up desires is far easier said than done it requires effort, it requires energy it requires time and it is important to recognize that there is no shortcut to growing spiritually that we may have to fight a long hard battle but we don’t fight against lower desires we fight for Krishna so the emphasis has to be clear our goal is not just to win against desires our goal is to win for Krishna so the more we keep our vision fixed on Krishna even if we are defeated we keep fighting and by that fighting gradually we move from defeat towards victory so surrender is not just giving up everything for Krishna but surrender also means giving up hopelessness for Krishna sometimes we may feel hopeless having been repeatedly defeated by our lower desires but surrender means that we are ready to give up even the feeling of hopelessness for the sake of devoting ourselves to Krishna for the sake of surrendering to Krishna for the sake of attaining Krishna with this understanding when we function in a mood of surrender then we can move steadily and firmly towards absorption in Krishna surrender means that we seek selflessly to absorb ourselves in our Lord and even if we fail we don’t give in to hopelessness we keep moving onwards doing our best to move closer to our Lord and ultimately to attain His all attractive lotus feet