Gita 18.58 – Talents are usable but not essential for attaining Krishna’s shelter

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
the all-attractive. This is one of the most inspiring verses in the Bhagavad Gita, which talks about the glory of being conscious of Krishna and the danger, indeed, the futility of refusing to be conscious of him.
So, Krishna speaks here, machittaha, become conscious of me, sarva-durgani, various kinds of obstacles that might be there in this world, and Durga can be related to the word Durga, Durga is not just the goddess, she is also the goddess who is in charge of, who is the superintendent of material existence, who is the warden, we could say, or the prison warden of material existence, and she, through her trishul, inflicts miseries on the conditioned souls who are there in existence, sarva-durgani, so Durga refers in general to miseries, sarva-durgani, various kinds of obstacles which are there in material existence, mat-prasadat, by my mercy, tarishyasi, you will cross over these, tarishyasi, this is an extraordinary promise, it is a promise of God’s unfailing help to those who seek that help by becoming conscious of him, so Krishna is not asking us for some extraordinary talent or skill which is limited to only a few people, such as singing very sweetly or building a big temple for him or writing some very scholarly book or doing some phenomenal book distribution, no, Krishna is not asking that, if you do any such extraordinary thing for me, extraordinary from the material perspective, then I will become pleased and I will help you to cross over all dangers, he says, all that he wants us to do is become conscious of me and he says that if you just do this, mat-prasadat, tarishyasi, by my mercy, cross over all obstacles, now our talents are useful but not necessary for being conscious of Krishna, that means if I have a good singing ability then I can sing and I can easily get myself absorbed in singing and thus I can be connected with Krishna at some level, it is easier for me, if I have a good memorization capacity, if I have good philosophical inclination then I can do those things and thereby I can be conscious of him, but the danger in using our talents to be conscious of Krishna is that often we become more conscious of the talent than of Krishna so we focus more on how I am singing than for whose pleasure I am singing of course it is not wrong to evaluate the quality of our singing and to try to improve our singing or similarly, for example, if somebody is a writer for Krishna to evaluate the quality of the writing to improve the quality of writing that is not wrong, that is definitely desirable because through the quality of our service we also express the quality of our devotion at the same time, sometimes we get too caught in the quality of the product and forget the object to whom we were going to offer that product so that should not happen, if we take care of that by regularly connecting with Krishna through directly devotional activities also, then we will be able to remind ourselves and remember the object of our service and then the efforts to improve the quality of the product will be not just to show off how good we are at that service but to please Krishna with the quality yes, I will write to the best of my capacity so that I can please Krishna through that because Krishna is my loving lord and he deserves the best of everything so at least let me give him the best that I can so what Krishna asks from us is be conscious of me, he doesn’t say that be talented, be super successful, be unique no, he just says be conscious of me and if you are just conscious of him we will be able to attain success in terms of passing over the obstacles of life, so this means that either we will not feel the obstacles are so troublesome because our consciousness will be absorbed in him, it can also mean that Krishna gives us intelligence by which we can deal with the obstacle in the best possible way it can that can manifest in various ways that depends on our situation and Krishna’s plan, whatever it is we don’t know, but we can focus on doing our part in the plan so when we are doing directly devotional activities like chanting studying scripture, praying at those times it is good to remember this promise of Krishna and by meditating thus on Krishna’s compassionate purpose on Krishna’s assurance that he will compassionately help us if we just become conscious of him so Krishna’s request for being conscious of us him is also democratic we don’t have to have some superhuman talent to please Krishna, we just need to become conscious of him and we can use whatever talents we have to engage ourselves in certain compatible forms of service by which we can become conscious of him so our talents can be are usable but not essential for being conscious of him and by being conscious of him in directly devotional activities we can ensure that we can increase the possibility, the probability of our being conscious of him at other times also and thus we can experience his mercy that enables us to pass over all obstacles so rather than worrying about the obstacles when we are chanting we can focus on being conscious of Krishna and then we will be able to watch the magical ways in which Krishna helps us to pass over the obstacles Thank you