Go beyond get, beget, forget, regret

Sunday feast lecture at ISKCON Melboure

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna so welcoming to you all for this Sunday Programme and I will discuss from the Bhagavad Gita 3rd Chapter 16th text, this is evam pravartitam chakram nanu vartayati haya aghayu indriyarama mokham partha sajivati so here Krishna says evam pravartitam chakram in this way there is a cyclicity to existence chakra, chakra is cycle, pravartitam that which is natural this natural cycle of things, one who does not follow nanu vartayati haya, one who does not follow aghayur indriyarama, as a person agha ayu, ayu is life, agha is in vain is actually misdeed, wrong doing, sin, person’s life is filled with misdeed, indriyarama such a person lives for satisfying the senses and mokham partha sajivati, mokham means waste such a person lives in vain, the life of such a person goes waste, now all of us, we intrinsically feel that our life is meaningful, valuable, none of us wants to intentionally, consciously waste any time even when others may feel that we are wasting time, we feel that we are doing something which we enjoy so we all feel our life is valuable and if someone comes and wastes our time, we get annoyed with that person why are you wasting my time, we try to end that meeting or interaction and move onwards towards something more constructive, so none of us wants to consciously waste our time and if after we start off on something, say if we are going on a travel, going on a journey and say if we want to go from place A to place B, say if we want to go from here to Sydney and after we have got into a train and after we go for a couple of hours then we come to know we have got on the wrong train then we get exasperated because all this time is got wasted so normally whether it is a journey or whether it is routine discussions or decisions in life none of us likes to waste time and here Krishna here is talking about not just wastage of time, he is saying that wastage of life itself so what do we mean by wasting life when we talk about wasting something, it means that we could have done something much more valuable with it so if we underuse something if somebody has a jewel, if a small child who doesn’t understand the value of currency, that person, the child thinks oh enjoyable things means chocolates, child wants to enjoy chocolates and so if the child finds at home there is a hundred dollar bill lying somewhere child just picks up that bill and goes to a shop and gives hundred dollars and gets one chocolate and eats the chocolate and thinks oh delicious, I got a chocolate, I enjoyed it child may have enjoyed the chocolate but at what cost no, when compared to hundred dollars, just one chocolate for hundred dollars, it’s a waste so like that if we take something valuable and we fritter it, we spend it on something which is relatively not of much value then that is also a waste so as I mentioned in the title, I was going to speak on this topic of get, beget forget and regret, so this these four things often characterise life in today’s world get, that means we all want to get more and more things in the Bhagavad Gita in the 16th chapter 16th verse Krishna says that our consciousness chitta is split apart by many many desires I want this, I want that and I want that and the problem with wanting is not in the wanting itself the problem is as living beings we naturally have desires so desires are not the problem, when we desire things which actually leave us dissatisfied then the process of desiring keeps going on and on and on so for example if a child has an itch, now a child may want to scratch the itch but the parents will say don’t scratch, because the parents know that by scratching the itch it’s not going to provide any lasting relief, temporarily it might be there but it’s going to get worse so now with the itch we very easily understand this but with respect to our desires, when we don’t have something we feel as if I can’t live without it, I must have it but usually when we get a thing, initially we get a new dress a new cell phone, a new laptop, a new car, whatever it is when we get something new there is a sense of speciality, there is a sense of achievement if we are wearing a new dress and if no one notices it no one says oh you are wearing a very attractive dress we feel what happened, is something wrong, have people gone blind why is nobody noticing it, so when we get something the pleasure in that getting is not so much in the object as in the appreciation and admiration that we hope to invoke in others through getting that object I once saw an advertisement of a car, so the advertisement was this young man was driving a car and sitting next to him was a girl looking admiringly at him and in the background there was a glaring another young man envious and the advertisement was buy this car and enjoy the envy in your neighbour’s eyes so now what level of enjoyment is actually this? yes we all want happiness but enjoying the envy in someone’s eyes it is actually a sick standard of enjoyment because it is a endless process in the Mahabharata there is a story Mahabharata is basically a story of the confrontation between two cousins the Pandavas who are overall virtuous and the Kauravas who are quite vicious so the Pandavas attain great prosperity and they perform a great sacrifice a majestic sacrifice where their whole prosperity is displayed for the world to see, their purpose is not to display the prosperity their purpose is to actually do dharma, to do biassed activity but everybody who comes sees their palace, sees their wealth and their cousin Duryodhana becomes very envious and after going to the kingdom of the Pandavas which is Hastinapur which is Indraprastha then he goes back to his own kingdom Hastinapur and there he goes to his father the blind king Dhritarashtra and he has his cousin with him Shakuni Shakuni says, he tells Dhritarashtra do you know how much your son is suffering he is not able to sleep, he is breathless and restless because of agony so now as a concerned father Dhritarashtra immediately asks now son what is the matter, what is lacking in your life Dhritarashtra, Duryodhana is still seething with anger so he says that what person can be satisfied when on seeing that his enemies are doing better than he is doing so Dhritarashtra tries to calm him down he says what are you lacking, you have huge palaces you have beautiful queen, you have chariots and warriors you have fame, you have power, be satisfied with what you have how does what the Pandavas have make any difference to you so Dhritarashtra gives this good advice he says, Duryodhana tells him that all my wealth has no meaning for me as long as it is less than the wealth of the Pandavas so he had actually when we become envious of someone, when we compete with someone we are unwittingly making our own success and not just success, our own self worth dependent on someone else and this is actually the formula for insecurity and misery if we want to make ourselves miserable, the easiest way to do that is by comparing ourselves with others and unfortunately today’s society and today’s culture it specialises in showing us all the things that we don’t have in today’s culture advertisement is so common, so pervasive that many of us may not even realise that just 150-200 years ago people lived without any advertisements yes there were local sellers who just verbally told about their products but the kind of advertisements that are there today, we didn’t have so because of the advertisements, now often whenever a product is made quite often as much money as is spent on the product, that much is spent on the advertisement or sometimes even more than that and the reason for this is that a majority of our desires today are not our own desires they are the desires that are induced within us by the corporate controlled media, Oscar Wilde he said that fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to change it every 6 months fashion is a form of ugliness normally fashion is considered a form of beauty, if you are fashionable you are beautiful but what is considered fashionable today, after a few months it becomes old fashioned and if we are wearing or using something that is old fashioned that is considered uncool, that is considered ugly and even if it is good we are forced to give it up in order to not look old fashioned so it’s a form of ugliness in that sense that it becomes intolerable within 6 months and in this way the consumer economy runs on where the propaganda is that the consumer is the king but actually the consumer is the consumed the consumers money is consumed by the corporate controlled desires corporate driven desires which just force us to get more and more and more and more.
Now there is nothing wrong with economic prosperity Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha, the Vedic culture these are 4 Purusharthas, so earning money and acquiring material prosperity Artha and Kama that is fine, but when these are themselves made the only goals of life, then we keep pursuing things and we never get happiness from it Today’s society is often characterised by what is called a rat race Now the problem with the rat race is not that so many rats are racing the problem with the rat race is that even if we win the rat race we still remain rats that means actually nothing changes we may achieve something, we may get something but after getting it still there is always something else to get and there are again so many people who are racing to get that So unless our consciousness our definition of success is changed, we will just keep going on this treadmill trying to get more and more and more and more and we will never get happiness in a lasting sense. We get some things and some new things some titillation will be there, but there will be no happiness It will be a recipe, like Duryodhana was perpetually dissatisfied not only when he did not have when his cousins, when the Pandavas had a bigger kingdom than he had, at that time he was dissatisfied but even after he very unscrupulously he stole away the kingdom of the Pandavas and then he went to the forest, they were exiled to the forest, so they were practically like beggars and he was reigning in supremacy, but even then he was not satisfied he was thinking that what is the use of my prosperity if the Pandavas don’t see it and so he thought I have to show them my prosperity and when they see how I am enjoying and they see how they are living in poverty then their eyes will be filled with envy for me and that will be the success of my life so he took all his chariots and his treasures and his horses and his elephants and his queens and with all of them he went to the forest and there he wanted to brag all his power but unfortunately, fortunately for the Pandavas unfortunately for him, what happened is he trespassed into the area of the Celestials and some higher beings, some warriors more powerful than him, the Gandharvas, they attacked him and when they attacked him, he fought fiercely but he was completely overpowered and defeated and when he was defeated he was arrested by the Gandharvas and for him he was a proud king for him to be arrested and imprisoned and shackled all this happened right in front of the Pandavas so he wanted that the Pandavas should see his power and feel envious and feel humiliated but instead what happened was he himself was arrested, he himself was bound and he couldn’t help himself, none of his friends, Karna was his very good friend but when Karna was defeated by the Gandharvas, Karna ran away from there and he deserted him and then eventually the Pandavas, Arjuna and Bhima, the two part of the Pandavas of whom he was most envious, they came and rescued him and that rescue, rather than feeling rescued and grateful, he became even more miserable so actually at the end of it, although he was rescued he came back to the same old thing when he was rescued, he was completely shattered his friends told him, at least you are saved what is the use of my life when I have been shown to be lesser than those who are my enemies and at that time he decided to commit suicide and he sat down to fast to death so essentially, no matter how much he achieved when he had less than his opponents, when he had more than his opponents he never knew satisfaction why? because he did not have the right definition of satisfaction satisfaction cannot come simply by our becoming better than someone else even if we become better than someone else how long will we stay better? even if that person does not become better than us, somebody else may become better than us even if we become number one, how long are we going to stay number one? somebody says, I want to become the wealthiest person in my community or I want to become the wealthiest person in my country or I want to become the wealthiest person in my continent or I want to become the wealthiest person in the world or I want to become the wealthiest person in the world’s history and by the time one pursues such desires, one becomes history The time comes and we die and everything is taken away from us. So this idea of getting more and more and more when that is our definition of success we set ourselves up for frustration, for perpetual dissatisfaction.
So one aspect of pleasure is get, the other is beget. So, beget means that we all have a natural desire, it is a biological desire induced within us that we want to reproduce and continue our own existence through our project. This is a desire that is there in all living beings, in all living beings they reproduce and through the reproduction the species goes on generation after generation.
Now in human beings, this desire to beget is associated with far more drama than is the similar desire in other species. Now, a he-dog and a she-dog beget, a he-elephant and a she-elephant beget, but he-dog does not compose a song, oh this she-dog has ditched me and my heart is broken and I am thinking of committing suicide. So the process of reproduction remains the same, but associated with it in the human life there is a huge amount of emotions, that extent is not there in any other species.
And the reason for this is that we human beings have a more developed consciousness, when in the lower species relationships are formed, yes there is affection, but largely the relationships are formed for functional purposes, yes there is bonding so that there is the functional purposes are served, but we human beings we want to live for something just much more than our bodily functions. So when we form relationships we long for lasting relationships and quite often the very thing that we hope will give us great pleasure, that often is the source of the greatest suffering. The Bhagavatam calls this the reverse effect principle, Krishna also talks about this in the Bhagavad Gita, yathag agre amritopamam parinahume vishaniva, says that which tastes like nectar in the beginning will taste like poison in the end, this is the reverse effect, we think what will give us pleasure it often gives us frustration and we see that quite often the very relationships which we go into with the greatest expectations, those are the relationships which often cause the greatest disappointment, the greatest frustrations.
Now why is that? That is because again we are under utilising our potential for relationships, what does that mean? The Bhagavad Gita explains that we are at our core spiritual beings, that our essence is not physical and modern science is also increasingly recognising that all of us we have a capacity for consciousness, if somebody asks you do you exist, what kind of question is this? Now obviously I exist, yes we all exist, now this table also exists, but this table doesn’t know that it exists, we don’t just exist we are aware of our existence, not only are we aware of our existence, we also question the nature of our existence, now all living beings they live, but no other living being asks questions such as why am I living, what is the purpose of my life, all the species other than the human species they live for fulfilling their biological instincts, these biological instincts are four, the Mahabharata says aahar, nidra, bhaya and maithu, the eating, sleeping, mating and defending, these four are the primary instincts which drive all living beings and they drive us humans too, but our human life we also want to do something more, so we have higher consciousness and this consciousness makes us ask fundamental questions, all branches of knowledge have developed because of the human capacity to ask questions, Newton observed a fruit falling, if a monkey had been sitting there, the monkey would just have picked a fruit and eaten it and gone away, not just a monkey, most people would have also done the same thing, millions of people have seen fruits falling, millions of people just picked up the fruit and ate it, but Newton when he saw the fruit falling, he asked questions, okay what made this fruit fall, and then that led to the development of, to the discovery of gravity, actually he did not exactly discover gravity, gravity is already existing, but the mathematical formulation that’s what he came up with, so in a sense science and spirituality run along parallel tracks, Albert Einstein said that all religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree of human knowledge, sometimes people say seeing is believing, if you show me God, if you show me soul, I’ll believe in this, otherwise why should I believe it, actually if Newton had said seeing is believing, then we would not have most of science, isn’t it, all of science essentially progresses by postulating invisible principles for visible observations, the visible observation is a fruit fell, now gravity is invisible, so generally when knowledge progresses, human knowledge progresses by moving from visible phenomena to invisible principles, and this progression from the tangible to the intangible, from the visible to the invisible, it applies in science, it also applies in spirituality, now the invisible is not unreasonable, just like there is a principle of gravity, it is entirely reasonable, because we can have a whole theory, rational theory explaining gravity, similarly that at our core there is a spiritual essence, this is not just some unreasonable belief, actually scientists have found that no matter how much we probe the brain, now there is no single point in the brain which is the source of consciousness, as I said that all of us we not only exist, but we are also aware of our existence, so for example you are looking at me, I am looking at you, now you are aware, now this, if I look at the computer, the computer is not aware that I am looking at it, nor is any object, which any material object is aware of it, so what is it that makes us aware, how does matter develop the capacity to experience matter, if there is a, if say after this programme there is a feast, and in that there is some sweet, say some gulab jamun or something is there, now the gulab jamun does not know that it is sweet, the gulab jamun does not know that it is delicious, when it is placed on my tongue, it is I who tasted delicious, so if I were just a material creature, then how do I, which is one form of matter, get the capacity to experience matter, so actually it is not matter that experiences matter, it is consciousness that experiences matter, and consciousness comes from a non-material source, there is a Nobel laureate neurophysicist, Dr. Wilder Penfield, he is a pioneer of brain surgery, in 40 years he did various kinds of brain surgery, and he examined the brain to see where is consciousness, now scientists have found that certain parts of the brain are connected to certain bodily functions, so for example, if a pro, we know that, say for example, the parietal lobe of the brain is connected with say the motor nervous system, so if a particular part of the brain is activated and the hand raises, so he did an experiment, now he asked the subject to raise his hand, he asked what happens, yes I raise my hand, put your hand down, then he put electrodes in the brain and electrochemically activated that exact part of the brain, and the hand went down, and he asked the subject what happened, he said my hand went down, did you raise your hand, he says no, I did, you raised my hand, he deactivated the electrodes, the hand went down, and then he asked what happened, he says my hand went down, did you put your hand down, he says no, I did, you did, so now no matter whichever other part of the brain Dr. Penfield, he activated, no part of the brain’s activation would give him, give the subject the feeling that I am raising the hand, so to give an example of what this means, suppose this is a computer, there is a printer next to it, and there is a print button on the computer, now as soon as the print button is pressed, then the print hand of the printer will start moving, so the print button is connected with the print hand motion, just like a particular part of the brain is connected with the hand motion, so now in the second case, so say if this is my computer, I can press the print button or someone else can press the print button, either way when the print button is pressed, the printer hand will move, now in the case of that experiment, in the second case, it was Dr. Penfield who pressed the print button, that means it was he who activated that part of the brain through the electrode, and the hand went up, so in the second case, it was Dr. Penfield who activated it, in the first case, who activated it, in the first case, so the brain is simply an instrument for consciousness, the brain is not the source of consciousness, so after 40 years of brain study, Dr. Penfield concluded that the source of consciousness is extra cerebral, the source of consciousness is extra cerebral, extra cerebral is out of the brain, consciousness does not come from the brain, the brain is the channel by which consciousness is manifested with the body, but it is not the source of consciousness, that source the Bhagavad Gita explains is, avinashitu tadviddhi ye na sarvam idam tatam vinashyam avyayasyasya nakashchit kartum arhati, Bhagavad Gita says that that which pervades the whole body, that consciousness is coming from an indestructible source, that source is the Atma, so the Atma, the soul, it is not just a religious belief, it is the fundamental entity that explains not only consciousness, it explains our capacity for seeking and finding explanations, if we did not have consciousness, we would not be able to do anything, there will be no science, there will be no religion, there will be nothing at all existing, so Newton is lauded because he asked the question, why did the apple fall, how did the apple fall, spirituality asks us to ask the question, why does the apple exist at all, why do I exist at all, so when we go to more fundamental questions, that is when the spiritual search begins and takes off seriously, so we human beings are at our core spiritual beings and as souls we are eternal and we are meant for eternal life and we are meant for eternal love, the soul is an eternal part of God, Krishna explains in Bhagavad Gita 15th chapter 7th text that all souls are my eternal parts, so the part is naturally meant to harmonise with the whole and when the part is harmonised with the whole, the part is naturally happy, now we are meant to be a part but unfortunately presently we are apart, we are a part of Krishna but unfortunately we are apart from Krishna and because of that Manah Shashtani Riyani, Prakriti Sthani Karshati, with the senses and the mind, Karshati we struggle, now we want to get more and more things and we are never satisfied, now we want to form more and more relationships and yet we are never satisfied, so get beget and then there is forget, what does forget mean here in this context, that actually much of technological progress today is centred on creating newer and newer ways to help people forget the pointlessness of their existence, much of entertainment today, what is that entertainment? It is, this was enjoyable, when people say something enjoyable, what it means is that if something helps them forget the emptiness, the pointlessness, the boredom of their life, this is enjoyed, so if somebody is watching a movie and if you look at a movie 50 years ago, 100 years ago, maybe there was a little bit fighting in the movies, now there is a big explosion, that was fun, why I like that? Because as the inner emptiness becomes more and more, the external stimulation has to become more and more jolting, then there is some relief from the inner emptiness, otherwise we just don’t feel any sort of relief or solace, so most forms of entertainment are simply means of forgetting the ennui, the emptiness of routine life, so for example, when people go to watch movies, yes, entertainment can be wholesome, it can be meaningful and it can refresh us, but often entertainment today is not a means for refreshing ourselves, so that we can face the reality of life, often entertainment becomes an escape from life itself, to try to forget about life, so for example, if people are watching a movie and there is some romantic scene going on, so now what exactly are people doing? Now, actually when somebody watches a romantic scene, it is basically second-hand enjoyment, second-hand enjoyment means somebody else is enjoying and everyone else is imagining, if I was there, it would be so nice, so it is, that means the enjoyment that the media promises us, buy this, get this, eat this, enjoy this, then you will be happy, so first the media tells us, do this and we will be happy, and when we don’t get it, we are not happy even after getting it, then we further are shown images of others getting it and becoming happy, that’s why often when people watch movies or any form of entertainment, they also like to eat, one of the main causes of obesity is people are, when they are sitting in front of TV or movies or watching and they are eating, so what happens is, when we are watching something, everything there is second-hand, everything else is in one sense not real, so there has to be some real enjoyment, so just keep munching, keep eating something and the end result of this is, you want to forget, but what we get is regret, regret means that at the end of it, what did I achieve in my life? No, I went along the path of success that was charted for me, but I may be successful, but I am not happy, I am not fulfilled, I am still feeling that something vital is missing in my life, so this regret is something, if it comes late in life, it may well be too late, so if we can recognise early that this chart, this career chart or this life journey that is in one sense plotted out for us, do this, do this, do this, do this, but are we going to necessarily become happy by this? Is this going to be fulfilling for us? If we ask this question, the Vedanta Sutra says, Athato Brahma Jitya Nisar, enquire about ultimate reality, in the Bhagavad Gita at the start, Arjuna faced such a crisis, he felt that even if I win a kingdom, even if I win the biggest kingdom, which is the dream of kings, he said, that will not satisfy me. He says, internally, grief is drying me up completely, and externally acquiring more and more things, acquiring a huge kingdom is not going to relieve my internal grief, so if a patient is sick, and a patient is in pain, doctors give two things, there is a painkiller to immediately deal with the pain, to minimise the pain, and there is a proper medicine, antibiotic or whatever medicine for curing the disease, and when both are given properly, the patient gets relief from pain and also moves forward towards becoming cured. But suppose, now painkillers are often not very expensive, they are relatively, as compared to medicines, they may be very cheap, and the patient goes to a doctor and says, this painkiller, I just take this painkiller, my pain goes away.
This doctor unnecessarily wants to take my money, that’s why he gives this medicine. And the patient doesn’t take the medicine at all, just takes the painkiller. What will happen? There will be relief, but only temporarily.
The painkiller doesn’t cure the pain, it covers the pain. And while the pain is covered superficially, internally, the disease is becoming worse and worse and worse. And when the disease worsens, at that time, there is a greater dosage of painkiller that is required.
And eventually, one may take more and more doses of painkillers, but a time comes when the disease becomes so bad that no amount of painkiller can help at that time. So, in our life, the material progress, material success is like the painkiller. And spiritual growth, spiritual success is the real medicine.
So, both are required in balance. If a patient is sick and there is no painkiller given, then the patient will be in mortal pain. Similarly, in our life, if our material necessities are not there, if the basic necessities like food, clothing, shelter are not there, they are, that causes great misery, that is intolerable.
Yes, and some people may say that there are so many people hungry in this world. And that is a big problem in life. Yes, that is a big problem, no doubt.
At the same time, there are the people who are hungry, who are suffering. But there are also many people in this world who are well fed. Are they all happy? So, absence of food is a problem.
But the presence of food is not the formula for happiness. Once we have food, we want other things in life. And those other things we do not have, we do not have.
So, material needs, our bodily needs, they are like painkillers. When the painkiller is not there, there is pain. But the painkiller itself does not solve the problem.
So, it is not that the painkiller is to be stopped, but we should not stop with the painkiller. So, we need to progress in material life and that is something we should naturally do in the course of our life and our career. But if we pursue success in terms only of material success, then we are only taking the painkiller, we are not taking the treatment.
And the result of that is, we over time start wanting more and more painkillers. We get one thing material, and we want something better and we want a better material thing. And actually, there is no lasting satisfaction.
So, at our core, we are spiritual beings, as I said, and the soul has a natural loving relationship with God, with Krishna. And when we use our abilities, when we use our intelligence, when we use our resources to cultivate that loving relationship with Krishna, then our heart gets deep fulfilment. Because our deepest need is a need to love and be loved.
Even when we acquire a lot of things, we may acquire education, we may acquire a position, we may acquire possessions. Our hope is that by acquiring these things, we will become more lovable for others. We think that a man may think if I have a very good job, then I can get an attractive spouse.
A woman may think that if I look very good, I may get an attractive spouse, a good husband or whatever. The idea is that we acquire things because we think that getting those things will make us more lovable. And yes, often getting things gets us more attention.
But quite often, that attention is not towards us. It is towards the things that we have. And when people are attracted, not to the wealthy, but to the wealth of the wealthy, people are not attracted to the beautiful, but to the beauty of the beautiful.
So, when that with age, say the beauty starts going away, or because of circumstances, the wealth goes away, then those same people feel utterly desolate, because no one cares for them. But still, always one person cares for them and that is God. Krishna, He doesn’t love us for the things we have.
He loves us for who we are. We are eternally connected with Him. We are His precious parts.
And He always loves us. In fact, He loves us so much, the Bhagavad Gita says, He is always present with us in our heart to act as our guide, as our escort. He is close to us, right in our hearts.
And from there, He guides us. And actually, Krishna loves us, not just for who we are, He loves us for who He is. He is eternally loving.
And even if we may be sinful, even when we may be of a character which is not very attractive, still Krishna loves us. His love for us is dependent on who He is. He is all-attractive, all-loving, supreme person.
And when we direct our love towards Him, when we learn to love Him, then we start experiencing a mystical, non-material enrichment. We start experiencing a higher fulfilment, an inner peace, an inner fulfilment that does not depend on externals. And that connection with Krishna is best established through Bhakti Yoga.
Yoga is becoming increasingly popular in the world. And that is primarily seen as a means of sitting in some postures, doing some exercises by which you can make the body more fit, more attractive. And that is the preliminary aspect of Yoga.
The essence of Yoga is not just physical fitness or physical appeal. The essence of Yoga goes beyond the physical. For a spiritual purpose, the word Yoga means essentially to connect.
Yoga, the Sanskrit root means to connect. So, Yoga is that process which connects us, consciousness with the supreme consciousness, which connects the soul with the super-soul, which connects the part with the whole. And that Bhakti Yoga is the essential treatment for the heart.
It is the medicine that can cure all kinds of dissatisfaction and frustration. So, the easiest way to practise Bhakti Yoga is by chanting the names of God. So, we recited this mantra, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Ram, Hare Ram, Ram Ram, Hare Hare.
This mantra is actually a means by which we directly connect with God. So, just as when we love someone, we naturally remember them. And one aspect of remembering them is we remember their name, because we identify that person by their name.
So, imagine a movie in which a boy is proposing to a girl. And he says, I love you. By the way, I forgot your name.
The name is the basic identity. Somebody forgets the name. But any protestations of love are very suspicious at that time.
So, a name is the basic identity of a person. So, when we remember someone, we naturally call out their name. When we love someone, we naturally connect with them through their names.
So, similarly, when we connect with God, we connect with him by chanting his names. So, when we chant his names, our consciousness becomes connected with him. So, the spiritual sound is different from material sound.
God’s name is a spiritual sound and spiritual sound is like a elevator for our consciousness. It is just like if we sit, if we climb into an elevator, we don’t have to do anything automatically. We go from the ground floor, we may go 10th floor, 100th story, wherever it is, we need to go, we can rise.
All that we need to do is just stay in the elevator. So, like that, when we chant the holy names, when we practise this process of mantra meditation, then we situate our consciousness in the sound of the holy name and our consciousness gets elevated, elevated upwards, upwards. And when our consciousness is elevated upwards, we can look at life with greater maturity, with better perspective.
If we are on the ground, a skyscraper appears to be very big. But if we are high above in a plane, the skyscraper appears not very big. Similarly, when we face problems in life, if we are all alone, and we are at a material level of consciousness, this problem is so big, I can’t deal with it.
But if you are connected with God, if we chant his holy names, our consciousness rises upwards. And the same problem that seemed imposing earlier, it appears not such a big problem. It is said that don’t tell God how big your problems are.
Tell your problems how big God is. So, that happens when we chant the holy names. When we connect, we chant the holy names, internally, the dynamics shift.
Rather than we feeling ourselves dwarfed in front of big problems, we realise that big problems are dwarfed in front of God’s greatness. And then we can more intelligently, more maturely work to find solutions for whatever problems we have. So, the process of Bhakti Yoga is not just about ultimate solutions.
Ultimately, our heart longs for love and Bhakti Yoga connects our heart with God, Krishna, who is the reservoir of all love. And thereby, it cures our heart disease of dissatisfaction and frustration. But along with that, Bhakti Yoga also enables us to get the mental calm and clarity by which we can deal with immediate problems also better.
So, in this way, Bhakti Yoga is all-encompassing programme. It helps us to take care of our material and spiritual sideboard. That’s why at the end of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna, or rather the conclusion of the Bhagavad Gita is that, यत्र योगेश्वरः कृष्णो यत्र पार्थो धनुद्र तत्रश्रीद विजयों भूति धुर्वानी थिर्मतिर्म। Wherever there is Krishna and wherever there is Arjuna, there, there is victory, there is success, there is prosperity.
The Bhagavad Gita has a very beautiful symbolism over here. Now, it is described यत्र पार्थो धनुद्र धनुद्र is Arjuna who had picked up his bow and who was fighting with the bow. So, at the start of the Bhagavad Gita, it is described that Arjuna cast aside his bow, being rejected.
विश्रुञ्जिसशरं चापं शोकसं वीगन मानसः Being overwhelmed by distress, he put aside his bow, saying, I can’t fight. नयोचेति गोविन्दम् उक्त्वातू श्रीद भभुवान। He said, I can’t fight. He gave up.
But by the end of the Bhagavad Gita, he regained his heart. He picked up his bow and he was ready to fight again. So, actually, Arjuna’s Gandiva bow represents, it symbolises our determination.
In this world, when we face problems, we lose determination, we lose heart, we feel like giving up. But when we hear the Bhagavad Gita’s message of immortal spiritual love, when we understand our own eternal spiritual identity and we redirect our life spiritually, then our morale is restored. Arjuna picked up his bow and was ready to fight.
We all also, we may not have to have physical martial battles with anyone, but we also have our fights in life. We have to deal with so many problems in life. So, those fights, our morale is restored when we hear the spiritual wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita and we can march ahead confidently through life.
So, I’ll summarise, then we can have a few questions. I started by talking about how none of us wants to waste time. We don’t want to waste anything, in fact.
But the Bhagavad Gita says, one who lives unspiritually, such a person wastes one’s entire life. Why does the Bhagavad Gita say that? To understand that, what does wasting of life mean? We discussed the four points, get, beget, forget and regret. So, get, our current society, current culture makes us think I have to get this and get that and get that and only then I’ll become happy.
But no matter how much we get, there is always so much more that is dangled in front of us. And it’s an endless chase. Even if we win the rat race, we still remain rats.
So, all that we get by this is simply dissatisfaction. And in the end, we discussed about how we get, the urge to reproduce is there in all living beings. But in human beings, we strive, we invest a lot of emotions in our relationships and we want much more through our relationships.
Unfortunately, often the relationships that promise great happiness, they often cause great distress. That is because we humans are not meant to just live for getting or begetting. Our life is meant for a higher purpose.
We have more developed consciousness. With the developed consciousness, we through science have moved from visible phenomena to invisible principles. Similarly, in spirituality, we can move from the visible to the invisible.
The visible is that we experience things. We taste, we see, we touch. Then the invisible is where is this capacity to experience coming from? That is coming from the soul.
I talked about Dr Penfield’s experiments with the brain and that the source of consciousness is extra cerebral. So, the soul is a part of God. And the soul can get satisfaction only when it is harmonised with God in love.
This is a part needs to be connected with the whole. So, then what does this mean? If we do not do this, we try to get and beget and we try to get satisfaction. When we do not do that, when we live only at the material level, we do not get satisfaction.
Then from the material level, we are meant to rise to the spiritual level. But instead, from the material level, we go into an illusory material level. That means various forms of entertainment, where we create an imaginary world in which we watch others acting out the fantasies and try to get secondhand enjoyment through that.
So, most of entertainment today is primarily a means to forget the emptiness and the misery of life. But this only leaves us further frustrated. We saw that how there are now people want more and more, more stimulating, more violent or more gross forms of entertainment.
Why? Because it does not satisfy. And why does it not satisfy? We discussed how when there is a disease, there is a painkiller which may treat the pain immediately, but there is a medicine which cures. So, material progress is like the painkiller and spiritual progress is like the medicine.
You need a balanced programme of both. A patient who takes only the painkiller will need more and more dosages and eventually no dosage will be enough. So, similarly, if you go on the path of only material success, material progress, we will always be craving for more and more and more and eventually no matter how much we get, we will not be satisfied.
So, people want more and more forms of aggressive, intrusive forms of entertainment and still they are not satisfied. So, the balanced programme is of both material and spiritual, both balanced. And that is offered in Bhakti Yoga.
When one just tries to live a life of get, beget and forget, then the end is regret. At the end of our life, we feel that what did I achieve with my life? I did so much. I worked so hard.
I did all the things which were promised, which were told to me will give me happiness and still I am empty now. So, rather than living a life of regret, we can ask where is my urge for happiness coming from? And we can strive to fulfil that urge. And that urge comes from our soul.
So, Bhakti Yoga offers us a programme by which we get both the spiritual treatment and the pain killer. That is, at a spiritual level, through the activities of Bhakti, we connect with Krishna. Especially the easiest way to connect with Krishna is through chanting his holy names.
It elevates our consciousness to the spiritual level. And when our consciousness is elevated, even the problems that are there in our life, they do not overwhelm us. Rather, we can deal with them more calmly.
We do not feel dwarfed by the problems. Rather, when we are sheltered by God’s greatness, we see the problems as manageable. And when we thus live in the light of God’s love, then we live always encouraged and confident.
So, Arjuna lost his morale on seeing the battle that he had to fight. He put aside his bow. But by hearing the Bhagavad Gita’s message, he raised his bow and is ready to fight.
So, Arjuna’s bow represents our morale, our determination. That may be lost when we face, when we are confronted with many problems in life. But when we turn towards Krishna’s message in the Bhagavad Gita and illumine our life with that message of spiritual love, then whatever be the problems, we become enlivened, we become enthused, we become encouraged to march forward in life.
Thank you very much. Are there any questions? Yes, Preeti? How do we know the balance between the painkiller and the medicine? Balance is dynamic. It is not static.
That means, say if you are riding a cycle or a bike, then the normal balance state is a vertical state. But if I have to turn right, then the balance state for the vehicle, for the bike is a tilted state. So, only if I stay tilted, then I can turn and go towards the right.
But if I stay tilted continuously, then I just go around in a circle. So, then after being tilted, then I have to tilt towards the left and again come back vertical. And I come back to the balance state.
So, like that, when we are travelling along, the balance will not be one rigid vertical position. Sometimes towards the left, sometimes towards the right. And overall, if you have a clear direction, this is the direction I have to go.
If there is a traffic jam over here, I may go left, I may go right. And again, I will turn the other direction and keep moving on. So, when we think of balance, the problem often is that we look for balance in a rigid or static sense.
This is what I will do in my material life. This is what I will do in a spiritual life. And that is how I can have a balance.
But life does not work out like that. So, at different stages in our life, balance will mean different things. So, at our particular position, what balance means, we have to introspect, we can consult our seniors, the Vedic culture talks about life being divided into four ashramas.
And that is also a way in which the life spiritual and material side are balanced together. Today, the exact ashram system is not there, or it’s not easily replicable. But the principle remains that being balanced in material and spiritual life means that we don’t keep ourselves perpetually materially dissatisfied.
Nor do we, in the pursuit of material satisfaction, neglect our spirituality. So, there are some basic spiritual practises, spiritual standards, spiritual practises we follow. And then, based on the circumstances and necessities of our material life, sometimes we may have to give more time, sometimes we may give less time.
So, a simple example could be, say, if somebody is a student, and students, their exams are there, at that time, they need to focus on their studies, they may not be able to practise so many spiritual activities at that time. So, that time their spiritual life may go a little slower. But after the exams are over, then they can focus more on spiritual life.
So, our life will go through phases. And we can ourselves find out, if we observe, Shri Prabhupada, in the Upadesha Amrut, Nectar of Instruction, in the introduction, he states that when we come to the mode of goodness, then how to advance further will be revealed from within. That means that we have our spiritual guides, but spiritual guides cannot tell us everything.
No, they are not always there with us. And even if they are always there with us, we are different persons. So, eventually, we learn principles from our spiritual guides.
And then we introspect. This introspection is possible, is beneficial, when we purify ourselves and we are relatively situated in goodness. Then in the mode of goodness, there is inner clarity.
And we can perceive, okay, these are my needs, these are not really my needs. And then we can accordingly decide. So, balance is not a straight formula, nor is it a universal formula.
Different people may require different levels of things in material life. So, for example, somebody has lived in a rural setting, that person can always live in a rural city without many of the modern technologies and still modern facilities and go on with life. But somebody who has, say, lived in an urban setting with many of the facilities of city life, now for them, a simple life is not so simple.
Simple life, trying to live a simple life may itself become such an austerity that spiritual life becomes too difficult after that. So, it is not that spiritual, practising spiritual life does not mean that we put ourselves in a state of material deprivation artificially. It is not putting ourselves in a state of material deprivation.
It is, the more important thing is that we do not put ourselves in the state of perpetual material obsession. So, what is our material need, that is not universal. That is something which we have to individually observe and then we decide.
So, there is no, I cannot give a broad, a specific answer, but the broad principle is, we take guidance and we introspect. And especially for such introspection, it is, it is good to do such introspection when we are relatively in the mode of goodness. So, for example, if you want to decide, maybe writing down our thoughts in a journal, and okay, this is what I feel I need, but this is what I am feeling right now.
But we observe ourselves after a week or after 15 days or after a month, and if our thoughts stay more or less the same, then we understand this is like my stable state. This is not just the ups and downs of the mind, but this is my stable. Now, often, journaling can, writing down our thoughts in a journal, it can act like a snapshot of our mind.
And then, you know, when things are in the mind, they just eat up the mental space, they create congestion, and they do not allow us to think. But we get the thoughts out, that creates some distance between us and the thought, then we can observe. We can more critically evaluate those thoughts.
This is, this makes sense. This is, I am just being too sentimental here. Yeah, and this is, I am being unrealistic here.
We can evaluate our own thoughts and then place them in a proper context. And overall, if we keep observing ourselves for a reasonable period of time, say six months or a year or something like that, by that we will understand what is our overall mental state. And then we can decide, okay, these are my needs.
And these are just, I felt I need this, I need this, that is just a spike of the mind’s desires. I do not have to pay attention to that. And I thought I can do this, but maybe this is too high a level of austerity for me.
So, bhakti is to be sustainable, it has to be practised realistically. Now, we cannot imagine that I have utopian standards, nor can we think that I will postpone bhakti till I get a lot of things in my material life. So, whatever level we are at in material life, we start practising bhakti there itself.
And at the same time, we observe ourselves and learn how much we need in material life. And then we move onwards. Does it answer your question? Thank you.
Anyone have a question? Yes, I remember the question. So, the question is that, I had mentioned in yesterday’s class that if you have problems, you should not focus too much on problems, you should focus on just practising bhakti. And that will help us to rise above the problem.
But then sometimes when there is an urgent problem, then we feel that let me solve this problem first, then I can focus on bhakti. So, if we try to leave the problem unattended, then our thoughts are caught up in that problem and we cannot focus on bhakti. Yeah, it depends on the nature of the problem also.
If something is an easily fixable problem, some small thing needs to be done, we can do it. But often, the problems that consume our mind are also the problems whose solution is like a mirage. It means I do this, it will solve, the problem will get solved, but it will solve it, but something else comes up, something else comes up, something else comes up.
And in that sense, it just keeps going on and on. And so, we can decide, okay, this is a problem I am facing, and I will put this much time and energy dealing with this. And then I have done my part.
And I will put my faith in Krishna. And I will focus on practising bhakti. Then later on, I can come and deal with the problem also.
Because at one level, material problems, certain issues are there which need urgent attention. So, if some emergencies come up, some crisis comes up, definitely at that time we should give attention. We cannot say that I will just chant Hare Krishna.
We have to do practical things to solve the problem also. But at the same time, we also need to know that if every day an emergency is coming, then the problem is not the emergency, the problem is maybe our own disorganisation, our own carelessness because of which emergencies are coming. So, there has to be some broad structure in our life in which occasionally if emergencies come up, we give them immediate attention.
But if we have a broad overall structure for our life, then there is time for our spiritual life, there is a time for our material life. And the main point which I was making is when we have allocated time for our devotional activities, at that time, if we let thoughts of problems enroach into the time for our spiritual life, then we will never have time for spiritual life. Because problems will always be there.
Now, waiting for problems to be solved in this world is like waiting for the waves in the ocean to stop so that one can jump and swim in the ocean. The waves will never stop. So, like that, the waves of material problems will keep coming.
But we decide this much level of attention I will give, this much I will try to do for solving the problem. If it doesn’t happen, let me focus on my bhakti and then I will come back and later deal with the problem. And many times we will find that if we really connect with Krishna, then we can solve the problems much better.
See, the problem is usually not just the situation. We just get one insight to deal with that situation. Now, a big problem can be solved sometimes within minutes.
So, sometimes that insight may come by our connection with Krishna. So, problems are solved not just by the amount of time that we spend in it, but also the clarity of thought that we have when we are dealing with the problems. And if we wholeheartedly absorb ourselves in Krishna, then our thoughts become much clearer and we can think better and deal with the problems.
Does this answer your question? Thank you very much for your kind attention. Hare Krishna.