Govardhana Puja – Ecological disaster originates in spiritual disaster

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
on the sacred occasion of Govardhan Puja, let us meditate on how this festival has relevance today, certainly just hearing about the festival purifies us, and it elevates us, where we see ecological disaster all around us, the world stands on the brink of eco-suicide, globally humanity is doing such destruction in the world, so at that time if we contemplate this festival, we get a deeper understanding of its relevance, the whole Govardhan and Vrindavan at large was the most picturesque ecological harmony, everything is perfectly in order, and what happens, the egomania of one person, Indra disrupts everything, he showers such devastating rains that everything, the homes, the cow sheds, the people, the animals, everybody gets disrupted, they get mortally fear struck, and they are on the verge of devastation, if it had not been for Krishna’s intervention, the whole ecology of Vrindavan would have been destroyed, so just as Indra’s egomania was responsible for the ecological disaster that happened after the Govardhan Puja, similarly modern people have got their own egomania, we think just as Indra thought that the resources of Vrindavan were meant for his enjoyment, similarly modern humanity in modern times has assumed that all the resources of the ecology are meant for our enjoyment, and with this assumption we have used our technological power to indiscriminately plunder the ecological resources of the planet, and wherever we feel that something is not according to our plan, we have recklessly and thoughtlessly rushed in to make changes, and we have created such disasters by our indiscriminate technological intervention and attempt to bring domination on material nature, on ecology, so the ecological problems that humanity has seen today are the natural inevitable reactions that will come from material nature due to our abuse of nature, as long as we abuse nature we will be abused by nature, so just as Krishna mercifully and gracefully saved the Brajwasis, similarly Krishna can intervene even now, Krishna may not lift a mountain, but actually the mountain that really causes the ecological disaster today is the mountain of our own egomania, of our own false ego, and our spiritual wisdom and our devotional life is lost and lost under the mountain of our false ego, and if we pray to Krishna for guidance and we take insights from his wisdom as given in the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedic literature, then we get the strength by Krishna’s grace to reject the false ego, to reject the assumption that we are the controllers and the world is meant for our pleasure, we understand with spiritual insight that we are not the controllers but the cooperators, and we are meant to cooperate with nature and cooperate with the Lord of nature, and then we can live harmoniously, so with this understanding of our position as cooperators not controllers, we can reject the false ego, and then that mountain of false ego which is crushing us, it gets lifted, and that gets changed to the true ego, the true ego is our understanding that we are loving parts of Krishna, and then that understanding shelters us from whatever upheavals happen at the material level, though materially things may not change overnight, and though materially the world will remain ultimately a place of misery, but by taking shelter of our true identity that we are parts of Krishna, we can get shelter from many of the miseries of material existence, and ultimately by Krishna’s grace we can become liberated from material existence and return back to Krishna. So the spiritual disaster is the soul’s devotional propensity getting crushed under the false ego of a mountain like false ego, and the ecological disaster is the false ego infatuated soul indiscriminately tampering and breaking nature for one’s own comfort and pleasure, and the relief comes by a devotional harmonization with the Lord, and Govardhan Puja is an opportunity for us to remember how the Lord has rescued His devotees in the past, and He stands ready to rescue us even today, and by praying to Him we can become free from our egomania, and become filled with the sweet mania of pure devotion as the devotees of Vrindavan are forever filled, and we can follow in their footsteps. Thank you.