Happy New Year – Karmi, Jnani and Bhakti attitudes towards the celebration

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you. Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna.
So, today we will talk about the karmi, the jnani, and the bhakti way of looking at the new year. So, now the new year has started and everybody is wishing each other Happy New Year. And people often have genuine hopes of good coming up in the new year and they fondly wish each other also.
Let the new year bring happiness and newness in each other’s lives. Now, how do we, when we look at the wisdom of the Vedic scriptures, understand this festival and this feeling basically? So, in the Vedic scriptures, there are three approaches that are described. There is the karma marga, there is the jnana marga, and there is the bhakti marga.
And these three are associated with three different worldviews. So, what are these worldviews? The karmi worldview is that this world is for our enjoyment. And just by doing some things better, we will be able to enjoy.
Till now, we may not have got so much enjoyment, but there is so much enjoyment out there available. All that we need to do is just go out, just do a few things, and then we will be able to enjoy. That is the karmi way of enjoying the world, karmi way of looking at the world.
Now, in the karmi also, we will not go into technicalities here. There is the karmi and there is the vikarmi. Karmi means the person who does dharma, artha, kama and moksha, a person who religiously wants to do right activities and thereby get material enjoyment.
A person does dharma, then there is dharma one hopes for artha, and in artha, from artha comes kama. That is how the progression is. And there are also people who just want to enjoy godlessly, that they just want to enjoy in this world.
In the karmis, there are two categories. There are sukarmis and there are vikarmis. Both have the common denominator that both want to enjoy the world, and the way they want to enjoy is different.
One wants to enjoy by following dharma, the other doesn’t care for dharma, cares only for enjoyment. But either way, people want to enjoy. So now, in these two categories, both think that, okay, this world is a place of enjoyment, and I am going to enjoy now.
And their idea is, happy new year. What that means? That in this year that is going to come, I am going to enjoy. My plans for enjoyment will attain success.
And when I succeed, then all the dreams that have not been fulfilled till now, they will become fulfilled. That is the karmi way of looking at life. Now, most of the parties that happen, they are often not just sukarmi, they are vikarmi.
That means people engage in drunken orgies, they do all sorts of immoral activities for the sake of enjoyment. But either way, the idea is, this is how we are enjoying now, at this moment of celebration, and we hope that this is how we will be able to enjoy throughout the new year. There are some people who may be a little more religious, and they may start the new year by praying.
But their prayer is what? Primarily, we will look at these people this attitude more in detail when we come to bhakti part. But either way, the hope is that we will be able to enjoy. And this attitude, the karma attitude is what defines majority of the people today in the world.
Even scientists are actually, or even those who rely on the products of science, that is technology, and those who develop these products, the technologists, or even the scientists who are involved more in applied sciences. So they are also more in the category of karma than on jnana. Karmi is not just defined by the activity, but also the mentality.
And that mentality is that we want to enjoy this world. And by our plans and schemes, we will enjoy. Most of the sciences, and especially the technologies that have grown from the sciences, are based on this belief that the enjoyment that we have not had till now, we will be able to have once we have adequate power and technology.
So science and the scientific applications, they are basically designed to fulfill the karmic worldviews, hope and longing, that is to enjoy in this world. So nowadays, the New Year celebrations may be broadcast using high technology, and they may be spread everywhere. And people may want to enjoy through those technologies.
And they watch others how they are enjoying through those technologies. So this is even science is also part of the karmic way of looking at it. Now, unfortunately, many people find that the New Year turns out to be an anticlimax.
They hope for enjoyment, but afterwards what happens? Oh, the same day goes on. You know, we wake up in the morning, we have to do the same activities again, the same waking up, the same responding to nature, the same battling with the traffic, the same dealing with the problems of the world. So we see that the New Year doesn’t change anything.
The world goes on and life goes on. Externally, the world provides us the same similar kind of problems. Internally, our own mind presents a similar kind of problems.
So often the karmic way of looking at world and hoping for enjoyment turns out to be a bitter disappointment, an anticlimax at best. Sometimes in the hope of enjoyment, people may even do such a daredevilish thing that it ends in disaster also. So that is the karmic way.
Now, the gyani way is to be utterly skeptical, to be dry, intellectual. And somebody may say, what is there to be happy about? You know, what is the happy New Year? If you consider the cosmology, and the sun is at one place, from the modern scientific worldview, the earth is going around the sun. And if you look at the earth going around the sun, what is so special? It is just at different positions and it doesn’t stop at any position.
At all the positions, it just keeps moving around and round and round. So from the point of view of the earth’s motion, no position is especially special. Maybe certain positions are special because they are equinoxes or solstices, but they are more concerned with other cosmological interactions with other bodies in the cosmos.
But from the point of view of the annual year that we celebrate, no position of the earth is special. So that’s why in a circle, how do you say one point is a starting point or ending point or anything like that? It just goes on. So from the point of view of the earth’s position, in its revolutionary orbit around the earth, no position is special.
And that’s why there’s nothing special about the new year intrinsically. It’s just another day in the calendar. It’s just another position on which the earth is in its orbit around the sun.
And the earth has come to that position millions of times in the past. And it will come again also in the future. So what is there to be excited about? How is the earth going from one position to another or returning to a position which it had one year ago? How is that suddenly going to change things? How is that going to make things happy? How is that going to make anything new? The earth has already been in that position before and the earth has already charted the position many times, charted that, gone through that position, charted that path many times.
So how is it going to bring anything special? And therefore, there is no need to get excited about it. And this whole thing is a complete hoax. And this attitude of trying to detach oneself utterly from the world because nothing of the world is special.
This is also taken by some traditions to reject all festivals, in fact, all celebrations. So some people say, what is the use of celebrating one birthday? We have had so many lifetimes that if we look back at all the incarnations that we have had in our past, then practically every day could be a birthday and every day could be a death day. So there’s no need to get excited about it.
So this gyani way is that anything which excites emotions, that has to be pushed away, that has to be neglected. I just look in a critical scrutinizing way and reject whatever causes emotions. And under the cool, clinical, critical, detached vision, reject anything that causes emotion and that way stay utterly unfazed by anything material.
And by rejecting all material emotions, one can attain peace, shanti, shanti, shanti. So the gyani way is the way of rejecting the whole New Year celebration as just so much hoopla over nothing, as just so much bravado, as so much excitement and so much hype about something which is inconsequential. And some people respond to the New Year celebration in this way and to some extent they’re also true that there are many companies who just make a merry business out of the celebrations over the New Year and often they also increase the hype of the celebration so that people will purchase more and that’s how they will be able to earn more.
So New Year cards is one thing. We may give cards to our loved ones and wish them good, wish them well. And that is one thing.
But beyond that, it often becomes a whole industry where people just chase after things and purchase them in the occasion of the New Year, not just to give us gifts, but also New Year purchasing splurges there and then people get fleeced. So to some extent being a little not so carried away by emotions about the New Year may be good. So the gyani way of looking at the New Year can be good if it saves a person from becoming excessively carried away and victimized by emotions, by undue emotions, unrealistic hopes which are going to be dashed and before they are dashed, which may be exploited by others.
Now the karmi way also has its virtue because we cannot live in life without hope. Take hope away from a person and that person may well become a monster if that person lives at all. No, just as we need light, we need heat.
Of course, we need light in the form of energy at least. Sources of energy through which we get food, we get water, we get air. Just as we need these, similarly, we also need hope.
Without hope, a person has no reason to wake up in the morning and walk through life. So we all need hope and the troubles, the obstacles, the reversals of life can sap away at our reserves of hope. It can sap away and it can make us feel what is the point of living? What is the point of struggling? So we all need hope and we all need something to look forward to and something which will help us to make a fresh beginning and the new year offers that hope.
So even the karmi way, if it infuses hope in people who have lost hope, it also has some virtue to it. Now the path of bhakti is the balance medium between karmi path and the jnani path. If we consider a pendulum, a pendulum has two extremes.
One is at one extreme, one thinks that is karma and the other extreme position is jnana and in between is bhakti. So the karma position is the position of, oh, I can enjoy this world. So it is based on romanticization of the world.
Oh, this world is filled with enjoyment. The jnani position is based on the demonization of the world. This world, everything here is out to entangle me.
It’s all a hoax and the more I get attracted, the more I get entangled and I suffer. That is the jnani way. But the bhakti way is balanced.
It takes in the positives of both karmi and jnani and it avoids the negatives of both. So how does that work? In the bhakti way, we understand that hopes are important, that emotions are the ornaments of life. Without emotions, a person can’t live.
So emotions are not negated or rejected. But at the same time, rationality is also valued and with rationality, one is also urged to think seriously. Are our hopes for happiness at the material level realistic? Are they going to be fulfilled? So the uncritical emotionality of jnana is used to look at this world with a slightly critical frame so that one doesn’t get carried away by the emotions and the false hopes of the world hoppers.
At the same time, that critical look is not carried to such an extreme that one rejects all emotions. No, that the devotee who practices devotional service, one who looks at the world through the bhakti view, such a person focuses more on learning how everything can be connected with the ultimate goal of life. So the bhakti way is not to romanticize the world, not to demonize the world, but to utilize the world.
Utilize the world as a path to Krishna, as a means to return to Krishna. Utilize the world. So how do we utilize the world? Whatever can be used in the service of Krishna, we use that.
And by using it in Krishna’s service, we make spiritual advancement and we taste higher spiritual happiness even in this world, while also doing good to others. So if a person has a good singing voice, the karmi way is to think that, oh, I will sing and I’ll become famous and I’ll enjoy. The jnani way is, what is this singing? What is there to sing about? What is there to celebrate about? Ultimately, you sing and you get excited about things, but ultimately everything is going to end in death.
It’s all useless. So the bhakti way is in between. Bhakti way is that, yes, we have been given singing, I have been given the ability to sing or I have been given, then I should use it, but use it to go towards the ultimate truth.
So a devotee will use the singing ability to sing about Krishna, to sing about spiritual truths and to develop spiritual music and be a part of a spiritual culture that can help people move towards the highest truth and where spiritual culture is not always possible, then one can have sattvic culture, a culture that is based on balance and moderation and one can have that kind of utilization of one’s talents also. So the world doesn’t have to be rejected by demonizing it, nor does it have to be put on a high pedestal by romanticizing. We utilize it.
The balanced way is, okay, whatever in this world evokes emotions, we can see how that thing and the emotion that are evoked can be utilized to further our spiritual advancement. So on the happy new year, a devotee thinks, okay, what is actually new and what is actually happy? What is actually that which brings happiness? So the truly new thing is, actually it is Krishna who is truly new. Actually, nitya-nav-navaya-mana the Bhaktira Sama Sindhu described that Krishna, one of his characteristics is nitya-nav-navaya-mana, is always new, he’s ever fresh, ever youthful and by relating with him, by meditating on him, by serving him, nava-nava-rasa-dhamanya-udhyatam-rantam-asit as Yamanacharya says, I’m experiencing nava-nava-rasa-dhamanya-udhyatam I’m experiencing new new tastes every day and that is actually truly new.
In material life, the new that we get is actually false newness. Externally there are new things, I may have a new mobile, I may have a new laptop, I may have a new car or there may be some new technology that itself come down and develop. The externally that things are new, that many things new come up but all the things are externally new, the experiences that they provide internally are old because ultimately all material things, the best experiences that they can provide us at the material level is the pleasures of eating, sleeping, mating, defending and the extensions of those pleasures and they are ultimately all old pleasures.
Now a person may get a new bottle of wine or a person may try to find a new sex partner or whatever, it’s all ultimately the same pleasures. So actually there’s nothing new at the material level essentially speaking. There is new packaging is there but it’s the old stuff, same old stuff.
So as one social commentator said, what is the news? Actually the news is old things happening to new people. Old things happening to new people. In the past, there was an accident over here and now today there’s an accident over here.
In the past, there was a scam over here, now there’s a scam over here. In the past, there was a tsunami over there, now there is a tsunami here. So it’s old things happening to new people.
So actually speaking, at the material level, the hope for newness cannot be fulfilled. It is, the hope is erased and it is frustrated. There are external appearances of newness but internally everything is the same old thing.
As the Bhagavatam says, Again and again, chewing the chewed. But if one turns towards Krishna, then in the relationship with Krishna, although the activities may be the same, they may be the same old activities, we may chant the same Hare Krishna Maha Mantra, we worship the same deities, we read the same Bhagavad Gita, but the experiences are new. Why? Because Krishna is infinite and Krishna is infinite and when we connect with Krishna, as our relationship with Krishna becomes stronger, then we start relishing more and more of Krishna’s glories.
If Krishna is like a vast, vast, vast, vast ocean and filled with ever fresh, ever new nectar and although externally things remain the same, internally newer and newer aspects of Krishna’s sweetness and Krishna’s glory are revealed to a devotee and that’s how a devotee feels great joy and that’s how a devotee moves forward steadily, uninterrupted, relishing newer and newer pleasure. So that’s how the hope for newness, which is cherished in the greetings of new year or in the celebration of new year, that newness will be fulfilled if we can connect with Krishna seriously. If we can come to new levels of commitment in our relationship with Krishna or old commitments which we have, we bring in new levels of seriousness in those commitments and then what will happen by that? We will experience new fulfillment, we’ll go deeper into our relationship with Krishna and experience truly new spiritual pleasures and that’s where truly happiness is to be found.
The happiness of this world is a deception. There is some temporary pleasure but after that there is a disappointment, there is entanglement, there is frustration. So that doesn’t mean we can never be happy.
No, we can be happy if we turn towards Krishna. So the point of this world is to point beyond this world. The point of this world is to point beyond this world.
Point of this world means whatever happens in this, actually it is a reminder, it is a pointer to the ultimate reality that is beyond this world. So the Karami way of looking at this is, oh new year has come, now all our dreams that have never been fulfilled now will be fulfilled. In the new year, I will be happy.
That is looking only at this world and thinking this world will fulfill us and that hope is going to be frustrated. So if we think that the point of this world is only this world, then we’ll be frustrated. On the other hand, if we think the point of this world is to just reject this world entirely and then we don’t know anything clear about what is there in the next world and how that is to be achieved, then our life will become filled with dry abstinence.
We don’t celebrate anything, we don’t enjoy anything and our life is just dry in the name of being philosophical and intellectual and jnani. It’s a very unemotional, unexciting, unfulfilling way of life. So that does not have to be a devotee’s way.
Of looking at things. So when we offer happy new year wishes to others or when we receive happy new year wishes, we don’t share those unrealistic hopes of becoming happy in the new year just by itself. But at the same time, we recognize that is a natural human longing that the joy that has eluded us, it will come to us.
And when we, so when people are wishing us or we are wishing others, we don’t have to be skeptical. Yes, we can have genuine good wishes for others and we can also receive others wishes which are given warmly, sincerely, cordially, genuinely. We can accept them and we can spiritualize them to the extent people are eager to hear.
To that extent, we can also say, now if we really want something new, let’s do something new. Take our spiritual commitment to one level higher and then the happiness that will come in our life will be lasting, will be truly fulfilling. So if we connect with Krishna, then everything of this world, even the new year celebration of this world, the point of this world is to point beyond the world.
Yes, we focus seriously on our bhakti and we use the things that we have, we use the resolutions that we make, we channelize the emotional energy that is generated by the hopes and the expectations generated by the new year and we utilize them to take our seriousness in the connection with Krishna to a higher level. Now, in my book on recession, adversity or opportunity, I quoted about how there are surveys which have been done about how many people are able to keep their resolutions on the new year and what is the best way to keep the new year resolutions. So there was an article in the New York Times about four or five years ago and it was found that generally religious people are more likely to be able to stick to the resolution.
So their idea was that a comparison was done from the 1920s onwards till almost 2010 about how people measure on the willpower index. So there are non-religious secular people and the religious people and it was found that in general, whether it be in terms of abstinence or in terms of persistence, abstinence means not doing, giving up the things which are undesirable and persistence means going on with things which are desirable. On both these scales, abstinence and persistence, it is found that the non-religious people had lower scores and the religious people had higher scores and not only that, if the non-religious people chose to become religious, then their scores improved.
That means if somebody wanted to decide that in the next year, I’m going to give up smoking, then if that person was a non-religious person, the success rate was very less, but if that person became religious and then with a religious commitment, also made a commitment that I’ll give up smoking, the success rate was much higher or on a positive side, somebody decided, now I’m going to exercise regularly every day. So the capacity or the success rate for the religious people was much higher and then for the non-religious people. So the article concluded that if you want to keep your new resolutions, add one more resolution.
What is that resolution? The resolution to increase your spiritual commitments. When we increase our spiritual commitments, we connect with God and when we connect with God, his supreme strength comes to us and by that strength, we become boosted and then we can keep many other commitments also. We can keep many, many other commitments because we will have the internal strength, the internal willpower, the internal wisdom, which comes by connection with God.
So thus, the devotional way is that yes, we increase our commitments to Krishna and when we increase our commitment to Krishna, either in quantity or in quality, we try to do more activities for Krishna or whatever activities we are doing, we try to invest more emotion, do them with more intensity and when we do this, we will find that actually, there is a great satisfaction that comes and that satisfaction will give us inner strength and whatever other resolutions that we make, we’ll be able to keep those resolutions also. The likelihood of our being able to keep those resolutions will increase significantly and that’s how we will truly have a happy new year. So to summarize, we discussed about how the karmi, the jnani and the bhakti way of looking at the new happy new year.
The karmi way is just to be filled with unrealistic hopes that the new year will automatically make things better and happier and newer. It is often frustrated, almost always frustrated and sometimes painfully frustrated. The jnani way is to become utterly unemotional.
It’s all just, the sun is just in one position in its orbit what is so great to be excited about it. The bhakti way is everything in this world can be utilized in the service of God. Don’t romanticize the world, don’t demoralize the world, utilize the world.
And for that purpose, if the new year brings hopes, draws out the emotional energy, then we utilize those hopes and this emotional energy to intensify our relationship with Krishna. We’ll get spiritual strength by that and we’ll intensify our commitments to our other resolutions also. And in this way, our new year can become our upcoming year can become truly new and truly happy.
Thank you very much.