Harmonizing our spiritual and material lives

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So thank you all for coming here today evening and today I will try to discuss on the topic of spirituality and its relationship with our life. So is it an alternative reality? Is it an escape from reality or is it an escape to reality? Now, the word spiritual has many different meanings.
I was just a few months ago in Los Angeles and at Delhi University I was giving a talk and there one student mentioned her conception of spirituality. She said that whenever I smell aromas, I feel very spiritual. So for her, aromatherapy was her conception of spirituality.
So I told her, fine, yes, certainly there are various ways by which we can connect or rise to the spiritual level. But suppose if say, if from Sydney you are driving to say Melbourne, then there are many ways by which you can go from Sydney to Melbourne. We may go by car, we may go by flight, but we need to have a map.
This is Sydney is here, Melbourne is here, this is how I need to go. So once we have a map, then we can choose whichever path we want, whichever mode of transportation that we want. So within spirituality, there is the map and there is the journey.
And many people conceive of the journey without the map. That means, whatever makes them feel good, makes them feel peaceful, makes them feel calm, makes them feel nice, they conceive of that as spiritual. And it may be spiritual, it may not be spiritual.
And how our spiritual longing for something higher, how that is sometimes misdirected and sometimes properly directed. That will be the theme of today’s discussion. All living beings strive to live and they strive to live as well as they can.
So for example, if a sparrow is living in a nest and the sparrow’s nest is on a branch that is shaky, the sparrow may build a nest on a slightly sturdier branch. But at the same time, generation after generation after generation, the sparrow does not necessarily improve its nest with the same kind of nest which it keeps making. We humans on the other hand, we have houses and we need houses.
And we improve houses not just for their functionality, but we improve our residence for its aesthetics, for its appeal. And we may want to move from a small flat to a row house, to a mansion, to a castle, to a villa, whatever. So similarly, with respect to eating, a cow eats grass day after day, generation after generation.
A cow doesn’t think, maybe I should cook my food. Then if I cook the grass, it will taste better. It doesn’t do that.
Whereas we human beings, we cook and there are hundreds of cuisines in the world in which food is cooked in various ways. So through these simple observations, we can understand that we human beings have an innate longing, we have an innate longing for something better, we have an innate longing for something better than what nature naturally offers us. So nature offers us a particular kind of residence, a particular kind of food, but we want things better, more than what nature offers us.
And this longing for something more than what life naturally offers us, this defines and distinguishes human beings from all other species. And paradoxically, this longing for more is often the cause of both progress and regress. More scientific advancement happens because of this desire to improve things.
Now, we all know the famous incident when Newton saw a fruit falling. And when he saw the apple, as it is said, or whatever it was, he saw it falling. Imagine if instead of Newton, at that time, there had been a monkey.
If a fruit had fallen in front of a monkey, what would that monkey have done? Just picked up the food and eaten it. And not just monkey, most human beings would have also done the same thing. Just picked up the food and eaten it.
But Newton thought, why did this food fall? How, what made it fall? And from that enquiry was postulated the law of gravity, which led to the whole significant advancement in science. It set off the scientific revolution. And we live in a radically technologically transformed world today, which is all the result of the momentum that was set off by that one enquiry.
Now, Albert Einstein said that all the religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same human tree. The human tree, as I said, the tree grows and it gives branches. Similarly, the human tree, it, as it grows, as it blossoms, it expands in various directions.
So, it goes into art, it goes into science, it goes into religion. All these are ways in which we humans strive to get more knowledge, more pleasure, more control and more meaning out of our lives. Now, this enquiry about life’s ultimate meaning, which we all want to have, when we want more out of this life, how do we go about getting it? We strive to gain more outer control.
Outer control means, say, we have environment, which may become too cold, and to control it, we have our heating systems, which give us greater control over our immediate environment by which we do not feel so hot. Now, another way in which we human beings try to get more from life than what nature offers is through entertainment. Most entertainment, it involves people wanting some relief, some release, some change from the routine of life.
And for gaining that change, there is a whole multi-billion-dollar industry, which caters for entertainment. The Mahabharata describes that all living beings primarily engage in four kinds of activities. āhāra-nidrā-bhaimaitu-namca-sāmānyametat-paśubhēr-narāṇāṁ-dharmohiteśāmadhiko-viśeṣo-dharvenahīna-paśubhī-samānaha So, it says, eating, sleeping, defending and mating.
The four activities which animals do and which humans also do. But what differentiates humans, the Mahabharata says over here is, dharmohiteśāmadhiko-viśeṣo-dharma is what is special. Now, the word dharma is famously multivalent.
Multivalent means it has many meanings. And in this context, dharma doesn’t simply mean some religious rituals. Is it, Mahabharata is not saying that among all animals, it is only human beings who go to temples.
Now, dog may also sometimes go near a temple hoping to get some food. So, there the Mahabharata says dharma, it uses dharma in the sense of the search for the meaning and purpose of life. That search for the meaning and purpose of life is expressed through the performance of certain rituals.
Suppose the child is throwing a ball at a wall and is catching the ball and just having a nice fun over there. Hitting the ball, catching the ball, hitting the ball, catching the ball. Now, if a wall has been just recently constructed and an engineer wants to know the tensile strength of that wall and the engineer throws a ball at the wall.
Now, the engineer will be carefully observing, seeing if I hit the ball here, how fast it comes back. If I hit the ball here, how fast it comes back. And by that, the engineer will understand, okay, here the wall is thickened, here the wall is not yet thick.
So, the child may be throwing a ball and an engineer may be throwing a ball. The activity is the same. But the intelligence with which that activity is being done is very different.
For the child, it is just entertainment. For the engineer, there is measurement, there is evaluation that is happening. Similarly, there may be many people who perform religious rituals just because it is a part of our culture, because it feels nice.
And they go to a temple, they participate in kirtans, all that is good. Anyway, we connect with God, that is good. But when it comes to dharma, what it means is a person who has enquired, what is the purpose of life? That person sees the same activities.
For example, when we sing in kirtans, at that time, we experience some peace, we experience some calmness, we experience some joy. So, the spiritually introspective person enquires, why is this happening? How am I getting this feeling? What is the source of this peace that I am experiencing? So, there is a whole different inner world within a casual religious practitioner and within a serious spiritual seeker. And that inner world makes eventually a world of difference even in the outer world.
So, when we talk about spirituality, some people think they feel that what is the point of spirituality? Okay, it makes me feel good. So, that is why I practise it. Yes, anything that makes us feel good, we would naturally want to do it.
But feeling good, and being good, or becoming good, these are two different things. Suppose a person is sick, has some disease, and then the doctor gives some medicine. Now, because there is a disease, the doctor says give some antibiotic.
But because the disease is also causing some pain, the doctor gives some painkiller. Now, as the painkiller is, so the patient normally takes both the antibiotic and the painkiller. But then one day, somehow, the patient just takes the painkiller.
The patient feels good. And the patient starts thinking, why do I need to take this medicine at all? I take the painkiller, I feel good, and that’s enough. And the painkiller is cheaper also.
The painkiller is easier to take. And then the patient just keeps taking the painkiller. And whenever there is some problem in the body, takes the painkiller, feels good.
But is it actually good? The painkiller is not curing the pain. It is covering the pain. And while it is covering the pain, internally, the disease is worsening.
And as the disease becomes worse and worse, eventually, the person will require stronger and stronger doses of painkillers. And as the disease keeps worsening further, then eventually, no matter how strong the dose of painkiller may be, at one time, the painkiller may just stop working because the disease has become so bad. Now, when taking the treatment, a patient, a doctor will give the painkiller because that offers immediate relief.
But along with that, the doctor uses also the medicine, say the antibiotic, which offers lasting relief, which actually cures. So, in our life, we have a material side and we have a spiritual side. So, from the spiritual wisdom of ancient India, it is described, the material improvement that we make in life, the material progress, the social success, the financial success, the professional success, all this is like a painkiller.
And the spiritual growth that we make, that is actually the medicine, which cures. And a balanced life, like a balanced treatment involves both. It involves both a balance between material and spiritual sides.
Vidyam cha vidyam cha yasya dvedo bhayamsah, avidyavatyam teerthva vidyayamrtam ashrute. Aishwarya Upanishad, an ancient Upanishad says that we need to have knowledge of the material world and we need to have knowledge of the spiritual world. And with both these knowledges, we can progress successfully in life.
Now, today’s civilisation is largely materialistic, where at the material level, there has been tremendous change. Tremendous through technology, we have far more facilities and gadgets than what were not only available 50 or 100 years ago, but what were not even imaginable 50 or 100 years ago. And yet, despite this dazzling technological wizardry that surrounds us in today’s world, there is something seriously wrong.
One of the strongest indicators of things being wrong is the problem that the WHO calls as a tragic social health problem. And that problem is suicide. According to WHO statistics, 1 million people commit suicide every year.
1 million people that is actually that count is more than the number of people who are killed by others, be it in wars, be it in terrorist attacks, be it in murderous crimes. That means, put another way, more than the number of people who are being killed by others are the number of people who are killing themselves. Why is that? Now, among all species, we are discussing about difference between humans and animals.
No other species is known to consciously commit suicide. No, no dog, if the dog finds that she dog has left me, so let me hang myself by a rope. A dog does not do that.
Now, going further, this figure of 1 million per year, this is actually only the reports of documented suicides. There are many which are undocumented also. And still, 1 million works out to be one suicide every 40 seconds.
That would mean by the time we started this talk, more than 30-40 people have already committed suicide. It is a very sobering and scary statistic. And paradoxically enough, suicide is not caused so much by physical pain as it is by emotional pain.
When people feel lost, disoriented, deserted, defeated, at that time, people succumb to suicide. Suicide is of course a complex problem. But it illustrates something fundamental that we humans, now if we see in today’s world, we have tremendous material progress.
And yet, when Shrila Prabhupada, the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, when he went to America, and he was giving talks there, he went to a famous university over there. And he was telling the young people that America has made tremendous progress. But why is it that with the progress, people have built huge skyscraper buildings.
And then people climb on those skyscraper buildings and jump down and commit suicide. So what is missing? Martin Luther King, he said that we have guided missiles and misguided men. He says our spiritual, our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.
Our scientific power, that is the power to discipline, regulate, bring order to our outer world. Our scientific power brings order to the outer world. But our spiritual power brings order to our inner world.
So when our scientific power outruns our spiritual power, that means we have control over the outer world, but we do not have control over the inner world. And that leads to the phenomenon, we can guide missiles precisely, but we have guided missiles, unfortunately, we have misguided men. So we need a balance.
So now, when this is our routine level of reality, what nature offers us, we have bodies, and bodies have needs, and we fulfil the needs. The normal reality is what all living beings live at, you know, pursuing food, clothing, shelter, and such things. Now, we human beings want something more than what nature can offer us naturally.
This search for more, when we direct it towards the material level, then we can improve things material. But that improvement does not necessarily bring fulfilment to us. That change does not make us feel fulfilled, feel joyful.
So the material progress, what it leads to is, as I started earlier talking about is, material progress is like a painkiller. When there is pain, it is essential that we take a painkiller. But the painkiller does not cure the disease, just as if I am hungry.
Hunger is a discomfort, it can even be a pain. It can be a burning agony, the hunger is gone for a long time. And that there are many people hungry in the world is very sad.
At the same time, the lack of food is a problem. And the lack of food makes people miserable. But just the presence of food, does it make us happy? Yes, it is one problem solved, but once our belly is filled, we have so many other issues to deal with in life.
So in that sense, the bodily necessities like food, shelter, and all these things, these are necessities, but they are like painkillers. The painkillers are needed to counter the pain, but they do not fulfil our heart. They do not cure the emptiness that is there in our heart.
For that, we need something higher, we need life’s spiritual side. So what is life’s spiritual side? So people, I said, we may think that, okay, anything that makes me feel good, that is spiritual. That is like mistaking the painkiller to be the medicine.
That is like taking something material and thinking that it will fulfil what is our spiritual need. To illustrate this further, suppose we consider two aspects of our life, we have our professional life, and we have our personal life, our family life. Now success in one area of life cannot compensate for failure in another area.
Suppose somebody is professionally very successful in one’s career, but if at home, one’s relationships are breaking down, one’s marriage is breaking down, one’s children are completely lost in their own world, and one cannot communicate with the children, then that agony that comes with the failure on the family front, that cannot be compensated for, even by dazzling success on the professional front. So just as success in the professional field cannot compensate for failure in the personal or family field, similarly, success at the material level cannot compensate for shortcoming or failure at the spiritual level. We need both in balance.
It is not that for the pursuing spiritual life, we need to give up material life. But it is also not that for pursuing material life, we should give up spiritual life or indefinitely postpone spiritual life. So now, the Bhagavad Gita explains systematically, what actually is spiritual? What do we mean by spiritual life? So spiritual refers to an energy that is present within us, but that energy comes from a source.
So for example, now there is this light, and I can sense that light. So there is thermal energy, the heat energy, the light energy that is coming, and I can sense it. But that torch itself cannot sense it.
So we have consciousness, and the consciousness enables us to perceive everything else. And this consciousness comes from a spiritual entity, which is called the Atma or the soul. And our innermost longings spring from the soul.
The body is driven by the functions for survival, eating, sleeping, mating, defending. The Darwinian perspective is that the survival instinct which is there, the body is driven by that. But as I said, we human beings want something more.
Why is that? The soul that is there in our bodies, there is a soul in my body, there is a soul in your body, there is a soul in a dog’s body, there is a soul in a cat’s body. But the soul which are in non-human bodies, their consciousness is not very developed. So those souls simply function more or less like programme machines.
And the dogs, say for example, many of you know that on some holy days, say like Ekadashi, some people fast. Now, if a cat sees a mouse, can it think, today is Ekadashi, I am fasting. The cat can’t think like that.
The cat is simply driven by its bodily drives. We human beings are also pushed by our bodily drives, but we can subordinate those bodily drives for a higher purpose. So the same soul that is, similar soul is there in our body and in animal bodies, but in the human bodies, the soul is more developed.
And this development of soul, how is it seen? That is through the faculties of the soul. The soul has three defining characteristics, Sat, Chit, Ananda. Sat means eternal, Chit means consciousness and Ananda is happiness.
So we see, none of us wants to die. We all want to live and live as long as possible. So where does this longing come from? Now, if you came in this room, and suddenly you found a small particle of gold over here, maybe a gold necklace or a gold coin, the question will come, where did this come from? I don’t see any gold anywhere around.
If something is out of place, we’ll get the question, where did this gold come from? So if we look at the world around us, everything around us is temporary. Some things will last for a short time, we get some fruits, they will last for a day or two. We may get some other items, they will last for a week or so.
We get some electronic gadgets, they will last for a few years. We build a house, that will last for a few decades. But everything around us is temporary.
And yet, we have an innate longing to live on and on, to never die. Where does this longing come from? So if everything around is good, or cement, where did gold come from? Similarly, if everything around us is temporary, is perishable, where does the longing to live forever come from? That comes from the soul. So similarly, chit, chit is consciousness or awareness.
Now, we all want to know, even animals want to know. You know, if scientists had an experiment, a monkey escaped in a walled cell, the monkey wants to jump on the other side and see what is there. It is curiosity.
But we human beings have that inquisitiveness in a far greater measure than other species. And that is how all our systems of knowledge have developed. And then third is ananda.
Ananda means happiness. So we all have a pursuit for happiness. But in the animal species, this search for happiness is sent or is channelled primarily along the lines of eating, sleeping, mating, defending.
Show one strength, how big I am, try to get attractive mate, get some good food to eat, and lie down and go to sleep. That’s all the animal thinks for pleasures. We human beings also look for pleasure in these things.
But we want more. This wanting more comes from, as I said, we try to improve our eating arrangements, we try to improve our staying arrangements, our sleeping arrangements. Why is all this there? Because the atma is by nature full of ananda.
And that natural longing for ananda, it is now expressed at the bodily level. And that’s why we do eating, sleeping, mating, defending, but we will do it in a more extravagant quantity or in a more extravagant form. And we’ll try to get more pleasure.
However, the body cannot satisfy the soul. The body’s capacity for pleasure is always limited. Now suppose is now after this there’ll be a feast.
Now if say we like gulab jamuns. Now first gulab jamun we’re eager, oh I’ll eat it. Second gulab jamun, eagerly take it.
Third gulab jamun, fourth. If we have ten gulab jamuns, then afterwards somebody offers a ten gulab jamun, you also take something. You also take something not because you’re selflessly concerned about that person, but because the body when it gives pleasure, there is a law of diminishing returns.
The same activity that gave a lot of pleasure initially, the pleasure from it starts going down, down, down. So when we enjoy at the bodily level, we stop the enjoyment, not because we are satisfied. We stop the enjoyment because the body’s capacity to enjoy has become exhausted.
I would like to eat more and more, but my stomach is full. It’s come to bursting point. I can’t do anything more.
So the point which I’m making is the search for happiness, we want more happiness than what the body can offer us. We want more happiness than what the body can offer us. And trying to create arrangements for increasing our pleasure at the bodily level doesn’t work.
Many of you know, might be know that in Egypt, there were the pharaohs, the emperors, and their bodies will be preserved now as mummies, some of them. So they, these emperors, some of them were Epicureans. Epicureans just lived for bodily pleasures, eat.
So they devised a way or they thought they devised a way to try to go around the body’s limitation on pleasure. So now say if I want to eat and enjoy, I can eat, but my body’s capacity to eat is limited. So what they thought will outwit nature.
So they had physicians who made for them painless vomiting pills. So they would have a big plate of feast, eat that feast to the heart’s content. And once they’re full, they would have the physician get a vomiting pill, and take out, vomit everything out.
And then get another plate of food and eat it again. Can you imagine how desperate they must have been for pleasure? But they did this a few times, but it is, see eating, the activity is not just the matter of the capacity of the body. The whole body is designed in a particular way that it has a certain processing capacity.
And just sending food inside the alimentary canal and then regurgitating out, it exhausts the body. And those who tried this, they just had miserable digestive maladies. And they died, most of them young.
And thereafter, this experiment has not been tried again. And it’s not worth trying, of course. But the point is, we can’t extend our body’s capacity for pleasure much.
Therefore, what Gita wisdom tells us, the Bhagavad Gita tells us is, we want happiness. Spirituality connects us with a higher source of happiness. And it truly fulfils our longing for happiness.
What is this higher source? It explains that this Sat-Chit-Ananda is longing, the wanting to live forever, wanting to have awareness and knowledge of things, wanting to be happy. All these come from our spiritual essence, our Atma, the soul. And this soul has an eternal relationship with God.
God is known in different traditions by different names. The Bhagavad Gita reveals him to be Krishna. The same one God, Bhagavad Gita is Krishna.
And Krishna, this name is not just the name of the God of some tradition. Krishna actually means Sarva Akarshati Iti Krishna, one who attracts everyone. That all attractive person is Krishna.
So, the Bhagavad Gita describes and the Bhakti tradition describes that we as souls are meant to have an eternal loving relationship with Krishna. We as souls are eternal. Krishna is eternal.
And our loving relationship with him can also be eternal. Many of the novels and movies, they often talk about happily ever after. If you want a relationship to be happy, go on forever and ever.
Unfortunately, in this world, nothing goes on forever. And yet we have a longing forever after. So, where does this longing come from? This longing comes from the soul.
And what is a longing meant to be fulfilled at the spiritual level, we try to fulfil at the material level. And that unfortunately leads to frustration. So, the Bhagavad Gita tells us that to achieve the spiritual, we don’t have to give up the material.
Rather, we have to harmonise the material with the spiritual. That means we have relationships, we have careers, we have ambitions. All these, we can connect them with God.
Bhagavad Gita says in 18.47, sva-karmana, by your own work, tam abhyarcha, worship him. And in this way, siddhim vindati manavah, one will attain perfection. What we have is God’s gift to us.
What we become is our gift to God. What we have, our talents, our resources, our intelligence, this is God’s gift to us. And using these gifts, what we become, that is our gift to God.
In this way, bhakti as envisioned in the Bhagavad Gita is not just one part of life. As all of you have come for satsang now, or we may go to temple for some programmes, we may do some japa, some kirtan. This is bhakti, definitely.
And it’s important to do these activities that directly connect us with God. At the same time, bhakti is not just a part of life. Bhakti, when understood properly, it encompasses our entire life.
Our whole life becomes a reciprocation of love with God. So if I’m a student, I will try to be the best student. Not so that everybody will know how clever I am.
Not so that I just have a very good career in future. These are okay motives. But Bhagavad Gita gives us a higher motive.
What is that? That God has put me in the situation where I’m a student, where I’m a professional, whatever it is, and let me use my abilities to the best of my capacity. Normally, if we use our material skills for getting material fruits, when Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, one of the verses that people very often know and quote from Bhagavad Gita is, So what does it mean? Be not detached from your work, Krishna says. You have authority to perform your work, but you don’t have a right to its fruits.
So what does this mean? You may wonder, if I’m a student, I’m studying, is it that I should not think how many marks I’ll get, what grade I will get, which career I will have? If I’m a professional, should I not think, okay, how much salary will I earn? Then how will I manage my finances? What does this verse mean? Actually, there’s a difference between goals and fruits. Goals are set before we do an activity. Fruits are got after we do the activity.
So the Bhagavad Gita doesn’t tell us that don’t set any goals. The Bhagavad Gita says don’t seek fruits. Arjuna himself every day, say in the Kurukshetra war, he was a warrior and he was fighting the war, every day he would set goals.
And Krishna assisted Arjuna in fulfilling his goals. So the Bhagavad Gita doesn’t tell us don’t set goals. It says don’t be consumed by thoughts of fruits.
Why is that? Because the fruits are not always in our control. Sometimes we may study diligently and because of some reason, we may not get the desired result. So if we do our work, simply at the level of thinking, okay, this is the work, this is the fruit.
Then if I don’t get the fruit, then I think the work is pointless. What did I do it for? But when we see our work as an offering of love to God, that these are the talents which God has given me, this is the position I am in, let me do the best that I can. Then that loving reciprocation remains.
And we get satisfaction because we have served our beloved. And we grow spiritually by that irrespective of whether we get the results or not. So when our eyes are glued only on the results, many things happen.
If we don’t, if we feel that we will not get the result, then we become disheartened. If we feel that maybe a result may or may not come, we may become anxious. Or if we get the result, we’ll become proud.
See how great I am. But in the process, we miss out on the higher spiritual enrichment that can come if we see our work as an offering of love to God. And further, when our eyes are fixed only on the result, our eyes get closed to other ways in which God can work in our life.
Now God works in mysterious ways. If we are open minded, we will note that many times the best results in our life, they come not just because we did the work A and it produced the result B. Yes, we did the work A and the result B came. And we had to do the work A properly.
But still, A alone does not produce the result B. So many of you know, cricket is a very popular sport. And there was a former Australian captain Steve Waugh. So when he would play cricket, he would have a red handkerchief in his pocket.
And he would keep it about three-fourths inside and one-fourth outside. And he had a strong belief that if that handkerchief was positioned well, he would perform well. We forgot the handkerchief.
Sometimes if you drop a catch, first you would look down and see how I dropped the handkerchief. So there is another cricketer Mark Taylor. He was a batsman and he, before he would go out to bat, first he would go to the pavilion’s commodes and he would make sure all the commode lids were closed.
And if he got out early, he would not go back to the pavilion, he would first go to the commode and see if any lid is open. And if any lid would be open, he would go and blast all his team members. Why did you keep it open? Now, and this is not just Australian cricketers, all cricketers in different parts of the world, they have their superstitions.
There is a famous tennis player who would wear an earring only in one ear. So now, the sports players know that performance matters. That they have to perform well on the sports field.
But they also know that performance is not all that matters. Sometimes a game may move in such a way that despite the best performance, the results may not come. So they know there is something more that matters in bringing about the results.
So all these, keeping a handkerchief, wearing a earring, shutting the commode lid, all these are their own sentimental ways of trying to appease that unknown. The point relevant for us is that our actions are not the sole causes of the fruits or the results that come through a linear chain. Our actions are important, but many other factors play a role.
Sometimes we may shake a mango tree and an apple may fall down. That means what? Say I’m hungry and a child is hungry and the child says, Oh God, give me some food. And the child goes to a mango tree and shakes a mango.
And nothing falls. But the child is so caught in looking at the mango, the child doesn’t see from a nearby tree, even without his shaking, an apple has fallen down. So the child’s need for food has been fulfilled, the food has been provided for, but just not in the way that the child had expected.
Similarly, in our life, if we open ourselves to God’s love, if we see our work not just as meant to produce a result, but we see our work as a means to express our love to God, our heart opens to God, and we will see that God can fulfil our needs, fulfil our wants in ways that are beyond our conceptions. So when we are, when our vision is locked to the fruits, we miss out on the many mysterious ways in which God can work in life. When our vision is open, so that we focus not on the particular work and the result, we focus on the work as an offering to God.
Then we grow spiritually in our devotion, and also we open ourselves to the many ways in which God can mysteriously act in our lives. And He acts mysteriously, He acts wonderfully. So I’ll conclude with a story about how God can act in our lives.
Most of you know the story of Durvasa Muni and Draupadi, and the Pandavas were in the forest. At that time, Duryodhana schemed to have Durvasa Muni sent to the house, to the place where the Pandavas were staying. It’s a small hut sort of thing.
They were in exile. And he wanted the Pandavas to be embarrassed and maybe even cursed. So now for those who are Grahastas, it’s an important duty to host and receive and serve renunciates.
So Durvasa Muni was a sage, and Duryodhana told Durvasa Muni, you know, please go to the Pandavas in the afternoon so that they will be able to serve in a relaxed way. Now actually his intention was, the Pandavas had an Akshaya Patra, and Akshaya Patra’s arrangement was that after Draupadi ate her food, then it would not give any food till the next day. And Duryodhana knew this, and that’s why he wanted that after Draupadi has eaten, if Durvasa Muni goes, the Pandavas will be embarrassed.
And they will be in trouble. So that’s what exactly happened. And the Pandavas, they saw Durvasa Muni has come.
They received him, warmly welcomed him. And they were in great anxiety. And Durvasa Muni said, I would like to go and take a bath, and then I’ll take food.
So they showed him the way to the river for taking a bath. And then meanwhile, Yudhishthira turned to Draupadi and asked her what to do. Draupadi said, I don’t know.
I have already eaten. We can’t get anything from that pot. Akshaya Patra knew.
So Draupadi is a devotee. She started praying to Krishna. And as she was praying desperately to Krishna, Krishna suddenly appeared over there.
At one level, she was relieved. Oh Krishna, please help me. I am in big trouble.
And then Krishna said, yes, afterwards, but first I am hungry. Please give me some food. Now Draupadi felt shattered.
It’s one thing to not be able to feed a sage. That’s a bad enough problem. But secondly, my Lord is coming.
I am not able to feed the Lord also. Sometimes we pray to God and it may appear that our problems become doubled instead of solved. So Draupadi said, Krishna, are you making fun of me? You know, I don’t have any food.
I can’t even feed Durvasa. That’s why I called you. Please.
But Krishna said, no, but I am hungry. You know, you had Akshaya Patra. Just see if something is over there.
So Draupadi just, okay, she had faith in Krishna. She just went there and she saw over there, you know, there was Akshaya Patra and there’s one morsel of food left over there. And she just took that, she brought that plate and Krishna said, nothing, just one morsel over here.
She said, just give that to me. And Krishna took that one morsel and he ate it. And as soon as he ate it, he used his mystic power and the sages were bathing in the forest, bathing in the river.
You know, they suddenly felt as if their stomach was full. And they said, you know, actually, Videshther is a great saintly king and Bhima is a very angry person. Now suppose, you know, somebody comes to our house and they tell, I would like to eat.
And then we go to a lot of effort and cook and eat. And they say, I don’t want to eat now. They’ll feel offended.
So Durvasa Muni said, no, the Pandavas will be offended if you don’t eat. But he and his disciples said, you just can’t eat now. And they had gone to the forest and Bhima was waiting near the river.
And from there only they disappeared, just went away. And the Pandavas were waiting and calling and didn’t come. And Krishna said, don’t worry, they have gone.
I have made the arrangement. Now often in this story, how Krishna comes to the rescue of his devotees in miraculous way, that is described. That is, yes, true.
But a significant point is, how did Draupadi, she was a very careful, responsible lady. And this Akshaya Patra was also not an ordinary utensil. Sometimes if you have some ordinary utensil, just put it aside.
But if somebody has a gold plate, you know, gold plate will clean it very carefully and put it aside. So how is it that Draupadi accidentally left one morsel of food over there? So was it an oversight? Whatever it was, it was something that Krishna used for his purposes. So Krishna is so expert that if we have the intention to serve him, even our mistakes, he can turn them for our good.
Just as an expert musician can produce good music even from a broken instrument. Like that, if we have an intention, consistent intention to love and serve God, even the things that go wrong in our life, God can bring a greater good out of them. And in this way, if we function with the intention of serving God, then, Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita 18.58, if you become conscious of me, all problems, whatever you may have, you will cross over them.
So life will send problems in our way. But if we take shelter of God, we will be able to cross over those problems. Now, if I am on the ground floor or on the road, and I see a hundred storey building, I may feel, I feel dwarfed, how big this building is, how small I am.
But if I am going in an aeroplane above, then that same huge building will look very small to me. What our devotion does is, it raises our perspective. When we don’t have a spiritual side to our life, you know, we are all alone.
There is this big world with all kinds of unknown dangers out there. What danger may come hurtling down at us, we don’t know. And we feel tiny, we feel lost.
We may not feel this normally, but when problems come, we feel isolated. We feel deserted. So problems can come sometimes and they can make us like dwarfs.
But when we are connected with God, then that connection with God, the practise of bhakti yoga, the chanting of the holy names, the hearing of the wisdom of the Gita, this raises our consciousness. So instead of being in a ground and seeing such a big problem, our connection with God raises us above. And when we rise above, we see this problem is there, it will come, it will go.
You know, life determines our problems, we determine their size. Life determines our problems. There are different problems that come in our life of their own course.
But depending on our attitude, depending on our orientation, depending on our consciousness, sometimes you can make a small problem very big. On the other hand, if you are connected with God, we understand, yes, this is a big problem, but God is bigger still. We understand that instead of telling God how big my problem is, when we become devoted to God, we understand that when we feel Krishna’s connection with us, then we tell the problem how big God is.
And then we can deal with the problems competently, confidently, and constructively. So the process of bhakti is a life-encompassing process, which takes us to a higher reality. So it takes us to a life of eternal love with God.
And that is the eternal benefit we get. But even before that, in this life, we experience tangible peace, we experience fulfilment, we experience a means to rise above problems, and a means to release ourselves from anxiety and stress. In this way, the life of bhakti is empowering in this life and liberating in the next life.
In that way, it is actually the escape to reality. People watch movies, people go into entertainment, they’re escaping to an artificial world, it’s only going to temporarily there. If you connect with God, we move to a reality, which is going to eternally be there and will eternally fulfil our hearts.
So I’ll summarise, and you can have a few questions. I started by talking about how people think anything that makes me feel good is spiritual. Aroma makes me feel good, that is spiritual.
But yes, we want to be spiritual, and there have been many ways to be spiritual. But to become spiritual, we need to have a map of the territory. It’s like if I want to go from Sydney to Melbourne, I need a map.
So the philosophical wisdom of the Gita is like the map for our journey towards being spiritual. And then what is spiritual? In that connection, I discussed how there’s a difference between us and other animals and other living beings, other animals. Animals are basically satisfied with whatever the body offers them.
So they make a particular kind of nest, they eat a particular kind of food, grass, and they’re satisfied. But we human beings, we want more and better than what nature naturally offers us. We want more and more delicious food, newly made food, we want better and better houses.
And this comes from our soul. So the soul is there in all bodies, human and non-human. But in non-human body, the soul is underdeveloped, and that’s why they don’t have much free will.
That’s why a cat can’t think I’ll fast on Ekadashi. So they just function as if like programmed machines, driven for survival, driven for eating, sleeping, mating, defending. We human beings also seek eating, sleeping, mating, defending.
But we are not satisfied by this. Why? Because the soul is more developed. And the soul wants more.
We discussed how the soul three characteristics are Sat, Chit, Ananda. And that’s why we long to live eternally. Where does this longing come from? If you find gold in a place where there’s no gold, you wonder where is this coming from? So everything is temporary.
Where does the longing to live forever come from? It comes from the soul. Similarly, we want to know that comes from the Chit aspect of the soul. And we want happiness, constant happiness that comes from the Ananda aspect of the soul.
And when we live in this world, we have a body, we are ourselves soul. So both material and spiritual sides need to be taken care of. If we take care of only the material side, then that is like a person is given a treatment, that person takes only the painkillers.
And a painkiller, it covers the pain, it doesn’t cure the pain. And while the pain is covered, the disease is worsening. And eventually, painkillers will not work.
So in the last 300-400 years, we have had tremendous material progress through science. And that has led to increased capacity to control the outer world. We have guided missiles, but we have misguided men.
And one aspect of misguided men we discussed is how over a million people every year commit suicide. This is the ultimate expression of dissatisfaction and frustration in one’s life when one wants to end one’s life itself. And this happens because people, whatever they’re living for, whatever they’re living with, doesn’t have any meaning left for them.
This extreme of wanting to destroy one’s own very life comes when there is a spiritual emptiness within, which makes one feel that if some things go long at the material level, what is the point of living? When we have a spiritual side to our life, even if material things go up and down, we know that we have some shelter which is always going to be with us. Then I discuss what does spiritual mean? It means our loving connection with God, Krishna. So there are directly devotional activities, which we need to do to connect with God.
Chanting the holy names, coming to satsang, worshipping the deities, studying shastra, studying the Bhagavad Gita. These are directly devotional activities which connect us with God. But bhakti is not just about these activities alone.
Bhakti is a life of love between us and God, which encompasses our entire life. So what we have is God’s gift to us. And what we become using what we have is our gift to God.
So when the Bhagavad Gita says we detach from the fruits, it is not asking us to be irresponsible or negligent about our work. It is asking us to do our work for something higher than the fruits. If we work only for the fruits, if the fruits don’t come, we will feel disappointed.
If the fruits are not sure, we will feel anxious. And if the fruits come, we will become proud. But overall, if we see that this is the work which God has given me and I do it well with the abilities He has given me, then we get fulfilment from a work well done in a mood of loving service that enables us to grow spiritually.
And further, that openness of doing the work not just for the fruit, but with a desire to serve, that openness opens our heart to other ways in which God may give us the results that we want. So I give the example of Draupadi being helped by Krishna. First, the players seem to have made the problem worse, but Krishna did help her.
So then in the connection, I discussed how our work alone does not produce the fruit. Performance matters, but performance is not all that matters. As a cricketers perform, but they also know there is something unknown which also shapes the result, then they try to appease that.
That unknown ultimately is the will of God. And when we work with the intention to please God, God can work in various ways to help us. And I concluded with the point that the spiritual life, the devotional life does not just help us to attain an eternal life of love with God.
In this life also, when there are problems, they may seem to tower over us and crush us like a hundred storey building at the foot of which we are. But when we connect with God, then that connection with God elevates us. We feel a strength and security by our connection with him and the problems shrink down.
So life determines our problems, we determine their size. And by our devotion to God, we can get the problems to shrink down and then we can deal with them competently. In that way, bhakti can offer us fulfilment in this life and eternal fulfilment in the spiritual life.
Thank you very much. Are there any questions? Yes, please. Just have a couple of questions.
We need a map, but sometimes we come across people who say, I have got a different map and I am happy with that. I would like to stay on this path, even though that we know that it is a longer path or it might not even be the right path. How do we address that kind of issue? Okay.
Some people say that we have our own maps and we satisfy with them. Then how do we address that? Yes, a map has to correlate with the reality. If say, I have a map of Melbourne and I am travelling in Sydney and I am trying to correlate, it just doesn’t correlate.
I may try sincerely, I may think optimistically, but nothing is going to help. I have got the wrong map. So now, when say we have a materialistic map, that means we think that everything is matter and there is no reality beyond matter.
So now, this may seem very convenient. I don’t have to practise in spiritual life. I just enjoy life at the material level.
But the materialist repeatedly have to walk off the material map. Why is that? Because if we consider materialism scrutinizingly, what it means is everything is purely material. If everything is material, then even all the cherished emotions that we experience, say, if a mother experiences love for a child, and all that is happening from the material perspective is, oh, instead of saying, mother saying to a child, I love you, the mother should say, oh, some chemicals are coming in my brain when I see you.
Will the mother say that? Even if a person is a brain surgeon and that brain surgeon comes home and his wife is upset with him, so will the brain surgeon say, please come, I will do your brain scan to find why you are upset? No. So, no one lives purely as a materialist. People live functionally as materialists.
But materialism, strictly taken, reduces all our emotions to simply flows of chemicals. So, is that the way anyone can live? A life would become totally meaningless if he lived like that. There have been philosophers, but the existentialist philosophers, so for example, there is a philosopher Albert Camus.
So, he said that everything, there is no spiritual side to life, everything is just material. And he was intelligent in one way, but his conclusion was that life is meaningless and miserable. Therefore, the only philosophical question worth asking is whether to commit suicide today or tomorrow.
We may laugh at this, this is really, this is a living philosopher who came to this thesis. So, materialism is a map that does not coincide with reality. Our own reality, lived reality, we cannot explain in terms of materialism.
So, now, somehow when it comes to spirituality, people think that you can have your map, I can have my map. It’s true, we all can have our maps. We all have been given that freedom by God to live the way we want.
But in no other field of life will we be so apathetic towards enquiring what is the reality. If I am going in Sydney, I won’t say, okay, you can have a map of Melbourne, somebody else can have a map of Perth, somebody else can have a map of Ireland, and we all travel our way. We will, we normally check, does this make sense? So, if we really enquire seriously, we will see the limitations of whatever map we are claiming to have.
And we will be forced to walk off our map. Because that map, it will describe a part of the reality, but it will not describe the reality in a way that is meaningful for us. Specifically, this is not a matter of authoritatively imposing one worldview on everyone else.
It is a matter of intelligent choosing. The Bhagavad Gita is not a book of commandments, where Krishna says, do this, do this, do this, or you’ll go to hell. No, Krishna, he, the Bhagavad Gita reveals to us a vision of God who respects human intelligence and who respects human independence.
After speaking the full Bhagavad Gita, at the end, Krishna says to Arjuna in 18.63, He says, deliberate deeply on the subject. And then you decide what you want to do. So, Krishna is not imposing, he is inviting.
See, does this make sense to you? Deliberate on it. Krishna is not calling for faith. Krishna is calling for deliberation.
So, if we open-minded, if we can present the spiritual message of the Bhagavad Gita in an intelligible way to people, and some people may be interested, some people may not be interested. So, we don’t have to be confrontational with others. We should always be cordial, even if somebody has some other worldview.
Sometimes people hold on to certain worldviews, not because they have thought about a worldview properly and come to a conclusion. There are various reasons, maybe it is my culture, maybe it is my upbringing, maybe it is just what I like, whatever. But even sooner or later, the inadequacies of that worldview will become apparent to them.
So, if they are right now open to discussion and cordial debate, that is fine. We can try to present things properly, or we can consult senior devotees who are more learned, and with their guidance we can present things properly. But even if they are not ready, even if they are not able to present properly, we should discuss and leave things at a cordial note.
So, eventually, if people feel, yeah, I met some nice person. This person was speaking about the Bhagavad Gita, was talking about Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, was a nice person. So, eventually, when they fall off their map, because their map takes them to a no man’s land.
What am I doing? Where am I? At that time, they will turn towards Krishna. So, we shouldn’t think that it is by our preaching that we are changing people. Actually, it is Krishna in their hearts who will change them.
All that we can do is we can try to present Krishna’s message. So, if Prabhupada went to America, he was not saying that I am going to make all these Americans into devotees. Prabhupada was praying, Krishna, please make my words understandable to them.
So, that is the mood with which we devotionally and respectfully challenge this notion of all maps being relative. And we end on a cordial note, inviting people to explore what the Bhagavad Gita is teaching. Does it answer your question? Any other questions? Yes, please.
He has his own map right now. So, the question is, I talked about a balance between a painkiller and a medicine. Now, if we are living as grahasthas, how do we decide what is the balance? Now, are there any guidelines for this? Different people may have different ideas of how much they need.
Yes, this is the beauty of the Vedic path that it gives us a trajectory, but it allows us to move at our pace. The idea is that even if we don’t complete our journey in this one life, we can continue to our future lives also and then complete it. But the thing is that there is a lot of uncertainty between this life and next life and where we will go, when we will start off the journey again.
So, wise person, so the idea is that say if I have a car on hire and say I have to go to some place which is say 800 miles away and I can travel at the car say at 80 miles per hour or whatever and I can go there in 10-11 hours and I have the car for the next 12 hours. So, I can if I am going along that car, just focus straight, I can reach the destination well. Now, in between I might have to stop to fuel the car, I might have to stop to take food, that’s fine.
But overall, I keep moving on. If along the way I decide, let me go sightseeing here, let me go here, let me go there, then what will happen? My time will run out and I will be left stranded. Then I have to get another car and then I have to move forward.
Similarly, when we are practising spiritual life, we are here and we want to attain Krishna. So, we have a journey to cover. That journey is actually the journey of our heart, the redirection of our heart from this world to God, to Krishna.
Now, this is going to take time and we don’t know how long we have in this life. So, Bhagavatam says, तूर्णम् यतेत नपतेत अनुमृत्तु यावन् निश्रेयसाय विषय कनु सर्वतान्स्याद। Says, तूर्णम् यतेत, immediately and ever. नपतेत अनुमृत्तु यावन् The body may fall at any time.
निश्रेयसाय विषय कनु सर्वतान्स्याद। Spiritual life is what one should pursue because material things, they are available everywhere. They are available everywhere means they are available to us in all species. So, in general, if we focus on material life alone, there is no end to it.
There is no end to it. Now, the Bhagavatam talks about, say, people who are too attached to their family life and their work and they don’t have time for God and it reproaches such people. Now, today, we don’t even have people at that level.
There are people who are so attached to their professional life that they don’t have time even for their family life. There are workaholics who work constantly, constantly don’t have time for family life. So, we live in an age of imbalance, severe imbalance.
There is not only material spiritual imbalance, there is even imbalance within the material itself, this professional personal imbalance. So, it’s very easy to get imbalanced and that imbalance has severe consequences. Being aware of the danger of imbalance, being aware of the urgency of the spiritual, we keep this in mind and then we orient our life.
At the same time, we also need to know that material life is dynamic. That means sometimes in our material life, there may be bigger obligations. So, if a student has exams, if a job has deadlines, at that time, we have to give more attention, more time, more priority to our material life.
So, rather than looking for balance in terms of one rigid formula, this I’ll do, this I’ll do, this I’ll do, we can look at balance as a dynamic balance. That means, say if I’m here, say if I’m here and I have to go here, say this is Sydney, this is Melbourne, I have to ride along the way. If I’m going, sometimes there will be traffic, at that traffic, I’ll move slowly.
When the road is clear, I’ll move faster. But overall, I’m moving in the right direction. Eventually, I’ll reach the destination.
So, like that, sometimes the traffic may be more in our material life. And at that time, our spiritual life may slow down a little bit. At other times, when the traffic in our material life is lesser, we shouldn’t create more traffic unnecessarily.
We can accelerate our spiritual life at that time. So, usually this balance is something which if others tell us, we will feel it as an imposition. We may feel it as a deprivation.
So, we have certain basic spiritual practises which we do, which we should always try to do. Our chanting of the holy names, our going for some kind of satsangh at some level. Because if we don’t do that, then our spiritual life will be starved spiritually.
So, some basic standard we follow. Apart from that, how much more we can do that, we can vary on time, place, circumstance. And usually, we shouldn’t leave such decisions on the spur of the moment.
It is best to, there are three modes, goodness, passion and ignorance. And in passion, if we take decisions, often those decisions perpetuate our agitation and our illusion. So, in goodness, we sit and think.
And when we are in a reflective, calm mood, then we can analyse, okay, these are things which I need to do in my material life. These are things which I would like to do in my spiritual life. How can I balance these? And we make a plan.
And once we make a plan, we may not be able to stick to the plan strictly. But at least the plan will give us a sense of direction. This is the way I am going.
And sometimes it may be slower, sometimes it may be faster. So, sattva guna, at least in terms of planning is required. So, calm contemplation to decide, this is what I need to do.
And the important thing is to not let others determine our definition of success. Others can mean materialists who will drag us too much in a material direction. It can mean there are some devotees who may also be extremists.
And they may drag us towards too much spiritual life. In one sense, spiritual life too much is not too much because we are devotees of Krishna. But in a particular situation, things may be too much.
So, Krishna, certainly we would like to serve Krishna more and more. But we should not have either a negative attitude towards spiritual life that this is going to take me away from material life. Nor should we have a negative attitude towards material life thinking this is taking me away from my spiritual life.
You see both as ways in which you can go closer to Krishna. The spiritual life is more direct connection with Krishna. So, we need that.
But our material life is not disconnected from Krishna. That is also connected with Krishna. So, yes, we do consult others.
And especially if we have some serious spiritual guides, we can consult them. And based on that and based on our own prayerful deliberation, we can make a decision. And this decision doesn’t have to be a lifelong decision.
We make a decision and then we adjust. Okay, this is a little too much. It’s a little too less.
So, it’s something which will be dynamic. And overall, if we have that, if we maintain the desire to serve Krishna, through all aspects of our life, Krishna says, He will give us the intelligence to come to Him. So, these are broad principles.
Specifically, you have to decide and you have to consult with senior devotees and then make a decision. Okay. Thank you very much.
Yes, sir. Oh, really amazing. There is some connection of hearts between father and son.
Thank you. Yes. So, shall we stop here? Any other question? So, thank you very much for your kind attention.
Hare Krishna.