HEAR Association vs mind

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, we expect good people to do good things and bad people to do bad things.
Krishna talks about such categories in chapter 16 of the Bhagavad Gita. He says there are two kinds of people. There are divine people and then there is what is the opposite? Demonic.
The word demonic seems very harsh at one level. Or we could put it in softer language. There are people who are wise and there are people who are otherwise.
Sometimes, when some education is being given, some class is being told, is spoken, sometimes it is spoken in a way that is meant to raise questions. Suppose some speaker says, I want to speak three points in the class and they speak only one point. And nobody in the audience raises the question, okay, what are the other two points? And the speaker will get the question, what is the point of my speaking only? Isn’t it? So, there are some question-begging points and Krishna’s division of the living being into these two neat categories, divine and demoniac, is immediately question-begging.
And you see, this is what Arjuna does. Chapter 16 is Sura Sampad Vibhagayogam, the divine and demoniac virtues. And chapter 17, the first verse, Arjuna asks that what about people who are in between? So, basically he says a simplistic vision is that all of humanity can be divided into say, the divine and the demoniac.
But there could be a more refined vision where we understand there are some people who are divine and there are some people who are demonic. But the vast majority is the muddle in the middle. The muddle in the middle.
What that means is that these people sometimes behave in ways that seems good. And sometimes they behave badly. So, what about these people? And then Krishna goes, Krishna appreciates the question.
Krishna says, therefore, he says we need to look according to the modes. And based on three modes, we can look at people’s actions. And then based on that, decide the nature.
So, generally speaking, whenever in categorical, if somebody is operating based on strict categories, and something comes in the middle of those categories, he doesn’t fall here or fall there, that becomes confusing. So, same thing happens when we think, when somebody, we think of somebody as a good person and they do something bad. They speak hurtfully, maybe they deceive us, they do something just sounds downright malicious.
So, why do they do such things? And so, that is the question that we discuss. Now, there are bad people who do bad things. So, if we consider the Ramayana, who is a bad character over there? Ravan, yes.
What is the bad thing that he does? He does many bad things, but the one that really leads to disastrous consequences for him is his abduction of Sita. Now, are there any good people who do bad things in the Ramayana? K.K.E. What does she do? Yes, she exiled Ram and that even led to the exile of Ram, no fault of his. So, anyone else? Ram’s dad, he never questioned the intentions of K.K. and just followed her.
Well, yes, it is a little harsh to call that a bad thing. It was more like he felt bound by the word that he had given to her and he questioned whether that much honouring one’s word is important. But it is a little difficult to call it a bad thing.
He was obligated to do that, that is true. See, there are three broad kinds of beings. There are the humans, there are the demons and there is one more category of beings in the Ramayana.
Vanaras. Is there anyone among the Vanaras who does a bad thing? Vali. Vali, what does he do? Vali basically, he severely attacks Sugri in many different ways.
He tries to kill him, but he can’t kill him. He tries to get back at him by taking his wife for himself. It’s not a good thing to do.
But Vali is also not an evil person. Now, related to that also, there is someone else also who does something bad. Same way.
Okay, Indra is always doing bad things. Okay, yeah. But is there a specific Ramayana? I think you had said? Sugriya.
Yeah, how Sugriya? Well, he doesn’t do that because Vali himself tells that. He makes a promise that he will help Ram. Yes, he forgets his promise to Ram.
So, it’s not for a long time, but still he does forget. So, there are examples of good people doing bad things. So, now we may wonder why? So, why might somebody do something like this? So, in general, when somebody does something bad, what do you think are the causes? Greed.
Greed. So, who was motivated by greed? Among these, Egmont particularly or is it a general thing? Greed. Okay.
I think greed is a bit harsh. She was already living in the royal palace. Attachment.
It was, it is more like, yeah, it was attachment for her son’s elevation. So, let’s put greed as internal factors. It could be, sometimes it could be lust, it could be jealousy.
Jealousy. So, there are internal impurities or we can say there are impressions within us which can make us wonder. Now, conversely, what else might make us do something bad? External influence.
Yes. So, we could say, basically, bad people or even if you don’t want to call somebody a bad person. People who have a bad influence on us.
So, that’s an external factor. So, now, broadly, now, can we give an example of some bad people making a good person do a bad thing? Mantra. Mantra.
Yes. Mantra was someone who pushed, who incited. So, now, in one sense, both of these leave us a bit vulnerable because we don’t really know what all is there inside our heart.
Isn’t it? We would like to think that overall we are good people. Whatever we do, that there are no dark things in our heart. But we all have a dark side to us.
And there could be impurities within us. Or sometimes some greed or some jealousy or whatever may arise within us. And basically, we could say that everybody can have a moment of weakness.
Let’s put it over here. So, anyone, even the best of people can have moments of weakness. And these moments of weakness can arise because of internal or external factors.
Or worse would be both together. That means, say, we are feeling discouraged or maybe we are feeling hurt because somebody has disappointed us. And that’s the point we need somebody who’s out to manipulate us.
And that person starts feeding a particular story to us. So, basically, for us, while we can try to protect ourselves, the internal impurities, we try to decrease them through purification. You may say, right now, I’m not likely to get angry if I do something terrible.
But in future, if something incites me, I don’t know. So, we try to decrease the negativities inside us through purification. And we try to avoid the external influences by association.
Association. So, now, association, that’s a good association. Satsanga is so important.
But then the problem is, did Kaikeyi not have good association? What do you think? She didn’t have good association, isn’t it? There was the Saint Vashishtha, who was the royal priest. There was the Minister Sumantra. And there are many virtuous people over there.
So, what happens is that now, even Mantara had not been an evil person. She had never done anything like this before. She was known to be a sullen person.
Yes, what we might call a little cranky sometimes. But what she did here was downright manipulative. And it was like a bolt from the blue.
Kaikeyi could also not have accepted it. So, basically, for us, it may sometimes happen that some urges may arise within us. Now, what applies to us, this applies to others also.
So, whenever, sometimes even among good people, some urges may arise. Or sometimes they may come under the influence of some people who are playing games with their mind. So, nowadays, with social media, there is greater opportunity for connection.
But there is also greater possibility of distortion. The people can just get caught in what they call as the social media eco-chambers. There is, just hear one point of view reinforced again and again and again and again.
So, generally speaking, what we need is that, see, Kaikeyi’s mistake was not just that she heard mantra. That was unfortunate. But it was almost, she was unprepared for that.
And her concern that her son get the best, that’s also a natural maternal concern. But what really went wrong was, she did not give Dashrath even a chance to tell his son this. She did not even, not, she did not even consult Vashishtha.
Even he said, okay, Dashrath, he’s a part of the constituency. I don’t want to hear. She didn’t even consult Vashishtha.
She did not consult anyone else. So, basically, when we operate in this kind of very categorical view of reality, then what happens is that anybody who disagrees with us, I don’t know if there’s a word called disagreeer. Let’s make that word right now.
So, anybody who is a disagreeer, we stop being nice to them. It’s like some, we have had a conflict with someone and somebody comes around and tries to speak something which seems to be supporting the other person. And instead of hearing what they are saying, on whose side are you? And the first question we start asking.
And then, this is where the problem comes. So, basically, nice is, I will be using this as an acronym, to explain how we dismiss those who disagree with us. And Krishna talks about this in the Bhagavad Gita as knowledge in the mode of ignorance.
Knowledge in the mode of ignorance means Normally, knowledge and ignorance are opposite. Mathematical languages are inversely proportional. Knowledge increases, ignorance decreases.
Ignorance increases, knowledge decreases. But knowledge in the mode of ignorance is a peculiar thing where our knowledge increases. And the more our knowledge increases, the more our ignorance also increases.
You may say, how is that possible? It’s because our knowledge is unique. It’s like, basically, we take one thing and we equate it with everything. So, this is how people become biassed.
This person is from this community, this country, this religion, this ethnicity. All these people are like that. And reality is not that simple.
So, we just take one attribute of a person and we reduce that whole person based on that attribute. This is where sometimes leftist ideology reduces people to their group identity. Now, it’s not only left, right can also do that.
But the idea is we reduce people. Okay, if you are from this group, you are going to be like this. So, here what you do, if anybody you disagree with me, then you are wrong.
Now, how do we achieve this? This is where there are four things. If somebody disagrees with us, they say, you are naive. This is too complex, you don’t understand it.
So, basically, you are not intelligent enough, I am more intelligent. The other is you are ignorant. You just don’t know enough.
There is a difference between ignorance and naivety. Ignorance is you don’t know. Naive means you are not shrewd enough, intelligent enough to evaluate things properly.
C is you are compromised. You know, that person must have done something good for you. That’s why you’re taking their side.
So, basically, here, we start casting aspirations on the other person’s motivations. And the last is downright, you are evil. And this is how polarisation starts happening.
So, polarisation is this. This is right, this is wrong. Anybody with this opinion is right, anybody with that opinion is wrong.
This is how we end up dismissing people. Now, from the Bhagavad Gita’s perspective, now, we human beings have multiple layers. If we consider that the soul, then that subtle body, the mind, intelligence, and the senses, and then there is the outer world.
So, then mind, intelligence, senses, and here we have the outer world. So, basically, what we are saying here is that when you say you don’t know, that means you are ignorant. You have not studied this issue enough.
You don’t know enough about it. You don’t know what you’re talking about. So, nai, if you consider the subtle body, in the subtle body, there are broadly two categories, there is the intelligence, and there is the mind.
So, basically, this information is not coming in your senses, you just don’t know about it. But when somebody is nai, basically, what you’re saying is, your mind is too people, not mature enough to judge things. And there is a possibility of that also, but possibility is not making an inevitability.
Now, when you say somebody is compromised, that means what you’re saying is, you know what is the truth, but because you have some vested interests, so, you are still taking this wrong side, because you’re compromised. You know, like sometimes it happens in a court, that say, if a judge is judging a case, and say, if we find out that the judge is related with the person who has been accused, then we will say the judge is compromised over it, that he’s conflicted, so the judge has to accuse themselves. So, we’re saying you’re compromised.
Now, the worst is where we say you’re ill motivated, that is where you’re evil. So, basically, for all of us, people around us are what can protect us from making bad decisions, from doing bad things. So, we all can have moments of weakness.
We all can succumb to people with agendas. But if we have respectful relationships with others, and that is when we can actually protect ourselves. If we don’t have such respectful relationships, that’s where things go wrong.
So, now among these characters, did Ravan come to his senses? No. Did Kaikeyi come to her senses? What do you think? Yes, she came, but it was a little too late. When did she come to her senses? Yes, after Ram left, something more after that.
Yes, when Bharat came back. Now, she was believing that I did all this for Bharat’s sake. Nobody’s understanding me, but I’m doing this for the sake of Bharat, for protecting his interests.
Now, we all want our kids to do well in exams. And suppose our kid comes and says, you know, I came first in my class. Wonderful.
How do you do that? I hacked my professor’s computer. I found out the question paper. I got all the answers.
I had prepared all the answers. I came first in the class. Now, if our kid starts telling us bad, you’re like, what kind of person are you? And not only what kind of person are you, it is the what kind of person do you think I am that I’ll be pleased by your doing this? That you are telling this in a celebratory mood.
So, for Bharat, it was like that. When Kaikeyi told him, he was shocked when he heard that his father was dead and Ram was exiled, his shock became double, like shock squared. When he heard that, his mother was behind all this.
And his shock became raised to the power of three, shock cubed. And he saw that his mother expected him to be pleased by all this. See, I’ve done all this for you.
And that’s when Bharat just snapped. He said, you cannot be my mother. You must be the goddess of destruction, Mahakali, incarnated into a family for destroying our entire dynasty.
Do you understand what have you done? So, when he spoke so strongly, that was the time her illusion was shattered. So, basically, the same thing happens to Sugriva, who shatters his illusion. Yes.
Actually, Tara and Hanuman, both of them won. But Lakshman, when he comes and he chastises, that’s when he’s shaken out. But after that, he never repeats the mistake.
So, basically, what happens over here is, the point I’m making is that there will be times when we all may succumb to our lower urges. For whatever reason, or we may succumb to bad influences externally. So, what we need to do is that time, that may happen once.
But after that, we have or we need to have people around us who can protect us. But if we start dismissing all the people around us, then you don’t understand. So, everybody, if you consider Vali’s case, in Vali’s case, basically, there had been a misunderstanding.
Sugriva had thought Vali had been killed inside the cave. And so, he blocked the cave with a giant boulder. That way, he would trap the demon.
But actually, it was, Vali was alive and the demon had been killed. But Vali had been exhausted, fighting, chasing the demon, fighting. That’s why Vali had not roared in celebration, as you would normally do.
And the demon had screamed. Sugriva couldn’t make out whether the scream was of victory or scream was of like a pain while dying. But he didn’t hear any sound from Vali.
So, he thought that Vali has been killed. He thought, I have to protect my citizens. If this demon killed Vali, then he would kill me also.
If he kills me, he will destroy our entire kingdom. Therefore, he decided to block the cave. He came back and then he decided that.
He told the citizens and the courtiers. They all were shocked. They went into mourning.
And then after that, the citizens and the courtiers said that a kingdom needs a king. Vali’s son is too young right now. You have to become the king.
And so, they reluctantly agreed as a service to Vali. But later on, when Vali came back and he saw Sugriva on the throne, what happened was, he snapped. You dreamed.
You deliberately trapped me over there. You tried to use up my throne by killing me. Now, in the case of Vali and Sugriva.
First Sugriva and then Vali. In both cases, there was a misunderstanding. And it was not just a misunderstanding.
You can say it was an understandable misunderstanding. If anybody could make that mistake. But the thing was, after that, how was it resolved? Sugriva, you didn’t really have much chance over there.
If that demon was that strong, Sugriva didn’t have the chance there. I go inside the demon and I came and investigate what has happened. What if he kills me? What if he destroys our kingdom? Vali, on the other hand, had a chance.
Vali was stronger than Sugriva. He could have let Sugriva tell his brothers to go. Or he could have let the other citizens, even his own wife, Maharaj, told him, no, it’s just a misunderstanding.
That’s when he dismissed everything else. He said, Sugriva is evil. And everybody who doesn’t agree with my understanding that he’s evil is either naive or ignorant.
You don’t know what happened. Or he told you a story and you’re so gullible that you believe the story. Or because you’re also related with him, because you’re compromised.
So, in this case, this is how those people who were brothers, close friends, they ended up becoming mortal enemies. The enmity was primarily from one side, Vali was out trying to kill Sugriva. Time and time again.
So, basically, the point we discussed till now is, good people do bad things. So, there are two causes we discussed. The causes can be internal and external.
But then there is a protector. And that is also external. There is people around us, our valuations.
But these are the people, often, we dismiss them. And this is the most dangerous thing. Generally, some people say, I don’t care what the world thinks about me.
I don’t care what people think about me. They may write down the issue, I don’t care what people think about me. I don’t care what people think about me.
And I want people to know that I don’t care. So, the point is that one of the signs of growing and maturing is socialisation. Socialisation means that we do care for what people think.
Now, that is not the only factor in our decision making, but that’s an important factor. Now, suppose we have a child who is very good at a particular sport. Maybe he is in middle school, 7th, 8th, 9th.
And he is very good at what is the sport here? Baseball? Ice hockey. So, he is great at ice hockey. And he is super talented.
But then, because of that talent, he is also a bit of, to use a fine language, a bit of a jerk. So, he is a bit arrogant, a bit dismissive. And whenever the team wins, he takes all the credit.
Hogs all the landmines. And when he doesn’t win, he throws a tantrum. Now, he may be winning most of the time.
And now, we as parents, you need to be friendly with, you need to be well-behaved with your other kids. You need to share the credit with them. He says, why? It’s I who won the match.
It is I who won. What is winning? Okay, you are in middle school right now. You may win a game.
But if you win a game in such a way that nobody wants to play with you after that. Or, because you are so talented, people want you to play. But nobody wants to have anything to do with you after the game is over.
Basically, you will be a genius, but you will become completely lonely. And right now, you may be a genius. But when you go to college, there may be many more talented people from other places.
So, if our particular talent alone is the basis of our friendship, if people value us just because we can do this thing well, but people don’t value us for who we are, then we are going to end up being lonely after some time. So, the point I’m making is that. So, basically, we want people, the social feedback, in one sense, social feedback, it often, it protects from mind’s insanity.
Now, of course, there are times when social feedback can cause our mind’s insanity also. But it’s not just one of this. In general, there’s an abundant scientific evidence that the more lonely people are, more their mental health problems increase.
Because what happens, there could be many reasons, but our mind is telling us a particular story. This is like this, people are like that, I am like this, the world is like this. And if there is no one to challenge that story for us, no one to give us an alternative story, or no one whom we are open enough, whom we are ready to trust, then our mind’s story becomes our reality.
And if our mind is filled with dark impressions, the dark story becomes our reality. So, basically, we don’t want this to happen. Our mind is always telling some story.
But our mind’s story should not become our reality. There will be one input, but we need alternatives. So, how do we do this? I’ll conclude with this.
Basically, if I am here, and my mind is here, this is not the mind. If my mind is like a mirror, through which I am looking at the world, and everyone in the world. So, for example, if I meet someone, and that person is very nice to me, immediately my mind says, what does this person want from me? Why are they being so nice to me? Now, it’s possible that they are being sweet talkers, and they want something from us.
It’s also possible that they are just nice people. So, normally, we look at the whole world through the screen of our mind. The technology is telling me to finish the class now.
Is the Wi-Fi bad over here? I’ll finish in a few minutes. So, basically, what do we do to ensure that we are not misled like this? The essential point is that if I’m a soul over here, there needs to be at least one other person in my life, a trustworthy person, who is as close to me as my mind, or closer to me. That means what happens for most people, we look at them through our mind.
So, if somebody is over here, look at them through our mind. But we have at least one person, we look at our mind through that person. My mind is saying this person is evil.
And everybody who is not evil, I know they are naive, they are ignorant, they are compromised. But this person, I trust this person. This person is my validation.
So, if they are saying, maybe things are not like this. Maybe I need to give them a hearing. So, now, this cannot happen at that time.
Generally speaking, this requires us to cultivate relationships. One of the key principles of bhakti, which is often downplayed is sharing our heart and confidence and hearing others share their heart and confidence. So, we need at least some person whom, when they speak to us, when do we say that I have a good relationship with someone? Okay, we say okay, whenever we say that, we smile.
Well, okay, you could say that’s a good relationship. It’s a very, very basic level of basic level definition of a good relationship. Good relationship means we just smile at each other.
But it’s like, we like to spend time together. That’s also indicative of a good relationship. But really, a good relationship is where, you know, that person, we can disagree.
There can be disagreement without dismissiveness. That means, if that person disagrees, that means that person can tell me that I am wrong. And my response is not, maybe I am wrong to have a relationship with you.
So, generally speaking, most people don’t really want to get into anyone else’s bad books. Some people just like to, but let’s put them aside. There are times when we need from others.
If you’re doing something wrong, you need to be told. This is where the idea of a guru, guru is not just one, there are shiksha gurus. The idea is that the guru is like a surudra.
The guru is our well-wisher, but it is also, when there are great saints, Srila Prabhupada would say, you’re our well-wisher. That’s how he would sign all his letters. Now, he also had such a level of purity that even then Prabhupada would use strong words like fools and rascals.
Because of his purity of intention, because of his selflessness and compassion, people would not take offence. Why is he saying like this? Let me try to understand. Did everybody do like that? Maybe not, but many did.
So now, we can’t wait till such a saintly person comes in our life. But the point is that over time, everybody makes mistakes, but over time, if you find that this person is my well-wisher, so for Kayi, it was Bharat. Now, she thought she was her well-wisher, but she did not think Bharat was anyway compromised.
So when Bharat spoke, that’s when her illusion got worse. So for each one of us, it’s important to develop healthy relationships. And to the extent we develop those relationships, to that extent, we can protect ourselves when our mind starts misleading us.
So I’ll conclude with how we can get to this level, where we can develop a healthy relationship, a relationship healthy enough by which we are open to people’s opinions. Basically, we want a good, a good relationship means that person can call us a fool, and we don’t reject that person. So I’ll conclude with one acronym here.
Four steps by which we can develop strong relationships. First is humility. So the word humility can have many different meanings.
But I’m going to use a particular meaning of humility. See, there are things I know, is what I know. And there is what I don’t know.
So humility means just being open to the possibility that what I don’t know, may be more important than what I know. So there is a particular conflict, there is a particular situation, I have acted in a particular way, I have taken a particular stand. And that’s basically what I know, maybe what I know is correct.
But there is what I don’t, there are things that I don’t know also. So it is basically, in one sense, humility is the starting point for any relationship. Now we can say we have physical needs, we have emotional needs, that is why we seek relationship, that’s true.
But beyond that, when you really want to connect with people, for the sake of learning and growing, then humility basically means that there are things I know, but there are things that I don’t know. And those are also important. It’s possible that those things may be more important than what I do know.
So for example, if I come for a programme, now I may know very well the subject that I’m going to speak. But the organisers may know better than me, what is the level of the audience who’s coming. And at a particular place, if I’m going to give a class, what the level of the organisers is, is knowing that is much more important than the subject that I’m going to speak One time I gave a class in India.
It was an interfaith conference. I gave a talk. And it was a 20 minute talk.
I spoke for five, seven minutes. And you know, it was, everybody was looking at me as if they were watching a foreign language movie without subtitles. Then I just look at the organiser and the organiser had been signalling something to me.
So a Christian group had organised this interfaith meeting. So I had gone there to speak in English. And then the person said, you know, nobody understands English, nobody.
Or they understand English very little. And then I spoke it. And after that, they introduced me, you know, to all the participants.
All the participants look typically Indian. You know, they were. But they’re all converted Indians who were Christian priests.
I thought because they had shown me the names of the participants, it’s Father Joseph and Father John. And it’s Father Joseph and Father John and Father Peter. All typically Indian, South Indians or Maharashtrians.
So anyway, so the point I was making is that what I don’t know is when it is much more important than what I know. So that humility. Humility doesn’t mean we have to let people walk over us.
It doesn’t mean that we let people treat us like a doormat. It just means that that there are things which I don’t know. And maybe there are others who know about it.
The second part is empathy. Now, I am again using empathy. Krishna talks about humility in 13.8. He talks about empathy in 6.32. I’m not going to go into the words because I don’t want to make this class too long right now.
But I’m going to use empathy in a particular sense. See, empathy generally means we should be able to feel what other person is feeling. But I’m going to use it in the opposite sense.
Sometimes when we are going through something, we feel, you know, somebody says, I understand what you’re going through. No, you can’t. You’re not living my life.
You have not felt my pain. You can’t understand what I’m going through. Well, there is some truth to that.
But why our individual experiences are unique. But there is a common denominator to our human journey. And empathy means we understand that others’ experiences, they may not be same, but they can be similar.
They can be similar. And that is why we all can learn from each other. One of the great advantages of humanity and the human connections nowadays we have is a multicultural society.
The idea is that, yes, we all have our differences. But we all are on the same human journey. So others may not be able to understand me completely.
But then by that criteria, do even I understand myself completely? Isn’t it? There are sometimes I do things and I want to, why do I do those things? So nobody can understand us completely. But that doesn’t mean that others’ experiences don’t count. And other experiences can be similar and therefore they can be valuable.
So when we have this empathy, then we don’t go into the zone of dismissing others. So Shrila Prabhupada, when he came from India to America, at one level, there was no similarity between the experiences he had and the experiences that his followers from the West had. But Prabhupada still was able to communicate.
And he was able to because there is a universal common denominator to our experiences. We all have in our own ways experienced loss. We all have in our ways experienced disappointment, frustration, maybe even betrayal.
If not betrayal, at least disappointment. If you’re not experiencing disappointment, then I’m disappointed to tell you that you’re so going to experience it. That’s the life it is.
People don’t live up to our expectations. We ourselves don’t live up to our expectations. So empathy means, yes, people can understand me.
Maybe I need to help them understand me, but they can understand what I’m going through. So their perspectives can have value. And after that is appreciation.
So appreciation means not just that, okay, others’ experience can have value. This particular person, you know, this particular person seems to get me. Or when this is something, I get what they’re saying.
So, okay, I appreciate what you’re saying. I may not agree with everything that you’re saying. But, okay, this is an interesting take on this.
I need to think more about this. So in traditional cultures, respect was given according to social hierarchies. If somebody is an elder, that person should be respected.
If somebody is in a position of authority, that person should be respected. In today’s world, those kinds of hierarchies, people don’t respect somebody in a hierarchy, they suspect somebody in a hierarchy. That’s the default.
You know, if you’re in a position of authority, you must have done something manipulative to get there. No, that’s possible. It’s also possible that somebody could have got there by their competence.
The point is, appreciation is, empathy is general openness to others. Appreciation is a more specific openness to specific people. So if they put it this way, I’m putting this like a funnel over here, the inverted funnel.
It’s humility. It’s where what I don’t know matters. There are things I don’t know, and what I don’t know matters, or at least can matter.
Then, the second circle is empathy. What others know can matter to me. Others’ experience, others’ wisdom can speak to me.
What was the third one I discussed? Appreciation. And what this person says, this could even be this, would be these, matters. This person has something of value to say.
And then the last, what is the acronym we’re discussing? Here. That is R. That is respect. This is where, that I am, what this person thinks is at least as important as what I think, if not more important.
Like I said earlier, we look at everyone through the filter of our mind. Some person is close to us, we look at our mind through that person. So, respect is not just when you see someone, you offer obeisances to that person, or when we speak some polite, honorific words.
So, what this person thinks, it is equal to or greater than what I think. This is where we are ready to let the other person question our being. Now, when we, if we can have one person like this in our life, we are fortunate.
We will be protected from many of the dangers that our mind subjects us to and the world subjects us to. So, the purpose of spiritual life, and especially for cultivating spiritual relationships, is to come to this level. We say we hear, as we come to satsangh and hear, that’s important, no doubt.
But we also, through hearing, develop connections with particular devotees, where and then we can connect with them for guidance. I’ll talk one last point about this respect. This level, there are basically three characteristics of this.
A person who will earn our respect. By respect, I’m using a specific term that I can let that person, person’s opinion be a basis by which I question or change my opinion, or challenge or change my opinion also. So, first is, in the Bhagavad Gita, Bhakti Samskriti talks about like-minded association.
So, we can use that and say like-minded guides. We need guides who are like-minded. What is like-minded means? We understand their mind.
That means that when they speak, what they say makes sense. Sometimes some people, they give a class and after the class, before the class we had some questions and after the class we have more questions than before. Instead of having more answers.
And not more questions in the sense that our curiosity has increased. More questions in the sense that our confusion has increased. So, you just want to get what they’re saying.
So, for example, if we ask a logical question and somebody just gives a scriptural answer. Well, okay, I know that scripture says that, but how do I make sense of it? So, we understand their mind. The way they speak things make sense to us.
And the second is, they understand our mind. That means if we ask a question, they don’t immediately label us. That you are a fool.
If somebody asks a very analytical question, in my earliest days in spirituality, about four or five years, I used to have a lot of questions. I had a very analytical mind. So, this one devotee asked him one question, second question.
And he was giving an answer and he was not satisfied by that answer. So, I was probing further and I was so caught in my head that I didn’t even notice that this person was getting a little annoyed with me. So, finally he said, Chaitanya Charan, I think you have forgotten that we are in the bhakti mark, not the jnan mark.
And we are in the path of devotion, not the path of intelligence. Now, when he spoke that, whatever his intention, I decided one thing is, I’m never going to be on the path to ask you any questions. So, we all have a particular kind of mind and it works for particular people.
So, some people are more emotional. Now, when they are being emotional, somebody says you are just being sentimental. That’s not very helpful.
It may be like that. But that’s the way their mind functions. Somebody might be more rational.
So, they understand our mind. They don’t leave us immediately. And the last part is probably the most important.
They help us understand our mind. That means, you are thinking like this, I understand you are thinking like this, but till this point you are right. You know, maybe at this point, I have thought of this particular factor.
So, they don’t ask us to reject our thinking, but they help us to build on our thinking to correct our thinking. And this is a key point. A real guru doesn’t teach us to distrust our thinking.
No, spiritual life is not about distrusting our own judgement. It is about building, elevating, refining our own judgement. Yeah, what you are thinking, where you are coming from is right.
To this point, you are right. This is where you’ve been going wrong. We want to examine this.
So, ultimately, the purpose of any Gaheel is to connect us with the guide inside us. Krishna is the ultimate guide inside us. So, our mind of the thoughts from inside us, sometimes they connect us with Krishna, sometimes they disconnect us from Krishna.
So, to the extent they are connecting us with Krishna, that is good. To the extent they are disconnecting us, they need to be connected. So, it takes time and effort, but if you can find, it may even take months or years to find a friend like this, find a devotee like this.
Even if we find one person like this in our lives, then that’s a great blessing. There is no blessing in Bhakti that can be more valuable than this. Of course, we have the holy name, we have the deities, we have Shri Rampal’s mercy.
Of course, that is extremely important. But Prabhupada says that these sixfold exchanges, our Krishna consciousness movement is nourished by these sixfold exchanges. And the way we, as good people, can avoid doing bad things is by learning to hear.
And often when good people value bad things, that’s because they stop hearing. They have got caught in their own mental bubbles and that’s why their mind is leading them astray. Fortunately for us, Krishna is the guru inside us and he will guide us.
If we are open enough, if we are eager enough, we take time. But if we look for friends, we will find them. Not everybody will come to that level.
Even if you can come to the H-E-A level, that’s also helpful. To come to the respect level may be difficult with anyone. If we come to the appreciation level, then we can get inputs and we can refine our own conceptions and become better equipped to avoid being misled by internal or external forces.
So I will summarise what I discussed today. The topic was why good people do bad things. So broadly, I discussed this in four parts.
First was, I started by talking about categories and confusions. First was the muddled middle. That there are good people and there are bad people.
The good people do good things, bad people do bad things. But there is the muddle in the middle. This is where people sometimes do good, sometimes do bad.
And quite often, the people around us as well as we ourselves tend to fall in this place. So then we discussed the causes. Basically, in the causes, we discussed that there can be two kinds of causes.
These are internal, in terms of the impressions within us. We all are vulnerable to certain things we all can have. And external can be the association around us.
Sometimes we will be affected by the people around us. These can create moments of weakness. But the third and fourth point that I will focus on in the class.
So there is the outer protection. How it is lost and how it can be, that same outer protection can be gained. So how that outer protection is lost? I talk about four stages or four ways we distance other people.
Do you remember that? We stop being nice. So what is nice? Naive. N was? Naive.
I was? Ignorant. C? Compromised. And E was? Evil.
So basically, we start seeing that if you consider people. They have their soul, the mind, the intelligence and then the senses. So basically, if somebody is at this level itself, naive.
You don’t know. At this level it is? You are ignorant. Your mind, you are not able to judge properly.
You are naive. Your intelligence, you know what is right. But you don’t do the right thing.
That’s because you are compromised. And you are deliberately doing something wrong. That is? Evil.
So this is how we dismiss. Now can people fall in this category? Of course. But do all people who disagree with us necessarily fall in that category? No.
Quite unlikely. So how do we regain that outer protection? Here. So we discuss this as a funnel.
So what does humility mean in this context? Yes. What I don’t know matters. Then what is the next one? Empathy.
Empathy means what? What other people think matters. Can matter. A was? Appreciation.
What this person says matters to me. And last was? Respect. Respect means? What this person says is at least as important or more important than what I say or what I think.
So if you can have a person at this level of respect where we understand them. We understand their mind. They understand our mind.
And they help us understand our mind. And we are extremely blessed. And this is the way we can protect ourselves during our moments of weakness and stay on the path to our ultimate well-being.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. Yes, please.
So I have a couple of questions, but I’ll start with this one. As far as this here, the end of it, we might start where we have humility we’re getting from someone, empathy, appreciation, but when you get to that respect part, it might be very hard to get that. What is it in myself, I’ll just speak for myself, that maybe I’m not allowing someone in my life to be fully transparent.
Is that a desire or I don’t want the outside influence to judge me? It’s difficult. We shouldn’t be too harsh on ourselves. Because we all are shaped by our previous experiences.
And trusting others, or to speak of trusting others implicitly, is extremely difficult. It’s extremely dangerous also. The more we trust someone, the more we make ourselves vulnerable to be hurt by that person.
So, it’s a natural defence mechanism within us. And that defence mechanism itself is not a bad thing. But, it’s like saying, you know, if some thief has come in my house and somehow I manage to push the thief away, and that I’ve locked my door and I’m safe, and then the police come, and they say, we are the police, how do I know you’re the police? And we don’t open the door because the police has come.
Maybe there’s somebody in our home who is wounded because of the thieves. And, emergency has come. And we don’t open the door.
That’s unhealthy. So, our defensiveness, our protectiveness is understandable. But the problem comes when we take one value and elevate it to the supreme value.
So, defensiveness, or protectiveness, that’s understandable. But, there are other things of value in our lives. In the COVID pandemic, the way things worked out, protecting life is important.
We all realise that protecting the quality of life is also important. As a complete lockdown is not something which, at least in retrospect, seems to be such a good thing to do. Because it’s so long.
So, I don’t want to get into the politics of that. But the point is that there’s only one value So, we shouldn’t think of ourselves as a bad person if we find it difficult to trust somebody. It’s safety, security, that’s an important value for us.
But, you need to know I can’t make this into a supreme value. Wanting to be safe can be an extremely dangerous thing. If that is the only thing we want.
Wanting to be safe is good, but somebody says that I want to be safe so I won’t drive out in the car because there might be an accident. Okay, if I’m sitting in this room, the roof can collapse. In my house also I can be unsafe.
So, where do we stop? So, we understand that ultimately we want some meaning and purpose in our life. That’s what we want. We want our existence to count.
We want our existence to matter. We want our existence to make things better for someone in the world and to make ourselves better. So, we want some meaning and purpose.
And, when we have that, okay, I’m at a particular place right now but there’s more that I can do. Thank you very much, Mataji, for coming. So, we need to recognise that there are other values that are important.
So, if we keep those values as important, finding meaning, finding a deeper purpose in our life, finding the resources by which we are pursuing our purpose, then we can become open to trusting others in a way that won’t naive. Then, even if we are disappointed by people, we will learn and we will grow from there. Is that a question? How to bridge that gap if that’s there and it’s blocking your spiritual life? How to… Well, it’s step by step.
It’s to open ourselves a little bit. You know, we share something about ourselves that is that people might criticise and then we see how the person reacts. That person starts condemning us then we may not want to share.
But if that person understands and then guides us, maybe we can do this, or this. So, gradually, we open ourselves. Like, we want to swim in a particular water body.
We are not sure how cold it is. We don’t just jump into it. We will put our toe in it first and see how cold it is.
So, like that, gently, step by step. Gradually, step by step. Yes, ma’am.
You can have one. Hare Krishna Prabhu. Thank you for a wonderful class.
My question is, the solution you gave is humility and appreciation. In all of these, there is sense of seeking validation. I’m accountable for that respect, for seeking that what other person thinks.
So, I do such things. So, I gain respect or appreciation for what this person says matters. When does it become unmotivated, when our intention becomes unmotivated for being accountable to all of these? When does it become unmotivated? When we become convinced the other person is unmotivated.
When, say for example, we become convinced that this person simply loves Krishna purely and wants nothing for me except that I should also love Krishna. Then, that means, unmotivated means selfless, usually in that sense. So, the parampara is not just like a link of heads where we agree with somebody who speaks a particular word.
It’s a bond of hearts. So, Prabhupada loved Krishna and that’s what inspired people, so many devotees from different backgrounds to also become dedicated to him. They still had their individualities, but they felt inspired I’m going to love Krishna.
And they made loving Krishna the supreme value. And so, it’s also an incremental process. Should we be seeking validation? You see, the word validation has a slightly negative connotation.
It conveys the idea of dependency, there’s approval addiction we might have. But the thing is, if our life is centred only on pleasing someone, then that is a bit unhealthy. See, we say we should please Guru, but our purpose is to love Krishna.
Our purpose is to develop our love for Krishna. And our pleasing the Guru is because the Guru was guiding us how to love Krishna. So, our life should always be a principle centred, not a personal centred.
The principle could be, I want to develop my love for Krishna. I want to become a better person. I want to pursue a particular set of virtues in my life.
And then, to the extent I seek the approval of those who are good at that, then I also become good at that. If somebody wants to learn ice hockey, then they make a particular move when they look at the coach. Are they having approval addiction problems? No.
They want to learn a particular thing. And they are not just trying to please that person. They are trying to love that thing.
And when that person approves, that means they are doing the right thing. So, basically, Bhakti is purpose centred. The purpose is to develop our love for Krishna.
It is not person centred. Prabhupada said, what will please me the most is if you love Krishna. Distribute books, worship the deity, so many things we may do, but ultimately, it’s when we love Krishna.
So, we need to keep that purpose at the centre of our consciousness. And then, when we seek approval from others, it is to know that we are progressing towards our purpose. And that’s why, in the Bhagavatam, there are examples also of people rejecting authority figures.
Yajnik Brahmin patnis, they reject their husbands. Bali Maharaj and Shukracharya. There are authority structures and normally, within those authority structures, we try to please those who are authority figures.
But, if pleasing them is taking away our purpose, then we need to stop that. Thank you. Krishna, I want to connect the first step.
Should we hear all people, good, muddle in the middle, and bad, or should we only hear some people? Well, it depends on the context. Generally, for our learning and growth, we need to hear from people who are better than us. Any subject, if I want to learn math, if I want to learn geography, I need to hear from people who know more than me.
So, if I want to grow in my spirituality or my character, then I need to hear from people who are better than me. That’s the primary source of hearing for our growth. But then, in our relationship with others, there are some people who might be bad people, who might be in the muddle in the middle.
Now, we will need to hear from them, not to obey them, but to understand where they are. Somebody has done something wrong, and we could just dismiss them as a terrible person. If we hear them, then by hearing, maybe we can make out does this person actually regret what they are doing, or are they simply trying to justify what they are doing, what they have done.
Are they trying to make amends? One bad action does not make a person to be a bad person. But, how should I respond? If they have done something bad, how should I respond? So, I need to hear them. So, we hear good people, to learn from them.
Among the other categories of people, if we are already related with them, or if we had worked with them in some way, then we also need to hear them to understand where they are at, so that we can deal with them appropriately. But, it’s not that we have to hear every single worldview in the world. We don’t have time for that.
Everybody can propagate their own idea and their ideology in such a way that it can seem convincing. God has given human beings the capacity that whatever we want to believe, we will find reasons to justify that belief. Now, we may say that God exists.
Clouds are themselves a miracle that points to God’s extraordinary engineering capacity. The clouds are like a mobile airborne water tank that is made of aircraft-proof technology. The twin tower designers couldn’t make aircraft-proof technology.
Nobody has made that till now. The clouds are like that. And they bring rains to all living beings.
That’s true. It’s a miracle. Somebody may ask, if God made clouds to give rains, then why does it rain on the oceans? Well, it rains so that you can ask these questions and stay atheistic.
The point is that whatever somebody wants to believe, they can come up with evidence for that. That’s why we don’t have the time to hear every single worldview. We don’t do that in any field.
If I want to take medicine, if I have flu, it’s not that, first I have to study a book on allopathy, then I have to study a book on Ayurveda, then I have to study a book on naturopathy, homoeopathy. And by that time, if I keep doing that, my flu has become a terminal disease and I’ll die before I take any medicine. We use our basic intelligence and we act.
So, we need to have that discernment. Does that answer your question? Yes, thank you very much. Any last question? Yes, please.
Prabhu, I was just thinking about the stages of devotee, machyama, ikanistha and uttama. And scriptures say that we have to at least come to machyama dikhari. And I was just contemplating on the qualities of someone who wants to aspire to be machyama, is to differentiate between who is favourable, who is not favourable, and details like that.
So, could you reflect on how the principles that we learned today can be used? So, kanistha is the introductory, beginning devotees. They get very caught in externals. That means, if they come to a spiritual place, they’ll only look at you know, if somebody does aarti, oh, how nicely they move their hand.
It’s so elegant. This person must be a great devotee. Or, if somebody pronounces sanskrit very nicely, oh, this person must be a great person.
Now, are all these attributes important? They are important. But do they necessarily equal spiritual advancement? Not necessarily. In fact, the Bhagavatam says that Sudhakuswami himself was not very good at pronouncing all the Vedic mantras.
But he understood their essential purport. And that’s why the sages wanted to hear from him. So, basically, it’s like, at the kanistha level, at the kanistha level, we just look at externals.
The externals means, we may look at certain abilities that a person has. His abilities could be his material skills also. And if we equate that with some ritual specialisation, we equate it with spiritual advancement.
At the madhyama level, we start looking for virtues. So, how much is this person actually dedicated to Vishnu? Now, how is their sadhana? Now, how is their overall behaviour? How do they react in difficult situations? And then, at the uttama level, we can perceive beyond this, love for Krishna. At the kanistha level, or at the madhyama level, we also see some symptoms, some characteristics, and we may equate them with love for Krishna.
Somebody does aarti very nicely, oh, this person must be loving Krishna. Maybe, maybe not. Some people may be very calm and equivoiced.
Does that mean they love Krishna? Maybe, maybe not. It’s good to be calm and equivoiced. But they might just have a sattvic upbringing.
They might just be like a stoic person. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are loving Krishna. So, it’s incremental procreation.
So, when I was talking about this H-E-A-R, that’s more at the madhyama level. We are looking at the virtues that a person has. And okay, the virtues that we try to cultivate, and then we are able to focus on the virtues of others.
Okay, I have humility, and others, what I don’t know is important. This person, and other people get what I am going through. This person gets what I am going through.
And this person may help me understand me better than what I understand myself. Does that answer your question? Yes, sir. So, thank you very much.
Shri Ram Chandra Bhagwan ki, Srila Prabhupada ki, Gaur Bhakta Vrinda ki, Gaur Primani ki. Thank you.