How does evil harden our heart towards Krishna? How can we prevent such hardening?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna question how does the evil of this world harden our heart towards Krishna and how can we prevent such hardening this question is based on a comment by Tamil Mani Prabhu on the article evil wins most thoroughly when it wins in the heart the comment is I don’t think that evil that happens around the globe hardens our heart more so towards Krishna while we do feel angry with the perpetrators and sad about the whole thing we must understand this is Kali Yuga and there are demons amongst us who will eventually pay dearly for their sins answer yes when especially people are victimized by evil those who are subject to violence, injustice and such other terrible crimes then they may naturally get the question why did God let this happen or even if they why did God do this if they don’t have a proper understanding of what it means when we say God is in control so that failed expectation of God’s protection at the material level can lead to a hardening of the heart people may start thinking that actually God doesn’t help so therefore all that I have to do is I have to find a way to help myself and therefore one may become asympathetic even antipathetic towards those who pray to God for help when they are in trouble and we may think that such expressions of prayer are signs of weakness and helplessness however that is a mistake but when we get such feelings that is how our heart hardens and we may also start treating others as we may become suspicious of others when we are victimized by some and we may start becoming hard towards them treating everyone as potentially manipulative or violent or unjust and therefore becoming hard towards them over a period of time such a such hardening of the heart may make us even unwilling to trust and love anyone and this is very unfortunate so the hardening of heart happens when we have unclear philosophical understanding of God and his role in the world actually God has given everyone free will and he allows people to act according to their free will and sometimes when people choose to act in evil ways then that leads to consequences those consequences come in terms of karmic consequences which come for others but also involves we getting our own past karma’s consequences through those people so yes this is Kali Yuga and there are lot of people who do lot of misdeeds and they will all have to suffer the consequences but the most important thing to prevent the hardening of our heart towards Krishna is to recognize that Krishna is not up there causing our suffering but he is right in here helping us to tolerate and transcend the suffering Krishna loves us and he gives us his loving remembrance and he gives us the intelligence so that we can not just go through the suffering but we can grow through the suffering so that we can evolve spiritually through the problems that we face in this world and thereby we can move further in our eventual journey towards Krishna wherein we will experience supreme fulfillment and ultimate freedom from all evil and all misery so by redirecting our emotions from the material level to the spiritual level and focusing our consciousness on Krishna we can become less afflicted by material emotions, by material problems which may result because of the evil that others do and in this way by absorption in Krishna we can prevent the hardening of our heart when problems come up at the material level because of the evil acts of others further we can soften the heart even more by seeing even those who are perpetrators of such crimes as ultimately parts of God they are evil and they need to be definitely punished for what they have done but at the same time we will understand that they have also become perverted, they have also become perverted by lust, by greed, by anger and they also need ultimately help, although they are causing suffering to others, they are suffering themselves also because lust, anger, greed don’t leave a person happy no matter how much a person indulges in them, so that’s why even we can, especially by praying for them, not that just in a simplistic way we excuse what they have done but that we pray that while they get the consequences of their actions but along with that they also learn and reform and they also come to know Krishna’s grace and Krishna’s love and thereby become free from the evil that has gripped them, this prayerful disposition towards others towards those who hurt us that can tremendously soften our heart that pleases Krishna and helps us to make enormous leaps in our spiritual advancement towards Krishna. Thank you.