How hearing does wonders BG 7.1

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so we will discuss from the Bhagavad Gita chapter 7 verses 1, 2 and 3 so the chapter 7 in the Bhagavad Gita is called as knowledge of the absolute knowledge of the absolute in Sanskrit is called as Jnana Vijnana Yoga so I will tell the translation of the first 3 verses and then we will discuss the topic we are discussing today is the uniqueness of Krishna conscious wisdom the uniqueness of Krishna conscious wisdom so 7.1 states he says that by hearing about me you will become free from doubts you will understand me in full, you will gain shelter of me and in that way you will become attached to me so in this one verse Lord Krishna is talking about six things, the first thing is actually what comes last in the verse hear about me by hearing about me what will happen you will get knowledge about me you will get complete knowledge about me and when you get knowledge about me the third thing that will happen that is you will become free from doubts when you become free from doubts what will happen the next thing you will want to take shelter of me when we get knowledge about Krishna we want to take shelter of Krishna and how do we take shelter of Krishna for that we will practise yoga and when we practise yoga what will be the fruit of that yoga we will become attached to Krishna or more specifically our mind will become attached to Krishna so hearing is a very important part of learning whether it is material knowledge or it is spiritual knowledge in our colleges we go and study basically we hear from the professors similarly in Krishna consciousness we hear from the spiritual master and the spiritual master’s representatives so the first point is relatively easy to understand hearing gives us knowledge but in Krishna consciousness the hearing doesn’t give just an intellectual knowledge you see when we talk about hearing we are not just talking about process of knowledge information transfer just like sometimes in school small children they memorise tables so two twos are four and the student also replies two twos are four that is mere information transfer but essentially when we hear from a devotee it is not just information transfer but it is consciousness transfer it is not just information transfer but consciousness transfer consciousness transfer means desire transfer so Ishwara Prabhupada went and preached in the west before him so many other people had written commentaries on the Gita but by reading those commentaries nobody became a devotee why? because the writer of the commentary the speaker in the Gita himself was not devoted to Krishna he had no desire to serve Krishna, he had no Krishna consciousness and so naturally he could not produce any Krishna consciousness in the readers so when we talk about the knowledge of Krishna consciousness that knowledge is meant for a purpose that purpose is to transform our hearts to transform our desires and an important part of that is asamsayam and we become free from doubts so now we may have different kinds of doubts some doubts can be very basic does God exist first of all? or why should Krishna be God? there are so many other people who might be God or did Krishna really marry so many queens? how could he have lived? there are different kinds of doubts which are there so when you talk about these doubts it is very important to get all of them clarified over a period of time and the way we get them clarified varies so I will analyse four kinds of doubts the first is the kind of doubts which are clarified as soon as we hear the philosophy for example some of us may have already experienced to some extent how life in this world is a misery how repeatedly there are frustrations, there are problems, there are disappointments and we feel that this is the way the world is but everybody around us is telling us no this world is a wonderful place, this world is an enjoyable place and we can be happy here so this kind of doubt is something which will get cured by the hearing of Krishna conscious philosophy that means as soon as we hear for example somebody tells us he wrote how as soon as he heard the devotee speaking this world is a place of misery at last there is somebody who is ready to tell the truth who is not just bluffing yes this world is miserable that’s what I have experienced at last somebody is ready to speak that directly face on somebody is not just bluffing but they are telling this is the truth so I am sending you a powerpoint presentation right now which is possible after you receive it you can open it and we will discuss based on that so you will receive it you can just accept it so the first kind of doubt is where we hear and immediately say this makes sense and the second category will be we may hear but we may wonder how is this true, for example we hear that it is not the body it is the soul that is the source of life then we may have some doubts but actually when the body gets damaged and the person dies that would seem to indicate that the body is the source of life and not something different from the body so then we understand that actually the body is like a vehicle so if a vehicle is damaged that does not mean the driver is necessarily damaged because the driver wants to move from one place to another so when the vehicle is damaged he leaves the vehicle and goes to some other place so like that some doubts we have some analysis some question answer some discussion and then those doubts get cleared the third category is when we practise Krishna consciousness for several years we become purified and after we become purified then we understand how this particular thing is true for example Krishna’s dealings with the gopis at first glance they may appear to be mundane just like a boy-girl dealing although Prabhupada and Acharyas repeatedly tell us that they are not but that is what they will appear to be to us so when we purify our hearts after purifying our hearts we understand that actually this is something entirely different in fact the Bhagavad Gita tells us that this world is like a reflection of the spiritual world in 15.1 Lord Krishna says that this world is like an upside down reflection of the spiritual world so we see the male-female relationship in this world and that is a reflection of the original pure spiritual male-female relationship between Krishna and the Gopis so the reflection gives an understanding of the reality but the reflection is not the reality now in all the different religions of the world there is a great mystery about the origin of the male-female attraction all religions which are genuine spiritual searches for God warn that attraction to the opposite sex will distract one from spiritual life and therefore they tell that one should curb or stop or at least regulate this attraction but the other religious traditions fail to explain where does this attraction come from why is there an attraction at all between male and female so nowadays in the west Christianity is the predominant religion wherever people are religious many people are mostly atheistic or agnostic atheistic means they don’t believe in God agnostic means they feel that God can’t be known so let’s not make any judgement about this so those people who do believe in some sort of God there is an aggressive feminist swing in Christianity which says why should God be male why can’t God be a female and therefore these people there are sects within Christianity which have changed the bible so wherever God is referred to as a he they have changed he to she so she said and then the standard prayer why should you be a father why not mother a mother is said to be more loving than the father and they have gone further and in New York they have made a big image of Jesus Christ they say if God is a person why should God be male why can’t God be female and if God has sent a messenger to us God has sent his offspring to us then why does that person have to be a male why can’t that person be a female so they have made an image, an idol of Jesus as a female complete with breasts and hips and female reproductive organs so this is complete misunderstanding about God’s nature where we superimpose our ideas on God now of course we should not just condemn Christianity because even what we call as Hinduism is also not much behind recently I had gone to Jamshedpur we have an NIT there Jamshedpur has the world’s first and only Madhuri Dixit temple where there is one person who has made a temple of Madhuri Dixit and in Kolkata there are 12 temples of Abhidha Bachchan and they are called as Kalyug Ke Ram Ka Mandir Kalyug Ke Ram Ka Mandir so the idea is here that in the west as well as in India people are dragging their own conceptions on God so I am a female so God should be a female now God is somebody who attracts me so I am attracted to a particular movie star whether a female or a male so I will make that into a God or a Goddess or whatever that’s why the Vedic scriptures tell us very clearly that this world is a reflection a reflection of the spiritual world so why is it important to understand that it is a reflection because there is a difference between the reflection and the reality the reflection indicates the existence of the reality but the reflection is not the reality if I see a delicious mango in a river then to get the mango I have to do two things there are two fundamental misconceptions which obstruct us from attaining real spiritual happiness the first is materialism the second is impersonalism so what is let’s continue with the example of a reflection so if there is a mango tree on the banks of a river and that mango tree is reflected in the river then we see a reflection of the mango in the river so materialism says that the reflected mango is real that reflected mango is real so jump in and catch it and eat it and enjoy it and if you jump in and try to catch it all that we get when we jump in is we bang our head against the rock below the surface of the river and we get wounded when we try to enjoy our senses all that we get is misery so materialism is the idea that the reflection is the reality that the mango is there in the reflection itself and therefore jump down and enjoy it and you know we have governments which make 5 year plans, 10 year plans, 1 year plans that is like a group of people coming together we will make a 5 year plan to find the mango in the river now how much exhaustively we search how much scientifically we search we are not going to find the mango in the reflection because it is not there so scientific and technological progress may be useful in the sense that it may provide us with more comfort physically speaking but it does not lead to happiness what is the difference between comfort and happiness comfort is related with the body whereas happiness is a state of mind and it is a state of the heart comfort is related with the body that means imagine if you are doing some project in computer science and you are working in an AC lab and summer is very hot so when you go to the AC lab you feel very cool and comfortable as compared to the outside sultriness and heat but at the same time if you have a project guide or a boss who is very tyrannical and he is chastising you although you have not done anything wrong he is chastising you so you may be physically comfortable but are you happy? no you are miserable because although you are physically in an AC room you are not happy because physical comfort is different from happiness so science and technology may make us physically more comfortable but it cannot make us happy because science only deals with the modern level so that is why we see in modern times people are comfortably miserable people are comfortably miserable comfortably miserable means what? they live a lot of comfort still they are bored still they are miserable just like a person working in a software job now he has AC so he will not sweat because of heat but still he sweats because of stress so a person in a software job or a high demanding job is sweating not because of heat but he is sweating because of stress so he is comfortably miserable so I was talking about these two different misconceptions the first is materialism which says that the reflection itself is the reality and the second is impersonalism which says the reflection is false and there is no reality the reflection is false there is no mango over there and stop pursuing the mango and the moment you give up your desires you will become happy so impersonalism has the idea that one thing you get correct is that when we get attracted to material forms we get attracted by material desires then those lead to suffering how do they lead to suffering? simple if we get attracted to some food we eat a lot of it and then we get indigestion are you able to hear me? so we get indigestion we eat a lot and we get indigestion some people smoke and they get lung cancer and things like that so when we enjoy our senses are you able to hear me? so the impersonalists get one thing right that the more we enjoy the more we will suffer but the other thing that they get wrong is that therefore all that we have to do is give up the desire to enjoy but giving up the desire to enjoy is impossible because we live for enjoyment if there is no pleasure there is no meaning for life you see all of us when problems come in our life we feel irritated for example we are going to college and our cycle punctures we feel irritated or we try to do a project submission and it doesn’t work we feel irritated but our goal of life if we look at it seriously our goal of life is not to live a problem free life but to live a purposeful life our goal is not to live a problem free life but to live a purposeful life let’s look back at our life sometimes after the exams get over and then we have 1,2,3 months vacation and during those vacations we have practically no problem we don’t have any exam tension we don’t have any work load we don’t have any deadlines and 2 months we think i will just relax but generally if you think of it within 10-15 days we get bored with the vacation what am i going to do whole day watch TV or just fool around and maybe when we come back after 2 months i feel i wasted those 2 months so we lead a problem free life but actually in the problem free life we didn’t get any satisfaction on the other hand if we look back at our life sometime when we were inspired by some purpose for example we had a very tough project to do and we had a tight deadline to meet and we worked very hard constantly working not wasting any time thinking about how to deal with the problem how to solve it coming up with creative ideas and although that period was tough although that period was intense when now we look back at it we feel satisfied yes i achieved something in my life at that time so if we look at our life what gives meaning and joy to life is not just being problem free but being purposeful being problem free does not give joy to life it is being purposeful that gives joy to life so the impersonalists they realise that our material desires become the cause of our problem and therefore they think that if we have to become problem free then we have to give up these desires so they are correct in the sense that we have to give up material desires but we don’t have to give up spiritual desires spiritual desires are very very important for us and its only when we develop spiritual desires that we can actually become purified become purified and we develop spiritual happiness so i was talking about we get knowledge about Krishna and then we become free from doubts so our doubts fall into two categories the first category is that this world itself is a place of enjoyment and second is that there is actually no enjoyment so all that i want to achieve is Shanti Shanti Shanti but both of them are wrong so then what happens when we understand this clearly we are souls and the soul has an eternal relationship with Krishna and when that relationship is developed then one becomes happy so then what does one want to do one wants to take shelter of Krishna so the first step was hearing second step was understanding third was becoming free from doubts fourth is taking shelter of Krishna when we take shelter of Krishna what do we do we render devotional service to him that is the fifth stage and sixth stage is we fall in love with Krishna so in the Shrimad Bhagavatam 10th canto there is a beautiful story of how this whole process worked in the life of a great devotee that is Rukmini Devi Rukmini Devi is the eternal consort of Lord Krishna in Dwarka so she heard about Krishna from Narad Muni and when she heard about Krishna from Narad Muni she developed an attraction for Krishna she felt that Krishna is my greatest well-wisher and I want to attain his shelter so this pastime of Krishna happened repeatedly throughout the different universes and sometimes the pastime happens slightly differently so this pastime of Rukmini and Krishna is described in the 10th canto of Shrimad Bhagavatam and it is also described by Rupa Goswami in his book Lalita Madhava so there he describes this pastime as it happened in a different yuga, in a different universe in a different day of Brahma how it happened so Rukmini Devi was the daughter of King Vishmaka who was the king of Vidarbha therefore one name of Rukmini is Vaidehi Vaidehi means the princess of Vidarbha and the capital of Vishmaka’s kingdom was Kundina so at that time Krishna’s heroic feats were known far and wide to everyone and therefore King Vishmaka as well as the citizens of Kundina felt that their beautiful princess Rukmini will be an ideal match for Krishna and they wanted that Rukmini should be married to Krishna but Rukmini had one brother Rukmi who was a friend of Shishupal so Shishupal was also a powerful king but he was very envious of Krishna in fact Shishupal was so envious of Krishna that when he was born generally a child cries when he is born but when Shishupal was born from his birth he was blaspheming Krishna instead of crying Krishna you rascal that was the first word he spoke so at that time he actually was born with four hands and so he was born with four hands and three heads a very peculiar feature so then at that time the astrologer told his mother that his extra hands and his extra heads will fall off when he sees the person who will cause his death so then Shishupal and Krishna were related just like Kamsa and Krishna were related so they were all more or less related as Kshatriya rulers so when Krishna came to Shishupal’s mother at that time he saw the baby and as soon as he saw the baby two of the heads and two of the arms fell off and at that time immediately Shishupal’s mother begged to Krishna Krishna please don’t kill my child Krishna said I have no desire to kill him but if he does activities which causes condemnation then if he misleads people if he is envious of people then I will have to do my duty but still because you have asked me for a blessing I promise you that unless he blasphemes me hundred times continuously I will not kill him so she told Shishupal you should never blaspheme Krishna and even if you have to blaspheme him don’t blaspheme him hundred times Shishupal whenever he would want to blaspheme him he would keep a counter with him at 1,2,3 he would come to 99 and then stop not literally he would not keep a counter but he would keep a mental counter so Shishupal wrote a letter to Rukmini and he said generally the conditioned soul has a very inflated opinion about himself so here I ask Oh Rukmini may your attraction to that glorious Shishupal who is the best of all kings and whose virtuous qualities fill his father Damaghosh with pride and joy may your attraction to that Shishupal awaken constantly so he said that I am the best of kings and my father loves me so much now Damaghosh was also arrogant like him envious like him so naturally because both of them were envious both of them liked each other so he wrote a letter when Rukmini got that letter she replied to him that I have already given my heart to the cowherd Krishna who is now the prince of Dwarka and I will never give my heart to anybody else so Shishupal became very disappointed and angry by this and Rukmini heard this Shishupal was a powerful king and Rukmini wanted to make Shishupal into his friend so Rukmini because he himself was a powerful prince and king Bhishmaka was attached to his son to some extent he could not oppose and displease his son so when Rukmini proposed that Rukmini should be married to Shishupal Bhishmaka could not refuse although nobody else in the family wanted this marriage Hare Krishna can you hear me? till what time should I go on? till 8.30, 8.45, 9 you tell me I don’t want to take too much of your time 8.45 should we have some time for question and answer before that or after that? after that ok so I was telling about the story of Rukmini so because Rukmini was the prince and he was powerful nobody could displease him at the same time nobody was pleased with his proposition so Rukmini called for Shishupal to come and Shishupal being afraid that Krishna will come and take Rukmini he brought with him many other princes he brought Jarasandha, he brought Dantapakra and he brought all the other demoniac kings who were there of course by this time Kamsa had been killed so he brought other kings to Kundina and huge armies were there and meanwhile Rukmini started doing a sacrifice a yajna for the pleasure of Chandrabhaga Chandrabhaga is a form of Durga to make sure that the marriage of Rukmini and Shishupal will go off successfully and he pleased the Devi and the Devi appeared and she gave him a mysterious blessing she told him the grandson of Sura who was born with four hands will certainly become your brother-in-law the grandson of Sura who was born with four hands will become your son-in-law now Surasena, he had many sons so one of his sons was Vasudev and through him the son is Krishna another one of his sons was Dammaghosh and through him the son was Shishupal so now all the Devatas, all the demigods and demigoddesses they are actually servants of Krishna and they play a role in Krishna’s plan only so Shishupal thought Rukmini thought, now Devi has promised so therefore the marriage will be successful but what had Devi promised? that Sura’s grandson who was born with four hands will become your brother-in-law now both Shishupal and Krishna were born with four hands so Rukmini thought that this referred to Shishupal but the Devi had referred to Krishna then at that time Narad Muni came there to again see Rukmini Narad Muni saw Rukmini like the goddess of fortune and Rukmini told her heart that I have given my heart to Krishna and I cannot tolerate being with anybody else so at that time Narad Muni told her that you send a message to Krishna so then Rukmini wrote a letter and she wrote a letter to a brahmana named Sunanda and that brahmana went from there to Dwarka to inform Krishna and Sunanda he rushed from there and Rukmini wrote very fervently that in Vedic culture a woman is expected to be shy, chaste and unassuming surrendered so the Vedic culture or rather the Bhagavad culture demonstrates both Aparadharma and Paradharma what is Aparadharma and Paradharma? Aparadharma is not transcendental that is mundane religion Paradharma is transcendental religion so for example for a woman to be obedient to her Hare Krishna for a woman to be obedient to her husband or to her father to her brother that is considered to be very important and unless women are submissive and shy and unassuming then they get themselves into trouble if women are not like this they get themselves into trouble nowadays women want to dress in provocative ways exposing various parts of their body and why do they want to do that? they want to do that so that people become attracted to them and then of course if they are exploited if they are abused if they are physically violated then they complain that men are so uncontrolled that they do all these crimes against us but the point here is that they are becoming provocative so what the idea is that we want to dress provocatively we want to attract men but men shouldn’t touch us so it doesn’t work like that once you start burning a fire you can’t control the fire because we ourselves don’t know how much lust is in our hearts or in others hearts so once we trigger the lust then how much the lust will go forward we don’t know so it’s like there is a tiger who is lying on the ground motionless with eyes closed now there are two possibilities the tiger is either asleep or the tiger is dead now somebody says i want to just find out whether the tiger is asleep or dead so i will go and pinch the tiger now if we go and pinch the tiger what will happen? if the tiger is not dead he will not just pinch us he will swallow us we will be dead so what modern society does is lust is like a sleeping tiger there in the heart of all of us whether it is men or women a sleeping tiger there in the heart of all of us and what modern society does is we show all these images people dress in provocative ways on the television, in the movies, in the ads there are sexually stimulating images and all these are like pinching the tiger so their idea is that let us pinch the tiger because there is some excitement when a person gets sexually stimulated there is some excitement when a woman finds that so many boys are being attracted to me it gives her a sense of ego so similarly when a man feels like I am like a Casanova so many girls are attracted to me it gives him a sense of ego but actually when lust is stimulated we can’t control it once that sleeping tiger is awakened you can’t tell him only eat this rice, dal, sabji, chapati don’t eat me he can’t control like that therefore the Vedic culture is don’t stimulate lust at all that’s why women will always dress in very modest ways covering their bodies and not act or speak in ways that provoke the men because when men are provoked it’s not only men who get in trouble it’s not only women who get in trouble everybody gets in trouble by that so the aparadharma the aparadharma for a woman is that she should be obedient to a man either that man can be her husband or it can be her father or it can be her brother whoever and of course for the man it’s not that he should be the master of his wife the man is also the servant of the spiritual master and the spiritual master is the servant of Krishna so in that way it’s like an engine it’s like a train, Krishna is the engine spiritual master is the first bhogi the husband is the second bhogi, the wife is the third bhogi the children are the subsequent bhogis so the whole train goes towards Krishna so this is aparadharma