How important is applying shastra in our life?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
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How important are Shastra conjunctions for all devotees to follow and why? Shastra is basically like a manual so how important is the manual? Manual is what enables us to operate a machine properly so like that life we can live best when we live according to Shastra, see broadly speaking we make our decisions based on four factors first is fashion now why do I wear this dress? because everyone is wearing it everyone is doing it, so I do it second is tradition why do I do like this? because we have already done it like this third is feeling, why did you go over there? I felt like going there fourth is logic why do that? it made sense to me now all these four are useful they can be potentially useful guides in our life but fashions can be foolish quite often you know Oscar Wilde said fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to change it every six months laughing so the corporate controlled media determines that one thing is fashionable and we rush to purchase it and after sometime that same media determines something else will be fashionable and that becomes old fashion so we have to give it up after that so fashions can make us foolish sometimes traditions, not all traditions are right many traditions can be wrong also for example within the vedic traditions the idea that a person is brahmana by birth that is something which is wrong so tradition can also mislead and our feelings are notoriously fickle same thing I like today tomorrow I just can’t tolerate it when we are driven just by feelings when two people form a relation simply based on feelings they may say initially I can’t live without you and then after six months I can’t live with you so if we are driven only by feelings we cannot move on and logic is useful logic is valuable but our logic is also limited we may not have enough information we may not have enough intellectual capacity to reason things properly all these four are useful parameters but they are not sufficient parameters beyond all these we need scripture scripture is the word of god that is the manual and we subordinate and integrate fashion tradition, feeling and logic with scripture when we follow scripture that is the lighthouse that guides us that is the lighthouse which will never mislead us through scripture scripture has a lot of knowledge but the most important part of scripture is it guides us about how we should act in our life Krishna says that therefore act according to scripture and in this way you will attain auspiciousness in life