How much is the jurisdiction of our free will?
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
question is that we say we have free will so if we have some free will, so what is the jurisdiction of our free will and how can we exercise this free will properly so now the jurisdiction is determined by our past karma the Bhagavad Gita in the 13th chapter talks about Kshetra and Kshetra Kshetra is a field so just as a poor farmer may have a small field and a wealthy landlord may have a huge field so like that all of us as souls have different levels of influence so some people may have a very attractive charismatic personality and when they talk they are able to influence many other people and some other people may have more may not have such charismatic personality so they are not able to influence so many people why is this difference like that that, this itself is a example of how people have different jurisdictions for how they can exercise their free will so the jurisdiction that we get over which we can exercise our free will that is determined by our past karma so now just like an ant its jurisdiction is very small it can just move from here to there elephant it has got a body which is so big it can crush so many things under its feet also it’s a different body with a different kind of influence so why is this one soul has an ant’s body another soul has an elephant’s body that’s based on past karma so our kshetra essentially connotes our jurisdiction of influence and that is determined by our karma now the various spiritual paths such as the path of karma or jnana or yoga progression in those paths depends on how much control we have over our kshetra now if I have a lot of intelligence and if I have a lot of control over my intellectual faculty then I can do a lot of segregation and follow the path of yoga if I have a lot of control over my body and I can perform austerities then I can follow the path of yoga but the glory of the path of bhakti is how much control we have doesn’t matter what we do with what control we have that is what matters so Hanuman when he was building a bridge for lord Ram to setu he was able to carry giant boulders, the squirrel was carrying just some little grapes but lord Ram accepted both their services both of them and both of them he blessed so bhakti takes us beyond whatever influence we may have to what we do with that influence that’s why as devotees we don’t bother about how much control we have what is the jurisdiction of our control we focus on what is the direction in which we are utilizing the control so if I have good singing ability I use it for singing for Krishna if I don’t have good singing ability that does not mean that I can advance in bhakti still I can express my bhakti in some other way and I can mix with it advance with it that is the beauty of bhakti that it does not depend on any material factors so by learning to love Krishna in the association of devotees and then expressing our bhakti in whatever way is possible for us we can best use our freedom and attain eternal salvation