How the Bhagavatam reveals the conception of God

How the Bhagavatam reveals the conception of God
[Srimad Bhagavatam class on 2.1.8 at Brisbane, Australia]

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So today morning we will discuss about How Shukdev Goswami Gives a orientation To Parikshit Maharaj About the Bhagavatam Normally If we are going to do some long course Say if We are going to do Bhakti Shastri Or some degree or diploma We would like to have some orientation What all am I going to be taught Because without Orientation we tend to get Lost And especially If we are going on a long discussion Or a long journey Then a discussion Is also like a journey You could say it is more like a mental or intellectual journey Wherein Various concepts are going to be discussed So At that time if there is no orientation Then We might enjoy the ride itself But we will not really understand Where I am going, what all places I have seen So similarly The Bhagavatam is going to be relatively speaking A long journey Technically the Bhagavatam starts From the first canto, first verse itself But Specifically the central conversation Of the Bhagavatam is starting from here In the last verse of the first canto Parikshit Maharaj Asks the defining questions Of the Bhagavatam What is the duty of a person about to die And In response to that Those questions of Parikshit Maharaj Several points are being spoken And one of the points Being spoken is here That he is In that part of the orientation Generally How do we orient ourselves See our Consciousness is often helped In it to focus By questions Say If somebody asks Introduce yourself We might say this is my name, this is my profession But what do I tell about myself If somebody asks which part of the world are you from If the questions are there Then the We can give more specific answers and the discussion can move on So generally If we want to orient ourselves in anything It’s a Broadly six questions Can These are said to be the friends of an intelligent person Who, what, when, Where, why and how So these are considered To be Whenever a person wants to orient themselves They ask themselves these questions So who is speaking So here Parikshit Maharaj is hearing And Shukdev Goswami is speaking But if we consider in this verse What all is being answered Idam Bhagwatam Nama Purana Brahma Samyitam So what is being spoken It’s Bhagwat Purana So the Bhagwatam itself identifies There is no self-identification in the Bhagavad Gita The Bhagavad Gita says that this is the Bhagavad Gita being spoken It is spoken by Krishna so it’s called the Bhagavad Gita But the Bhagavad Gita does not Self-identify Self-identify means that there is no There is no verse in the Bhagavad Gita Which says that this is the Bhagavad Gita being spoken There is what is called the colophon At the end of recitation of each chapter Where it says Bhagavad Gita But that’s not intrinsically what Krishna spoke to Arjuna So But the Bhagavatam Self-identifies itself So this is the Bhagavat Purana Idam Bhagwatam Nama And then what is the name of this book What is the content of this book Purana Brahma Samyitam It is About Brahma The ultimate reality And when was it spoken How was it spoken So it says That it was spoken by Dwaipayan And I heard it At the end of the Goparing So you know end and beginning These all These depend on reference points So The example that is given here by Jiyugoswami And Prabhupada Kursin’s purport is that If We are looking at a building or a tree from the top And the first thing That we see is The top part Now we can say the building begins from there or we can say the building Begins from below So When is it spoken by whom is it spoken These questions are being answered over here And the most significant part Over here is Prabhupada takes the point that He, Shukdev Goswami Has learned it from Vyasadeva And similarly we need to learn it From We need to learn it from a proper Tradition From teachers within a tradition And The previous verses talked about Who is it who So when we have the who question Can be who is it that is teaching it Who is it that can study it So normally if we are joining some course In a university we may want to know Who is the faculty what are their qualifications Then we may also want to know Okay who are the students What is their eligibility If is it like a Adult learning course say if we are 30 If we are 40, 45 and we are joining and everybody else is Maybe 20, might feel a little out of place over there So who is Who are the students So the students So Parikshit Maharaj Is himself a student Now and he Although he was a very greatly Powerful and wealthy King, he has renounced it all To focus on hearing the Bhagavatam And he is giving an example Generally if we Want to join some course we want to know Okay those who graduate from this course What do they achieve, what kind of jobs Do they get, what kind of career do they have What kind of life do they have So similarly here the point being made is That Shukdev Goswami Himself Was a person Who had you could say graduated Out of material life He He didn’t have to graduate out of material life Through experience and Realisation He in his mother’s womb Only had graduated out He was so spiritually evolved That he is completely detached But still he was attracted to the Supreme So he is the So if you look at the questions Who is speaking Who is hearing So that is answered, what is being spoken That is the most important question which we will focus on Later once again but Puranam Brahma Samyitam So this is the Bhagavatam itself Is eternal But it is spoken at Particular times in history So Yugaswami in his Shatsandarbha says that This is just like Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Is the Channa Avatar So Bhagavatam is the Channa Shruti Although Technically it is a Smriti, it is a part of the Puranas But Essentially it is Shruti It is eternal message The Puranas, they themselves keep changing According to time, place, circumstance Because they are spoken According to The whole point of Puranas is Smriti is recollection Which is Puranas That means those who have heard something They hear it and then they recollect it And they speak it according to time, place, circumstance When Bhakta Siddhanta Sri Thakur Was asked about this He said that Just like if we speak right now So language Also evolves So if somebody starts speaking You know, how are thee? How are thee? Are you missing one century? How are you? Thee is something Maybe in the early 20th century Or the 19th century, thee, thou, thy So language changes So similarly Sanskrit has also evolved over centuries So what happens is The Puranas are written in Relatively recent Sanskrit Whereas the Vedas themselves Are written in relatively older Sanskrit So when Bhakta Siddhanta Sri Thakur Was asked about this So the inference that Scholars draw from it is that The Puranas are recent, whereas the Vedas are very old But Bhakta Siddhanta Sri Thakur Says that Just as the soul reincarnates Similarly the Puranas also reincarnate What that means is That the Puranas, because they are Smriti They are spoken according to Time, place, circumstance So the essential Puranic message is eternal But depending on when it has been spoken There is an oral tradition And there is a textual tradition So in the Puranas When the Puranas are written down The textual tradition is what is recent The content itself is not recent The way it was phrased That is recent Sanskrit But interestingly The Bhagavatam Although it is categorised as a Puran It is not in It is not in recent Sanskrit It is actually Sanskrit is quite Vedic So If somebody wants to learn Sanskrit traditionally The books which are recommended For learning Sanskrit are Something like Ramayan Or the Padma Puran The Puranas are generally very simple Sanskrit The Vedic Sanskrit is very difficult And the Bhagavatam Sanskrit Is also not very easy What do you mean by easy Sanskrit and difficult Sanskrit It is just like If somebody wants to learn English If a child wants to learn English Then there are simple children’s books With which we start Or if there is a general newspaper Is there, well that is not so difficult to read The words will be familiar But if somebody is writing Is going to read May be a book Written by a scholar for another scholar May be an academic journal paper Then it is much more difficult Sanskrit So the Bhagavatam Sanskrit Is quite difficult In fact Monier Williams Was considered the first modern Sanskritist And he was A European who came to India Learned Sanskrit And he made a Sanskrit dictionary Which is considered even now the standard dictionary The Monier Williams Dictionary So what happens It is so fascinating That sometimes if you look at the Bhagavatam It has some word which is not very common And if you look at the meaning The Monier Williams Dictionary Will give a meaning But then generally what happens To understand how a word is used You also need usage Many times people who just Try to expand their vocabulary By memorising word lists What happens They know the meaning of the word But different words have different connotations If they don’t understand the connotation They use the word in a very inapt way So Now if you want The Monier Williams Dictionary has the word And it has its usages There are At least several Hundred words in the Bhagavatam Which if you go to the Dictionary You look at the word Meaning is given and if you look at the usage It refers back to the Bhagavatam itself So those words Are not found anywhere else except in the Bhagavatam So those are very rare words So the Bhagavatam Has its own standard of Elevated Sanskrit And it is spoken Puranam Brahma Samyitam Now why is it like this At one level The Bhagavatam is spoken For the masses But although it is spoken for the masses It is not just for the masses It is for the mass and the class That’s why among all the Puranas If you look at the various Puranas The Bhagavatam has The most philosophical sections also The Bhagavatam has A lot of philosophy The Bhagavatam is often celebrated For its 10th Canto Which has beautiful pastimes Of Krishna and in fact Nearly 1 third of the Srimad Bhagavatam Is 10th Canto There are 335 chapters in the entire Bhagavatam Out of the 90 Are in the 10th Canto And numerically 10th Canto is the largest And most people who Cherish the Bhagavatam, most Bhagavat Kathas Are either in the 10th Canto or They are on some other store like Dhruva or Prahalad But the Bhagavatam itself Has many philosophical sections Broadly speaking There are 5 sections which are considered Especially philosophical And the 2 most prominent among them are The Kapiladevahuti Samvat And the bigger than that is the Uddhava Krishna Samvat Of course there are others also which are very philosophical But the point I am making over here is The Bhagavatam It is Puranam Brahma Sammitam It is telling us the stories About Brahma, about the Supreme Brahman Bhagwan But also giving us the philosophy, the Tattva And in that sense The Bhagavatam is a Channa Shruti, Shruti means It is like a Vedic text It is like the Shrutis Which have a lot of philosophy Within them, the Upanishads Have elaborate philosophy among them And philosophy means That often things are Explained in a way That is adequately complex To attract people with Complex minds What does it mean? That you might say Radha Krishna is The divine couple That’s a simple way of saying it But If somebody is Very intellectual Divine couple So you say that Radha is the Primordial Cosmological Feminine Principle And Krishna is Krishna is the Primordial Cosmological Masculine Principle So that sounds about impressive So in general You will see that the Upanishads Have passages Which are quite Difficult to understand And some people Unless there is something difficult to understand They don’t feel stimulated If everything is simple They get bored So for those who want something Intellectually challenging and stimulating The Upanishads are there And Bhagavatam also has sections like that Which are quite Intellectually demanding So basically what the Bhagavatam Is doing is That it is a Puran But it is unlike any other Puran Because It integrates the Puranic Stress on stories Also with the Upanishadic Stress on philosophy So pastime and philosophy are both Integrated over here So Brahma is depicted or described Through the pastimes And Brahma is described even through the Philosophy So broadly How do we come to know about a person One way Is we can directly know the person We can meet them How do they look, what all do they do That’s one way of knowing a person Another way of Knowing a person is to know About the position of the person Say If we come to know Okay this person speaks very nicely Looks elegant and This this But then you come to know Okay this person is the CEO of this company Okay So now the name CEO Sounds very big So you know many people Like to, there is the quality Called Dambha Dambha means people want to appear Bigger than who they are So I was at a I was at a Corporate conference And then afterwards I was talking As in Singapore So then this person came The person said I am a CEO of a company And I talked with him for some time And then as the devotee was organised So I told him I told him who After the programme we were talking So I told him that Who are really interested So he told me yes He is the CEO of the company And he is the sole employee of the company Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter So Sometimes somebody might claim a position But that position might not be Meaningful But generally We get a sense of a person by Understanding their activities Understanding their personality We also understand it by understanding their position So the Bhagavatam Spends a good amount of time To explain the position of God Position of the absolute truth And the idea is Both by understanding the activities As well as the position We can learn more and more about the absolute truth And this particular chapter Is called The first step in God realisation And Later on as we will see The Bhagavatam will move toward Describing Describing How God can be seen In this world The idea is that Most of people Don’t become directly Interested in God Very few people suddenly wake up one day And think does God exist It’s like When they are trying to live in this world And While living in this world They find that things don’t work the way They want them to work So broadly speaking Our life we can divide into There is order And there is chaos Order is where That area in our life When we do something and we get the expected result So when the cause effect connection Is well known for us That’s where we can have order So I I call somebody on the phone And that person picks up the phone The call goes through and pick up the phone that’s order But I call someone And the person doesn’t pick up the phone I call someone And the call doesn’t go through I call someone and my phone is not working So basically when we When we do something And we don’t get the expected result Or we don’t know what results are going to be there That’s when Disorder starts happening So for all of us When we function in the world We try to create some order in our life And it’s based on That order that we function So this order Is vital Say for example all of you are sitting and hearing this class Now everyone of you Is reasonably confident That suddenly the person Next to you is not going to turn at you And slap you in the face Now hypothetically It’s possible But it’s very unlikely And because that foundational order is there So that you can focus Imagine if you are sitting And you are afraid the person will slap me Then you would not be able to focus at all So we need a certain level of order So that We can function But We don’t want things to be Completely orderly also Say for example If before you came to this talk You knew every single word that was going to be spoken in this class Then you will feel What is the point of coming here I want to learn something Now chaos doesn’t necessarily mean It’s complete disorder It’s just that when we do something What is the result that is going to come We don’t know that So there has to We all need some amount of newness in our life So the disorder that is there That is what brings about some newness But the order that is there That brings stability And even in our relationships We need both If people are completely predictable If I say this They are going to say this If I do this, they are going to do this If people are completely predictable Then life becomes boring But if people are Completely unpredictable Then Life becomes Very worrisome We just don’t know what we are going to do So say for example Right now there is a basic structure You are going to come for a Bhagavatam class You are going to hear something about Krishna And With this framework, I want to learn something new So what the Bhagavatam is Doing is When do we I am talking about When do we start thinking about God Normally Wherever there is order for us I do this, I get this result At that time there is no need To think about anything higher But When we encounter disorder Now some people love adventure Some people don’t love adventure so much Different people are of different natures But still when we Encounter disorder And chaos starts Overwhelming us That is the time we start thinking Is there something more in life Beyond this chaos and order Order and chaos Is there some higher Governing principle So when We are not able to do What we intended to do Or what we intended to do Does not give us the desired results That’s when we start seriously Thinking about God Of course another way is also that Even when things are going orderly in our life We may understand that this order is also sustained by God But At that time we may not think so seriously Or call out to God Generally we call out when there is a disorder So What the Bhagavatam does is That it doesn’t start With God It starts with the world Prabhupada writes in On the way to Krishna That All knowledge comes from God But all knowledge doesn’t begin With God Whatever knowledge anyone has It is God It is God who gives all knowledge to everyone So all knowledge comes from God But all knowledge Doesn’t begin from God Our knowledge begins from the world around us We observe the world We think about the world What is more about the world So when we observe the world And we want to make sense Of why is there order in the world And when there is chaos Is there some ordering principle beyond the chaos That’s when we start thinking about Some higher reality That’s when we start thinking about God So the Bhagavatam Basically As I said it talks about the position of God And it talks about the past times of God And in a sense it evolves The first few Cantos focus more on the Position of God And position in terms of How we can meditate on God While functioning in the world Or while interacting with the world While observing the world It offers us three ways of meditating The second canto This is where we will see the The universal form Is where We look at the world and we see the Hugeness of the world And that points us to somebody huge So the idea that The mountains are like the Bones of the lord’s body The rivers, the oceans Are like the water in the navel of the lord The trees Are like the hair on his body This is a meditation Which enables us to understand The hugeness of God Now this is kalpidaha This is actually not a Real, it is not that God Has any form like that, there is no Like we have satya loka, jana loka, tapa loka There is no virata rupa loka There is no Abode where the virata rupa resides So There is a verse in this canto Which says this is how the lord is Envisioned, so great seers Envision the lord in this way Now the virata rupa Which is described In the bhagavatam and the vishwa rupa That is described in the bhagavad gita They are similar and dissimilar The Similarity is that How God’s greatness can be seen In connection with the world How the whole universe is contained Within God, that is depicted in both But the virata rupa Is a conceptualisation Whereas the Vishwa rupa is a revelation Virata rupa is a conceptualisation Means that the seeker Thinks This is like this, this is like this And that is why you will see This virata rupa is described Primarily in the second canto But throughout the bhagavatam in many prayers The virata rupa is described But at different places Sometimes it may be said that This particular loka is the shoulder of the lord But some place it may say that particular loka Is the chest of the lord So that is, why is that different Because it is a conceptualisation So the virata rupa is described in the bhagavatam Is a conceptualisation, we look at the vastness of the world And we try to, we see that this Is God’s greatness manifesting Whereas the vishwa rupa is described in the Bhagavad gita is a revelation Krishna says Lakshmichamite rupa And Arjuna says that I want to see it Divyam dadamite Chaksho pashyame yogam Aishwaram, I give you the eyes The divine vision by which you can see And he is able to see at that time That is the difference But either way the point is The first step in God realisation is We look at the hugeness of the world And we want to understand What is beyond this world Is there anything beyond this world And that reality which exists beyond this world That is God At one level God Is best understood First as the principle Then as a person Now of course For developing a personal relationship Approaching God as a person is good But for somebody who doesn’t understand God as a principle They might think of the person As the personal conception as sentimental Or sectarian Or you people imagine God is like this Or that is your conception of God That is their conception of God I was at a I had a conference on spirituality And mental health And Interfaith conference So I was talking after that With one prominent spiritual teacher From the Buddhist tradition And then he was telling me that We Buddhists have one big advantage over you I said Because we also talk Buddhists talk a lot about mindfulness And mindfulness has become very big in the western world Now Our tradition also has quite a sophisticated Understanding of the mind But somehow Mindfulness of the Buddhist tradition has become very big So we were discussing We have one big advantage over you What is that? We don’t have God So There what he meant by that was That we don’t have God Means as soon as you bring God into the picture People start Thinking of it as sectarian You have your God And we have my God And then there is a conflict Of course now God is not a disadvantage God is a supreme strength for everyone But contextually So what happens is Many atheists Who want to be religious They adopt Buddhism Or people who don’t want to affiliate with any particular denomination They adopt Buddhism And they feel that we are spiritual So there is a whole genre of people Who call themselves as spiritual atheists So Now It’s a oxymoron Actually to say that you are a spiritual atheist To say that somebody is a spiritual atheist Is like saying that somebody is a Brilliant fool The two ideas themselves are intrinsically contradictory So Why is it contradictory? Because whichever major tradition in the world we go to We talk about theism Theism is Centred on accepting God as a spiritual reality So if somebody is Atheist Usually they are materialists And if somebody says I am a spiritual atheist Then it’s a contradiction in terms But the point I am making here is That Whenever we start Talking about the personal conception Too early Then people start thinking This is sectarian It’s either sectarian or it is sentimental Okay we human beings Are humans so we have imagined God to be a human being It’s anthropomorphic It’s just your sentiment But it’s not like that Why do we have a human form? Because we are made in the image of God So what is the way out? If you see the Bhagavata The first verse Om namo bhagvate vasudevaya Is the invocation But what it is Subsequent, the whole first verse Describes the position of God Not The past times of God The whole verse is telling about the position The principle What do we mean by God? So God is the source Of everything God is the reality Who gives reality to everything God is the being Who is the shelter Of all beings So like that the Bhagavatam gives very universal attributes And in that sense If we consider Everybody considers Something of the highest value And whatever Anybody thinks is the highest value Is their God So for example If somebody Thinks that money is the most important thing in life And they are going to do Anything and everything for money Then what happens? Money is their God If they are little religious They will worship Lakshmi But otherwise they just think money is their God For somebody Who is very much Having the idea of power as the greatest reality Then power is their God For somebody who is an addict Alcohol becomes their God They may not call alcohol as God But in the sense somebody is addicted Addicted person thinks of the Object of addiction Much more intensely than a devotee Thinks of the object of devotion So they are offering That same constant thought To that Even if you give them other things to think about But their thoughts come back to that As soon as possible Somebody who is a very strong addict As soon as they wake up The first thing they think of is their addiction And As soon as you go to sleep The first thing they think of is Before sleeping the last thing they think of is The object of addiction So Everybody has something Which they consider is the highest value Now We may consider something to be the highest value But is it actually of the highest value So This Conception, our conception of what is the Highest value and what is actually the highest value This sometimes comes In tension Sometimes we go along with our Somebody considers wealth is the highest value And yes by having Money you can get your desires fulfilled But then suppose somebody Gets a disease that is incurable No matter how much money You spend still You can’t cure This is not cured Then we see that money We are treating money like God but it is a false God We thought It is the highest value but it is not going to last For us So what the Bhagavatam depicts is I conclude with this point From Parikshit Maharaj’s perspective and Shri Dev Goswami’s perspective That Generally There is Bhukti and there is Mukti Bhukti is material Enjoyment, Mukti is Cessation of material miseries Liberation of material miseries So now Parikshit Maharaj was never a sense Enjoyer but Parikshit Maharaj Was in such a powerful position Materially as the emperor of the world That we could say that he Represents the pinnacle Of the facilities For worldly enjoyment He had it All And he gave it all up Now Shri Dev Goswami was a supremely Renounced person He was so renounced That he didn’t even want to come out of his Mother’s womb Why? Because he felt that the world is a place of illusion I was at a I had gone to One big builder’s Conference And there They had asked me to speak What had happened was behind that they had written We build houses As comfortable as your mother’s womb As comfortable as your mother’s womb Now Now What is happening over here is The Bhagavatam says The child In the womb Is in a state of great suffering Now actually speaking Is it a great suffering or it is not a great suffering If you look at it simply From the biological perspective Nature has designed the womb in such a way That the womb is quite a comfortable place The infant Is very tender And the infant Has to be protected So in that sense if you want to consider The embryo simply as a Biological entity Then the womb is a comfortable place But if you consider the embryo To be a conscious being Then for a Conscious being to exist In that constricted space That is not at all comfortable So the Bhagavatam is speaking From the perspective of consciousness Whereas this particular advertisement Was more from the biological perspective Just consider the embryo To be just like an object It is in a very soft cuddly place But So anyway the point I was making is that That When we From the spiritual perspective Understood that although the womb is A very uncomfortable place But still Shukdev Goswami was so detached That he preferred staying there So that better to have discomfort With Freedom from illusion Than comfort with illusion We have comfort in the world But along with it comes a lot of illusion So he was completely detached From the world So we could say that Shukdev Goswami represents The liberated souls He was already Mukta He had no attachment To any material at all But both So people conventionally would have these two trajectories The path of material success And the path of spiritual success The path of spiritual success culminates in liberation The path of material success Culminates In immense unrivalled Material power But these two people Who had attained the zenith Of their success In the material and the spiritual world They are coming together And both of them are rising To still higher success That is there is spiritual success But beyond that there is devotional success And devotional success is not just Liberation of material existence But absorption in the supreme spiritual reality So Shukdev Goswami is going to speak And through the speaking he is going to be absorbed And Parishad Maharaj is going to hear And through that hearing he is going to get absorbed And that way this Puranam Brahma Samyakam That Puran Which talks about ultimate supreme reality Is going to be spoken And it is by Shri Prabhupada’s Mercy that This Bhagavat Puran was made Available all over the world And we are able to Relish its wisdom And direct our thoughts Our consciousness towards transcendence So I will summarise I spoke today On the theme of The significance of the Bhagavatam We started by talking about how When we want to understand When we are doing any course or going on a journey It is helpful to have an orientation So this chapter Of the Bhagavatam is offering us an orientation We can orient ourselves broadly By asking six questions Who, what, when, where, why and how So This series of Verses by Shukdev Goswami Is giving answers to these questions So who spoke it? Shukdev Goswami is speaking it Parishad Maharaj is hearing it But Shukdev Goswami heard it from his teacher And then when was it spoken? At the end of Dwapar Yuga At the start of Kali Yuga And then What is it about? That was what we focused on primarily in the class It is about the ultimate reality Brahman And while discussing about the ultimate reality I discussed About how The Bhagavatam describes God as a person and describes God as a principle or the position of God In both ways We can come to know about God And That way we get a complete Understanding of God If we focus only on the personal aspect Then people may think this is sectarian or sentimental But when we focus on the position The position is universal How is the position universal? Because God is the object Of the supreme value So everybody has some Object which they consider the supreme value But that object lets them down Sooner or later Whereas God is Eternally the object of the supreme value And he will never let us down And how does the Bhagavatam start describing the position of God? It starts describing By describing the relationship With the material world All knowledge comes from God But it doesn’t begin from God So while living in the world There is a domain of order and there is a domain of chaos Order is where Things that we do give the Expected results And chaos is where things Don’t give the expected results So normally when we encounter chaos That is unmanageable for us That’s when we start thinking Is there some higher organising principle That’s why distress or dissatisfaction With the world is the primary impetus For turning towards God Exploring a higher reality Sometimes even the order itself If we are pious We understand this order comes from God So this first step in God realisation Will be that the Bhagavatam looks at The world As the body of God I talked about how the Virata Rupa In the Bhagavatam is the conceptualisation The Vishwa Rupa In the Bhagavatam is the revelation And this Virata Rupa is one of Three ways in which the Bhagavatam describes How God can be Understood In terms of his position or his principle And lastly I concluded how This discussion between the two of them Parikshit Maharaj and Shukdev Goswami Is like a discussion between Somebody who has attained the summit of success In material life That is the hearer, Parikshit Maharaj And the person who has attained the summit of success In spiritual life, that is Shukdev Goswami Who is already liberated from illusion And both of them are coming together And they are ascending towards the summit Of success in devotional life By becoming absorbed in the Supreme Absolute Truth Thank you very much Hare Krishna Any quick questions or comments Yes I was just wondering What did you answer to that Buddhist Who said that the problem With your religion Is that you have God What answer did you give him Okay So What answer did I give when he said That the problem with your religion is God So I think we also need to present God appropriately So whenever I go to Programmes like yoga studios Or somewhere like that Then I don’t talk about Krishna as a Hindu religious God I talk about Krishna as the object Of loving Yogic meditation So if you talk about In fact we conscientiously avoid Using the word God Somehow the word God has become a bad word In today’s world If you see the Star Wars They say the force is with you If the Star Wars had said God is with you The theatres would become empty People would not be interested So Generally if you consider Meditation is quite cool, yoga is quite cool And love is always cool So you present Don’t talk about Krishna as God Talk about Krishna as We are in a Yogic tradition And in this Yogic tradition For thousands of years People have meditated On this Conception of God So you present Krishna as the object of Yogic loving meditation So we are not saying that Basically there are two objections to it Sectarianism is the main objection Sentimentalism is the other objection So how do we deal with the Objection of sectarianism That is by primarily saying that This is a conception, there can be many different Conceptions of God, essentially the Attributes of God are one, but then that becomes The object of discussion further But what we say is that this is a conception And this is a conception that has helped many many Seekers to raise their consciousness And if you present it that way More in a descriptive way Rather than a prescriptive way Prescriptive is This is what you should do Normative is this is the truth But descriptive is this is what has been done This is what has worked for many people This has worked for me also, why not try it out So Many people Who may not be very Religious and willing to come to a temple and Worship Krishna on the altar They are okay chanting mantras Doing Kirtan of Hare Krishna mantra also Because somehow Kirtan is Seen as It’s seen as spiritual It’s seen more as non-sectarian Even if you are chanting the names of Chanting a particular mantra So basically we just need to Present it appropriately So we Especially with new people it’s best to Avoid the word God What we focus on is sometimes infinite consciousness Or sometimes The ultimate reality Absolute truth also seems a little bit Imposing How do you know it’s the absolute truth But A gentler way of phrasing it is Ultimate reality We are all searching for some ultimate reality And this is the Bhakti Yoga tradition Offers the ultimate reality Even those Christian churches That have been successful They have also rebranded God There is an article in New York Times about this About how God was traditionally Portrayed as the cosmic supplier Or the cosmic provider O father, thou art in heaven Hallowed be thy name Give us our daily bread Now at a time when Many people were poor And there was a lot of shortage of food God as a supplier of bread Makes sense But in today’s world Especially the western world Most people are not worried about bread If they are worried it is about butter So many churches are presenting God Not as the cosmic supplier But as the cosmic therapist Therapist You go to God And you will get peace You approach God And you can deal with your mental issues So we all need to Learn to present God appropriately Prabhupada was also an expert Prabhupada When he went to America He presented Krishna consciousness As stay high forever It was basically It was basically Drug lingo over there You take drugs and you go high It was stay high forever So if we present things appropriately Then initially Whatever are the conceptual barriers That hold people back We can avoid those conceptual barriers Thank you You had a comment Ok Ok Thank you One question When you are saying It is quite an intangible All suffering so much You know my loved ones When I am dying Ok That’s true Yeah So if we say that God never lets us down If we say that But then people they pray And still their loved ones may die Or they get lot of suffering So how do we understand that How can we explain to them A lot depends on Our conception of God Most people As I said approach God Because they have some problems Which they are not able to deal with And they hope that God will deal with those problems for them So now this is Ok way of approaching God That’s the way most people will approach God That But the terms of this Relationship are that God These people have some faith In God’s power But not faith in God’s wisdom That means You are forming a relationship with God The terms of the relationship are God I have this problem and this is solution to this problem But I don’t know I can’t implement the solution you implement it for me So the terms of the relationship are My intelligence and your power So we are trusting God But we are only half trusting God We are trusting God’s God’s power But not his wisdom not his intelligence And because of So it’s good at least to trust God At that level but that is Not a It will work for sometime but after sometime it may not work And that’s why Scripture does offer us Occasions Where the protection that comes Is not material If you look at the whole Bhagavatam story itself It’s like sometimes you may have some Adventure novel or something like that Ok the hero has to get to This treasure pot within one week Without that the hero will die And the hero fights against various Obstacles and finally gets To the treasure pot and then he is saved The Bhagavatam begins with The hero Cursed to die in seven days And by the end of the Bhagavatam The hero dies So what is this So In one sense the Bhagavatam The central storyline itself is Quite the antithesis Of the material conception of religion There is religion or devotion You could say you could have a material Conception of devotion and a spiritual conception Most people will Approach God with a material conception Of devotion and that’s what 716 in the Bhagavatam says That four kinds of people come to him Those who desire wealth, those who are Distressed, those who are inquisitive And those who seek knowledge But then three verses later Krishna says that And why do they surrender to me Vasudeva is sarvamiti Samatma sudurlabha, it’s 719 Where Krishna is saying that It may take many lifetimes of spiritual evolution To understand that God is the supreme value So if we expect protection of God Protection by God at the material level We We will be let down Because the terms, because our expectations Themselves are in one sense you could say Unrealistic, because the material world Is a place of distress and death ultimately So yes We, God can protect us At the material level also But it is primarily the Absorption in the Lord That is the ultimate protection And that absorption that he offers to us Through the process of bhakti So to the extent we Take shelter of that absorption We become elevated So now how do we explain All this to new people You could start with the extreme negativity And somebody says I am a good person but so many bad things happen to me Well you could say that Why should bad things not happen to you What do you mean I am a good person But who said that Good thing, good Good action should lead to good results Who said that Shouldn’t it be like that But why If there is no God If you are going to Reject God Because you did something good but you got something bad But the causal connection That good action should lead to good results What is the basis for that Within the atheistic world view There is no reason For correlation of good action and good results There is no Basically In the atheistic world view Things happen just by Impersonal mechanical forces Acting upon unconscious Material objects And in fact For matter there is no conception of good or bad also For unconscious matter There is just existence And interaction, collision and destruction So the very idea of good and bad Or good and evil That itself There is no basis for that within Material existence Within material conception of life So our very presumption that There should be order in the world What is the Basis for that presumption So atheism The problem of evil is a Common argument that atheists use to Try to disprove God That If God is good why is there so much evil in this world But why should there be no evil in the world Why should Good action lead to good results and bad action lead to bad results Who said that What is the basis for making that claim itself But we all live that way Even atheists will not raise their children Saying that You do whatever you want And if you are just clever enough to get away with it everything will be wonderful No Even an atheist will train their children You know you have to Keep your things carefully You have to make your bed You have to keep your this this So basically we cannot function in the world Without some implicit assumption Of cause effect correlation And Science also functions based only on that Science is basically when Newton saw the fruit falling I had gone to London To Cambridge University to speak We passed by that same tree Where Newton is said to have seen the fruit falling That tree is like a pilgrimage place for scientists So now When Newton saw the fruit falling He asked what made the fruit fall And now that question It is his intelligence that he came up with the idea of gravity to explain that But the point is He asked that question because there is an implicit Presumption that Apples don’t fall by chance There is some cause effect connection So if there were no cause effect connection Science could not progress at all Science could not even exist So in both our daily life As well as in scientific research We have a concept of We have a presumption of cause effect connection And Sometimes The expected cause does not produce the expected result Then what do you do? We have two choices One choice is that Either there is no cause effect connection Or maybe There is some more complex correlation going on And Science almost always Adopts the second So Newton’s law was discovered And Newton’s law worked very well for maybe 200-300 years But at the start of the 20th century They found that For subatomic particles Newton’s law didn’t work Newton’s laws of motion didn’t work And for cosmic objects also it didn’t work Scientists didn’t give up the idea That there is no cause effect connection Maybe there is some deeper order They found one level of order But maybe this level of order Is nested in some other deeper order And that’s how they came up with quantum physics For subatomic particles And relativity for cosmic objects So similarly When we do something good And don’t get the good results We have two options Either we just reject the idea of cause effect connection But nobody functions like that If suddenly we go to a doctor Once you go to a doctor And the doctor says you have cancer It’s horrible Why? What did I do to get such a terrible disease? But many of the cancers We just don’t know what is the cause But immediately the next question we ask is What is the treatment? Is it curable? So when we are asking Is it curable? That means we are again Accepting the cause effect connection Although I do not know What caused this But still I accept the cause effect connection If I take this treatment This can be eliminated So the idea is we can’t live without accepting Cause effect connection We may not be able to specifically Find out the cause effect connection in particular cases So that’s because Maybe there is a bigger framework So one bigger framework That the dharmic texts offer us is That there is a previous life And there is a future life So actions And the results don’t come up immediately Always So that’s a bigger framework Now whether somebody wants to accept that bigger framework or not That’s up to them But the point is If we look at our ordinary way of functioning We always assume a cause effect connection And if one particular set of cause effect connection Doesn’t make sense We look for another framework Within which we can place and find some cause effect connection So that’s how the Vedic texts offer us So does God let us down? Yes, it can appear like that If we are looking at God Only from particular frames of reference A child cries And the mother provides the child whatever it wants Child wants food, child wants water But the child wants chocolate and the mother doesn’t provide the chocolate Then the child may say mother doesn’t love me That’s looking within that frame of reference But then If you put in the bigger frame of reference That the mother wants to please the child But the mother also wants to protect the child And that particular case Maybe eating chocolate is going to spoil the tooth of the child So she will not give So we need a bigger frame of reference And that’s why If the devotion is not Is not accompanied with philosophy Then the devotion is not sustainable It will go on for some time But when the complexity of life Befalls us Then our devotion will start getting shaken That don’t be lazy about understanding philosophy This is all philosophy, I just want to hear Leela I just want to have Rasa Don’t be like that because If you understand By this Our consciousness will become fixed on Krishna So philosophy Gives us The right frame of reference In which to place The events of our life So Parikshit Maharaj You could say is the exemplar of a good person He was pious He was devoted He was devoted to God, he was devoted to duty And still for a small mistake He was cursed to die Now talk about Sense of disproportionate punishment It’s horrible What he got But he put it in the right frame of reference Maybe I was attached to the world And this is Krishna’s arrangement To make me attached only to him So our philosophy Is meant to help us Place the events of our life In the right frame of reference By which we can see those events As taking us closer to Krishna And if we don’t have Philosophical understanding Then we will just work with our default frames of reference And sometimes Within that frame of reference Our devotion will work I pray to God and God solves my problem But sometimes we pray to God and God doesn’t solve our problem So then we need to put the things In the right frame of reference So the Bhagavatam gives us various stories And in these different stories We see the characters Putting their difficulties in the appropriate frame of reference And that’s how They are able to move on That’s how they are able to Navigate life’s difficulties And persevere So God never lets us down Provided we understand How God’s love acts in our life If we have the right Set of expectations The right conception of God Then we will understand God doesn’t let us down So God will never leave our hearts And go away God will never take away from us The opportunity to remember him But if we expect God’s protection In terms of specific material terms That may or may not happen Thank you very much