How the demonic distort Dharma Artha Kama Moksha Gita 16 11 Youth

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
in this session the next session i’ll be discussing about the 16th chapter of the bhagavad-gita how this chapter offers a mirror to the world as we are experiencing it nowadays so we will discuss some of the verses and the way we’ll discuss it is i’ll explain the words that will recite the words and then we will try to discuss it so we will focus on some of the verses in the chapter so how many of you will be there tomorrow also okay almost all of you a few of you will not be there so we will see how much of this chapter we can try to cover we’ll focus on some verses but overall we’ll try to get a overview of the chapter so let’s look at the 11th verse first this is krishna is telling chintam what is the meaning of chintam anxiety yes and aparimeya now now pramana pramana is to know to measure aparimeya means to that which cannot be measured so great anxiety and krishna says how long does the anxiety last now pralaya can mean death but that individual death it can also mean cosmic destruction so till the point of the plant it’s although ashram is what shelter so means it’s like they’ve taken shelter so krishna is everybody has anxiety in life that is the nature of life so tomorrow if you have to go from here to catch a train and if your bus if your transport from the bus or the bus whatever is anxiety so there is circumstantial anxiety that everyone has but anxiety comes and goes after something but here krishna is saying that this anxiety has two characteristics it’s immeasurable and it is perpetual till the point of destruction and the next part he says it is both a it is a subsequent description as well as a causal connection that is krishna is describing two characteristics so one after the other but the second characteristic also is a cause so why do they have so much anxiety kama upabhoga so kama is desire upabhoga is enjoyment so now everybody has kama in the world and we’ll talk about that that kama is also one of the purusharthas in life but krishna is saying that kama upabhoga that the enjoyment of the senses what is their characteristic parama parama means it is the most important thing in life yeah that is one part of it but they make it the most important thing in life and it is that they don’t have any doubt about this they are convinced about it in fact their conviction in the fact that sense enjoyment will give happiness is much greater than a devotee’s conviction that krishna will give me happiness so this conclusion if he does means certain convinced etava so let’s recite the verse together not responsibly but together three times ka so here we are talking about the divine and the demoniac natures so which nature do you think has been described right now sorry divine nature isn’t it now clearly if we think it is a divine nature then we are certainly demonic so it is the demoniac nature we describe so let’s look at the characteristics okay it’s not clear oh okay let me see if i change the background here this so anyway we can decide the words chintam so if i change is this better so it is this chapter is describing the divine and the demoniac natures now when we use the word nature what is it referring to basically when we talk about nature krishna is outlining that nature one by one the various characteristics of that nature so when you talk about nature when you think of you know this person is good nature and this person is not so good nature what is your idea when you say use the word nature what all does it convey yes somebody responds or activity response or kind of response he gave to some okay so it is kind of a response to situations so some people you know if they’ve done something wrong and we give them some feedback and they are humble and grateful and they accept and some people we give them a feedback and they just give us a feed front they just start attacking us criticising us they just don’t take it so how people respond to situations so one is it could be also different kind of situations when they’re in anxiety when they’re in a stress how they respond that’s one aspect we’ll come to this more little later anything else okay i’m not sure i’m looking for the translation so the sanskrit word basically is we can look at this it’s not a wrong thing the word is for how what other words can we use for sorry nature now let’s love to the translation were completed what other words could we use krishna himself uses the word sampad the translation yes we could also have vritti has a specific meaning but these are various words we could use so but what else does nature mean to you liking and disliking yes what likes and dislikes somebody says i like to dislike you now we all may dislike someone we can’t really control that some people we just get along you know but some people we just can’t get along but if you can’t get along with someone we at least have to conceal it isn’t it it’s not that we are just bitter and rude with them but somebody actively likes to dislike then you know okay i’m a dangerous person we may have dislikes but at least we try to regulate them but at least try to regulate it okay our likes and dislikes you could say not just likes and dislikes and our attitude toward them we all have our likes and dislikes but how do we look at our likes and dislikes anything else characteristics okay can you give us an example of what you mean by characteristics okay characteristic could be like tolerance kindness humility like that yes so essentially when we talk about nature are we referring to the soul or the body or the mind okay how many of you think mind how many of you think body okay how many of you think soul okay you are the soul person who thinks about it yes so now if we consider every soul is a part of god that means everyone at their core is godly is good so so basically if you consider the soul is always in one sense good or godly or pure whatever now around the soul is the subtle body which you can call as the mind around that mind is the body okay so broadly speaking the nature refers to the body mind machine now it refers to the mind primarily you could say but also refers to the body some people are very neat and tidy and some people they come into a room after five minutes you think did a hurricane come what happened everything is disorderly so it’s it’s it’s behaviour some people their clothes are neat some people are clothes are just completely messed up some people they are neatly shaven some people are completely unkempt so it comes out in behaviour also so it comes so basically it’s primarily mental but mental doesn’t stay mental it’s what is in the mind it also reflects in the body so when we are referring to the subhava in this case the prasampada the prakriti the nature we are talking about the body and mind so here krishna is describing the characteristics now we are picking up in the middle because these five verses are especially important as a vivid picture of the nature but it’s given the entire chapter but we’ll be focussing on we’ll see in today’s session trying to complete 16 11 to 15 this gives a vivid picture of demonic nature now have any of you heard of this term called plausible deniability no okay what do you know the word plausible okay sorry feasible feasible okay feasible plausible is more like believable reasonable if somebody says you know i couldn’t i couldn’t come for the meeting because an alien came and abducted me now is that a plausible reason well you can say anything is possible but it’s very unlikely so plausible means it’s a believable reason and deniability when you say deny what does it mean it means say no i didn’t do it somebody accuses you did you do it no i didn’t do it so plausible deniability basically is a legal term which is used say if now some newspaper writes some suggestive article about some politician but they absolutely don’t mention the name of the politician and they say we are only talking in general term we didn’t refer to you because if you refer to a particular person then there can be in court libel cases you know you have spoiled my name they spoil my reputation so sometimes what happens two people are talking with each other but both of them know who is being talked about but but neither of them mention the name of the person so both of them understand so like that now who is this discussion going on between krishna and arjuna where is it going on on the battlefield so when krishna is talking about divine and demoniac natures he is not talking in an abstract vacuum who do you think he’s talking about yes so you see that while he is referring in general terms to the demoniac nature but there is an example right in front of both of them of the demoniac nature so krishna will talk about demoniac nature at various levels in the sense that he will talk about their thought process and then behaviour so if you look at this this series of verses 16th we are right now discussing the 11th verse so 11th verse primarily describes 11th and 12th verses basically it’s describing their desires and fears so it’s like a introduction to their mental state so generally speaking if we consider in the mahabharata who was a person who was constantly filled with anxiety and fear then normally we don’t think of him as a demoniac person do we well he is like a passive demon so what happens is that he is filled constantly with chinta that if you see he goes along with dumyodhana schemes or shakuni scheme to try to plot against the pandavas but after the scheme goes through sometimes it is successful sometimes not successful after he allows the entire gambling match to go through and the pandavas are defrauded of everything then he is not able to sleep at night he calls vidura and he says vidura you know the pandavas are so angry with my sons what can i do to protect them vidura says the time of protecting them is over he says the only thing you can do now is that you insist that duryodhana go and beg forgiveness from the pandavas only then there might be a chance that they will forgive you otherwise the kind of action that we’re done today not just stealing their freedom but dishonouring their wife this is not something they will forget so dhritharashtra just gets angry with vidura he said you know i called you to comfort me but you are agitating me he said you are partial to pandu’s sons you don’t have the welfare of my sons at heart i have no desire for your advice anymore go wherever you like he sends him off so vidura leaves vidura follows and goes to the pandavas and meets them in the forest when he’s there with them but the next morning dhritharashtra finally when he sleeps and wakes up says oh dear vidura is a close friend of mine where did he go why did i send him away but then he says send sanjay please tell vidura to come back so what happens is he is not a complete demon because he has some affection for vidura he wants to hear good advice so you know there is something called the dam is not a good word but damming by paint trains suppose somebody invites us to their home for prasad for food and then they ask okay how was the food it was edible is so like that if you say you know how is this person i like to hear good advice so what that means is they like to only hear they don’t want to do anything more after that so he’s filled with chinta and for him gaining the kingdom is the most important thing it’s even more important for his son but his son has got the qualities from his father and he’ll worsen the also but so in general so with the thrashtra his was like to hear good advice that’s all only here do nothing more if we consider that as i said chinta is natural and unavoidable in life because in life there is going to be uncertainty and whenever there’s uncertainty there’ll be anxiety so so because you can say uncertainty is just a fact of life but what krishna is talking about is two things it is immeasurable and then it is perpetual it is now this this kind of chinta it is not normal it is pathological pathological means it’s like a pathological disease so we all may have anxiety about some area of our life you know okay if i don’t get this job what will i do we may have some financial anxiety now if we had a relationship we’re trying to explore explore a particular thing and like that’s not working out but for most people it’s not that there are 25 areas in their life with all 25 sources of anxiety if it’s like that how was i not going to survive to just go crazy so now if somebody has either too many desires too many unrealistic desires then everything becomes a source of anxiety so this is now this is why is this chinta like desire if you consider a coin one side of the coin is desire and the other side of the coin is fear so this is the result of material obsession when you’re obsessed about something then that material obsession on one side brings desire on the other side it brings fear like say if somebody is a very attached cricket man as a form of entertainment that’s okay but sometimes people it’s not just entertaining it’s entangling it is completely consuming so i i want my team to win so that is a very strong desire and the desire is not fulfilled or even before when i win whether we not win maybe not win what will happen because so much fear so much tension so chinta and ichha so kama and chinta they go together now there is also this is to as i said to some extent it’s normal but when it is excessive when it is disproportionate when it is all consuming that is where it is not healthy so there are four purusharthas what is the word purushartha mean have you heard the word purushartha so purusha is what sorry okay learning entity enjoy all of you haven’t got very philosophical vocabulary the simple meaning of purushartha human being man or human being so artha in this case it’s also purpose so purushartha is human purposes so human life has broadly four purposes what are those four purposes dharma artha kama and then moksha so now what do these four purusharthas mean practically now dharma we can say it means religion but dharma can also mean dharma has in dharma is one of the most multivalent words in the sanskrit language so dharma can mean religion it can also mean ethics it can also mean at a basic level discipline because what is what do the ethics teaches it teaches to be disciplined you don’t speak lies what does dharma tell us it has it encourages to follow certain ways of doing so it’s disciplined so the idea is that say as we are growing up in our life um are the way we grow up in society especially if we grow up in a cultured family in a in a functional society then we learn some discipline one of the most important things that parents need to teach their children is one of the most important words that a child who is growing up needs to hear is no it might seem very unloving but it’s necessary a child needs to learn boundaries let’s say there are two siblings and they’re eating food on the dining table and then say the food is one kid’s plate gets over and instead of waiting for the mother to serve some more food the kid grabs the food from the sibling’s plate the parents have to say no you want more food wait i’ll give you more parents when they the parents say what is the need for boundaries let the child do what they want well you can fast forward 25 years that kid is working in a he’s now working in a company and there’s a corporate dinner if that man started speaking of somebody else’s plate in a corporate dinner what kind of person are you so boundaries are so dharma is also about you know the discipline is boundaries so now when we learn at a foundational level when we learn discipline when we learn some ethics and leads the boundaries then we learn what is here yes so basically wealth or we could say resources it would wealth could be one resource but there is kind of resources there could be contacts that a person develops there are certain qualities that a person develops if somebody has a command commanding speech now they can translate that into money by being a lawful speaker and make pain for it but just having capacity to communicate properly is a resource so so artha itself has many different meanings artha we discuss one meaning is purpose another is just literally meaning then it also means wealth who is a finance minister of india so in this particular sense so basically the idea is if we learn discipline then we from dharma we can get earth now we can look at it from a religious perspective that when we perform yajna then nature will give us rain then we’ll get artha that is one way of looking at i’m looking at from a more common perspective dharma will lead to artha and artha with with artha what do we do karma doesn’t just refer to lust it can refer at one level to lust but karma can refer basically to desires and more specifically here it refers to fulfilment of desires so it is that when we have artha then we can fulfil our desires if we have resources okay i want to get a new house i want to buy this kind of car or i want to get this i want to get that we all have desires in life and by this when we go through this chain dharma artha and karma then our desires are fulfilled to some degree now for most people what happens is they go to dharma artha karma and then from karma they again come back to dharma in the sense that okay i fulfilled one desire then i have another desire so then again i start disciplining myself i start working hard and this goes on but eventually for a few people this is the path that the majority take or the same person may take a majority of times but if you from here go towards moksha moksha in this context means freedom from desires that at this point the person realises okay this is yeah i got a house you know i got some position in society i got some i got a car i got this let’s you know this is just like a it can just be a treadmill that i can keep going on for the rest of my life but there’s a saying you know what is it being there done that it’s okay i’ve done this there’s nothing so exciting about it that’s not what i want to keep doing in my throughout my life being there done that so what else is there in life uh and you see almost everyone say by the time they know 40 45 50 uh they start thinking okay is there something more to life it’s not that they want to give up the life that they have right now but even while they have that life they want to look for something else many people nowadays this term is this happens a midlife crisis midlife crisis means a person feels that i’ve achieved certain things in my life is that really a value should i have done something else should i be doing something more so that question comes up so this is the normal way the human journey goes that dharma artha kama and we may go on for some time in that but over a period of time a person comes to moksha however if you see in today’s world many people they just focus on artha and kama dharma in terms of discipline is forgotten and moksha was not even remembered so you see especially say in the western countries it’s not a criticism of the west because west is also very complicated place but relatively speaking in the west there has been a significant level of prosperity as compared to india and so that’s why when young people grow up now they don’t really have to discipline themselves and work hard now there are in the west also in america there are a lot of passionate in the positive sense intelligent people who drive technological innovation and other things but if you go to american universities and the students who do the best in the american universities are basically indians and chinese so what happens is the people over there they are not really so driven to study so driven to excel because life has always been comfortable for them now some of them no doubt have a lot of zeal to achieve but majority of them are quite apathetic it’s people are so nonchalant you’re nonchalant and worried it’s like i’m worried that you are not worried like somebody has an important exam and they’re just not worried about it and the parents say i’m worried why you’re not worried you know it’s important so basically they’ve had so much comfort in their lives again i don’t want to absolutise there’s a difference between generalise it’s not the same as absolutise absolutise means absolutely everybody’s like that generalise means many people are like that and it’s not just americans were like that what happens is if the immigrants stay there for one or two generations that even their kids start becoming a little bit more apathetic they don’t start working so hard because they’re getting used to the comforts so what happens is that it is possible that some people may get artha without needing to do the harma that means they just inherit a lot of wealth or they live in a country which is which is say a welfare state have you heard of this term welfare state okay i am giving you a lot of general knowledge also see welfare state basically in one sense you can say every state is meant to promote the welfare of people but welfare state is a political term where if a person is unemployed then the government pays for their maintenance now the idea is why would the government do that they say okay you know this person is not able to get a job what can we do so now what happens some people say that if i don’t get a job i like i don’t take any job and the government will pay keep paying for them you know there are places in some of the liberal states in america where people are drug addicts and the government says that actually if you take drugs underground that’s illegal you take drugs they will contaminate your health you’ll get spoiled so we will legally give you drugs free this is you would say insanity but they say actually because america health care is supposed to be free so what happens is people fall sick and the government says that we will have to pay for their emergency care so at least they come and take drug under supervision then we won’t have to pay for it we would have to pay for the health expenses afterwards but one day there are welfare states in the world where if somebody is not a contributing member of society and the government maintains them now what this this actually disincentivizes discipline this disincentivizes hard work so if there is no dharma then what happens is if somebody gets artha ready-made then they never grow up it is dharma it is discipline it is it is boundaries it is ethics that helps a person grow up take responsibility so if there’s only artha and kama then so dharma artha kama at least it’s materially sustainable you work hard you are going to get resources you fulfil your desires you work hard at least it’s materially sustainable if it’s only artha and kama this is it’s called a discipline this is even materially unsustainable no society can continue like this for very long somebody has to be a wealth producer in society so the demoniac nature is of various characteristics but generally the demoniac people don’t care for dharma much if they can get artha without dharma then dharma is dispensable for them we’ll talk a little later about why they still follow dharma but in general it’s dispensable for them so it’s a peculiar this is the value system in India and America is so different that and we sometimes impose our cultural presumptions on the west so recently one devotee sent me an article see he says how selfish parents in America they said if the children especially the sons are staying with them now the parents are asking for rent from their children now when he sent an article to me okay that i i told you you know it’s not that the parents are selfish it is the children are irresponsible basically what is happening is that the western culture is such that when you go to college you get a job you know you go into your own place that is the culture but if the kids are not ready to move out of their parents home that because not because they love their parents it’s because they have no job and they have no way to earn money and they have no desire to get a job so they just stay in the basement of their parents homes you know play video games watch porn and waste their life so the parents they say that that that telling them you have to pay rent here you cannot be a freeloader over here freeloader over here that is the way of the parents who try to get the children to take responsibility so the point is that again if there is no dharma only karma is not sustainable so it is ironic that these kids they don’t really have much responsibilities but they have a lot of anxieties normally you would consider that you know the greater the responsibility that a person has the greater will be the anxiety but it is not that simple if responsibility increases anxiety increases well that’s true to some extent but if a person is truly responsible that as the responsibility increases that capacity to manage anxiety also increases isn’t it so that’s why say if you consider the prime minister of india india has so many threats one of my friends close friends in israel he had gone actually to initially to fight with the in the gaza in the gaza bank basically so now there’s a lot of tension and turmoil over there if you consider the the head of state of israel with so much anxiety but it’s not that such people who have a lot of responsibility they are crumbling another way of anxiety because generally if a person is responsible they also develop the capacity to deal with anxiety that’s a part of growing up but what happens is it’s almost that if a person’s capacity for responsibility is less then their vulnerability to anxiety increases because what happens is they never learn to take responsibility so they are more vulnerable to anxiety so in small things going wrong just collapse you know oh this person disrespected me kids when they cause a depression oh you know i posted my photos on instagram and you know only so few people like my photo i’m worried about it well you know if the biggest problem in your life is you didn’t get sufficient likes on instagram then you know you really don’t have much to worry about but for some people their whole universe is shrunk so much that that causes them unbearable anxiety now this especially happens to teenage girls much more than teenage boys teenage girls especially it’s been well documented that the greater the social media usage the greater is the mental health problem especially depression among girls girls are very image conscious and if i post a photo and i don’t get sufficient likes or i do something and i don’t get likes their social identity is very fragile at times but the point is that one if one doesn’t take responsibility that does not mean one will stay free from anxiety because what is happening is often people think that it is responsibility that causes anxiety which is true but actually what causes anxiety is desires it is anxiety can come from responsibility but anxiety can come from desires especially if the desires are irresponsible now what do you mean by irresponsible desires that means i just have a desire and i am not taking any responsibility to try to fulfil the desire like a small kid i’m hungry and if the small baby we could say this baby’s hungry starts crying and the parents run and the mother fondles the baby and feed them now if an adult a teenage kid starts crying whenever they’re hungry parents will say grow up isn’t it so what happened okay your hunger is as as real hunger is a real concern your hunger is as real as a baby’s hunger but the difference is that if an adult is hungry they need to take responsibility how am i going to arrange the food so but they don’t take responsibility so people when they don’t learn dharma they just get artha ready made the problem becomes that they expect that i have a desire and the world should say yes to my desires and if the world doesn’t say yes to my desires then what happens is either the world is a terrible place or i am a terrible person well not that both are terrible conclusions because desires require most of it is it i think comes easy nothing worthwhile at least comes easy in the world so nowadays the idea of greatness now people say i never take no for an answer you see i bend the world to my will so that is one sign of greatness people say get the world to say yes if i have a desire i am going to fulfil it but while that is one side side of greatness but but another side of greatness grace to accept when the world says no and even to the greatest of people it is not that their desires are fulfilled when the world says no they gracefully accept and they move like when a kid is playing now a kid is good in playing and wins a match say he’s playing some game maybe cricket or tennis or table tennis whatever is playing kid is good at wins that’s wonderful but the kid loses and throws a tantrum and just walks away and the parents or the coach is saying you know don’t be such a sore loser go and shake hands with others right because your culture your nature your dharma is seen in how you also take a note in sports sometimes you know if one team loses then another team wins the other team can lord it over the other the first team or the other team can be graceful it can be gracious and you know it is a good fight you played well and and that is that is quite sweet if both the loser the winner is not lording it over and the loser is also gracious so so the point is that if one sign of maturity is that one sign of in not even greatness you can just say it’s maturity maturity especially is the grace to accept me so why is that there is karma and chinta kashus the desire and fear they come together when we expect the world to say yes to our desires so otherwise what happens if the world says no there are two conclusions the world is terrible or i am terrible but actually speaking it will be either of them they said both are terrible conclusions because things take time things take effort so we need to be patient we need to persist so this kind of chinta is very much there in today’s world and one reason is because many people grow up in this unrealistic worldview that you know i am entitled to artha and by that artha i should get my karma but no artha requires dharma you know when there is a lot of jealousy in today’s world but you know most people of are jealous of where others have got that is oh this person has become so famous this person has bought this big car this person has got this many marks in their exam most people are jealous of where others have got but very few people are jealous of what others did to get there that thing in this world comes easy so very few people are jealous of the hard work the other person put isn’t it people are jealous of the fruits so one of the characteristics of the demonic nature is they always seek shortcuts in order to seek shortcuts they believe that i am entitled to shortcuts the shortcut is no dharma just artha and karma and so you could say demonic degradation when you talk about it so one is little dharma little dharma so that lot of artha and karma they feel that i am entitled to dharma sorry artha and karma without dharma that’s worse artha and karma without dharma and even worse is somebody thinks that i’m entitled to karma without dharma and even without artha that means that i don’t have to work hard i don’t have to i don’t have to discipline myself i don’t have to get any resources i’m just entitled to to enjoyment that doesn’t work and this is especially the danger of the digital world and you know among the many problems say with porn is one of those things that traditionally somebody wants sensual enjoyment you you have to become responsible you have to get a job you have to earn money then you have to find a partner but what for what technology is doing is somebody can have karma even without artha leave alone dharma so then this doesn’t lead to any development of character and many problems with with the obsession on karma without dharma and artha but one of these is that even the normal development of a person that happens when they go through dharma and artha to develop karma to get to karma to fulfil karma that doesn’t happen for me and now after this what happens so we discussed that chitta and karma they go together so if you consider the four purusharthas dharma artha karma and moksha hmm so now what they are doing is these four are there now among these which are the most important yes ideally speaking it is this is one and four these are the most important and two and three are relatively speaking these are less important in the sense that hmm dharma and moksha now these two are largely in our control artha and karma depend on past karma that see everybody can learn a certain level of discipline everybody can learn to live ethically to some extent but okay how much money will we earn it depends on our how much how well we work but it’s not just only on how well we work now how many of our desires will be fulfilled that’s not in our control so what happens is when we fixate too much on artha and karma forget spiritual elevation if we fixate too much on artha and karma it’s not in our control and because it’s not in our control and if we start defining ourselves by that alone then we subject ourselves to a lot of insecurity it’s like for some people if their net worth is equal to their self-worth then what is happening is for them artha has become parama parama means they have made wealth as the most important criteria for them hmm for some people their sex appeal that equates their self-worth now it means you know how many partners can i attract some people just are proud of their sexual composts and okay that is just even if somebody succeeds in doing that it is even on the spiritual side in material side such people are living completely lonely existences there’s no relationship or there’s no meaningful connection it is superficial identification so if karma is elevated as parama then the person’s identity becomes very reduced and that’s why if somebody is based their entire identity on their sexual appeal sex etc sexual attractiveness that is going to go away with time among all professions in the world sports is has the least longevity and most professions by the time you become 40 45 that’s the time you start peaking where you got experience you got training and then you can go to the top but in most sports 40 45 means you are like a dinosaur and so where a person’s identity it’s not sex appeal but it is physical promise the person’s entire identity is based on their physical ability that it can’t be last for very long so even for women if somebody becomes a model or a heroine their capacity physical attractiveness not going to last for very long unless they can shift from say a sexual role to a maternal role which requires a significant shift you know it’s it’s psychologically it’s not easy for people to do that unless they can do that then who am i you know it’s not a philosophical question for them it’s a psychological question who am i you know i thought i was this attractive person but i no longer have that attractiveness then who am i so it becomes a problem so this is if you see if our self-worth is low then naturally insecurity and anxiety they increase so when they lose either of these then what happens is they are plagued by this question who am i but it doesn’t lead to philosophical enquiry it only leads to psychological insecurity so this is a very unethical state to live in so this is what Krishna is talking about over here there is immeasurable anxiety that comes up for people when they live in this way materialistically so i’ll summarise what we discussed we’ll have a few questions then we’ll take a break and then go to the next part okay so we’ll be discussing about the demoniac nature today so we started by discussing about the idea of nature so nature refers to broadly the mind and the body and then you could say the characteristics it could be characteristics it could be behaviour and then we’re discussing about how this discussion in the Gita is in a context so it’s referring to broadly the Kauravas but indirectly so then we discussed about how the Kama and Chinta they are like two sides of the same coin the greater the desire the greater will be the anxiety while Chinta at one level is natural because life is uncertain but in the case of the demoniac what happens the Chinta is it’s immeasurable they have anxiety about everything in their lives and it is perpetual it is constant and we are exploring why it is like this so in this connection we discuss the four Purusharthas and how they normally work so the normal process is that Dharma in terms of what does Dharma mean in this context it can mean discipline it can mean ethics it can mean boundaries so when one learns this then one what is able to do they’re able to get Artha. Artha is what? Wealth and resources so then what happens after that one is able to fulfil Kama.
Kama basically is over here not just desires it’s not lust but it’s generally it’s fulfilment of desires and then after that Moksha is what? Yeah Moksha becomes freedom from desires so now for most people they will go on in the cycle back they’ll again seek Dharma to get Moksha but some people will gradually move toward Moksha and this is a normal trajectory of growth but then so this is the normal way but then we discussed about modern abnormalities so modern abnormality is what? First it is just Artha and Kama so there is Dharma is eliminated and Moksha is also eliminated so when people get readymade earth for whatever it could be parental prosperity it could be national prosperity whatever it is so when they get that then they don’t grow up then because of if there’s only Artha and there’s no Dharma being developed then what happens is normally when we say anxiety it is a result of responsibility but responsibility also leads to capacity to manage anxiety but there is anxiety can come from also desires especially irresponsible desires. Irresponsible desires means I just desire and I expect the world to say yes world should say yes that kind of things when the world says no then we start becoming very worried we start feeling the world is terrible I am terrible so then if it says no then there is there is total insecurity total anxiety one starts becoming resentful and then we also discussed that in modern times it’s only Kama without even Artha and that’s even if there’s only Kama without Artha then that’s even more toxic because at least you get Artha someone has to do something and then we discussed that if Artha is Parama or Kama is Parama that means what the person’s identity is defined that way this is the base of their identity and self-worth then what will happen they will have lot of anxiety because these things this is this we talk about this lot of anxiety Chintama Parimeyamcha it comes this way this immeasurable anxiety comes because they have neither learned Dharma nor are they seeking just seeking Artha so their net worth is the base of their self-worth or their sex appeal or their physical physical charm or physical attractiveness is the basis of their self-identity and when that starts going away then you just can’t bear it are there any questions or comments yes please do we have a mic okay thank you for the wonderful class was it a wonderful class or a dreadful class sorry sorry it was highly insightful it is wonderful to know how dreadful the world is pretty this Purushartha given us Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha so when there is Kama Moksha becomes subdued by Kama most of the time so if Moksha becomes subdued by Kama then Dharma and Artha the motivation to do Dharma, Artha will so it will be that people will come again and again to Dharma like fulfilment of desire in itself is like kind whatever fulfilment of desire so what about desire is get fulfilled isn’t it like oxymoron well it can be but i don’t think we have to be that pessimistic about desires so yes you see for example when a young couple get married you know they may physically attract each other and they want to enjoy but after some time they have a child i mean they have a child that their mutual sexual attraction might be there but in any civilised society the parents even have a sense of decency and the child comes first and then it’s not that suddenly they become free from desire but the other responsibilities come and they focus on those responsibilities so as a newly married couple the level of Kama that they will have and a couple which has been married for three years five years they have one or two children the desire naturally decreases now of course if a person is not taking up responsibility if a person has not grown up with a sense of boundaries then what will happen is their attraction to the other person in the marriage will decrease but then they will start looking for affairs elsewhere that is because the Dharma the culture of you know if you’re married then you have to live with a set of boundaries that has not been taught or that has not been internalised but normally it is not that every Kama will lead to insatiable desire it like we give the example if you scratch an itch it’ll hurt you but when it like say if i’m giving a class and suddenly i get a desire to scratch my nose now it will look odd if you’re in a class i’m scratching my nose but just because i scratch my nose once it’s not the rest of like i’m going to keep scratching my nose it is when there is already a rash and we scratch we have an itch because of the rash and we scratch over there that’s when the rash worsens the itch becomes stronger we keep doing that so it’s not that every single desire is an addictive desire now if say one day somebody has a desire okay you know eat parathas it is not that one day you eat paratha next day you have become paratha addict it doesn’t happen like that now can somebody be a paratha addict well it’s possible but for it’s not that every single desire is equally toxic or equally addictive there are desires which are active but generally speaking generally speaking addiction happens not just because of the desires it’s because primarily of the emptiness in a person’s life if a person is generally if a person is feeling empty so emptiness in life that is there that is when desires one tries to use desires to full emptiness and then the desires become addictive but generally how do you deal with the emptiness the healthier way to deal with emptiness is take responsibility so as devotees we have feelings of emptiness in our life but if you take responsibility this is a service i can do and i will do this service as well as i can generally the more responsibility we take we get a sense of meaning in our life that my existence counts it has some value and then as meaning increases the emptiness decreases so if somebody doesn’t have any sense of meaning in their lives then when they indulge in certain desires those desires become addictive so if a person has a meaningful life and then they have a casual desire it’s now i’m not saying that no desire will be addictive and then we can just get nonchalant carelessly indulgent desires but it’s not that every desire is pathological we all are experienced we have a desire to eat a particular food if we have that desire it’s not there just because we eat one day every single day we start craving for that can it happen of course it can happen like there are alcoholics there are also class of people called foodaholics you know foodaholics they’re just addicted to food but that is not that common okay please reflect on like you reflected on how the children those who are getting inherited they’re getting spoiled but when we see in the very society like when the kings were there their children when they inherited with all those things the blossoms move the kingdom not always but it is also possible it’s not necessary that the pandavas had a hard life other pandavas were born to a king they were not born in prosperity they grew up in a forest so now is it possible that somebody can grow in wealth and still not get spoiled of course it’s possible it depends on the parent and training see one of the characters of kshatriyas is that they are also taught a sense of responsibility and for them a sense of honour is very important that it is like my duty to protect others it is my duty to care for others so basically the kshatriya sense of honour for the kshatriya the sense of self-worth comes by how well can i protect others how well can i take care of others now of course i may want comforts for myself but those comforts are not just so that i can enjoy yes they have royal comforts but they also take responsibility and the princes when they’re growing up they see that their parents the kings the queen they’re dedicated to serving society and that is the values that they get so it is not inevitable that just somebody’s born wealth will become spoiled but it can happen even dharma as an ethos is not taught properly it’s not learned properly so i’m not saying it’s only about the parents sometimes the children don’t want to learn also they’re defiant so in the case of duryodhana dhritarashtra and duryodhana both were a problem in the case of vena anga was not a problem but vena was itself uh enough of a problem for both does it answer your question yes something else i was asking in the sense that so in that sense like if there is a king worshipping haritha so how that king’s son will become will get kingly character that’s generally by the example of the king sets that generally by the overall ethos in the kingdom there were brahmins who were the priests and sages who would also live and teach so it is the education the example the ethos all ethos means the overall way of living so in general a person’s character or a child’s character you can say it is shaped by three things the education is what they specifically learn the examples examples could be of the parents of their teachers and then there is the ethos ethos is the value system that they grow up in so all three things so because education is more the responsibility of the school the examples is more the responsibility of parents the ethos is largely of society that’s why they say it takes a village to grow a child an entire village it’s it’s not just a single parent’s responsibility parents do play a significant responsibility but it’s multiple multiple factors are involved okay thank you any other questions yes come to me okay so if our desires are not fulfilled because of our past karma generally the karma in the sense of past karma is a mixed bag mixed bag means that sometimes we get less than what we deserve but there are some areas where we get more than what we deserve so we need to look at that you all can think of areas when times when we studied a lot but didn’t get good marks in exam but probably there are other times we studied only a little and that only came in the exam and we do it that also happens now sometimes say somebody just applies to one company and they get that project or they get their internship they get that job somebody else applies for 150 companies and they don’t get something so we might just call it luck but if we look at our life life past karma generally works out both ways we tend to remember the times when we get got less than we deserve and we blame fate we blame destiny we may blame god but if we are really objective we can look at times we got more than what we deserve and then we understand that past karma it is actually without being unfair to it’s of course some people do have life harder than others there is no denying that say a kid who grows up in say the war zone in ukraine right now that kid’s life will be far difficult from for any kid’s life in india or america or anywhere else so there are different scales of suffering in the world but broadly speaking karma is and we need to look at times when we got more than we deserved so most of you know that i got polio so when my first memory is i just how it happened was that i when i was one my parents took me to a doctor to get a polio vaccine but somehow the doctor messed up things and the fridge in which they had kept the polio vaccine that fridge power had gone on because of some power surge so the vaccine had greater concentration of polio germs the vaccine that was going to prevent polio ended up giving me polio so no that happened that still i was just walking normally one day after that i just could no longer walk anymore normally at least but i don’t remember this i was just one at that time but then my first memory of this is when i was probably two and a half or three or whatever some neighbours that our relatives had come to our home and they were consoling my mother it’s so sad that you got polio your son got polio and my mother is saying in a very clear confident voice that whatever he lacks physically god will give him intellectually now i don’t know what signs my mother had seen in my intellectual ability intellectual ability at that age but somehow maybe it is krishna spoke through her what happened by that is i started identifying with my intellectual side more and i found that yes i could remember things faster i could understand things faster and i went to school i couldn’t play games like other kids but so while i was deficient in some areas it was because of some past negative karma but then i was more proficient in some areas and because of those words of my mother my focus was more on the areas i was more proficient in and that’s why that didn’t that didn’t fixate in my mind too much so for me is when somebody sees me their crutches is the first thing they see but for me my crutches are like my glasses without glasses i can’t see uh but it’s no big deal okay put on glasses and move on with life then i pick up crutches and move on with life so we need to see that there are times when we have got more than what we deserve i can say i didn’t do anything i didn’t do anything to from this life’s perspective i didn’t do anything to get polio true but i can say that i didn’t do anything to have an above average intelligence also it was not that in my in my mother’s room my fashion library in a particular room so we need to see that karma is a mixed bag thank you thank you for such intellectual class devotees don’t live in the material world uh so that this tendency that if the devotee is not doing service and if he gives some prasad and he gives to judgement committee and if someone is serving then he offered to lord and he keep that and be satisfied again so like this thing both like we do some actors okay okay you understand right now yeah okay so basically as devotees we still live in the material world and the principle is that even if you want to serve krishna we need resources for serving krishna this grand planetarium is being built for that we need earth now we can say in this case the karma is prabhupada’s karma now we won’t want to use the word karma in a negative sense but karma it doesn’t mean lust or it just means desire it’s prabhupada’s you know uh so we want to fulfil that desire so but for fulfilling even a pure desire artha is required and how are you going to get artha then we have to do dharma so dharma could mean that you know devotees themselves work hard and give donations they earn money and give donations dharma could also mean that devotees become cultured and polite and trained so that they can approach people who are wealthy and encourage them to give money so we are not immune to this principle so even for us this principle dharmartha karma the purpose of dharmartha karma may be different in the sense that the karma is to fulfil krishna’s desire so prabhupada he it was his genius that when he started krishna consciousness in the west there is no pious indians over there who are going to give donations so how is the movement going to succeed so it is primarily through prabhupada’s books prabhupada worked hard to write his books and he inspired devotees to work hard to distribute the books so that diligence that discipline is dharma so i’m using dharma in a very inclusive sense dharma basically the the endeavour that creates dharma so prabhupada did that now in india we may get because it’s a pious society you may get donations but those don’t come easy we have to make efforts for that so with this specific example it depends on context that means sometimes if some people feel very strongly that this needs to be changed then they may have to take the responsibility to change it but if that is not either they responsible to change it means they take themselves take the service or they report to some senior authority not that particular authority and why is this worrying them so much so now if we have a say if somebody is not very good at kirtans and some people are not very good at kirtans and they are very good at asking for opportunities in kirtans now that’s not a very good combination now we can say in our own morning programme if somebody sings a little bit off that’s okay we can get them to sing but if they’re having a new programme for new people where where you really like to have nice people then maybe that person should not be singing over there and if that is the case then they have to either they have to train and practise themselves so that they can sing better otherwise that dharma in them that diligence to develop that artha that singing ability that has to be taken so but in some areas maybe the authorities will decide this is not this important for us you know somebody may say okay you know we we want to have prasad of a particular quality we don’t need a very opulent prasad okay then then we may have to accept that in that way so my question was like we are when we are talking about the specific life this particular life of the person then we can see of them there is only artha and kama but in the case like somehow or other the person is getting artha and by that he’s satisfying his kama uh in that case he’s getting that artha because of his previous life so if you see from a wider point of view then we can see that he has done dharma part sometime before so then how why we are differentiating and why the output is different okay good question so if somebody’s getting artha in this lifetime isn’t it because they have done dharma in previous lifetime of course that is true but they need to do dharma in this lifetime also to be able to use the artha properly isn’t it one of my otherwise they will abuse it when i go to canada i stay at one devotee’s home so this devotee specialises in inheritance law is that their attorney inheritance law means basically they make wills and you know what happens where there is a will wherever there is a wherever there is will there are many willing relatives so so what happens is that the parents make a will parents have earned a lot of money but they want to give their money to their children but if they see the children are responsible then they will make a will by which that okay we have this much property this child will get my son will get this per year they’ll only get this much from this and then per year this much from this it’s not just like property but they invested money somewhere they will get only this much this much this much because otherwise the kids may get a million dollars a year also and then they are living in poverty for the rest of their lives so the parents make a will like that so that although if they feed his money they can only get it gradually and then what happens after the parent dies the kids go to court and they prove that my parents were mentally unstable when they wrote this will and they break the will and they take all the money so this devotee specialisation is that you write the will in such a way that it cannot be broken by the children so it’s almost like the parents are protecting the wealth for their children from their children so so the children they’ve done some past good karma that’s why they got the wealth but you know we need to keep doing that good karma into the dharma in this life also otherwise we’ll abuse it and it’s a very deadly combination if somebody has somebody has some attachment or addiction and that time they get wealth it says that you cannot have a more deadly combination with somebody just say getting into drugs and that time they get inheritance then they will get ruined so this time this life also our thing is important dharma is also important so the potential for misuse is always there because we always have free will and the free will can always be misused but we’ll be talking in the next session about the idea of bondage generally if we have grown up in a particular culture then what happens is the culture brings a certain level of bondage so for example if we have been brought up in a cultural family if we get angry you know we may yell at someone we may raise our voice but we may not speak clear words we may not speak profanities or we may get angry but we will not start punching someone or attacking someone basically then generally a culture of bringing brings certain level of boundaries so even when people misuse their free will it’s very unlikely that they will they will like violate a boundary extremely in the first go itself maybe it’s you know first time you do a little bit and then you do a little bit more a little bit more and then person will get completely caught off wind by that so okay last question then we’ll take a break for some time please i mentioned here that people start looking for their self-worth because of whatever reasons that they start looking for self-worth it also drips in into like devotees also when we start thinking that okay i practised probably five six years for devotional service now i look myself as senior i should behave in certain manner or something so is it also that manifestation of our karma that we are wanting to show all show off ourselves or will it get purified with only well the two different things over here see if we are looking for us everybody needs a sense of self-worth that is and we have intrinsic self-worth in our spiritual identity in our spiritual identity and our spiritual relationship with krishna that we are souls and we are parts of krishna and nothing can ever take krishna away from us in the sense that krishna is never going to abandon us so there is an intrinsic self-worth but it takes a lot of realisation to be satisfied only with an intrinsic self-worth so we need some extrinsic self-worth hmm now we can seek extrinsic self-worth from what we do or we can seek extrinsic self-worth from what we get the two are very different things now what we do is in our control what we get it’s also in our control so for example if somebody gets their self-worth from behaving politely helpfully basically okay i have a service attitude and if somebody comes to me for help i try to help them so now if i if that is where i get my self-worth from then it is possible i can maybe i cannot help everyone as much as they would like to as many people ask me but i can do some things but if my self-worth again i say i’m a senior devotee what does that mean that means that as soon as i come into the room i see who is all the who are offering obeisances to me who all didn’t bow their head down i’m going to cut their head now if that is my idea of seniority then there’s no danger in my control but if my idea of seniority is that you know that i should i should have the qualities i should have the behaviour i should try to i have some spiritual knowledge i should try to share that with others not in the holiest way but in the kind helpful way then that is actually good that inspires us to to act responsibly and that also helps us to grow okay thank you so we’ll take a break for about 15 minutes it’s 6 38 now we’ll come back by around 6 50 and then we will 6 50 is okay or you want me to 656 50 okay so we’ll come back in 12 minutes and then we’ll go on till around 7 45 for 30 40 minutes we have 10 minutes questions okay thank you very much