If bhakti practice makes us less emotional is that good?

Anwser Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, if some problem happens, some grief happens, some death happens, is the level of emotions goes down by the practice of bhakti? Is that natural? Is that desirable? There are two different things. One is that there is excessive emotion which works against us. When Abhimanyu was killed in the Kurukshetra war, at that time Yudhishthira was devastated because Yudhishthira feels that actually the Chakravyuh was arranged to capture him.
To save myself, I sent Abhimanyu there. So, he feels that I was responsible for his death. So, at that time, when his grief struck, so Narada comes over there and Narada tells him that, O King, give up this grief because grief achieves nothing other than to other than to sap the energy of the grieving person.
So, there he talks about how grief is undesirable. But then, in the same next chapter, when Arjuna comes to know that Abhimanyu has passed away, Arjuna is shattered. He is crying pitilessly.
And Krishna doesn’t tell over there. You have forgotten the Bhagavad Gita? Bhagavad Gita says you are not the body, you are the soul. Krishna is sensitive over there.
So, there is natural expression of emotions. So, there are certain situations when emotions are natural. And if you don’t express the emotions, they will get repressed over there.
But it is, we are not meant to repress emotions, but it is also not that we are meant to wallow in emotions. Just keep grieving, keep grieving, keep grieving. Something has gone wrong.
That means we are just living in the past. So, if our emotionality has gone down, we have to see for ourselves what is the overall effect of it in our life. Is it making us more stabler? We were over emotional and now we are becoming more stabler.
We don’t get so disturbed by things. And we are able to do what we are meant to do more effectively. Because emotionality can interrupt us from our functioning.
So, if that has happened, then the emotionality going down is good. But if you find that we are becoming cold hearted, then we have to understand that actually bhakti is also a matter of emotions. So, if we see whatever we are doing in life, our relationships with others, that is also a service to Krishna.
And as a service to Krishna, there are certain emotions which are appropriate. So, we don’t have to suppress the emotions. So, the going down of worldly emotions is good.
Because usually the tendency in the materialistic world is to have excessive emotions. But in the name of spiritual advancement, it is not that we are meant to suppress emotions. It is not that a loud one passes away and I don’t shed one tear.
And that proves how advanced I am. One time a person came to a sadhu and he said, I think I should become a sannyasi. He says, why? He says, you know, my wife passed away, I did not cry one tear.
The sannyasi told him, the purpose of becoming a sannyasi is to cry for Krishna. You can’t cry for your wife, how are you going to cry for Krishna? The point is, just hard heartedness is not the qualification for bhakti. So, it is not that we are meant to suppress all our emotions.
There are appropriate emotions which are desired at particular emotions, particular situations. So, we have to see and accordingly if our emotionality is too high, it is good to get it down and bhakti will help us to get it down. And if our emotionality is too low, then even if we have to hike up the emotions, by conceiving our relationships as a service to Krishna, we can invest the appropriate emotions in that relationship.