Is it good to practice bhakti because it teaches us good values?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So the point is that we worship the Lord, because in the scriptures, in the stories that we read in the tradition, we see that moral values are taught, that we learn to overcome evil and cultivate good. Yes, definitely, values we do learn from scripture, of how evil should be avoided, how good should be cultivated.
In the scripture, there are two kinds of values. There are moral values and there are spiritual values. Moral values means, we understand, if I do this good, good will result.
If I do this bad, bad will result. Those are very important. At the same time, spiritual values talk about not just being good in this world.
They talk about a goal beyond this world. So our goal is not just to do good and get good. Because no matter how much good we do, the end in this life is not very pleasant.
We all grow old, we all get diseased, we all die. And if we want an eternal result, we need to go beyond just the moral conception of good and bad to a spiritual understanding of God as a supreme good and devotion to God as a supreme good. So we practice bhakti not just because we want to overcome the bad and take the good.
We want to go beyond this duality of good and bad to the transcendent. Because if we practice bhakti simply as a tool for establishing morality, there are many problems with that. First and foremost is that, we may think that if people can be moral without bhakti, then what is the need for bhakti? Another problem is that, we may think that, if there are people who are supposedly religious, but they are immoral, then the whole principle of bhakti is useless.
Yes, that is possible, but there is the whole dislike. Even if you win the rat race, you still remain a rat. So even if we become very moral, but still, Bhakti Nath Thakur has written a song where he talks about, bhuliya to maale samsa rehasiya How I dear lord, I forgot you and I stayed in my true existence.
And now if you look at the full song, it is a success story. I grew up a child, I studied very diligently, I got very good marks in my exam, I got a very good job, I travelled far and wide, I earned so much money, I took care of my family members, and here he says, now I have old, it’s all useless. Now I have wasted my life, bhuliya to maale samsa rehasiya.
So Bhakti Nath Thakur says that, even a success story, if it is disconnected with God, it is a failure story. So it ultimately ends in failure. So I am not minimizing the point that scripture teaches us good and bad, that is valuable, but beyond that, there is transcendence, which goes beyond good and bad.
And we practice bhakti, not just to become good, but to love God, and to go beyond the good and bad of this world, to an eternal world, where our longing for love and happiness can be heavenly fulfilled.