Is it ok to have material desires?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Is it okay to have material desires? Well, it is not a matter of okay if we have them, we have them we can’t wish them away you know, we can’t, what is important is two things over here see if somebody is getting angry and told don’t get angry, well the anger is there what we can say is don’t express your anger, don’t act on your anger emotions are simply our psychological responses to situations no, we can’t what we are largely accountable for is what we do with the emotions if I get angry that means something is important for me that’s why I got angry, now I have choice whether I act on that anger or not and I definitely need to control that you can’t just tell me don’t feel anger that’s not humanly possible, emotions will often come upon us, so it’s not that material desires themselves are bad Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha so Artha and Kama, these are four Purusharthas, Dharma is religiosity, Artha is prosperity money, Kama is material pleasure and Moksha is liberation so all four are Purusharthas all four are important now the problem comes, especially in modern society Artha and Kama have been divorced from Dharma and Moksha that means people want economic prosperity, people want sensual pleasure, they don’t care for the God, they don’t care for liberation so this is unsustainable this is disharmonious so it is not that material desires are themselves a problem, the problem is when material desires they dominate our life, they control our life so when we live in the material world we need things for sustenance we have certain talents, we would like to make a contribution based on those talents, those talents are also given to us by God, so the problem comes when we make our relationship with Krishna conditional to the fulfillment of our material desires if Krishna gives this to me otherwise Krishna doesn’t care why should I care for it so now we shouldn’t if we are practicing Bhakti we shouldn’t really, we don’t really have to divorce our life to material and spiritual at every level, we do separate it in terms of giving time for spiritual activities, oh yes I should come for satsang, I should study scriptures, I should chant but after that we can basically have an attitude of service the essence of material and spiritual is actually the attitude of service so if a mother is taking care of her children she thinks the child is actually assigned by Krishna in my life then that is a service attitude not assigned material if I am doing my job, but I am thinking that through this job, whatever position I get, whatever security I get that will help me to serve Krishna better I will make a contribution to Krishna’s mission better then that is a service so rather than bothering too much about material and spiritual, we see, we try to infuse everything with an attitude of service and the key of service is that we desire, but we don’t demand now, if we don’t have any desire, even if say for example as Prabhupada writes in Parva a devotee desires to have darshan of Krishna but if he doesn’t demand Krishna you have to come and give darshan so desires are natural to the human condition but when we make the desire the fulfilment of the desire as a precondition to our service to Krishna precondition to our relationship to Krishna then those desires become injurious so if something is important for us we can certainly work on it pray for it and try to fulfil it but we don’t let it take us away from Krishna we try to connect with Krishna as much as possible so when we connect with Krishna, then that intention of service will gradually spiritualize it so the problem especially comes when the material desires dominate our consciousness and then we give up Krishna Bhakti but if we are focusing on Krishna Bhakti then using our godly intelligence by talking to senior devotees we can find out how best we can spiritualize those desires and there is no need to feel guilty about those desires more important thing is to connect with Krishna whenever we don’t do this that creates a lot of negativity resentment within us sense of deprivation within us we can focus more on connection with Krishna and try to connect all aspects of our life with the mood of service to Krishna does everyone see Krishna? thank you very much