​Is our capacity for long-term thinking our defining human feature?

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
The first question is that, okay, spirituality all sounds very good, but it is material things that give me pleasure right now. And that’s why I feel inclined to pursue material things more than spiritual things. Yes, it is true that material things often give us immediate pleasure.
Now, what differentiates human beings from the rest of the living world, from the animals, is our capacity for long-term thinking. That is one of the main differentiating things. So, animals, they can’t think long-term.
Now, even if there is some animals may save for, you know, they may save some food because it is going to be winter and everything, but they do it simply driven by instinct. They don’t make a conscious choice. It is just driven by instinct.
But we human beings have the capacity to look beyond the immediate future to the distant future and prepare for it. And that is how actually most of technological and scientific advancement has taken place. Even science, you know, sometimes people say, seeing is believing.
If you show me God, I will believe in him. But actually speaking, even science doesn’t function based on seeing is believing. Say when Newton saw the fruit falling, now most people would have just picked the fruit, eaten and gone their way.
Isn’t it? What did Newton do? He asked, what made this fruit fall? Now, the answer to that is he came up with the theory of gravity. That is his brilliance that he came up with the theory. But at the same time, what does it imply? He moved from a visible phenomena to an invisible principle.
The falling fruit is something which I see visibly, but gravity is something which I cannot see. It is an invisible principle. So, scientific knowledge almost always implies moving from visible specifics to invisible principles.
So, all form of progress, it happens when we go beyond the immediate to deeper things. That happens in long term way of living, that happens in terms of scientific progress. And that applies to spirituality also.
Yeah, what’s happening? Hare Krishna. So, when we start practicing spirituality, at that time, we need to use our intelligence. Yes, these things feel good.
But how long? How much and how long? It feels good. If I just eat and eat and eat, it feels good. But for how much and how long? Now people eat and eat and eat and then they say, oh, I have eaten so much now.
And then people get kind of eating disorders, bulimia and others because they feel obsessively, compulsively, they are afflicted with figure consciousness. So, any material form of pleasure, how much and how long? If you ask this question, we will understand. Yes, there is pleasure.
But it is not going to last. We use our intelligence to look for something more enduring. So, actually, that is the sign of intelligence, to look beyond the immediate to the long term.
And that is what has led to human’s progress in various fields. And the same applies to spiritual field also. It’s gone down again.
Hare Krishna. Is it better? Hare Krishna. So, similarly, that’s one way of analyzing.
Hare Krishna. Is it better? No. OK.
So, another way of another way of analyzing this is that actually, it is not that for the spiritual, we have to give up the material. Rather, it is just that we have to regulate the material. So, it is not that for spirituality, we have to give up all immediate things.
Even the worldly pleasures, they can be enjoyed, but in a duration, in moderation. And when we think that, it’s like, I have to choose between the material and the spiritual. If that’s what we think of life, then giving up the material for the spiritual is too difficult.
But rather, we understand that spiritual life involves not just choosing the spiritual, but harmonizing the material with the spiritual. So, it’s not that I’m giving up the material. In fact, you may feel, OK, when I start practicing spirituality, I have to regulate my diet.
But you know, within prasad, there’s so much variety of delicious foods. In the early days, at least in 1960s, people in America, they had no idea of vegetarian food. They thought if you have to be vegetarian, that means you have to eat vegetables.
And that’s why when Prabhupada came in place, you know, no meat-eating, people became panicking. But then, Hayagriva Prabhu, one of Prabhupada’s early disciples, he said, we were delighted to discover that Swamiji, you know, it’s called Prabhupada Swamiji, Swamiji’s knowledge of vegetarian recipes was as vast as his knowledge of Sanskrit shlokas. So, they discovered that there is so much, so much actually delicious food to eat.
So, it’s not that if we consider music, it’s not that, you know, we have to give up all music. In bhakti itself, there are so many different forms of music through which we can channel our material inclinations. So, that means what we need to give up is not the material, but the obsession with the material, or rather the unidimensional obsession with the material.
That means for the material, I give up everything, I give up the spiritual. Instead of doing that, we focus on the spiritual and harmonize the material with the spiritual. Then, we can have actually a regulated life in which we also enjoy material things in life.
Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha. In that Artha and Kama, material prosperity and worldly pleasure, they are also included in the progressive spiritual life. So, it’s not that they are rejected, but they are integrated within a higher purpose.