Krishna’s love Realize Reciprocate Relish BG 18 63 78 Part 2 HG Chaitanya Charan Prabhuji

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Prabhu Nityananda, Sri Advaita Gadadhara, Sri Vasadhi Gauravakta Vrinda, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna. Okay. So we continue our discussion today on the topic of the Bhagavad Gita as a guidebook for decision making.
Yesterday we discussed about how the Bhagavad Gita brings about a transformation in Arjuna from being confused to being convinced, from being discouraged to being encouraged to be enthusiastic and talked about how there is a three step process or three elements in the world view of the Bhagavad Gita which transforms Arjuna. And those three elements are associated with an acronym. What was the acronym? Wait.
Yes. W-I-T. W was what? World.
So that’s what we discussed yesterday that the world is. When it’s Dukha Laya, what? Okay. Hare Krishna.
Like this or above, further? Here. Here. Hare Krishna.
Hare Krishna. Is this better? No. Like this? Behind like this.
Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna. Is it better? Okay.
Not so much. So yes, I think this is better now. So it’s close, but not very close.
Want to do something? Okay. Hare Krishna. Okay, this is good.
So we discussed. I think it’s a little too loud. It’s okay.
Okay. This is better. I think.
Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna. Krishna Krishna.
Hare Hare. Hare Rama. Hare Rama.
Rama Rama. Hare Hare. Okay, good.
Thank you. So we discussed about the world. And therein we discussed, first of all, how that when we say this is Dukha Laya, that what does it mean? Not that we have to forever live in distress.
That distress at one level is unavoidable in terms of there can be dissatisfaction or there can be devastation. Things don’t. Things are not as good as we thought.
Or things are completely terrible, completely opposite of what we thought. Therefore. So what we need to do is decide when we are deciding things, we don’t decide based on what will cause the least distress.
Then we’ll basically running away from one place to another, wherever we feel that less distress. And we will end up and distress will come. There will be frustrated.
But we can focus on where there is maximum meaning or at least where there is meaning for us. We discuss this graph of pleasure and meaning. So we want this is the best if we can have pleasure and meaning both.
Even this is acceptable where temporarily there is distress, but there is meaning. So today we’ll focus on the individual. And tomorrow we’ll discuss about Krishna transcendence.
Now, at one level, when Krishna talks about the individual, he is this is one of the three elements in existence. There is Prakriti, there is Jeev and there is Jagdish, there is the Lord. So about the individual when he talks, he’s broadly talking at three distinct aspects.
And we look at these three aspects to try to understand how we function. So one is our spirituality. That is why he talks about it as a part of the decision making.
We’ll try to understand that. Then we’ll talk about the psychophysical nature. That while we are souls, each one of us has a particular kind of body, mind, machine.
And then we’ll talk about karma. Now, to some extent, I will talk about karma tomorrow also. And I’ve already talked about it today morning.
Everybody among you were there for the morning class. Yes. OK, good.
So nowadays there are a lot of movies, South Indian movies or Bollywood movies. They are bringing in some Dharmic, Vedic themes. And while some of it is positive, some of it may not be.
So now there are some Hindus also who push back when some things are not represented properly. And as some of you are aware, there was some promotion by some company where Radharani was depicted in a quite sensuous way. A bit of a backlash was there.
So now there are some Bollywood, some basically movie directors. They are trying to have an advisory panel with different organisations. If they’re going to make a movie on the Ramayana, then they will have somebody who’s a Ramayana scholar from this respected organisation so that what we are depicting should not hurt the sentiments of certain people.
And that is a good step in the positive direction. We can’t expect. Ultimately, movies are for entertainment.
So we may not expect that they will necessarily give a philosophically 100 percent accurate depiction, but they should not be giving a depiction that is 100 percent wrong. It should not be offensive. So that was one devotee recently sent me a movie clipping.
He said there was this movie star or he was there is Vendetta movies. Vendetta means like you kill my family. I’m going to one by one by one.
I’ll kill everyone. That’s Vendetta is like revenge. And there are some movies in which the hero decides that the whole system is corrupt.
So I’ll take the law in my hand. I’ll kill everyone. So there was this movie in which the hero would go and kill each villain or all the people assisting the villain.
And when he would kill them, he would recite the Bhagavad Gita shloka. Nainam chinnanti shastrani nainam dhahati pavaka. So now and there is some some people who have said that what Krishna says and Arjuna is not wanting to kill.
And Krishna tells Arjuna and actually they are souls. They’re never going to die. So it doesn’t matter if you kill them also because their soul is not going to die.
But is that the point of Krishna is telling the soul doesn’t die? Therefore, if you kill them, it doesn’t matter. Is that the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita? Not at all. See, the point is that when Krishna is telling about the eternality of the soul, he’s saying that don’t let killing that I’m killing someone be the sole factor for your decision making.
That yes, death is unavoidable and sometimes there is punishment where death is required. So just that they’re going to die or I’m going to kill them. Don’t let that be the basis of your decision making.
But then what should be the basis of your decision making? That’s a different issue. So the eternality of the soul, when Krishna talks about it, what is the point of it? That killing doesn’t matter because anyway, the person is not being killed. If that were the case, then why would Krishna even try to seek peace by going as a Shantidood before that? Isn’t it? See, when someone seeks peace, peace is also sought at different levels.
Like now, right now, between Russia and Ukraine, a war is going on. And just at the start of the war in 2022 itself, at Istanbul in Turkey, there were people from Russia and people from Ukraine had come together and they were looking, they’re almost settled for peace. And then as lower level government people, they settled it, they discuss it, they settle it.
And then the top people come together. Say Zelensky from here, Putin from there would come together and they would sign and finalise it. So normally peace negotiations which happen, they happen at the level of junior officers first.
And then the top people come into the picture. But imagine if Zelensky himself goes from Ukraine to Russia to seek peace. Or you can imagine if Putin comes to Russia to seek peace, that means the top person is going to seek peace.
That means it’s a very serious proposal. Imagine if the top person comes to seek peace and then they try to arrest him over there. That would be outrageous.
Krishna going for a peace mission and Krishna being arrested or attempted to be arrested. It’s outrageous. So Krishna is not simply saying all the soul is eternal.
So killing doesn’t matter. Just kill. Krishna sought peace by various means, including going himself.
There’s practically nothing more that Krishna could have done to seek peace. So eternality of the soul. What does it imply then? What it implies is that essentially don’t hesitate to punish wrongdoers even by killing.
By killing if necessary. That is the implication. It’s not that they are not, they will just cease to exist.
Prabhupada explains in the Purport that because Bhishma and Drona had remained silent when Draupadi had been disrobed, because they had chosen the side of the Kauravas, so they deserve to die. But then he also says that because they have more or less lived a virtuous life. So in their next life they will get a better body and thus they will be elevated.
So now the idea is whether they are wrongdoers, whether punishing them is necessary, whether the punishment has to go to the point of killing. All these are separate factors to be decided. Just the eternality of the soul does not decide these factors.
So there is a whole deliberation in the Mahabharata. Before the war happens, should we fight? What will be the cost of the war? And lot of deliberation goes on over there. So the eternality of the soul is meant only for one point.
That just because they are going to die that doesn’t mean you should not fight. It does not mean that okay, anyway they are souls, they are not going to die, so just kill them. That’s not at all the meaning.
So when Krishna talks about the eternality of the soul, when we are making a decision, so we are talking right now about in decision making, first thing is don’t just try to avoid the stress. Try to do a course that is meaningful. Then it seeks meaning even if it is not at the cost of pleasure.
That is the first step. But then the question is how do we find meaning? How do we decide what is bearable pain? So in that connection, in the pursuit for finding meaning, what is it that I am supposed to do? So death, the first thing is death is like a comma. It’s not a full stop.
Full stop means what? All of existence is over. This person has gone forever. Death is a comma.
It’s a transition. It’s not a termination. In many ways for people like death is the ultimate failure of meaning.
Like somebody may love someone, maybe they care for their parents, they care for their spouse, they care for their children and then that person suddenly passes away. And that person says what is even the point of living? I work so hard. I try to love someone, I try to please someone, I care for them and then at any moment that person can be taken away.
So death can be the greatest destroyer of meaning. And Krishna is saying that no, death does not destroy meaning. Now how death does not destroy meaning, that has to be carefully understood.
But first is death does not terminate the existence. So they will continue to live on even after they die. And you will also continue to live on in this life, in future lives.
So once we understand that death is not the end, then that means the pursuit of meaning, it matters in this life, it also matters in the next life. I may do something now which may not bear any result right now. It may take time for the result to come out.
So for Arjuna to make the decision, Krishna does not finish the Bhagavad Gita by 2.30 and say okay, they are eternal, therefore kill them, it does not matter. He could have finished the Bhagavad Gita in 20 verses. Because eternality of the soul, Krishna does not really refer to it again and again throughout the Gita.
He starts in 2.11 and he ends by 2.30. After that there are other subjects. Okay, if once you understand that death is not the end, then what does that mean? Then how should one act in life? So that is where the search for meaning comes up. So death is not a destroyer of meaning.
We are eternal beings. Others are eternal beings. That’s the first point.
Now, what after that? One devotee once asked me that, you see sometimes every point, there is, Krishna talks about gyanam, gyanam yeyam, gyanagamyam. He says gyanam and gyanagamyam. Gyanagamyam means the purpose of philosophy.
There is knowledge, there is the object of knowledge and there is the objective of knowledge. Objective is what is it that we are studying. Objective is why we are studying.
Somebody may be studying engineering, that is the object. Okay, I am studying chemical engineering, I am studying computer engineering. What is the objective? Oh, you know, because the girl I am interested in, she also studied computer engineering.
That’s why I went into that field. So the objective may be too close to that girl. So the object of knowledge and the objective of knowledge may not be same for everyone.
Some people study engineering, study computer science because I am interested in computer science. I want to do research in this field, I want to specialise in this field. This is the field I am drawn towards.
These are two very different motives. So when we study spiritual knowledge also, I was in Australia, I was in Perth. And after the class when Mataji came, she said, I want to talk with you privately.
I said, okay. So we met in the temple hall only. We met and she said that, you know, my doctor has told me to stop attending Bhagavad Gita classes.
Because these are psychologically damaging, he said. So he said, you know, I want to know, is the Gita psychologically damaging? Now, sometimes there is no point in answering a question. Naturally, if they are going to ask, is Gita psychologically damaging? If somebody is dedicated their life to teaching the Bhagavad Gita, what answer can you expect? But rather than answering a question, we need to question the question.
So question the question means, okay, why did your doctor say like this? So she said that when she was very small, that home had crashed. And she had fortunately managed to hide. There’s a small earthquake or something like that.
And home had crashed. And she had managed to duck under a bed and the roof fell. But she was protected.
But while she was there, she had a smaller sister. Like a log fell on her and she was crushed. And from that time, she had a lot of fear of death.
And she had a constant paranoia. Paranoia is like a persecution complex. Constantly feeling that someone is out there to get me, to destroy me.
And slowly she saw a therapist. And gradually she recovered. And then she started studying the Bhagavad Gita.
And it started helping her quite a bit. But then she came for a class. And the whole theme of the class was death can happen anytime.
And that class had like a video of different people who had died suddenly. Like some person was in a shopping mall. And that person was just handing over the money at the shopping mall.
Heart attack. I don’t know how they did the shooting of that also. Who did the shooting of that? Some person was driving a car.
While he was driving a car, he got a brain stroke. And there his car just went off and hit a wall. And there was a shopkeeper over there.
The shopkeeper just managed to duck off and the shop got crushed. And he got crushed and his car exploded. Somebody else was picking up their baby.
And while they were picking up their baby, suddenly something happened. Either they got a heart attack or something. They just picked up the baby.
The baby fell down. She fell on top of the baby. The baby got crushed and they fell on the head.
And the head got split. Now like that, the whole class, like 25 scenes were shown like this. And she said, just seeing that, Now all the trauma from my childhood, it came back.
And she said that I just couldn’t function after that. I couldn’t even come out of my house. Because so much fear was there in my mind.
So then finally I consulted a doctor. I couldn’t even go to meet the doctor. So first I had to do like a Zoom consultation with the doctor.
I begged him. And I explained the situation. And the doctor told me, first thing, never attend classes like this.
So then slowly she said, I stopped attending classes. I started recovering. And she said, I used to hear your classes online.
And I just find your classes quite reasonable. So I thought I’ll ask you. So I said that the Gita is not psychologically damaging.
Actually, we all are psychologically damaged in different ways. And this is not to laugh at anyone, but we are all damaged in particular ways. And if some aspect of the Gita is emphasised too much, that might trigger us sometimes.
So we need to be careful about what aspects of the Gita do we hear. That should be our select. We should also be careful.
And also those who are teachers, they should also be careful. Sometimes it is said, you remember that death can come anytime. That will make us serious in bhakti.
Well, it’s not that simple. The soldiers who are fighting in a war, or they are at the frontiers in the battlefield, they know death can come at any time. Are they all serious about bhakti? Not necessarily, isn’t it? Bhakti, it’s not so simple.
So, and more importantly, while it is true that death can come anytime, we want to be Krishna conscious, not death conscious. Isn’t it? Constantly living in fear. Oh, death can come anytime, death can come anytime, death can come anytime.
Ultimately, what should happen is that our remembrance of Krishna should be increasing. So, I’m talking about Jnana and Jnana Gamya. Death can come at any time.
Now, while this is true, but depending on a person’s consciousness, if the consciousness is in Tamas, there will just be total fear. The technical word is paranoia. Paranoia is like you are paranoid, you are constantly fearful.
This will happen, that will happen, that will happen. So, in Tamoguna, that’s what happens. Now, if somebody is in Rajas, then the thought that death will come anytime, that actually leads to a person wanting feverish enjoyment.
Like, I saw an ad when I was in Kolkata. Enjoy before you become a dirty old man. So, the idea is that if a man wants to enjoy with a woman, then as long as the man is young, the woman is interested.
But if the man is old and maybe 65, 70, 75, and that person is interested in a young woman, and the woman will say, what a creepy, dirty old man you are. So, enjoy before you become a dirty old man. So, for materialistic people, somebody is in Rajoguna, if you tell them, you know, youth is temporary, therefore we should enjoy without wasting even one moment.
So, if you see in our scripture, there is description of hell. But Prabhupada did not describe hell too much. If you see, how much did Prabhupada tell? You know, if you break the regulative principles, you are going to go to hell.
Therefore, practise bhakti. That was not his emphasis. You read his books? It’s more that you are a spiritual being.
Now, bodily pleasures are so temporary. You are meant for so much higher happiness. So, this is, when the education is being given, when the preaching is being done, it is not at the level of fear.
If you do this, you are going to suffer, therefore don’t do this. Rather, there is so much better that you can do in life. So, when somebody is in sattva, at that time, there is, when we think about death, there is rethinking of priorities.
When death comes, a person starts thinking, okay, what is really important in life? What actually matters? And that is how, by this rethinking of priorities, a person may move from being materialistic to becoming more spiritual. Now, if a person is at the level of shuddha sattva, shuddha sattva is at a devotional platform, then there will be simply absorption in Krishna. So, somebody who doesn’t even believe in God, and tells them death can come at any time, so what? If death can come at any time, everything will be over.
So what? If you tell them, therefore you will worship God, all that they will say is, you know, you are just using fear as a strategy to control, to get people under your control. There is this movie called PK. Jo dar gaya, wo mandir gaya.
But the idea was that fear is what impels people to turn toward God and religion. And yes, that is true to that, but the problem with that logic is, okay, fear can take people towards God. But I had written a book in response to that called GK for PK.
So, GK was General Knowledge, God Knowledge and Gita Knowledge. So, answering Krishna, there are so many things which people do because of fear. Jo dar gaya, wo PK dekhne gaya.
Why do people watch movies? There is so much anxiety, sometimes they want to forget all the anxieties. Isn’t it? So, because of fear, people can go toward entertainment. That’s also possible.
And it is that because of wisdom, because of spirituality, people can go towards God. So, just because A leads to B, does not mean that only A leads to B, and A leads only to B and nothing else. That’s the flaw in logic.
Like people say religion causes violence. Yes, and there are extremists who cause violence. But the problem with that logic is, is religion the only cause of violence? First World War, Second World War, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the biggest wars in history, religion was hardly a factor over there.
Now two wars are going on. Yes, now we may say religion is a factor between Hamas and Israel. But it’s not that simple.
There are Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and others, which are not supporting the Hamas. It’s primarily Iran is supporting. There is a Shia-Sunni divide among Muslims.
And so, to say that religion is the cause of war, that is, when you say A leads to B, what is the problem with this? Is A alone what leads to B? Can’t there be other causes which lead to B also? That’s one problem. Is war caused by other things? Many other things war is caused by. And then second is, does A lead only to B? Does religion not make people give charity? Does religion not make people kind? Does religion not make people more regulated? Many scientists have found that overall religious people are more healthy physically and mentally than their non-religious counterparts.
That religion brings a certain level of regulation to people’s life. That’s why people don’t succumb to bad habits so much. If they have bad habits, they recover from them.
Also that people, when they feel lonely or they feel depressed, and if they have some faith, they have some spiritual aspect to their life, then they are likely to recover faster. Generally, if you go to some experienced therapists, if somebody is having mental health problems, they often have a questionnaire. And one part of the questionnaire is, what is the spiritual element in your life? How spiritual do you consider yourself? What do you do about your spirituality? So this is a false logic.
It’s a little bit of a tangent, but I hope this is clear that A may lead to B. But the logical problem is, is A the only thing that leads to B? And does A lead only to B, or A leads to many other things also? So can the thought of death increase a person’s spirituality? It’s possible. But if somebody is an atheist, telling them, oh, death is going to come, therefore we should practise spirituality. They will just see that as a psychological threat.
They are using psychological fearmongering to create a bug, to make them believe in God. It won’t work. There’s one devotee, he likes to use this kind of fear.
And Indians generally are quite pious. So you tell them, death has happened in your life, now you should worship God. And people accept that.
But those people are a little more atheistic. And some people are, at least in the Western world, I have seen the atheistic people are actually more thoughtful. The religious people, especially the evangelical Christians that are there in the southern part of America, not South America, but southern part of North America.
They are so completely, totally fixated on Jesus, that it’s, talking with them is like talking with a wall. Nothing goes into them. Not all of them, but many of them.
At least many people are atheistic, they have done some reasoning. Maybe their reasoning is wrong, but they have done some reasoning, and that’s how they have gone toward atheism. So anyway, he tried to tell one devotee, he tried to tell a friend, death is going to come, if God is not there, what is the point of life? His friend said, suppose you are watching a movie, you are enjoying the movie, but you know the movie is going to end.
Just because the movie is going to end, should you not enjoy the movie while it is going on? He said, life is like that. Life is going to end, but while it is there, enjoy it. And he said, what a pathetic philosophy.
But, for somebody, who does not have faith in something higher, see it’s like, everybody finds some way of having meaning in their life. Now our purpose, should be to give them a bigger meaning. We shouldn’t be simply destroying, whatever gives them meaning right now.
It’s like say suppose, it’s a very important point, what I am talking about is, here, the point of death. And how fear of death, is not a healthy way to bring people to Krishna. Somebody already in sattva guna, they already know spirituality, and then, oh the thought, death might come.
Oh I should not get so caught in material life, I should focus on spirituality. That starts happening. But, for others, it may not work like that.
So generally speaking, say, we need to understand, like, everybody, has, some kind of world view, that shelters them. Maybe atheism is the world view that shelters them. It may be a very poor shelter.
Like say somebody is a very poor person, and in cold weather, they have got a very torn, thin cloth, by which they are protecting themselves from the cold. And we try to, take away that cloth from them. Our purpose may be, I’ll give you a thick, soft comforter.
But before that, we try to pull away their cloth. Now what happens is, that is the only thing that has given them comfort. And if you try to pull it away from them, they will fight with their life for it.
So instead, of trying to pull away that cloth, what we try to do is, okay, you can have that cloth, but I’ll put a bigger cloth on that. We just give them an opportunity to experience a bigger world view. Okay, I’ll put the, you’re not ready to give up that cloth, it doesn’t matter.
I will put the comforter around you right now. And when the comforter comes on them, you know the word comforter? Okay, in India the word comforter is not very common. Comforter is a thick blanket.
Okay, blanket. Your faces were not looking very comfortable with the word comforter. So like a rug, we say, like a thick, thick, like extreme cold we put a blanket.
so like a thick blanket or a rug, we put them thick, soft blanket we put on their body, and they themselves start feeling the relief from the heat. And once they start feeling relief from the heat, they will say, you know, this is actually much better. I don’t need the other one.
They will give it up before. So our focus should be not on destroying people’s world view, present world view. Our focus should be offering people a bigger world view, a better world view.
So when Krishna talks about identity, yes, we’re all going to die. But the fear of death is not the primary motive for people to come to spirituality. It can be one of the motives and then it is good.
But as a primary motive, it doesn’t work for very long. Even as devotees, if you’re constantly thinking about that, we will not be able to focus on Krishna. We need to have, okay, yes, death is there.
Death can happen at any time. But there is life that goes on from this to the next. And therefore, if we do something in this life, which will also contribute to something of value in the next life, then that is a wise way to act.
So just talking about death without talking about how it contributes to a meaningful world view, just talking about death without that is not very helpful. Now, different people try to juggle out of death in different ways. There was one philosopher.
He said that I will never die. When I am there, death is not there. When death will be there, I won’t be there.
So now you can do word juggling like that, but it’s not going to help ultimately. One person, he was from a Christian background, he has now become a devotee. He said, you know that, he was driving a car.
His child was sitting next to him in the car. And then suddenly a truck came from the front. And he brought a Christian background.
Oh, Jesus, please help me. And then he pressed the brake, the other person pressed the brake and it hit. Still it hit.
And his daughter was severely injured. He was not very injured. Daughter was injured.
And he said, actually what happened was, at least he claimed like this. He said that when he was just pressing the brake, he saw an apparition like a Jesus. He thought something like Jesus was there.
He is not really a believer. He had been brought up in a Christian background. So he saw something like Jesus.
Oh, Jesus, please save me. And the two vehicles crashed. And his daughter was injured.
He was slightly injured. So now what was his conclusion after this? He said, if I see Jesus again, Jesus is going to be a dead man. You understand what it means? That means, I am so angry with you.
If I see you again, I am going to kill you. So his logic was, Jesus did not answer my prayer. So next time I see Jesus, I will punish him.
So there is a completely perverted reasoning. But different people’s minds work in different ways. So again, the point of talking about the eternality of the soul is not to dismiss death.
It is not to create fear-mongering about death. That’s the first point. When we say there is death, what does this mean? That we can say there is this life and there is the next life.
So there are four ways we could live. That this life matters, the next life matters. Some people say, even this life doesn’t matter, next life doesn’t matter, nothing matters.
This is the most meaningless way to live. Isn’t it? That nothing matters at all. Very, very dark way to live.
Now this life matters, the next life doesn’t matter. This is still, it is a materialistic way to live. And in many ways, actually this is Tamasic, I’d say this is Rajasic.
And in many ways, actually, Rajasic is far better than Tamasic. Like suppose somebody is a parent. And then they say, okay, this life is the only life we have.
But if my child falls sick, I’ll move heaven and earth to take care of my child’s health. Like some people, nothing matters in life. So they just take drugs and they go high.
I know one devotee in America, he said that, his mother, in many families in America, there are no parents, no fathers at all. So it’s a single-parent family. And he says, my mother was stoned on drugs from the age of five.
In America, if you’re poor, then the government has soup kitchens and government provides free food. In America, it is like even the poor people are fat. Why? Because the food that they give is actually very unhealthy food, which makes people overweight.
Anyway, so he said that, from the age of, from when I was five, from that age, I was taking care of my mother. Because my mother would be so stoned on drugs, that she didn’t even know that she existed, or to speak that her kids existed. And I had a younger brother, I had to take care of him also.
So now, parents who are ready to risk their life, put their life on the line to take care of a child, and parents who don’t even know that their child exists. There’s a world of difference, isn’t it? So, if nothing matters, that’s a very, very dark way to live. This life is the only thing that matters.
That is, that is at least a better way to live. A person will take responsibility in this life. Now, only the next life matters.
And this life doesn’t matter. Now, this is a very world-rejecting way of living. World-rejecting, life-rejecting.
So, you know, this is called, what Prabhupada called as voidism. Nirvisesha shunyavadi. The more common philosophical word is Nihilism.
This is materialism. Now, the next life only matter, this doesn’t matter, this is impersonalism. Now, this Brahma Sathya, Jagannithya.
So, whatever we are living right now, none of it matters at all. That’s not really the Vedic way to live. Now, what we can call this is, this life matters and other life also matters.
That’s devotionalism, that’s the Gita’s worldview. That’s the Bhagavatam’s worldview. This world matters.
This world, Krishnadhan dismissed this world simply as Maya. So, the idea is, that, yes, death is there, and death is going to take away many of the things that we consider important in this life. Therefore, we should live in such a way that what we are doing will lead to some results that matter in this life, but also results will matter in the next life.
Care for both. So, that is the point of the eternality of the soul. So, the soul is eternal means, the soul is eternal.
What is the implication of this? That act in a way that matters. Matters in this life and next life. So, now that was the first aspect of the eternality of the question of identity and individuality.
The second aspect is, so, with respect to Arjuna, Krishna is telling that, for example, he says in 2.37, Hato va praapse se svargam, Jitva va bhunkse se mahim. He says, if you fight and lose, you will die, but you will get to heaven. And that’s where your next life matters.
Jitva va bhunkse se mahim. If you win, then you will get the kingdom in this world. So, therefore, fighting is good for you from both ways.
So, that is the first point. Understanding the eternality of the soul means, act in a way that not only this life matters, but the next life also matters. But, okay, that’s one aspect of acting.
But beyond that, how do I act? That is where our svabhava. svabhavajena kaunteya nibaddhasvena karmana Krishna says we all act according to our svabhava. Our svabhava is determined by our guna-karma.
chaturvalne maya-srishtam guna-karma-vibhagasah Now, the word guna and karma can be understood in many different ways. So, let me backtrack, because right now it may not be clear where I am going. What we are trying to do is, we don’t want to make decisions based on simply what will cause the least distress.
We want to make decisions based on what will bring the most meaning. So, one thing is, the most meaning will be that should bring meaning in this life and in the next life. But you could say that generally applies for everyone.
You remember I said that success, yesterday morning I said success can have an objective side and a subjective side. So, what about me individually? So, each one of us has our guna and karma. So, in other words, guna and karma can be understood in many different ways.
I’ll take one particular translation here to explain this in a way that is relatively easy to understand. See, if we have the guna, the quality for something, then we are comfortable doing it. We feel good doing it.
And if we have the karma for doing something, we are competent at doing it. That means we are good at doing it. So, what is the difference between these two? Like some people may have the guna for music.
That means, you know, they love to hear music. Maybe they also like to play some instruments. But they may have the guna for it.
However, they may not have the karma for it. That means they may play musical instruments and they may enjoy it. But, it’s like sometimes, you know, some people come in a kirtan and they pick up a kartal and start playing the kartal.
And they are closing their eyes and playing the kartal. And they seem to be in ecstasy, but they are playing aftal and everybody around them is in agony. So, they may not actually be good at it.
That may be good for their own shelter. But it may not be very good for others. Like with respect to writing, you know, there is writing for personal journaling.
And there is writing for publishing. Some people may not be very good at writing, but they just like to write and organise their thoughts. Get it out of my head.
Now, what you write for journaling, that may not be very good for publishing. You have to think about whether what I am saying makes sense to others. How are thoughts flowing? Some people may just not need that.
So, we could say that what we are good at is one circle. What we feel good and what we are good. There are two circles and there is, it’s like a Venn diagram with some intersection.
So, we all can probably think about things which we are good at. Sometimes some people, they say that they have a, what is the, they are, they have an abundance of talents. Like there are so many things I am good at, that I don’t know which field I should go in.
Some people have a lot of talent. Some people are very athletic. I met one devotee in America.
He is from a very athletic, in Australia, I met him from an athletic family. His brother, he said his brother is playing four sports at a professional level. He is in cricket, he is in football, he is in lawn tennis and he is in squash.
And he says he is good at all four of them. He doesn’t know which sports to take as a career. Some people, for them, just to go to a sports playing field, I am tired now.
People just don’t have that athletic ability. Like some people, they say if you want to choose a career, you know, I like arts also, I like history also, I like computer science also, I like psychology also. And I don’t know which to choose.
For some other people, you know, I don’t even know what I like. Isn’t it? I feel I am not good at anything at all. I don’t know what to do.
So now the thing is that if we are good at something, then what happens is we experience some level of contentment. Contentment is satisfaction. We just feel good doing it ourselves.
And if we are good at it, then we can make a contribution with it. We can actually make a difference. Some people may like to watch, read investigative fiction or they may like to watch crime shows.
But if they lose something or somebody loses something, they are not very good at investigating and fighting where I lost it. So they may enjoy that, but they are not really good at it themselves. So ideally speaking, our Varna, Varna here refers to our profession, the role in which we can make the maximum contribution in our lives.
If it is at the intersection of these two, that is the best. If what we are good at and what we feel good doing. Not everybody is fortunate enough even to know what this is.
Some people, some children are so extraordinarily talented that right in the childhood itself, the talent is seen. I was staying at one devotee’s house in Canada. And I was staying at his home.
He introduced me to his son, 7 years old. And he was the national number 2 in under 15 in chess. And he said, I was playing chess with a friend, his father was telling me.
And he was just 4 years old. And he just walked over and said, Dad, what are you doing? I said, I am playing chess. Can you teach me? He said, I will teach you after 2-3 years.
He said, teach me now. And he said, he taught him. The first game he played, he lost.
The second game, he defeated his father. Some people just have extraordinary talent. But for most people, it takes time to discover this.
But for us, if we want to do something meaningful, we can say everybody needs to do a job, everybody needs to earn a livelihood. And that is true. But when we want some meaning in life, when we want to do something meaningful, then if it is according to our guna or karma, or best, if it is according to our guna and karma, then what happens is, then it works very well.
So, we often talk about the lower taste and the higher taste. So, the lower taste we say is the taste of sense gratification. There is a lower material taste and there is a higher spiritual taste.
And, you know, we are here and we want to go all the way there. But sometimes what happens is, the higher taste seems so high up. We try to go there and in trying to go there, we end up going further down.
We feel, this is not going to happen to me. This is too far away. So, what the system of Varanashram offers us is, there is a higher material spiritual taste.
What it means is, that this is according to our varna, so it is material. But it is done in the mood of seva, that becomes spiritual. So, for example, somebody may like to manage, somebody may like to teach, somebody may like to counsel, somebody may like to organise a particular big festival.
Now, if you tell them chant 64 rounds everyday, they just can’t do it. Impossible. But they like to do the service and they get a sense of satisfaction by it.
They are actually doing a contribution and this can sustain us while we progress towards the higher taste. So, for all of us, when we, now just the material, you could say, just acting according to our swabhava, even if you are not doing it for Krishna, can also give us some satisfaction. But if you are doing it for Krishna, it gives us much more satisfaction.
So, basically, if we want to find meaning in our life, we need to look at what is it that is according to my varna. So, Krishna tells Arjuna, by nature you are a warrior and you will want to fight and protect people. And right now you are saying that I don’t want to fight.
But if later on you hear that the Kauravas are doing some atrocities and then you have taken sanyas, you have given up your Kshatriya Dharma and you can’t fight at that time, you will feel miserable. So, when we want to find meaning, look at what is it that we feel good doing, what is it that we are good at doing. So, how do we find this level of meaning? This is itself an elaborate topic, but I will just keep it simple at this point.
First is self-observation. Just look at ourselves. We all do various things in our life.
And while doing various things, we observe ourselves. Actually, when do I feel happy? When do I feel satisfied? Say today I have ten things to do. Which activities do I look forward to doing? By that we may get some understanding.
This is what something probably my varna means in this direction. Now, finding our varna doesn’t necessarily mean fitting into one of these four categories of Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisheshudra. Because, you know, today’s roles, today’s professions, where do they exactly fall? It may not be very easy to understand.
But the idea is, we try to find, underlying principle is, we try to find a work that is broadly compatible with our nature. So, self-observation. Then after that is association.
If we have some well-wishing friends, guides, they also can observe us. And they can tell us, hey, you are good at this. Hey, you may not have paid much attention to this, but you can actually do this quite well.
Or, you know, if you are spending so much time on this, but it’s not getting the result, do you really want to spend your time in this? You can explore some other services. So, when I joined as a brahmachari, I think I was the first person who was physically handicapped and decided to join as a brahmachari in ISKCON, as far as I know. There are other devotees who got injuries after they became brahmacharis.
So there was some concern, you know, brahmachari life is a little tough and what kind of service would I be able to do? So I was doing various things, exploring, and then Radheshampu asked me once to do some proofreading of some document. Then I did that and I gave it to him. He said, Chaitan Charan, this is very good.
He said, you should take this up as a service. Then he asked me to write something and I wrote and he said, this is excellent. So that’s how, while speaking I was doing teaching, but writing has become a major service for me.
So he helped me discover that although I had interest in words, I was interested in language. But at that time, this was 2000, 1998, 1999, 2000, now many devotees are writing books. At that time, hardly anyone was writing anything.
So in association, sometimes we can find what service we are good at. We can observe and learn, but others can also observe and that can also help us to learn it. So self-observation, that is important.
Then association is also very, very important. Now, along with that, it is that there is what we can say is time. Time means sometimes you just need to be patient that for some people, last part I’ll talk about is karma before I finish, but karma works in many different ways.
And some people may have the karma by which they are good at some things, but they may not have the karma to realise that they are good at that thing. I know my field is the service where one of the services I do is writing. But there are some authors who actually started writing at the age of 60.
And they lived for 75 and 15 years, they wrote something. So at the age of 60, they discovered that they like to write and they wrote. So now, if they had written from the age of 16, they could have contributed much more.
There are some authors who wrote and nobody noticed their writing. Sometimes their books were not even published and they died. And afterwards, somebody published their book and they became very famous.
So they had the karma to write, the ability to write, but they did not have the karma by which they would be recognised for their writing. So life can be quite complex. So sometimes it may take some time to discover for us.
So we just go along with our life, do what we can, but keep observing. Maybe at a particular time it is revealed. And our interests may also not be completely static.
That we may have interest in 5 things, but at a particular phase in our life, our interest in a particular thing gets triggered or gets heightened. So initially, we just do whatever services we are told to do. But while doing whatever services we are told to do, we keep observing ourselves.
We keep consulting other devotees. Okay, which service I am able to do well? Which service I feel satisfied? Which service do I look forward to? And that way, we will be able to find meaning in our life. So for some people, teaching may give a lot of meaning.
Even in sharing Krishna Bhakti, there is teaching and there is preaching. Preaching is more to new people. Teaching is where somebody talks about Bhakti Shastri, Bhakti Vaibhav, where you go deep into Shastra, look at Acharya’s commentaries, look at a particular scripture from multiple perspectives and present it.
So there could be also different kinds of teaching or different levels of teaching. So basically, when we are able to, our individuality means that we find what is it that is meaningful for me. Ultimately, at initial, at a universal level, everyone has to find out what will be meaningful in this life as well as the next life.
But for each one of us individually, it may vary. And the last part I talk about is karma. That in terms when I understand that I am the soul, we are talking here about the individuality.
So in the individuality. So karma works in mysterious ways. Now the word karma itself.
What do I mean by that? The word karma we use very freely. But karma can have at least four meanings. Karma can refer to karmic reactions.
Isn’t it? Everybody has to endure their karma. But karma can refer to actions. Actions in the sense of, now karma can also refer to the law of action-reaction.
The law of karma is inescapable. This is a very different meaning. Then, so when I say karma can also refer to good actions like karma, akarma and vikarma.
So karma is one kind of actions. Now karma can also refer to dutiful actions. Isn’t it? Here when I say actions, it just refers to activity.
So everyone should do their karma. What is our karma? Here it is almost like the word karma is equivalent to dharma. What is our duty? So when Krishna says, which is the meaning that he is using over here? Yes, 2.47 when he says, it is dutiful actions.
aham tvam sarva-papebhyo moksha-iśyāmi mā śujaḥ So there, sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ bhaja Okay, the word karma is not there over there. yeṣāṁ tvantra-gataṁ pāpaṁ janānāṁ puṇya-karmaṇāṁ te dvandva-moha-nirmukta-bhajante mā madhurvatā Yes, so anyway, I think this will take a lot of time. I was thinking that I could tell the verses from the Gita which talk about each of these meanings.
But then the whole class will become karma. Let’s not go into that. The point I’m making over here is that karma can have many different meanings.
So for us, when we are looking for meaningful action, what action will be meaningful for me? So sometimes, ideally speaking, I do an action. When we want to do an action, what is it? It is, I told today morning, there are three factors in action. What are they? The intent, content and consequence.
Now generally the word consequence is used in a negative sense. That its consequence is going to be very bad. But consequence just means the result, what comes out of it.
So the best action will be where the content is good, the intent is good, the consequence is good. Isn’t it? That means, by good I mean, we like to do it. So for example, say somebody likes music.
The content is good means that they are themselves good at music. They feel happy doing music and the world is happy to hear their music. Somebody for whom that karma is not there, they try to pick up an instrument and they try to play it.
They try to play a kartal and they say, it’s so hard. And somebody who is training them, they say, it’s so hard to hear. So sometimes the consequence may not come.
So basically, so we could say content is the guna here. Guna karma vibhag asha. Content is good means we feel good doing it.
The consequence is good means we are good at doing it. And intent is good means our motive for doing it is pure. So what does that mean? That means I want to make music so that people can be uplifted.
Now, when people are down, then they have some positive vibes in their life. They feel encouraged. They feel enlivened.
Now, some people make music just so that they can make a lot of money. Some people may use music to create a revolution, to make people agitated and make people violent. The different motives can be there.
So for us, we need to have at least one of these working for us. If you want to do some meaningful action, our intent needs to be good. The action is something which we feel good doing it and the consequence is good.
If all three are there, that is the best. But even if two of them are there, that is also good. If one of them is there, that is also okay.
If none of them is there, then that is trouble. That means nothing about the action we like. Our intent is also, you know, I am doing this work just to prove that I am better than this person.
I want to pull down this person. I just don’t like doing this. Like somebody is teaching and you ask them, why are you teaching? He says, what are you doing? I am teaching these dumb students, this dumb subject, in this dumb school which is run by this dumb professor, the dumb principal.
You hate everything about it. Then where is the question of any happiness at all over there? Yeah, maybe the management is not good. Maybe the students are not very intelligent.
But if that is the attitude, then that person is only going to radiate darkness wherever they go. Darkness and negativity. So, if we want meaning in our life, ideally speaking, if all three of these work together, that is the best.
If one or two of these work together, that is also good. So, when Krishna tells Arjuna that you are a Kshatriya, you fight. Now, unfortunately or whatever, because of some karmic complication, right now you have to fight against your relatives.
You have to fight against Bhishma and Drona. That is not a pleasant thing. But that is a part of life.
Even when we are doing something that we like, that doesn’t mean we are going to like everything about that. Or we are going to like that for all the time. Nowadays, maybe IPL has earned so much money, so young people want to become a cricketer.
I want to become an IPL star. Okay. Somebody may have that talent also.
But just because somebody is a sports player or somebody is a talented cricketer, somebody becomes an IPL star, does that mean that they are going to like everything about it? Not necessarily. You know, if you become famous and the media starts trying into your private life and then, you know, you spoke 10 years ago, you bullied someone and then that comes out in the media and then you have to apologise for what you spoke 10 years ago. Many things can go wrong.
And that’s that you have to deal with it. Sometimes, you know, you get into the team, but you come into the team and some very popular player is removed from the team just for you to come into the team. And then you are in the team, but everybody is booing you when you come out to play.
Because you have caused the removal of a very popular player. The popular player may not be performing. You may not be coming out to play and everybody is booing you instead of cheering you.
It’s a terrible thing. Isn’t it? So, life is, even if we are doing something we like, that doesn’t mean we like everything about it or we will like it all the time. The idea that just if I can find my dream job, my dream career, then everything in my life will be happy.
It doesn’t work like that. Again, that is the idea we are thinking of this world as Utopia. This world is Dukkhalaya.
So, Dukkhalaya doesn’t mean we have to be constantly Dukhi. But don’t imagine that there will be some perfect job where there will be no problem. Everything will be what I like over there.
It doesn’t work like that. Indian students may want to go to America. And I want to go to America.
I want to settle in America. And you know, I want to marry an American girl. Maybe somebody has a dream like that.
Okay, we go to America. One of the first things that Indian kids in America notice is the huge amount of loneliness. Because even if you go to a hostel and stay over here, at least you have some people who are from a similar background.
At least you understand each other. But in the West, the culture is so different that many Indians feel very lonely over there. And once you get a job in places like, I am not criticising America over here.
I am just saying that there is no such thing like a perfect place. Even if you get a job which you like. But even after that, in countries like America, there is minimum labour, minimum wages are there.
That’s why even wealthy people cannot hire help. You cannot hire someone to do your laundry or to do your dishes. People have to do it themselves.
Because otherwise you have to pay so much that you cannot afford it only. And there are challenges everywhere. So, but what happens is, when we are trying to find work according to Varna, what can we expect by that? Again, we can have maximum meaning through our work.
But if we are expecting no distress, no problems, that expectation that there should be no problems, that expectation is a big problem. Isn’t it? So, that is not going to happen. But we can maximise the meaning in our life.
And Krishna is to Niharjuna, you are a warrior, it is by fighting. Doing your dharma of the Kshatriya, that’s how you can act meaningfully. Now, how does Krishna play a role in our lives when we are trying to act meaningfully? That we will discuss in the last session tomorrow.
I talked about this material spiritual meaning or material spiritual higher taste. So, I tried to talk only about the material part in the sense that is according to a psychophysical nature. Now, how it will work spiritually, how Krishna element comes in, that I’ll talk in the last session.
So, today we talked about the topic of individuality. What does our individual identity, what role does it play in our search for meaning? So, I talked about first the soul’s eternality. What it does not mean is we can just kill anyone.
What it does not mean also is that live in fear of death constantly. We discussed how, I spent a lot of time discussing this, how sometimes this fear of death can be seen in sattva, rajas, tamas and shuddha sattva. So, how it will be seen differently.
What it means essentially is that if you understand the soul is eternal, then try to act in a way that this life matters and the next life also matters. So, that way we can find action. So, then we have a long term vision to the search for meaning.
Otherwise, death can seem to be like the complete destroyer of meaning. Then I talked about our psychophysical nature. So, this is the individual aspect of our meaning.
I spent a lot of time again discussing this, that for all of us, avarana is seen by our guna and karma. What we are comfortable doing and what we are competent doing, what we feel good and what we are good. And if you can find the intersection of these two, then that can give us like a higher material spiritual taste.
While we are moving from the journey from lower material taste to higher spiritual taste. So, it’s like one step in between for us. And to find our avarana, we discuss that self observation, association and time.
So, SAT, we are eternal beings. So, we need to be patient in trying to search our eternal. And lastly, I talked about karma, that just because we are acting according to our psychophysical nature and we are acting with spiritual awareness, that does not necessarily mean that whatever we do is going to be successful.
So, it may or may not be. It depends. So, with respect to karma, we discussed that karma can refer to our action, karma can refer to reaction, karma can refer to the law and karma can refer to responsible or dutiful action.
So, and we also talked about karma can refer to one kind of action. But here, I primarily focus on this point of karma as responsible action, that when we are doing some action in our life, ideally speaking, the satisfaction that we get can be based on our intent in doing it, the content of what we are doing it and the consequence. So, if all three work out, that is the best.
If even one of them work out, that is also good. Like somebody likes to care for others and they have medical ability and they become a famous doctor, then they will have a lot of satisfaction in life. When somebody may have a serving attitude and they may have medical ability, but they may not become a famous doctor, still they will be satisfied.
Somebody may have a serving attitude, but they may not get the opportunity because of financial or other considerations to actually become a doctor. Then they may become an assistant in some other way. They may help through nursing.
They may become a first aid volunteer. They can do it care in some other way. So, each one of us, our karma may constrain us, but when we act responsibly, each one of us from wherever we are, we can choose to add meaning to our life.
So, even when there is work according to Varna, that does not mean there will be no dissatisfaction or no distress. Sometimes somebody may love to do research, but even if somebody gets into a very reputed research institute, there might be politics over there. They may not like the politics, but still, I like the research.
So, we cannot have a place of no distress, but we can have maximum meaning in our life. Somebody may love to do research and they do some very significant research, but then their colleagues or their PhD guy, that person steals the research and publishes in their own name. That’s very painful for them.
And sometimes karma can be cruel, at least from this life’s perspective. But then they have to say, OK, but this is still what I am meant to do. This is what I love to do.
But maybe I’ll have to be careful in future at how I work and how I, with what kind of people I work, maybe I have to become a little more careful. So, we can maximise the meaning. We cannot eliminate distress, but we all can maximise meaning.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. Are there any questions or comments? Yes.
Where’s the mic? Is there? Yeah, you can speak. You can speak, I’ll repeat otherwise. Although it’s not completely, maybe mind may cheat it sometimes.
Like this situation might be happy because someone is praising me or glorifying me. That’s why it was. I feel like it was liking, but actually I was not so happy in it.
So can you make some good points? Good question. See, generally, when we after doing some work, when we get some satisfaction, there can be broadly two kinds of satisfaction. One is intrinsic and the other is extrinsic.
So extrinsic could be in terms of recognition or it could be in terms of remuneration. Remuneration is we get some money, monetary rewards. Both are important in their own ways.
That in the world, if somebody is talented in some field, then people will say, what is the proof that you’re talented? You know, if you are famous, if you are well-to-do, that’s one aspect of it. That’s not the only aspect, but that’s one aspect. So now there is intrinsic.
Intrinsic. What happens if there’s intrinsic satisfaction? There is absorption. It is like when you’re doing it, you just forget the whole world.
We all have probably experienced those times when a psychologist called it the peak performance zone or they call it the state of, what is the word for it? Basically, you just forget everything else. You just forget time. You forget hunger.
You forget everything. It may not come very often, but it does come sometimes. So that’s intrinsic.
There is absorption. And along with that absorption, there is longing to do more, longing to do it again. That, OK, I, you know, I completed one project.
Let’s say somebody is an event planner. Nowadays, that’s a big profession where somebody’s a party or a wedding or a festival, whatever. In the event planning, it’s, oh, I have to do this and I have to do that and do that.
It’s a lot of, in one sense, anxiety, but it’s also very absorbing. And once one is done, OK, you may have earned some some amount of money. But OK, where is the next? You feel excited about the next one.
So basically, we need to see whether there is intrinsic satisfaction also, at least to some extent. And generally, if we have the varna for doing something and Krishna says, He says, if you’re doing somebody else’s dharma, it is fearful. Why does he say it is fearful? It is because everybody needs some extrinsic satisfaction also.
It’s not that they don’t need it. But imagine somebody is a doctor and they get no intrinsic satisfaction in caring for patients, in seeing patients healed. Then what will happen? They will only seek extrinsic satisfaction.
And the extrinsic satisfaction is money. Then they may deliberately subject the patient to more and more tests. They may deliberately prolong the treatment so that they can extort more money from the patient.
And that is a disservice to society, isn’t it? So if and Krishna says, if we are not doing work according to our nature, then we will seek pleasure in things that will be disruptive. Like a Kshatriya who is a manager, a ruler, they are physically powerful and they love to exhibit their power. But they also are meant to get satisfaction in protecting others.
In protecting someone, they often create fear in those who are criminals, those who are aggressors. Like one of the names of Krishna Arjuna is Parantapa, one who creates fear in the opponents. You know, before terrorism became a big thing, if you see the 19th century translations, early 20th century translations, the Parantapa is often translated as the terror of the enemies.
Now we don’t want to use the word terror of the enemies because that is so closely associated with the word terrorism. But the idea is that a Kshatriya should be able to create fear. But fear in whom? Wrongdoers.
But if the Kshatriya doesn’t get joy in protecting the vulnerable, protecting the innocent, then the Kshatriya’s joy comes simply in creating fear in others. So fear in bad people, fear in good people also. That kind of Kshatriya will become a bully, that kind of Kshatriya will become a tyrant.
So generally one way to look at it is that even if I don’t get extrinsic recognition, would I like to continue doing it? That’s one thing. And second is that if the satisfaction lasts for a long time, then that is also indicating that it’s not so much based on externals only. That yes, if we are externally driven, then once, twice, thrice, we can do it.
When we are appreciated, we want to keep doing it. But if we are not appreciated, we start wondering, why am I doing this? We become disheartened, we become demotivated. And that’s an indication that maybe that is something which we can do, but maybe that alone is not likely to be our Varna.
See our Varna can also be a set of activities. It doesn’t have to be one activity alone. Okay.
Thank you. Any other questions? Where is the mic? Yeah. Professor, my question is like we were talking about guna and karma.
And in that we understood that because of some previous karma, one could like certain activities. Now, if in a situation a person is doing an activity which he more or less is not much comfortable in doing and not much competent as well. So, but he has to do for a living, for example.
In that case, can this be considered that because a person does it over a period of time with practise, he would become good at it or does karma have some say over here as well? How does karma affect that law of practise? The clearest thing that I have understood about karma is that it is unclear. So, we think of things as very, very simple. It’s not like when somebody is suffering, it’s very difficult to know what is the cause of the suffering.
In the Bhagavatam itself, when Parikshit Maharaj asks the bull and the cow, what is the cause of your suffering? And the bull is dharma personified. Bull says, Vaakya Bheda Vimohita. Different philosophers have said different things about suffering.
I don’t know. I’m confused hearing all those words. So, this is dharma personified and he is confused.
And if somebody is suffering, we are very eager. It’s your own karma because of which you are suffering. Maybe, maybe not.
There is a certain level of humility required. So, now, regarding your specific question. In psychology, there is a concept called acquired taste.
Acquired taste means that is contrasted with inherent taste. So, there is a taste. So, inherent taste means like first time I eat a food.
I just love it. I look forward to eating it. But acquired taste is that, you know, first time I ate it, I didn’t really like it.
But that is the food which is easy to cook. That is the food which is widely available in this particular region. And we keep taking it and gradually we get a taste for it.
That is more like acquired taste. And you will see to some extent, like, you think of a breakfast. A breakfast for somebody in South India, they may think of idli sambhar.
For somebody who is from Punjab, they may think of paratha. So, now, is it that all people who are born in Punjab, all the souls who are born there, they have that inherent taste for parathas? Maybe, maybe not. They grew up and that’s how they got that taste.
So, it could be acquired also. So, how much is it likely that by doing an activity repeatedly, we develop a taste for it? We can’t really know that in advance. Some people may say that, you know, I didn’t like this job when I took it up.
But now I’m doing it for 10-15 years. I’ve become good at the job. I’ve also seen other good things in this job.
I’m happy with it. Some people may decide that after 10-15 years, they said, I want to change my job now. People have what they call a midlife crisis sometimes and they do a change in their career.
Some people are very successful after that, some people not so successful. So, rather than deciding like absolute principle, just by doing something repeatedly, we will develop a taste for it or we will never develop a taste for it. If our responsibility requires us to do it, we do it and we observe.
Maybe we develop a taste. If we don’t, then as we grow in our life, we may get more autonomy. Maybe at the age of 25, we have debts in the family, we have to settle down, we have to deal with this, we have to deal with that.
But maybe at the age of 40-45, we have some bank, we have some savings, we can afford to explore for some time. We can turn and see something else. So, I think in many ways, life is to be approached more with curiosity than certainty.
Curiosity, just like say, with respect to parents. Parents want to guide their children, but parents also have to have some curiosity. Now, what does my child like? What is my child good at? If parents, so it’s like you approach, when you say I’m talking about approach life, I’m talking more like our mind.
I said our mind is like a child. Isn’t it? So, we can approach it with curiosity or with certainty. So, once there’s a court case between the husband and the wife.
The husband said, I want my son to become an engineer. The wife said, I want my son to become a doctor. The judge said, why are you coming to me? Just ask your son what he wants to become.
Both the parents said, no, we can’t do that. Why not? Our son is not yet born. So, it’s like sometimes people approach it with such certainty.
This is what you have to do. But the child is a person in his or her own right. And the parents may have certainties, you know, I want my child to be well settled.
I want the child to have good education. Child should have financial security. All those things are fine.
But whether they have to come through this career only, or this relationship only, or this role only, maybe, maybe not. So, I think it’s better to approach with curiosity. Thank you.
Any other questions? Yesterday I asked one personal question to you and you said two questions in class. So, the question was, like yesterday I was talking, like, there are so many different philosophies in India and Western. So, before coming to Krishna Consciousness, I studied so many philosophies.
And one philosophy was of Sandeep Maheswari. He talks about sound of silence. And he talks like Upanishad and Ashtavakra Gita.
So, what are your takes on this? Okay. So, first let me talk about the broad idea of what we have learned previously. See, generally, we can say in our life, there is a phase of Krishna Consciousness and there is a phase of pre-Krishna Consciousness.
So, now we can look at our pre-Krishna Conscious phase in two different ways, almost opposite ways. One is that it was all just a waste of time. Now, I was in Maya and I wasted so much of my time and my life over there.
The other is, it was like the building block for me. That, I learned certain things and those things prepared me. You know, first four or five years, I was introduced to Bhakti, I was introduced about 30 years ago.
The first few years, I treated my pre-devotional life as just a waste of time in Maya. But over a period of time, and especially after I started going abroad, in 2014, I am going abroad, and I see how difficult people’s, especially young people’s lives in America are. I don’t want to single out America, but I would say that’s where I have spent most time.
You know, people have very troubled parents, troubled childhood. So, I feel very grateful for what my parents have given me. I feel very grateful for what, not just my parents, but what the broader culture gave me.
So, more and more, now I have gravitated towards that my pre-Krishna conscious life was also a preparation, a building block. So, I developed my interest for language, I developed my interest for study, I developed my interest for introspection and analysis through my pre-Krishna conscious life, and I am using that in Krishna’s service now. So, it is not that, so this is the way we look at it.
So, I find the second way is much more constructive. Now, that does not mean everything about our pre-Krishna conscious life was good. There could be some aspects of pre-Krishna conscious life which were also a waste of time.
But it doesn’t have to be that everything is a waste of time. That’s from the way we look at it. But another point is, we can talk about Krishna consciousness in two terms, two ways.
One is, what we are doing in relationship with Krishna. So, how Krishna conscious a person is, what we are doing in relationship with Krishna. Okay, I go to a temple, I do this sadhana.
That is one way of looking at Krishna consciousness. And that is very important. But another way is, what Krishna is doing in relationship with us.
So, what is Krishna doing in my life? Or if you are talking about our family, our friends, our relatives, you may say they are not Krishna conscious. Okay, in the sense that they are not practising bhakti, not doing anything in relationship with Krishna. But does that mean Krishna is not doing anything in their life? No, Krishna is still in their hearts.
Ishwara sarva-bhutanam. Krishna is not in Ishwara mad-bhaktanam. Krishna is saying, I am in the hearts of everyone.
So, we can say that, what we are doing in relationship with Krishna, that happened in this phase. But what Krishna is doing in relationship with us, that was happening throughout our life. Even when we are doing nothing in relationship with Krishna, Krishna was still doing something in relationship with us.
So, maybe we went to a particular organisation, we read a particular teacher, we followed certain spiritual practises. That was also a part of Krishna’s plan. Yeah, maybe that is not the highest teaching.
Maybe that is not the fastest path toward Krishna. Maybe some aspect of it is taken away from Krishna also. But there also we learn some things.
So, the idea is that this is also a Krishna conscious vision. That Krishna is always acting in our lives. And one aspect is that we should always be grateful towards anyone who has taught us anything valuable.
So, my spiritual master is Radhanath Maharaj. So, when he wrote this book Journey Home, because I was alternating author and I was interacting with many different devotees. So, some people asked me this question that, in his Journey Home, there are so many pictures of Mayavadis.
People who are impersonalists. So, how can Vaishnava in his book quote Mayavadis and put Mayavadi pictures and glorify them like that? And I had some understanding but I asked Maharaj about it. Because I had to prepare some answers to such questions.
So, then Maharaj told me that, two things he said. That this is my life story. It is not that in my regular classes I will talk about these gurus and glorify them.
When I am talking about my life journey, then these people played a role in my life. And I am reporting what I learnt from them. And even when he is telling what he learnt from them, some of them were Mayavadis, many of them were Mayavadis.
But Maharaj is not focussing on their Mayavadi teaching. He is saying from this particular guru I learnt the importance of satsang. From this person I learnt about sadhana.
From this person I learnt about shaucha, about pure living. So, whatever it is. Was that the only thing that those teachers taught? Not necessarily.
But that is what Maharaj carried through and that is what he has used in his devotional life. So, from whoever we are connected with in the past, we can see what we have learnt that is of value. And we can be grateful to them for that.
That doesn’t mean we have to follow them now. That doesn’t mean we have to keep listening to them. But we can be grateful for whatever we are learning from whoever.
That’s one thing. Now, specifically with respect to what you are saying, to whatever extent I have looked at Sandeep Maheshwar, he seems to be more of a motivational speaker with some sattvic and slightly spiritual orientation. Spirituality is not a very strong part of what he teaches.
But there are definitely some sattvic values are there. So, generally speaking, spirituality can be devotional or it can be impersonal. So, impersonal spirituality is generally more appealing for most people.
Why? Because devotional spirituality is specific. Specific means, you know, you worship this particular God. You chant this particular mantra.
And what happens is many people equate specific with sectarian. Now, specific doesn’t have to be sectarian. But they equate specific with sectarian.
And that’s why impersonal spirituality, what happens is, it is generic. Like say, somebody says meditate on Brahman. Now, you can meditate on Brahman without even using the word Brahman.
Meditate on the light, meditate on the sense of connectedness among all living beings. Meditate on the sense of oneness. So, you can use very very generic terms.
And for most people, generic seems non-sectarian. Now, so, my understanding is that in this world there is a lot of Rajoguna and Tamoguna. And anybody who is teaching something sattvic is good.
The challenge comes when somebody is teaching something sattvic, see, impersonal spirituality is also part of our Vedic tradition. But it is not the highest conclusion of the Vedic tradition. So, the challenge comes when somebody is teaching something and that benefits people, that’s very good.
And it does benefit many people, from what I have seen. But when it is presented as if it is the highest, that is when it becomes a problem. Say, I use this example even for, say, the worship of the Devatas.
Somebody is worshipping, I say, now, I came from Kolkata, lot of Durva Puja happens over there in this time. So, is that a good thing, is it a bad thing? Well, I would say it is a very good thing as compared to somebody being an atheist or just a materialist. So, imagine, so, a parent has two children and one of them does very well and gets 90% marks.
I say 90% is very high. And somebody just gets 40%. And today, both of them have come with the results and both of them have got 65%.
Now, to one kid, the father will say, Shabash, well done. For the other kid, the father will say, Badmash, what have you done? Now, you may say, I got the same marks as that person. Why are you praising him and criticising me? It’s because you are coming from a different level.
So, if somebody is having no spirituality, simply living Rajasik, Tamasik, then, if somehow they come to some level of, even Sattva Guna, some level of spirituality, then that’s very good. That’s like somebody coming from 40% to 65%. But somebody who has the potential to practise Bhakti, if that person gives up Bhakti and starts practising Sattva Guna, then that is a step down.
So, we cannot really understand a teacher without understanding the context in which the teacher is teaching and the context of where the student is coming from. So, you may say that, wouldn’t it be good if everybody was just coming to 90% and practising Bhakti? Yeah, yes, but maybe everyone is not ready for that. If they are not ready for that, maybe it is good that there are other teachers who are providing something which is at least keeping people appreciative of the Vedic body of knowledge.
There are Christians who are converting, there are Muslims who are converting, there are left-wing people who are just, they are completely against everything in Sanatana Dharma and they want to make people communists and atheists. There are so many kinds of people out there. Now, if somebody genuinely feels called by Jesus and they actually become spiritual by taking to Christianity, we have nothing against it.
But many times what happens is, when Hindus become converted to Christians, Christianity, it’s primarily because Christianity offers them material allurements, you know, we will give free education for your children, we will give free hospital treatment, this or that. Or, for them, Hinduism has certain rules. And in Christianity, you can party, you can drink, you can eat meat.
So what happens is, they were a Hindu materialist and they become a Christian materialist. They don’t really change. So, but the difference is, that once they become a Christian materialist, then they become very hostile to Hinduism.
They start criticising everything that is associated with Hinduism because they have given that up So their psychological defence mechanism means, I gave it up, that must be bad. And they spend their life Sorry. They spend their life and energy trying to establish how that is bad.
So who knows if we didn’t have many other spiritual teachers who have some connection with the Vedic body of knowledge, we might have more and more people going completely out of the Vedic fold. So Prabhupada once asked that if somebody is doing Durga Puja and somebody is a Christian, who is better situated? So Prabhupada said that those doing Durga Puja are better situated because they are in the house of the Vedas. Now is it possible that some Christian might be actually very purely devoted and less materialistic and worse spiritual Durga Puja worshipper? Certainly possible.
But in general, somebody who is outside the Vedic fold, for them to start, accept the idea of deity worship, there are a lot of cultural and conceptual barriers to overcome. Somebody might be doing Durga Puja today, but it’s not that because somebody is doing Durga Puja, they will hate Krishna. They still come to Yama Ashrami also and they like the atmosphere in Yama Ashrami, they like devotees, they get some more philosophical understanding.
For them it’s not a very disruptive journey to go from Durga worship to Krishna worship. For somebody who is studying the Upanishads and from there to come to the Bhagavad Gita, to Bhakti, it’s not very difficult. I’m not saying it’s always easy, but it’s not very difficult.
So I think three things. First is, we should know that what we have learnt from the past is a building block. It’s not just a waste of time.
We should be grateful for whatever we have learnt from whoever. Second is that we can look at it as for specific teachers, rather than simply judging them or giving a label to them, we see where they are getting people from where to where. And based on that, we can appreciate them.
At the same time, we understand that we don’t want to go down from where we are just because somebody is offering something which seems materially more attractive. So I think we should stop here. We’ll have time for question and answers tomorrow also.
Thank you so much. How can we find meaning in our…