Light your heart this Diwali – LIGHT acronym

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. I’m grateful to be here with all of you today on the secret occasion of Diwali.
And I’ll speak today on the topic of how to light our heart this Diwali. Diwali is a festival that is celebrated across the world. And it is one of the most visually attractive and well-known festivals in Indian culture.
If you consider Athyatra, it’s more of a festival where you go out and dance and sing. And our movement has popularised that quite across the world. But Diwali is something which has been known for a long time.
And it’s called the festival of lights all over. So, now, the idea of lighting our homes with lights is attractive. It is illuminating.
It also has a significance. It’s about lighting our hearts within. So, how do we light our hearts within? Now, Diwali was originally happened when Lord Ram came back from the forest after a long exile.
And Ayodhya Vasis welcomed him, celebrated his return by lighting lamps all over their homes and all over the city of Ayodhya. So, Ayodhya is that which could not be conquered by fighting. But unfortunately, an internal conflict had conquered Ayodhya and Ram had been exiled from there.
But the light indicates triumph, the triumphant return of Ram. So, I’ll talk about five principles about how we can light our heart. So, I’ll use an acronym L-I-G-H-T.
So, love, intelligence, guidelessness and hope and hope and transcendence. So, we look at one one pastime from the Ramayana, which illustrates this principle. So, love is the ultimate light for the heart.
Now, broadly, we could say that Ayodhya is like our heart. Ram is the Lord of our heart and we are all like the residents of Ayodhya. So, we all want the Lord to be present in our hearts.
Now, we see that the Ramayana indicates what has later been analysed by psychologists as typical story patterns. There is a peaceful situation and a sudden disruption and then there is a restoration of order. The peaceful situation is in Ayodhya where Ram appears and grows and flourishes, becomes a powerful prince and is about to become the king and then there is trauma.
And then Ram is exiled from Ayodhya and then eventually he comes back. So, from our hearts also, at one level, the Lord is always present because he is the Paramatma. But although he is present, his presence is not sensed by us.
We don’t feel his presence much. So, in that sense, he is no longer present in our hearts. He is exiled from our hearts and we want to get him back.
So, that will be the broad theme we will take today. So, here we see that in some ways, many of the depictions of Krishna Leela and Ram Leela are remarkably similar. Now, Srimad Bhagavatam, it was spoken by Shukadeva Swami, written by Vyasadev.
After that, it became spectacularly popular and then even Ram Leela was modelled that way and there is Adhyatma Ramayana and some other books which describe Ram’s pastimes in a similar way in which the 10th Canto Krishna Leela is described. So, here we see Ayodhya was like a paradise. The four brothers were living happily with their three mothers and there was amity, there was joy.
And everybody loved everyone else and Ram was the centre of attention. Ram, he was the lord of the heart for everyone. And now when we talk about, we light our heart.
What lights our heart actually? The heart does not have any mechanical switch by which you can light it. But what lights it is actually love and that love is manifested in a magnificent way here. As Ram grew up, he became an archer.
As I said, in some of the artistic depictions, Ram is depicted as if having a complexion. Now, here you will see this is Krishna. Normally we don’t see, of course, Krishna has a bow and arrow and this is Krishna’s complexion.
But some artists have depicted Ram in ways similar to Krishna. So, here you see the complexions are slightly different here. So, ultimately the Lord’s complexion Ram is sometimes said to be green in complexion.
But actually Ram’s complexion is materially indescribable. Whatever colours we use, even for Krishna, blue is black. Those colours are simply indicative.
So, here we see their mothers are serving them and all of them are rejoicing. And immeasurably they are living happily. This is hand.
There’s no joy greater than for Dashrath, greater than to see all his sons flourishing. They all grew together very happily. It is a border of love and joy in Ayodhya.
So, what is the light of love? It is Ram’s upcoming succession. So, when that news came up that Dashrath had decided at that time to retire and to hand over the kingdom to Ram. There was no limit to that joy.
Ram’s presence was joy. In fact, the very word Ram means Ramati, Ramayati. That one who rejoices and who helps others rejoice.
That is Ram. So, the whole of Ayodhya was lit with celebration, lit with joy, lit with love. And the festival of lights in one sense mark the return of Ram.
But lights are central to all kinds of celebrations. And in this case, Ram’s coronation, Ram’s succession and eventually coronation, that everybody was celebrating. So, this is for all of us in our inner world.
If you want to light it, it is actually love that lights it. It is love that reveals all that is wonderful in the heart. Love that reveals what is, or exposes what is dreadful in the heart and helps us remove it.
So, now when you talk about love, the soul is, we are talking about love. Now, what is, what the soul’s nature is to love? Our deepest longing is to love and be loved. And the soul has that natural effulgence.
The soul is, at one level, it is luminous. It is Atmadruk. It is, the soul is the inner seer.
The soul has consciousness, which is like light. The soul’s effulgence, however, is covered by impurities. And that’s why people often behave in ways, we ourselves behave in ways that may not be very loving.
So, love is not just the pure state of existence of the heart, but love is also the means for purifying the heart. How does love purify? It is the ultimate purification. It is the ultimate illumination.
And love light is the heart. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that it is his love which lights our heart. So, the Diwali in the heart, the lighting of the heart is done by Krishna’s mercy.
When we direct our love toward him, then by the mercy of the Lord, he lights our heart so that what is dark, we can remove. And what is unnecessary, he can, the light, we can drive it out, he burns it away. So, love is the purifier and is also the purified state of the heart.
Now, when you talk about purification, why does love need purification? Why do we need purification? Because there are many things which distort our love in this world. So, the purification, we will, so, Ayodhya was a state where everybody was purely loving the Lord, but there was a disruption. We’ll talk about the disruption shortly.
In our hearts, in the pristine state, our heart will also be like Ayodhya. But presently it is not. The Lord doesn’t reign over there supreme as the object of love because of the impurities.
So, the purification doesn’t come by hating the impure so much that we drive it out. I don’t want this here. I don’t want this anger.
I don’t want this lust. I don’t want this greed. Get out of my heart.
No, we can’t drive out the impure from the heart. But what we can do is when we love the pure so much that the impure gets crowded out, that the pure could mean the devotees who are pure or devotees who are seeking to be pure, the Lord’s various manifestations which are pure and purifying. We may love the holy name, we may love the Shastras, we may love the deities, we may love the sacred songs and mantras.
So, it is love that purifies. So, this is love is the purifier and love is the pure state. Like Bhakti is the means and Bhakti is the end.
So, the creed to light the heart is to evoke love in the heart. And Bhakti is the process for evoking that love. And so, to the extent we practise Bhakti diligently, we are actually on the path to lighting our heart with love.
Now, that brings us to the next part. That is, you know, I talked about the acronym LIGHT. So, I is intelligence.
We need intelligence to know what is love and what is not love. Why? Because we see Kaikeyi acted out, she thought she was acting out of great love. Somehow she was misled into believing that Ram’s coronation would mean Bharat’s deprivation, even Bharat’s destruction.
That’s what mantra misled her into believing. And she thought Bharat is my son. I have to protect him.
I have to protect his interests. And she believed everything that she was doing was for Bharat. And everybody reviled for the horrendous demand that Ram be exiled.
And especially when Sita, the tender princess, put on tree bark. Everybody’s heart in Ayodhya broke. But Kaikeyi’s heart had become so hard that nothing penetrated into it.
So she thought she was doing all this because nobody was understanding her side of the story. Thought that I’m doing all this for Bharat. Bharat is the prince.
He should become the king. And why are they not understanding? I’m doing all this for Bharat. So she actually thought she was doing it out of love.
So we often do wrong things, but we rarely do wrong things so confidently and aggressively as when we are convinced that we are doing it for a right cause. Normally, if somebody kills, they might have some hesitation. They might say, you know, killing is wrong.
How can I take somebody’s life like this? But if somebody is misled by an ideology, it might be, say, ideology of religious extremism, where people start believing that this person is blaspheming our sacred conceptions. And then killing him is a sacred duty. So people kill righteously and they celebrate.
I did something glorious. And this is not just religious ideology. There can be atheistic ideology also.
During communism, a hundred million people were killed, more than any other ideology is killed throughout human history. They’re killed righteously for the sake of prosperity, for the sake of the poor. That was the reason given.
So we never do wrong as aggressively as when we think we are doing it for a right cause. So even when we are loving something, we need our intelligence to evaluate. Is what I am doing right? Is my love rightly directed? So Kaikeyi thought it was love.
So I said that to illuminate our heart, we need love. But what do we mean by love? What is actual love? For different people, love can mean different things. At extreme level, as I said, terrorists think they are loving God or loving their religion, but they’re killing people.
So similarly, Kaikeyi thought she was loving Bharat, but she was causing havoc in her kingdom. She caused the death of her husband. It was when Bharat came and Bharat’s intelligence was sound.
And Bharat told Kaikeyi, what have you done? He was aghast that Kaikeyi, that his own mother could do something. And he was even more aghast that his mother was thinking that she was doing all this for his sake. And he was most appalled to think that she was thinking he would be pleased by all this.
He said, you can’t be my mother. You must be the goddess of destruction incarnated in our family to destroy our whole dynasty. When he spoke such jolting words, that was the time when Kaikeyi’s intelligence awakened.
And she realised what a horrible thing she had done. She had an imaginary Bharat in her mind. She thought that Bharat is appreciating all that I’m doing for him.
But the real Bharat came and not only disapproved, but actually lambasted her. Then she came out of her stupor. So what is love and how it is to be expressed, that requires intelligence.
He exposed to Kaikeyi how she was terribly misled and her actions had been terribly misery causing. So that’s what brings us to the next point of I. Intelligence shows what is love and what isn’t. So quite often selfishness and various forms of exploitative ideas can also take the mask of love.
And that’s why we need scriptural understanding. We need to develop our intelligence to know what is love and what is not love. Tasmād śāstraṁ pramāṇam te kāryā kārya vyasthitau ghyātmā śāstra vidhānoktaṁ karmakartum ihā rasi.
Krishna says through śāstra learn what is to be done and what is not to be done. Krishna talks about buddhi, that was 1624. In 1830, Krishna talks about buddhi, intelligence in goodness.
And he says that that buddhi which understands, That is the buddhi in goodness which knows what is to be done, what is not to be done. What is to be feared and what is not to be feared. What will cause bondage, what will cause liberation.
So in the name of love, we might end up entangling and binding ourselves. So we need intelligence for that purpose. So here we see, there is a hard break.
Dashrath is begging, please don’t go. How can you go like this? Stay at least for one day. And Ram says that if I have to go, why should I stay? You know, one more day will simply mean one more day of agony.
And then eventually the same thing has to be done. So let me leave right away. And Ram remained very sober and grave.
And he ensured that things that were bad didn’t become worse. He didn’t act like a victim. He didn’t protest how unjust life is to me.
His love was shown at this stage by concealing his emotions. Nowadays, love is associated very much with effusive displays of devotion, displays of love. So public display of affection is quite common.
In some culture that might be the norm. But there are times when love is shown by expressing emotions. And there are times when love is shown by concealing emotions.
So Ram was shocked. Ram was himself shattered by what had happened. Of course, he’s the Lord and nothing happens to him.
But in terms of the Leela, whatever emotions he was going through, he didn’t show them. Because he didn’t want to make bad things worse over there. So his love was shown by his being very calm.
He was calming everyone else. Everybody was saying this is so unjust. You’re saying no, it’s alright.
Just 14 years will go like 14 days and I’ll be back soon. Please don’t make a big deal out of this. So that is Ram’s blissfulness.
So Ram is now going out. And when he was going out, he was leaving, the light of Ayodhya was leaving. As he left, Ayodhya started becoming darker and darker.
Not physically darker, the sun was there. But the sun in their heart, who was the son of their king, was leaving. And as he was leaving, there was nothing that they could do.
Ayodhya became like a ghost town. Hardly any activity. Even if people went around their activities, they were just so lackadaisical.
They just didn’t feel like living. So that is what unfortunately happens when our love is misdirected. When we start loving the things of this world more than the Lord of the world.
Then we unwittingly exile the Lord from our heart. And there are many mantra-like people who will incite us to love the things of this world. The whole advertising world, the whole materialistic culture is glamorising.
Get this, you’ll be happy, buy this, get this. And as our minds become filled with images of enjoying this and possessing that and doing that, then gradually all those impressions start filling our heart. Then there’s no place for the Lord left over there.
And then the Lord leaves. So that’s how it is, if the Lord is present in our hearts, so the Lord can be exiled if we are not using our intelligence. And we need intelligence to invoke the Lord’s presence back in our hearts.
So as I mentioned, not all love is actually love. Misdirected love can be misdirected in many ways. There can be the wrong object, there can be the wrong method, there can be the wrong result.
What do you mean by wrong object? Now Ravan thought that he was actually loving Sita. But Sita was already married to Ram and he had to regulate it. He thought, I’ll make you my favourite queen.
And Ravan actually, he thought, I’m offering Sita a privilege. In fact, he trash talked Ram. He said, Ram is just a pauper, what is he giving you? I will give you the wealth unparalleled in the world.
And he initially thought, actually I’m doing something good for Sita. And he believed or at least he imagined that I will win Sita over. After all, I am so glorious, what woman can refuse me? And still he had some suspicion, maybe she will refuse initially, then I’ll abduct her.
So he thought that he was doing something good, but he did not think that I’m doing something wrong. He had no moral sense. He thought that, so there are many people who may act out of selfish desire, but they may think it is love.
So when some emotion is directed toward, what do you mean by wrong object? It’s the object that goes against the principles of Dharma. Then that is not love. It may seem like love, but it’s not love.
Sometimes it may be the wrong method. So Kaikeyi, she loved Bharat and it was natural for a mother to want to protect the interests of her son. But there was no threat for Bharat.
Ram and Bharat, they had the best of relationship. And Ram was not going to deprive Bharat of everything. Ram did not see Bharat as a rival and Bharat did not see himself as Ram’s rival.
So she had loved Bharat and she thought she was taking care of Bharat, but she went about it by a completely wrong way. So for a mother to love her child is not wrong. But what we do because of that love, that may be wrong at times.
Now sometimes it can be wrong result. Dhritarashtra was told that your son has demoniac characteristics. Those who are wise and in those times they could see right from the birth, what kind of characteristics a child has.
And especially because he was born with very inauspicious signs. There were jackals who were making all kinds of sounds and there are all various inauspicious omens. So Vidura said abandon this child.
You will have 99 other children, just abandon this one child. Of course, it’s difficult for a father to abandon the child. But he was not just a father, he was a king.
He should have abandoned, but he didn’t. He thought I am loving my child. But what happened in the name of loving his child, he ended up pampering him.
He ended up unwittingly empowering the dark side within Duryodhana. Till Duryodhana became demoniac. So now sometimes we may use the word attachment, we may use the word lust, we may use the word illusion.
These words are different. But people who are doing it, they may think it is actually love. So it’s not love.
So we need intelligence to understand this. It’s remarkable in this world that even people who do terrible things, very few of them actually think that they are doing terrible things. Criminals, when they are caught, sometimes criminals, there was one serial killer in America several decades ago.
He just went around killing so many people. And finally he was caught. And then that was the time when people are studying sociopaths.
Psychologist asked him to write his story. Why did you do all this? And he wrote out the story in such a way that he thought that actually I did it for my loved ones. I did it out of love.
He killed hundreds of people and he thought he is doing it out of love. So just because we think that we are loving, that doesn’t necessarily mean we are loving. We need to educate our intelligence to understand what is love.
So intelligence reveals what is love and exposes what is masquerading as love. Because love is such a powerful emotion, the forces of illusion in this world sometimes put on that masquerade to be able to manipulate us. And unless we are astute, we will not know what is actually love and what is simply coming off as love.
So that is the second part we discussed about. We discussed about how to light our heart. We need to light it with love.
But how do we light it with love? We need intelligence for that purpose. And we discussed how Mantra took away that intelligence from Kaikeyi but Bharat restored it. Then we will talk about guilelessness.
So guilelessness opens the heart for love to enter. What do I mean by that? Guilelessness is having no deceptiveness, no ulterior mentality. Now here we see that Bharat and Shatrughna, they came to meet Ram in the forest.
And Bharat begged Ram, please come back, please return. But Ram said, my father has told me to stay. I’ll stay here and you be the king.
Bharat said, I can’t be the king. He says, you give me your sandals, you give me your footwear and I will worship them. I will place them on the throne and I will live in a cottage outside the city just as you are living in a cottage in a forest.
And in fact, Bharat performed more austerities than Ram did. Bharat did only very austere food while he was there. So now there was nothing in Bharat’s heart except the desire to serve his brother.
Generally, if you look at human history, transition of power is almost always accompanied by turbulence. Currently, the US elections, their aftermath is going on in America and there’s so much uncertainty. There are accusations and counter accusations and there are fears things may escalate, that foreign powers may exploit.
So it is just a fact of history that when there is transition of power, there is turbulence. And what will prevent the turbulence is, yes, we need systems in place. We need systems in place so that the transition happens properly.
But ultimately systems have to be run by people. So it is people with a service attitude. It is people with selflessness.
They will ensure that the transition happens successfully. So succession, if you look at, I was discussing about history with one of my friends who is doing his PhD in history. And he told me, he talked about how there was some European king and he said during his time, there was 37 years of peace.
And in the mediaeval times, sometimes they call it dark ages, 37 years without a war was like a remarkable thing. Wars would happen every few years. So now many of us are disoriented by how the COVID has brought our life to a standstill.
So in some ways, after the Second World War, for the last 60 years or so, 60-70 years, we have lived in a relatively anomalous phase in human history. Yes, there have been some terrorism and there is weather pollution, other things. But relatively, we have lived with a reasonable amount of our basic needs taken care of, our basic life going on.
But this is not the norm in human society. And especially when there is, the material world itself is filled with distresses. And especially when there are power hungry people and then there is a transition of power.
So in India, there was the Mughal dynasty. They ruled for generations. So there is not a single generation in which one family member didn’t kill some other family member.
Sometimes one family member killed many many family members. In fact, Aurangzeb, he is one of the most notorious Sindhu rulers. So he overpowered, overthrew his older brother who was much more popular than him, Dara Shukoh.
And then he arrested his own father and then his brother tried to resist. Then he actually killed his brother in cold blood by piercing his eyes and ears with red hot iron rods. And then he gave that as a gift to his father.
He says, I have brought a gift for you. And his father thought, oh, my son loves me so much. Although he has put me in prison, he has brought a gift.
And then he opened the gift. It was the bloodied skull of his own son with the eyes and ears pierced. Shah Jahan fainted in horror.
Now we don’t want to talk about such things when we are discussing about Ramlila. But this is the norm in the material world. Even now we know in Middle East and Africa, there are constant coups of happening and there is overthrow of power.
So if we look at the brutality of the reality of the world, we can appreciate more the extraordinariness of what is depicted in the Ramayana. So Bharat had no ulterior motives that he simply wanted to serve Ram. And yes, there was a succession struggle after the Ashrad’s departure.
But that succession struggle was not two princes fighting. I want the kingdom, I want the kingdom. The two princes were fighting.
You take the kingdom, you take the kingdom. So this kind of succession struggle will probably be unheard in the annals of history. And finally Bharat lived in the kingdom.
But Ram, when he came back, Ram was very cautious. And when he came back, at that time, what happened was Ram thought that maybe in the 14 years, Bharat has become attached to the kingdom. Sometimes when we have something for a long time, we start taking it for granted.
We start thinking that I am entitled to this. So maybe he has become attached to the kingdom and maybe he may not want to give the kingdom back to me. So what he did was, he said, if he wants the kingdom, then I won’t take it from him.
So he sent Hanuman ahead. He sent Hanuman ahead, what happened? Hanuman came and Ram told Hanuman, give him a message that I am coming soon and watch his face very carefully. If you see the slightest sign of reservation or displeasure, then I will not go back.
This was a big statement for Ram to make because what had happened was everybody was coming in a festive mood. They expected that coronation to be there and Ram had already got all the Vanaras to come with him. Ram as a commander wanted, normally if an army wins a big war, then after winning there is some kind of celebration.
But Ram had no wealth at that time. So he couldn’t celebrate. Of course, Vibhishan rewarded the monkeys in many ways, but still they wanted to celebrate Ram’s coronation.
So Ram had got all the monkeys to come with him and it would have been a tremendous loss of face and not just loss of face, but tremendous disappointment for all of them. A loss of face for Ram and disappointment for the monkeys if Ram didn’t go back to Yodhya also. But Ram was ready for that.
And when Hanuman came there and he offered his respects to Bharat and he said, I am a servant and messenger of Ram and he has sent me a message saying that he will shortly be coming here. And Bharat just jumped up in joy and he hugged Hanuman and said, such a wonderful news you have brought me. He says, what gift can I give you for giving me such news? I’ll give you a village.
I’ll give you cows. I’ll give you a beautiful damsel. Whatever you want, I’ll give you.
And when Hanuman saw the sheer joy in Bharat’s eyes and face and expressions, then tears came in Hanuman’s eyes and Hanuman said that, Hanuman felt that Bharat’s love for Ram is actually more than my love for Ram. Ram need have no apprehension. And when that happened and Hanuman went and gave the news, then Ram came.
So Bharat was guileless. Only when Bharat guilelessly celebrated the news of Ram’s impending return, did Ram decide to come. So similarly, when the Lord is coming back in our hearts, then what happens? So guile is what applies as guile for Bharat.
He’s actually not happy, but he’s pretending to be happy. That’s guile. So we all may have some ulterior motives.
So if you have ulterior motives, what happens? The Lord doesn’t come in our hearts. We may want to control, we may want to enjoy. Now our ulterior motives don’t stop God from loving us.
Ram still loved Bharat. But what those ulterior motives do is that they stop us from experiencing God’s love for us. So although God always loves us, we can’t experience His love if we have ulterior motives, if you have a desire to be powerful, to be famous, to be prosperous in this world.
Now, yes, somebody might be devoted and maybe all these also. But if those are our primary driving desires, then God doesn’t have place in our hearts. And then if that is what we want, He says, yes, you can have it.
So it’s important to understand, is God’s love conditional? Well, to understand this, we have to understand that there are two meanings of the word condition. Condition means demand. This is going to be a conditional piece.
So, for example, two countries are fighting and one country is more powerful and it’s willing. The conditional piece, as long as you satisfy these terms, we will hold ourselves back. So it’s conditional piece.
So condition can mean demand. But condition can also mean state. For example, if somebody is sick, we may ask, what is their condition now? So is God’s love conditional in the sense of demand? No, He doesn’t make any demand from us.
Whether we love Him or not, He still loves us always. His love is unconditional in that sense. We may have forgotten Him, but He doesn’t forget us.
He remains in our hearts, waiting for us to turn toward Him. Working so that situations in our life are arranged in such a way that we turn to Him. So in that sense, His love for us is unconditional.
Krishna says in the hearts of everyone, not just in the hearts of the devoted. Prahlad Maharaj says that the Lord is Krupana Vatsala, not just Bhakta Vatsala, not just the lover of the devotees, not just compassionate to the devotees, but Krupanas, even those who are miserly, those who are materialistic, those who have no interest in the Lord, even for them He is loving. So in that sense, His love is unconditional.
In the sense that He doesn’t make any demand from us before He will love us. But in the sense of state, that our heart has to be in a particular state to experience His love. So the sun gives light to everyone.
In that sense, the sun’s giving of light is unconditional. But if you consider that if we go into a dark dungeon, if our state is that we are not in the sunlight, our state is that we are in a dark dungeon, we cannot see the sun. So similarly, if the state of our heart is that we have filled it with other things and there is no place for God to come in, then we can’t experience the Lord’s love for us.
So in that sense, the Lord’s love is both unconditional and conditional. Unconditional in terms of He always keeps loving us, but we can’t experience His love if our heart is not in the receptive state. And receptive state means it’s guileless.
Guileless means we have no ulterior motives. Now what if we have ulterior motives? I am not that pure. I have so many other desires.
Then we can still open our heart. Our heart is filled and locked so that God can’t enter. But then we have the key.
The key to open the heart is humility. Humility means even if our heart is not open because of love for the Lord, still it can be open because of humility. And we can humbly be see, please pray to the Lord.
My dear Lord, I am not yet pure, but I want to be pure. Please purify me. My heart is dark.
Please light my heart. And the Lord will indeed light it. So at our level, we can’t have guilelessness in the presence of no ulterior motives.
But even if we don’t have guilelessness at that level, we can have guilelessness. We don’t conceal our motives. We don’t put on an act.
That doesn’t mean we go around and parade to the world that we are impure and we tell everyone about our impurities. It’s just that we don’t become proud. We don’t become presumptuous.
We don’t become arrogant. We stay humble. So in a sense, humility is simply honesty.
No, we are not at a very high level in our devotion. Unless of course, we are special souls and we are. But then even then, as an example for others, devotees are humble.
So that is Jigailessness. And hope, what happens is hope perseveres even when logic or reason falters. The journey of love can be a very troubling journey.
Why? Because whatever we do in this world is difficult. Even a material relationship to maintain is not easy. Even if two people care for each other, still the world comes in the way in so many ways and so many misunderstandings come up.
And unless people are really serious about the relationship, they can’t continue. So the same applies to our love for the Lord also. We need hope.
Sometimes everything can seem so dark and we need to persevere. I’m doing so many things. I’m trying to serve.
I’m trying to purify myself. But externally there are problems, internally there are impurities. How should I continue? So we see that Sita had that hope.
She had out of great sense of beautifulness gone with Ram to the forest. She didn’t have to. The sentence of exile was for Ram, not for Sita.
But she had gone voluntarily and then she had been abducted from there. So when she had been abducted, it seemed almost hopeless. How would Ram even know where she has gone? How would Ram find her? How would Ram regain her? And she remained firm.
From all logical perspectives, you could say that Sita should have given herself to Ravan. Now Ram had failed to protect her and now what could she do? She was in Ravan’s kingdom and Ravan offered her comfort and opulence and she could have submitted. But she didn’t.
In one sense, Sita’s resistance to Ravan was not logical. So she said what to speak of offering myself to you. I will not even live in your palace.
As long as my Lord is in exile, I am also in exile. As long as he is living in a forest, I will also live in a forest. And therefore, he put her in Ashokavattika.
You see, this is the garden. This was Ravan’s favourite park. And that’s where he placed her.
So she maintained hope that yes, my Lord will come. And that is now Ravan threatened her in various ways. And Ravan told her that now because of a curse, Ravan couldn’t take her against her will.
But he told her that I’ll give you one year and if you don’t come to me, if you don’t offer yourself to me, I am going to enjoy you. If I don’t enjoy you, he was a Rakshasa. Sometimes used the word carnal desires.
Carnal refers to fleshy desires related to flesh. So we can say carnivorous animal is one who, the animals which eat flesh. But carnal desires refer to desires of flesh that are sexual desires.
So he said if I can’t enjoy you carnally, then I will enjoy you carnivorously. That means he said I will, he is Rakshasa, he eats even human beings, he is a cannibal. So he said I will have you cooked for my breakfast.
You are so small that you won’t be one meal for me. I will eat you for my breakfast. So he threatened her.
Now there are various forms of death and today’s world cannibalism is outlawed. But cannibalism is, it’s ghastly to even imagine. Not only that we are going to die, but somebody going to rip out our flesh and eat our flesh.
It’s one of the worst deaths that can even be imagined. So he threatened that. But Sita remained firm.
We see Sita did not even offer a glance in his direction. Sometimes just eye contact indicates a certain level of interest and reciprocation. So Sita didn’t even choose to have eye contact with him.
And then her hope was not lost. Against all odds, Hanuman leapt across the ocean, faced all dangers and came to her. Her lord had sent a messenger and he had given a message of his love and expression of his love.
And she sent her love back to him by offering a signet to Hanuman. So now sometimes we may feel our life is hopeless. There are so many things that are going wrong in our lives.
Sometimes we feel that when adversities hit us, this problem and that problem, then I may feel that at least God should be there with me. I pray to God and he answers my prayers. But sometimes what happens? Not only adversities hit us, but our prayers seem to go unanswered.
And it’s one thing that we pray for something and it doesn’t happen. That is one level of praise being unanswered. But it’s even worse when our heart itself feels empty.
When we start feeling dry and we start feeling that God is far away from us. So this is like the time of ultimate hopelessness. We are facing problems in the material world.
God doesn’t seem to be a resource to help us to deal with the problems. And at least God will be there to solace me. But he doesn’t seem to be there like that also.
Our heart feels dry and empty. So it’s easy to give up hope at that time. There are many different kinds of crisis that the world may give up before us.
But what is extremely unbearable is if there is a crisis of failure externally and then there is a crisis of faith internally. If the two come together, how do we move forward? It is extremely difficult. So how do we maintain hope at that time? That’s where reason may not work.
So what works at that? We need to understand that this is the exam time. What do you mean by exam time? That a teacher speaks constantly in the class. This is how this is to be done.
This is how it is to be done. Suddenly the teacher becomes silent. That doesn’t mean that the teacher has rejected the student.
It just means that the student is now being tested by the teacher. So when God seems to have become silent in our heart, that doesn’t mean he has rejected us. That means that all that he has, all that his presence, the sweetness of remembering him, all that we have learned by that, this is the time to apply for us now.
This is the time to apply. And just as a student who passes the exam, the teacher comes forward and congratulates and teacher promotes the student. So similarly, if we pass through the phases when God seems far away, then we will discover that God has come nearer to us.
Rather, we have gone closer to him. And that increased proximity, increased intimacy will be a lasting gain. So the feeling that God is far away, that is short-lived.
But the eventual closeness with God, that is long-lasting. And that’s why we have to maintain hope. In the Bhakti Rasamal Sindhu, it is said, a devotee says that to the Lord that even if the Lord comes and says your case is hopeless, no matter how much you practise Bhakti, you are not going to get purified of your conditionings.
You are not going to come to me. Lord says, the devotee says, no, still I will continue my Bhakti. That is the Asha Bhadda.
The devotee is bound to have hope. There’s always hope for us. So when we are down to nothing, then God is up to something.
He has some plan. We just may not be able to perceive it right now. But He is there.
He is working. And in being reduced to something, we realise how God is everything. Namo Akinchanavittaya Nivritta Gunavrittaye Atmaramaya Shantaya Kaivalya Pattaya Namaha Kunti Maharani prays, Namo Akinchanavittaya, my dear Lord, you are the wealth of those who are wealthless.
So yes, sometimes everything else around us seems to be falling apart. That’s what happened to Draupadi. Nobody else could protect her.
That’s what happened to Sita. Nobody could protect her. But even when Sita was separated from Ram, she was remembering Ram intensely in her heart.
And she realised that without Ram, nothing is of value. So that conviction, that realisation is precious. And the Lord gave that realisation even to the Gopis.
When he went away, the Gopis love for the Lord. After he went away from them in Ras Nila, rose to an unprecedented, peerless level. And the Lord said, this was my purpose in going away.
There’s always hope for us. And the last is transcendence. Transcendence is where love reigns supreme.
This is Pattabhisheka Alankrit Rama. We see Lord Ram being in his Pattabhisheka. His one carrier is taking him.
This is Kubera’s flying vehicle, Pushpaka Viman, by which Lord Ram came back. We see Jambavan and Hanuman and Sugriv and others. There’s Vibhishan also has come for Ram’s coronation.
They’re all coming back. So when Bharat saw this, Bharat offered his prostrated obeisances at the flying vehicle itself and started doing Aarti of the Lord to welcome him. So there will be moments of great devotional ecstasy in our lives.
Even when we turn to love the eternal, not the temporary, but even loving the eternal in the world has its challenges. Because in this world everything is temporary. Sometimes there will be ecstasy and sometimes there will be agony.
There will be heartbreak. So Ram was coronated as the king. Ram was anointed.
But then in this world, love seems to have a tragic conclusion. What is that? All life in this world is not love. All life in this world ends in death.
But all love, so life will end in death, but love doesn’t have to end in death. Why? That love is directed toward the Lord who resides beyond death. Yes, the love in this world will end.
When the devotees have the presence of the Lord here, the Lord departs eventually. But the Lord remains in their hearts. In the brief description of Ramlila that is given in the Srimad Bhagavatam, in the ninth canto, the last verse is very striking.
What the last verse says is that in this way the Lord placed his lotus feet in the hearts of his devotees and then departed to the spiritual world. So the devotees in this world experienced separation from the Lord because he had departed. But no, they didn’t experience separation because he placed his lotus feet into their hearts and they experienced his presence more and more.
So for us as we become more and more devoted, we start seeing the transcendental nature of reciprocating love with the Lord and that vision is very different from the worldly vision. So that at the worldly level, there might be all kinds of trauma happening. But in the transcendental level, there is a reciprocation of love.
Bhishma was shooting arrows at Krishna and Arjuna and Krishna was urging Arjuna to shoot arrows back at Bhishma. But Bhishma and Krishna were having the most intimate reciprocations of love over there. So that love is basically transcendental.
So a devotee understands that materially whatever situation and whatever the situation and I have to deal with it appropriately. But from a spiritual perspective, every situation is an opportunity to reciprocate with the Lord. Now how to reciprocate? That requires intelligence.
When Prabhupada was trying his best to share the responsibility of carrying on his spiritual master’s mission, everything that he was trying seemed to be going wrong. And then one of his godbrothers told him that to those who are very special, I take everything away so that they give themselves to me and they realise they are nothing but me. He said, Bhaktivinoda Swami, Abhay Babu, this is what is happening with you.
And Prabhupada felt encouraged and he redoubled his efforts to directly start sharing Krishna Bhakti instead of trying to contribute financially to the sharing of Krishna Bhakti by others. So we may have to strategically think and intelligently learn how best we can reciprocate with the Lord in a particular situation. But once Prabhupada was being offered a Vyasa Puja and there are hundreds and hundreds of devotees glorifying Prabhupada and people doing chamar and there were somebody was washing Prabhupada’s lotus feet and Prabhupada was speaking something and the devotee was fanning Prabhupada.
He just bent forward and heard. Prabhupada was saying, Krishna, just see how your dog is being honoured. So Prabhupada was not seeing that, oh, I am being sweated by all these people.
Just see how great I am. Even that moment when he was being honoured by so many people for him, that was a way of reciprocating love with the Lord. So in prosperity and adversity, a devotee finds a way to reciprocate with the Lord.
And that is what transcendence is all about. So reciprocating love for the Lord is the concluding point. It can lead to transforming the world, transforming the situations around us and sometimes it can mean transcending the situations.
So Arjuna, after hearing the Bhagavad Gita, he fought the war. And what did he do? He transformed the situation. He established Dharma.
So Ram fought against Ravan and he transformed the situation. He freed the world from Dharma. But when Dashrath sent him to forest, Ram didn’t fight with Dashrath.
Ram didn’t fight with Bharat. Yes, this is the time to tolerate, to transcend the situation. So Ram is of course the Supreme Lord.
At the same time, he is also manifesting the characteristics of an ideal human being. And so he teaches us by his example. There are times when we show our devotion by strenuously endeavouring to change things in this world.
We transform. So Prabhupada, even in his advanced age, he had far more vigour than what young people have. And he worked tirelessly to transform situations, to create in this material world so many manifestations of the spiritual world.
But eventually when the time came, he realised that his body is no longer giving him the necessary support. He decided to transcend. He showed by his example how to be absorbed in Krishna while departing from the world.
So although Prabhupada’s last days are heart-wrenching for those of his followers who saw him so vigorous and then they saw him so enfeebled. But they are also example of how to learn. They are example to teach us how to reciprocate love with the Lord even during those times.
So Prabhupada transcended a situation by his absorption in the Lord. So this is a theme that is talked about in various religious traditions. In the biblical literature, they said the peace that passeth all understanding.
That when our heart is devoted to the Lord, then we experience a peace that is nothing like material peace. It is transcendental. The transcendental love is sometimes comprehensible by our head.
What is happening over here? Why is this happening? What am I meant to do? How should I act? Sometimes it’s comprehensible, but sometimes it is not. But it is always relishable by the heart. So ultimately Lord Ram came back to Ayodhya.
He stayed in Ayodhya, but then he left Ayodhya. And what about the Ayodhya Vasis? The Lord took them back eventually, but they didn’t go. Those who didn’t come back with him, the Lord pleased himself in their hearts.
And although it was traumatic for them that the Lord had departed, but still it was relishable because the Lord was there. So we don’t reduce our relationship with the Lord to the material situations that we are in. And that way we can always reciprocate love with the Lord.
So we can pray on Diwali that let the light of divine love light our heart now and forever. Today and every day forever. So I’ll summarise what I spoke today.
I spoke on the topic of how to light our heart on the occasion of Diwali. And I spoke five points in that connection based on the acronym LIGHT. So L was love.
The ultimate illuminator of our heart is love. So love is what purifies the heart. We purify our heart not simply by hating the impure, but loving the pure so much that the impure gets crowded out.
So the Ayodhya Vasis loved Ram. He was their Lord and he was the light and love of their life. But from that harmonious situation, there was disruption.
Why? Because of misdirected love. And that’s why I, in order to love, love is all that we need. But what is love? To know that we need intelligence.
Because love is such a powerful emotion, sometimes the world’s illusions masquerade as love and deceive us. So Kaikeyi thought she was acting out of love for her son, when she ended up causing the devastation of her kingdom. But it’s Bharat’s intelligence which helped her understand what is the right thing.
So similarly for us, when we study scripture, we associate with those who have intelligence. Then we understand actually that not all love is actually love. Love can be misdirected because of the object whom we are loving.
Ravana’s love, Ravana’s attraction towards Sita was not love. It can be the method that we are using, what Kaikeyi used under the manifold incitation by Mantra, in expressing her love for Bharat or it can be eventually the result. Duryodhana end up as a spoiled child, evil child because of Dhritarashtra’s pampering.
So we need intelligence to know how to love. Then L-I-G-G was guilelessness. So for the Lord to enter in our heart, we need to have no ulterior motives.
Only when the Lord saw that Bharat has no desire to hold on to the kingdom, let Ram come back. So there was normally any kind of transition leads to turbulence. That’s the norm in history, but the transition can become much less turbulent if there is selflessness and service attitude.
Between Ram and Bharat, there was a succession struggle, but it is succession struggle. You take the kingdom, you take the kingdom. It is unparalleled.
So now we discussed that if we have ulterior motives, it’s not that the Lord stops loving us, but we stop experiencing the Lord’s love for us. So the Lord’s love is unconditional in the sense that he doesn’t make any demands from us for loving us. But it’s conditional in the sense that our heart has to be in a state of openness and receptivity.
Otherwise, the sun is giving light, but if we are in a dungeon, then we can’t experience the light. And then even if we don’t have freedom from ulterior motives, even if we are not free from impurity, still we have the key to open our heart and that is humility. Just we may not have to parade our impurities to the world, but we confess to the Lord and that way that will itself open our heart to him.
And then we talked about hope. Maintaining any relationship in the world is difficult. Maintaining the relationship with the Lord is also difficult.
So when an adversity hits us, when our prayers go unanswered, and when we don’t even feel the Lord’s presence, when he feels far away, it’s not that he has rejected us, but rather it’s like the teacher is testing us. That is the time to apply. And if we apply what we have learned before, then the temporary distance from the Lord will eventually lead to much longer, much long-lasting proximity and intimacy with the Lord.
Yes, Sita persevered against logic in her hope that Ram will come. She resisted Ram, Ravan’s carnal invitations and she resisted Ravan’s carnivorous threats and she persevered. And then last thing was transcendence.
That this world, Ayodhya Vasis came and Ram came back and it was a brilliant festival and rain of love and joy that celebrated the Ram Rajya. But even Ram Rajya ends in this world. So then what happens is, when things ultimately start ending, while we are here and functioning, we reciprocate love with the Lord by transforming things in the world.
But when we can’t, then we transcend. So even when things are falling apart, that’s also a time for us to reciprocate love with the Lord. So when they’re down to nothing, the Lord is up to something.
And by staying connected with Him, we all can light our heart. Today and every day for all of eternity. Thank you very much.
Shri Diwali Maha Mahotsav Ki Jai. Shri Ram Chandra Bhagwan Ki Jai. Shri Prabhupada Ki Jai.
So are there any questions or comments? Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna. Humble obeisances.
Obeisances. Glory to Prabhupada. I was in Uvrindavan at Prabhupada’s Vyasa Puja in, I think it was 74.
Could have been 73, I’m not sure. And in there he spoke about what can you do to please God. You know, he said, what can you do to please a rich man? A rich man has everything.
But he said, if he has a son and you pat his son nicely on the head, he’s pleased. Or if he has a dog and you pet his dog, he’s pleased. He said, similarly, I am like Krishna’s dog.
So that’s, I mean, that’s one instance that I know of. So he definitely said that. Yeah, I heard that also.
Prabhupada also said that. Love me, love my dog. So, yeah, this is like a different instance.
I’ll find the reference now. Okay. Thank you.
That’s good class. Thank you. Any other, any additions, comments? Most welcome.
Any corrections? No. It’s time you did good. This time, okay.
Thank you. Amma, Jiva Mataji also. Krishna.
Thank you. You gave us a lot to meditate on today for Diwali. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Sorry. I can also develop some love for the pure.
My heart. Thank you. Thank you.
I had one question about, one point that you spoke about loving intelligently, you know, generally, you know, we don’t apply so much of intelligence when we love someone. In fact, there are sayings also, it says like, love is blind, but marriage is an eye opener, you know, those kind of sayings are there. So generally, we are not so much thinking from an intelligence perspective when we are making a relationship or when we are already in a relationship, and you know, only when the things start going wrong in the relationship, and it goes to a point where we realise, oh, what did I do? Why did I even get into these kinds of relationships? So then we start applying some intelligence over there, you know, in those relationships.
So how do we practically understand this or how do we, you know, before we even get into any kind of relationships, how do we actually apply some intelligence there? Yeah, and you talk about using our intelligence in loving, that depends. Sometimes we are born with some relationships, where we don’t really have much of a choice whether to have that relationship or not. Sometimes some relations are arranged by us, some relations are chosen by us.
Sometimes you just put into some relationship by situations. So, the role of our intelligence may be different in different relationships, and sometimes with some people we can be very close, some people we can’t be that close. So sometimes intelligence means that we just moderate our expectations in that relationship.
So we might expect a lot of closeness, but we might not get that much reciprocation. Okay, this is what I’ll get from this, I moderate my expectations of the relationship. So in general, we can’t know in advance which relationships are going to work and which are not going to work.
And we are now circumstantially, whether, as I said, some relationships we do choose ourselves, some relationships are chosen for us by destiny, by situations, by elders, just by birth, whatever. There can be various ways, however it works out. But even while functioning in relationships, we can use our intelligence.
So one principle that I find helpful is that, value those who value you and don’t overvalue those who devalue you. That I value those who value you. With some people, we connect very well and they understand us, we understand them, they are ready to extend themselves for us and we are ready to, we can also do something with them.
But sometimes when some people are readily available, they are available for us or they are respecting us, they are reciprocating with us, sometimes start taking them for granted. And then some people, they constantly devalue us. No matter what we do, they are never going to be pleased.
Now for them to speak one word of appreciation is like a rainfall in the Sahara Desert. It may happen once in a decade or something like that. So we live our life trying to earn their pleasure or their appreciation, their approval and it never comes.
They always, we do a hundred good things and they find out one hundred first thing that we didn’t do and they criticise us. So it’s like that, that not as we have to reject them, but don’t overvalue them. So don’t overvalue those who devalue us.
So we need to be intelligent, as I said, with whom I can expect what and reciprocate accordingly. And as far as intelligence and starting a relationship is concerned, well, that is something which I don’t know how much is not controlled. Satvaguna would mean don’t be hasty, be thoughtful, be patient primarily.
So we don’t really, when we get attracted to someone, we can’t really know much about them because that attraction, as I said, it can blind us. But then if we just, if you’re not very impatient, they say that romance has a shelf life of between 9 to 18 months. So that means after that we start understanding the other person, we start seeing their faults also.
And then if the relationship continues, then that can be a serious relationship. So basically within the relationship that we have, we try to moderate our expectations and value those who value us and don’t overvalue those who devalue us. Does it answer your question? Yes, Prabhuji.
Thank you so much. Thank you. Hare Krishna.