Managing the mind 2 – Understanding how the mind affects our free will

[Seminar at Govardhan Eco-Village, Wada, Mumbai, India]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
So, we are continuing today the discussion on the mind. I spoke yesterday about understanding what the mind is. So, the mind, the word has different meanings in different contexts.
It can mean intelligence, it can mean individual faculties, it can mean attention, it can mean the non-physical reality. So, in the Bhagavad Gita’s perspective, the mind is the interface between gross matter and the soul. So, the mind is the mechanism by which sensory input is integrated and provided for the soul to respond to.
Just like security cameras from different places in an establishment come together on a monitor. So, like that, the mind is the integrator of the inputs from the senses. And of course, the mind has its own recollection, which also comes.
So, the soul is the root, origin of consciousness. The mind is the root, the pathway of consciousness. And the mind is indispensable because it is essential for us as an interface.
At the same time, it is irreplaceable that we cannot get another mind. So, based on the way we have used our mind in the past, certain settings have become like default settings. So, just like when we search on Google, there is autocomplete, which happens based on our previous searches.
So, similarly, certain modes of thinking, desiring, feeling have become default for the mind. And because each of us have thought, felt, desired in different ways in our previous lives. In our previous life, this life also.
So, all of us have a distinct mind, which works in particular ways. So, in this particular verse, the previous verse and this verse are actually explained the same point by affirmation and negation. The previous verse states that the purpose of all religious activities is to focus the mind.
This verse says that, it is a alliterative statement of reality. If one has controlled the mind, then what is the use of all religious processes? kimadatasya kuthyam And if one has failed to control the mind, then again what is the use of religious processes? This is similar to the well-known verse, aradhito yadihari tapasahata takhi, naradhito yadihari tatapasahata takhi. So, if we are worshipping Lord Hari, what is the need for austerity? If we are not worshipping Lord Hari, what is the use of austerity? So, today I will focus on different approaches for controlling the mind.
And we will use in the traditional Vedic mode of relationship and interaction. There are four ways in which broadly people interact with each other. There are some differences coming up and there is sam, dam, bhed and danda.
So, we discussed how the mind is insentient but it is not like gross matter. It is subtle matter. So, it has this programming.
So, many times our tradition personifies the mind in order for us to deal with it. So, sam, dam, bhed, danda can be roughly called as harmonisation, that is sam. Dam is accommodation.
You give something to the person and accommodate. Bhed is castigation. Sorry, danda is castigation.
Chastise the person. Castigate the person. And dam is bhed and danda.
And bhed is dissension, division. So, now let’s begin with sam. Sam is harmonisation.
The mind is something which we have to live with. So, just like we can call the mind as our enemy and it is important for us to recognise that the mind can act in inimical ways. But it is not a kind of enemy that we can eliminate or get rid of.
The enemy is always going to be there. The mind is always going to be there. And it is not that the mind is the enemy.
There are forces within the mind which act inimically. So, we have to all develop some kind of working relationship with the mind. In the fifth canto, in the section Bharat Maharaj, there is an example given that if an animal, if a hunter has conquered an animal, still the hunter has to be vigilant.
Either the animal may just run away or the animal may come and attack the master itself. So, taking this particular metaphor further, we can say that if that animal is a horse and there is a person who has a big ranch. Now, to work in the ranch, it is a little primitive, there are no trucks or tractors or any modern devices.
For this ranch owner to cover the territory, the horse is essential. And let us assume that there is no other horse available. This is the only horse that is available.
So, he needs the horse. And there is always a possibility that the horse can run away at any time. The horse can just throw away the owner and sometimes the horse may not only throw down the owner but also stamp on the owner and break the bones of the owner.
That possibility is there. But still the owner has to work with the horse. So, for example, when I was in America, I had gone to one place where the devotee runs a horse.
He takes care of horses. He was telling me that actually when you get a new horse, there is a process called breaking the horse. Breaking the horse does not mean breaking it physically but rather breaking its stubbornness.
So, generally the horses may want to just roam wild and free. And they do not want to carry anyone on their back. So, to train the horse to carry a person that is often difficult and dangerous.
So, initially when a person… Either the horse can be a wild horse who has been captured and now is being trained to serve as a riding animal or it is a young horse who has been born and is now growing up. The second category that horse has seen other horses carrying people. So, it is a little easier.
In the first category where the wild horse is just caught, the horse has to be broken. And actually for breaking horses, there are special people who are trained. So, they approach horses very carefully, cautiously, slowly, surely, earning the trust of the horse.
And then they are also experts that if the horse runs away or the horse throws them away, how to get the horse under control. If they fall down, they know how to fall so that there is the least damage that happens. So, these horse trainers, not just horse trainers, but especially those horse trainers can be in different fields.
Sometimes there are race horses. So, a major part of their training is to get them to run as fast as possible. But the breaking of horses is a separate activity in itself, wherein for breaking the horses, there are specialised trainers.
And these trainers first break the horse. They themselves have to go through difficulty, danger. And after the horse is broken, only then it is sold.
And after the broken horse is sold, then the owner can ride on it with much lesser difficulty. Now, in our case, we don’t have anyone to break the horse and give it to us. If we compare the horse to our mind, then to the territory of the body and the world associated with the body, to cover that, we need the mind.
The mind is the channel through which our consciousness is going. So, we have to use the mind. At the same time, the mind is wild.
So, when the mind is wild, at that time, it is we who have to train ourselves to break the horse of the mind. Now, of course, we have our spiritual master. And the spiritual master is vital for us to learn how to break the horse.
But the spiritual master can’t take our place. The spiritual master can’t live our life for us. It is we who have to live our life.
So, the horse trainer, in this case, the expert horse breaker will guide us how to break the horse. But it is we who have to break our horse. And eventually, after the horse is broken, then the owner and the horse have to come to a working relationship.
Sometimes, they may become best of friends. Sometimes, the horse has become so loyal that if their master is in danger, they may rescue the master and run away. So, that is the stage where our mind has become our friend.
Krishna says that possibility is also there that the mind will become our friend. But initially, the mind is our enemy. So, uddhared ātmanātmānaṁ nātmānaṁ avasādayit.
ātmaiva ātmanabandhur ātmaiva ripurātmanaḥ. So, uddhared ātmanātmānaṁ that actually literally if you see the word ātma, one of the primary meanings of the word ātma is self. So, that little translation which is used by Shankaracharya and also used by I think by Baldevidya Bhushan is that elevate the self with the self.
Don’t degrade the self with the self. For the self is the friend of the self and the self is the enemy of the self. Now, what is the self? Just get completely confused by that.
So, Prabhupada makes things simple by translating one ātma as the mind. So, elevate the self with the mind. Don’t degrade the self with the mind.
The mind is the friend of the self and the mind is the enemy of the self. So, basically, we human beings, yesterday I talked about how it is vital for controlling the mind to first of all identify the mind. Not identify with the mind.
So, this means that we have to understand that, okay, this is the mind and it is feeling this way. So, all living beings have awareness. But animals, who should be studied extensively by a class of professionals called ethologists.
Ethologists study animals in the natural habitat. So, as far as they studied till now, animals very rarely demonstrate self-awareness. Awareness is the awareness of the world around us.
That all living beings have. That is the characteristic of consciousness itself. But self-awareness is the capacity to be aware of our own selves.
Our own selves means, say for example, if I am sitting here, I can envision if I am sitting over there. How am I appearing? How am I speaking? Am I speaking too fast? Am I speaking too slow? So, we can in a conceptual sense, create a dichotomy within ourselves. That there is an observer self and there is an observed self.
Yesterday I talked about how we can understand the difference between the mind and ourselves by talking about how there is an inner screen. We can see the screen but we can’t see the seer of the screen. But at least we can see the screen.
And we can understand, okay, there is a screen inside. So, there is a American anthologist who has written a book called, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? So, they talk about how animals have enormous amount of intelligence. And for example, there are dogs, canine dogs which actually are trained in such a way that these dogs can not just sniff out, say there are security dogs which are used if somebody has got some drugs or something, they find out the drugs.
And they find it better than machines. But there are also dogs which are trained to detect mental disturbances in people. So, for example, if somebody gets strokes or fits.
And often such people are told to keep a pet dog with them. And when they get a fit, then at that time, the dog somehow they have the ability to sense that the fit is coming. And this person is about to fall, this dog will start barking and go behind the person.
And a person will fall on the dog and then the fall will be cushioned by it. So, I met a devotee, a senior devotee of Prabhupada Sahib, who had a, keeps a pet dog with him always. Even in his home, even he goes to a temple, he doesn’t go to a temple hall.
The temple provides also, not the temple hall, but he takes the dog with him. So, I was wondering why he keeps the dog. So, he told me, he has this problem.
He said, three times this dog has saved my life. So, because when people get fits, it’s all a sudden moment. They fall and the fit itself doesn’t cause as much damage as the fall.
If you fall on a stone or a rock or a pointed object, it can be fatal. So, dogs, animals do have some abilities which are more than what humans have. So, now, how exactly animals are able to sense that a human being is going to get a fit? That is not so easy to understand.
But in general, it is known that animals have paranormal abilities. So, many places which are earthquake prone, one way to know that an earthquake is coming is to observe the behaviour of the animals. Till dogs and cats, they start, they start behaving abnormally.
Maybe howling, barking, and that indicates that. So, that is, it has been found that it is as reliable, if not more reliable, forecaster of, predictor of seismic disturbances than whatever seismic predictors we have with our technology. So, here, the point which I am making is that sometimes when we say only humans are capable of spiritual enquiry, that is not meant to demean animals.
We also understand that animals have souls. And that soul in that particular body has been given intelligence necessary for its purpose. And sometimes, in some way, that intelligence may be superior to human intelligence also.
So, a bird can make a nest which is very artistically designed. And it doesn’t need any training. If we want to design an artistically designed house, we have to go to, we have to go years and years of training.
We just learn it. So, the difference between animals and human beings, this itself is a different subject, but it’s related to us. Because, see, where is the difference? The difference, is it in the soul? No.
All souls are similar. Essentially, the soul is similar in humans and animals also. What about the body? The body is there to fulfil particular kinds of desires.
Yes, we can say that the brain in human beings is more developed than the brain in, say, human beings, nearest animal related animal, that is apes. But still, the fundamental difference between humans and animals is not in the physical body. It is in the gross, it’s not in the, it’s in the subtle body.
So, it’s in the mind. So, animals, they, we could say that they also have a subtle body in which mind, intelligence, ego is there. But their intelligence is primarily directed for fulfilling the desires and drives of the body.
So, they can’t resist that. So, there is what, if you consider humans and animals, there is this graph. The lower the animals in the evolutionary scale, their inherited characteristics are very high.
And their acquired characteristics are relatively low. And as we move upwards in the evolutionary scale, I’m not talking about necessarily Darwinian evolution, I’m just talking about the level of consciousness among people. So, among humans, also we get inherited characteristics.
But our acquired characteristics are substantial. So, animals, they, say for example, dogs can be trained. And the training works quite well.
Dogs can be trained to do certain things which naturally dogs may not do. Horses can be trained to do certain things which normally horses may not do. But by training they can do it.
However, the majority of what a horse does is based on inherited characteristics. For humans, the majority of what we do is not necessarily by inherited characteristics. It is by acquired characteristics.
So, now, they actually, we can say to some extent that the greater the ratio of acquired characteristics versus inherited characteristics, the more that means acquired characteristics, capacity for acquiring characteristics is there, or whether it is less. That is the magnitude of the free will that the soul has in that particular body. And what do we essentially mean by free will? Free will means that free will means the capacity to choose something different from the default response prompted by the body and mind.
Free will means the capacity to choose a response different from the default response prompted by the body and the mind. So, say if there is Ekadashi, and if a cat sees a mouse, the cat can’t think, oh, today Ekadashi had to fast. Now, we human beings, when we see food, for us also, the urge to eat may come.
Our tongue may salivate, our stomach may secrete digestive enzymes, we may get the urge to eat. So, on seeing food, the default tendency of the body and the mind is to desire food. But we humans have the capacity to say, no, I am not going to eat it.
So, this free will is the capacity to, the body and the mind for all living beings is going to prompt certain behaviour, certain actions. And if the soul in a particular body has the capacity to resist the default impulse of the body and the mind, that, to the extent which it has, that is its free will. So, among animals, this free will is there but it is very less.
So, if a cow eats grass in a particular row, then it has free will whether to eat the grass on the left side or the right side. But whether to eat grass or not, it will just eat, according to whatever its particular particular need is at that time. So, now Krishna talks about in the Bhagavad Gita, in the third chapter, about different levels of covering to the world.
In 3.38, he says that there are three metaphors for explaining how the soul is covered. In fact, this is the most metaphor-rich verse in the Bhagavad Gita. In one verse, there are three metaphors.
And actually, this verse itself cannot be understood much without a proper commentary. So, the previous verse we were talking about how selfish desire, kama, covers the soul. Now, kama doesn’t refer specifically here only to lust.
The word kama, I have a whole class on how there are five different meanings of the word kama in the Bhagavad Gita. Kama, especially in this 3.36 to 43, doesn’t refer to lust specifically, although it can be applied to lust. Because if you see, the previous question is, what is it that makes us do wrong things? So, lust makes us do wrong things, but anger also makes us do wrong things.
Greed also makes us do wrong things. Arrogance also makes us do wrong things. So, here when Krishna is using kama, he is using it in an inclusive sense.
Then when Krishna uses dharmavruddho bhuteshu kamosmi bharatarsiva, there he is using kama as one of the four things. dharmartha kama moksha. Then later when Krishna when he says kama maashritya dushpuram dhanmaram dhanam, 16th chapter, there he is using kama in an irreligious sense.
So, anyway, that’s not a topic over here for us. But the point which I am making here is that kama refers to the generic covering on the soul which distorts its perception and action. So, this generic covering which distorts the perception means how the soul takes in data from the world and action means how the soul responds to that.
So, this Krishna gives three metaphors for describing it. He says that the soul is just as smoke covers fire just as a mirror is covered by dust or just as a womb covers embryo. So, these three examples, Bhaktivinoda Thakur explains, refer to different species.
So, smoke covered by fire refers to human consciousness. The embryo covered by the womb refers to the tree consciousness and mirror covered by dust refers to animal consciousness. So, the next verse is what does this do? avrutam jnanam etena jnanino nitya vairena kama rupena kaunteya vishpure anali nitya.
So, avrutam jnanam, it covers our knowledge. So, this covering on the soul which is where is it present? Primarily it is present in the subtle body. Krishna said, indriyane mano mudhir but this is referring, indriya here refers not to the sensory organs, it refers to subtle senses which are present in the subtle body.
So, that is where because the physical senses, if we say lust is present in there, it can be present over there. But we also say that whatever desires we have from the previous life, carry on to this life. So, we are not carrying these eyes or these senses from this body to the next body.
So, it is in the subtle body that our conditionings are stored and they cover our perception and action. So, in human body, we have the capacity to evaluate and then to choose. This is the default prompting that is coming within me and I can choose whether I will act on it or I will not act on it.
But we all have free will. But depending on how even in the human body we use our free will, the free will can increase or decrease. So, suppose there is alcoholic, drunk alcohol, Oscar Wilde is a British thinker, he said, giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world.
I have done it over a hundred times. So, he has given it up but he didn’t give him up. So, it keeps coming back.
So, what has happened, when a person becomes addicted, the scope of choosing the response decreases. We may say that addict has no freedom. But it’s not like that.
The free will is still there. You know, a person may be alcoholic but the alcoholic may not be able to choose whether I drink or not. But still the alcoholic can choose should I drink wine or whisky or should I drink two pints or four pints, whatever.
There is some scope which is always there for our free will. But the scope can be increased or decreased by the way we use our free will. So, for each of us, we all have our particular attachments.
So, somebody in India, if a cricket match starts, they will get very excited. What is the score? What is the score? They just can’t live without looking at the score. Somebody in America, for them, they hear cricket, they think it’s an insect.
They don’t know much about cricket. So, for them it’s baseball. So, if a baseball match is going on, it’s like everything closes down.
Especially if the big matches are there. So, that means, depending on the way the person has acted, desired, that kind of conditioning has set up. And that free will, okay, when a cricket match is going on, I just can’t do anything else.
I want to but I can’t. I just get pulled towards it again. So, the free will means our capacity to choose a response but that capacity can be decreased or increased by the way we have chosen.
We have acted in the past. If somebody has not watched cricket matches for a long time, many years, then even if a cricket match is going on, they are not very excited about it. Okay, it doesn’t matter.
So, what has happened? The scope has become more and more. So, going back, I gave this, I went on this detour to talk about, while we train a horse, the mind is compared to a horse. And we have to train a horse.
So, in that I talked about the difference between humans and animals. So, now, if we consider our mind, we human beings, there are certain inherited characteristics we have and there are certain acquired characteristics we have. Now, modern biology talks only in these two terms.
We have inherited characteristics and we have acquired characteristics. But the Vedic understanding is that there are not just inherited characteristics, there are also what we could say reincarnated characteristics. So, that means, whatever characteristics we acquire at the start of our life, they are not just what we have inherited from our parents, they are also what we have got from our previous life.
One of the common arguments that atheists use for sceptics about reincarnation, they use for saying that actually there is no such thing as a soul, is that they say that the children usually have the characteristics that the parents have. And that indicates that the children, they are formed from their parents. Usually, whenever a child is born, you have the mother’s eyes, you have your father’s nose, you have this and that.
People try to look at the characteristics. You are not just parents, there are grandparents, you can try to find some similarity with cousins. So, our understanding is that the soul is arranged by karma to get a body where it inherits the characteristics which it is meant to get by its past karma.
What this means is, to put it in simple terms, that, say, if a brahmana and a brahmini, they unite, then by the arrangement of karma, daiva, netri, as Bhagavatam says, the soul, who is of a brahminical disposition, is attracted to that soul. And that’s how when we consider inherited characteristics, they are not just inherited, but they are also acquired from a previous life. or carried from a previous life, you could say.
Now, of course, there is also this case of exceptions, where there is some genius like Mozart, who was a musical genius, and one of the biggest musicians in world history, in western world especially. Now, if you go, in his dynasty, neither his parents, nor his brothers, nor his sisters, nor his grandparents, nobody had any special musical talent, and yet he was a musical genius. So, there are these anomalies, which point that just the genealogy as an explanation for psychology is inadequate.
Genealogy means which race we are born in. That is not enough as an explanation for the psychology of the child. So, anyway, for us the point is that there are inherited characteristics and there are acquired characteristics.
So, we all have inherited or carried over from our previous life certain tendencies in our mind. And we may have developed them further also. So, we have acquired characteristics even in this lifetime.
So, because in human body, the capacity to acquire characteristics is far far more than in animal species. That is why we can choose our destination. See, in animals, the evolution is natural.
That it is just that from this species, the soul will go to this species. There is practically no free will. In human being, we can go up, we can go down, we can stay where we are, or we can get out.
उर्धों कच्छनति सत्वस्ता मद्यदिष्टनति राजसा जगन्यगुणप्तिस्ता अधो कच्छनति कामसा So, we can, as per the mode that we cultivate, we can choose our actions. Going back to the horse metaphor now. So, we have a particular horse.
And what the nature of the horse is, what the nature of our mind is, is determined both by what we inherited from our parents, what we carried over from our previous life, and what we acquired in our life till now. In our pre-devotional life as well as our devotional life. So, now when we are working with the horse, we are using our mind, we need it and we have to train it.
So, the mind does not always act as our aim. The mind normally just functions. We have certain work to do, we do the work.
But there are certain things which, certain areas in which the mind goes wild. And sometimes those areas are our dangerousness. How much the mind will go wild, that will vary from person to person.
Even among people who indulge in undesirable things, there also it is not that the mind is completely uncontrolled. So, for example, when people learn to drive, there is a serious crime is driving under influence, driving under intoxication. So, in America, especially in the western world, generally if you drive under intoxication, your licence may be impounded, you may be jailed.
So, now people are very afraid of losing their licence. It’s like losing your driving licence is the second worst thing apart from losing your money. Because what will you do? You can’t go anywhere.
So, now when people go for parties, they go for parties where they are going to drink. But then every time when people go for parties where they are going to drive in their car, they have, they take turns. In this party, you are going to drive the car, so you will not drink.
And you know you tolerate it, next time you can drink, next time I will not drink. So, if there are five people going for a party, then they take turns. So, even they are going to drink, they have that much intelligence.
They don’t have enough intelligence to say no to drinking, entirely. But they have enough intelligence to say that, okay, if I am going to drive, I will not drink. So, the point I am making here is, all of us, no matter how much our mind is wild, we have some control over it.
And we cannot get anywhere in our life if the horse or the mind were constantly driving us wild, constantly acting as our enemy. So, harmonising with the mind means that recognising that we have to use it, we have to train it and use it to the best of our capacity. So, in certain situations, so for example, some horses, when they go near water, just get wild at that time.
So, then, these horses, you can drive them carefully, but don’t drive them near water. So, if you have to take them near water, get off the horse and lead the horse to the water. Some horses are very scared of, say, gunshots.
Normally, they work very well, but as soon as the gunshot comes, this goes wild. So, different horses have different triggers. And those things agitate them.
So, similarly, each of us, our mind has its own triggers. So, harmonisation means that we have to understand we have to work in harmony with them, we have to have a working relationship. And that means we have to know what will drive our mind wild.
And we have to be careful in avoiding those situations or at least becoming ultra-cautious while going through those situations. So, as I said earlier, for some people, it may be sports. Now, sports may not be a very damaging activity.
It is a distracting activity. It may not be very damaging. But, say, for some people, if somebody is alcoholic, then if an alcoholic decides to become sober, I am going to give up alcohol.
But that alcoholic’s house is above a bar. There, it is almost impossible to give up alcohol. Why? Because the trigger is always there.
So, then, we have to… the alcoholic may have to just relocate. Take a house somewhere away from the bar so that the trigger is not so much there. So, harmonising with the horse of the mind means that we have to know in which areas the horse will not be able to work.
And we become ultra-cautious in those areas. So, whatever are our triggers, we become very cautious and avoid unnecessary exposure to those triggers. We go, as much as possible, out of the way to avoid that exposure.
This is not just, in a sense, avoiding danger. It is simply being intelligent. Actually, the most effective self-control is to avoid situations that require self-control.
The most effective self-control is to avoid situations that require self-control. As I am in America, I gave a talk in Google. So, in Google, they had done a survey and I quoted that over there.
They had found that, because most of these software companies where people work, it is mostly a sedentary job. So, people tend to become obese. And in America, they have to have a lot of health insurance.
So, the company has to pay. So, they found what is it that is causing people to become obese. And they found that people are taking a lot of candies, sweets.
So, in their cafeteria, they had all these chocolates, toffees and other sweets. So, all of them were in transparent boxes. So, they consulted an expert and they said that just cover them up.
And don’t cover them with promotional material. Just cover them up so that they become non-transparent. And just by doing that, in the next three months, the sale and the consumption of those sweets decreased by around 30%.
So, what happened is that just the presence of a tempting object triggers the desire. And especially if that indulgence doesn’t seem to be very harmful, then just eat it. So, just avoiding that, nobody will want to take excessive amount of sweets and become sick.
They want to enjoy the taste. But everybody knows this is harmful and I have to be a little careful. So, just avoiding that trigger led to the capacity to control much more easily.
So, the same principle, if we know our triggers, the horse of our mind has certain things which will agitate it. And harmonising means not expecting the impossible from the horse. Not expecting that even in the presence of temptation, there will be no agitation.
There will be no relapse. Now, avoidance alone is not the solution. There has to be purification by which ultimately the desire goes away.
But purification takes a good amount of time. And that’s why Krishna said, tasmāt tvaṁ indriyāṇyādau niyamya-bhadatarśanam pāpamānaṁ prachahīyāenaṁ jñāna-vijñāna-nāśanam That therefore, tasmāt tvaṁ indriyāṇyādau learn to regulate the senses. That means, idāsaṁ hṛtecāyaṁ kurma-aṅgāni-vasadeśaḥ that just as a tortoise withdraws its limbs, similarly, we minimise the exposure to the sense objects.
Now, this, it has to be done very cautiously. We are not to blame the sense objects. Krishna says, when he’s talking about kāma, he says it is situated in the senses, mind and intelligence.
indriyāṇi-mano-buddhir-asya-adhiṣṭhāṁ Krishna doesn’t say that lust is situated in the sense objects. So, we can’t blame others if we are getting agitated. It is we who have the agitating desires within us, because of which we are getting agitated.
So, avoidance has to be done not in a disrespectful or a denigrating way. It is just caution. Healthy caution.
Respectful caution has to be there. Now, when this is there, there are two aspects over here. This is a little sensitive topic.
The principle, I’ll take a sensitive example, but I’ll draw a universal principle. For example, now some people may be very attracted to sweets. Some other people, I don’t have a sugar tooth, I don’t have a sweet tooth.
Not very attracted to sweets. Sweets may be agitating for some people, sweets may not be agitating for some people. But there is subjectivity with respect to temptation.
In the sense that what tempts one person may not tempt another person. But just because there is subjectivity to temptation, doesn’t mean that objectively there is no temptation. There are sweets, there are different objects, chapatti, rice, these are not considered especially tempting.
But for some people the temptation may be sweets, some people may be fried items, some people may be some other delicacies. So there are certain objects which are staple food, there are certain objects which are tempting. So there is subjectivity to temptation, but that does not mean that there is objectively no temptation.
Objectively also there are certain objects which are tempting, but subjectively which objects will tempt who will vary from person to person. So, this point applies to all tempting objects. So we have to see what is it that is the trigger for me and we have to avoid that.
Without blaming the trigger. There are in the western world, in the westernised world, there is a lot of criticism or condemnation of anybody who tries to say regulate have any kind of external cultural regulation. Few years ago, there was this ghastly gang rape in Delhi which had happened.
So at that time after that I had written an article about it. And then I had talked about how Krishna talks in lust is like a fire. And when fire starts at some place, we have to see who started the fire.
The person who started the fire is primarily responsible for the fire. But if in a city fires are occurring repeatedly, then the city administrators also have to investigate are the buildings made of inflammable material? The inflammable material is not the cause of the fire. It is the arsonist.
The person who set the fire is the cause of the fire. But the inflammable material is a factor in the fire’s burning. In the fire, when it is triggered, it just starts blazing rapidly.
And it starts going off. So I said similarly, whoever is a wrongdoer, that person is a primary culprit. But we also have to see whether there is the material which is used to make the houses is highly inflammable.
So in a culture where there is excessive exposure of temptation to temptation and of temptation, so then that also causes provocation. So when I wrote this article, a barrage of criticism I got. The idea was that, yes, women also need to regulate the way they dress.
So I got so much criticism. There are sometimes small girls who are attacked. There are elderly women who are attacked.
There are women who are fully dressed who are attacked. There are men who are animals. It’s their responsibility.
So that’s true. It is true that when a man becomes animalistic, that person can attack anyone. That person can get provoked by anyone.
But that does not mean that there is no such thing as a temptation. To give a simple example, this is in fact an example given by a western psychologist. He says that, the idea in the western world is women have the right to dress whichever way they want.
Nobody can tell us how to dress. Yes, you have your right. There’s no doubt about it.
Nobody has the right to tell you how to dress. But the issue here is not of rights. Say, suppose somebody is walking on a dark street with dollar bills sticking out of their pockets.
You know, the dollar bills are here, pocket, this pocket, this pocket. And some thugs come and steal money. And then the person goes and complains to the police.
He says, why are you keeping your dollar bills sticking out of your pocket? It’s my money. It’s my right. If it’s my money, I can keep it however I want.
Hell, making it an issue of rights is not the right thing over here. Yeah, if you have money, it is your money. No doubt about it.
But if you’re going to expose the money, what happens? You’re going to attract people. You’re going to attract thieves. So, it is not the way if I’m keeping money in a very showy way all around me, then that is a signal, oh, this person has a lot of money, and this money can be easily stolen.
So, that itself acts as a trigger. Now still the thieves are responsible for stealing. And the thieves need to be punished.
The thieves stealing when the money is visible is no lesser a crime than when the money is invisible. But the point is the money being visible is a trigger for the thieves. So, similarly, when women dress in revealing clothes, that becomes a trigger.
So, the way we dress sends out messages to others. So, the point which I was making here is there’s a difference between a cause and a factor. There is no question of blaming the victim.
That is never to be done. Krishna is very clear that lust is not present in sense objects. It’s present in the senses.
It is in senses, mind, and genes. But there are triggers. And the triggers need to be avoided.
Now, avoiding the trigger has to be done by both. Not just by men, also by women. Now, lust tempts men with pleasure, and lust tempts women with power.
With power. Pleasure, lust tempts men by promising, hey, there’s so much pleasure we’ll enjoy. But when a woman can attract a man, oh, this man, when I can attract this man, this man will do anything for me.
So, that gives a giddy sense of power. Oh, sorry, people attracted to me. And this person’s attracted to me so much, he’s ready to do anything for me.
So, the principle of temptation is the same. So, just as men need to resist the temptation of pleasure, which lust promises, similarly, women need to resist the temptation of power that lust allures them with. Again, the point here is not to blame anyone.
The point is to recognise that we all have our particular triggers. And we have to learn to be with our triggers. So, I talked about how the mind is very much connected with the senses.
The mind is agitated through some recollections from internally, but it’s largely also agitated by perceptions from outside. So, the way to minimise the agitation of the mind is by minimising the agitating perceptions from outside. So, harmonising with the mind, which is only one strategy, we’ll talk about others later, but harmonising means that we recognise what it is that triggers the mind and avoid that.
And, wherever the mind functions normally, we function well with it and we use it. So, this will lead to the point of accommodation, in which I’ll talk about the principle of varnashram, because when we talk about vritti, our svabhava, and svabhava is also stored in the subtle body, that is also in the mind. So, there is accommodation also, which is there, which we’ll talk about in tomorrow’s class, but this principle of harmonisation, where we don’t expect the unrealistic from our mind, we learn to respect its triggers and keep a distance from them.
That will be able to substantially decrease the agitation of the mind and help us to work with the mind for our growth, for our constructive contribution, for our spiritual growth. So, I’ll summarise what I spoke today. So, I spoke today about the four strategies for dealing with the mind, harmonisation, accommodation, castigation and division.
I spoke about harmonisation. The mind, like a ranch owner, needs a horse to cover the territory of the ranch. Similarly, the soul needs the mind.
But just as a horse, a wild horse needs to be broken by a specialist. Similarly, our mind needs to be broken. It needs to be trained so that it can work with us and not harm us.
Now, the trainability of the mind is what differentiates humans from animals. Animals, if we consider the acquired characteristics versus the inherited characteristics, in the lower species, the lower the species, the greater is the inherited characteristics and the lesser is the acquired characteristics. In humans, the inherited characteristics play a significant role, but the major defining personality of a person is determined by their acquired characteristics.
So, our free will is basically our capacity to resist the default actions, the default promptings of the body and the mind. In the lower species, our capacity to resist is almost non-existent. Animals also have intelligence.
In some ways, they may have better intelligence than humans. But that intelligence is for acting according to the drives of the body and the mind. That is not for resisting those drives.
In the human body, the difference between animals is not so much in the physical form or in the brain structure, but it is a subtle body. The intelligence is stronger. We humans have the capacity for self-awareness.
That means, we can look at our own minds and evaluate Hey, this desire is coming, but should I act on it or should I not act on it? That capacity for self-reflection, looking at oneself and then choosing how one should act, that is what is the basis of human free will. So, the prompting comes, we choose whether to act on the prompting or not. Addicts, for them, because they have chosen a particular way of action, their scope of free will becomes lesser and lesser and lesser.
Those who are sober, their free will becomes more and more. For each of us, depending on our past indulgences, for certain things, our free will may be higher. Baseball may not tempt us at all, but cricket may tempt us a lot.
So, to harmonise with the mind means to recognise that the mind doesn’t go always wild, but it has certain triggers which make it wild. And we have to take responsibility to stay away from our particular triggers. Identify it and keep it away.
And it is the individual responsibility to minimise exposure to triggers and it is also a social responsibility. So, I talked about lust. That lust is present primarily in the person who is getting lust, in the mind, senses and intelligence.
But that doesn’t, just because temptation is subjective, doesn’t mean that there is no objective temptation. So, the cause of any wrongdoing, just like a fire being set, the cause is the arsonist. But the inflammability of the material of making a house is also a factor.
So, like that when people parade themselves, then that creates a culture where the mind becomes inflammable. So, individually and socially, there is a responsibility of everyone to minimise the exposure to temptation. Lust tempts men with pleasure and it tempts women with power.
And everybody needs to resist this temptation of lust, whatever the particular temptation. And similarly, for our particular temptation. So, when we stay away from the triggers, we will find that the mind’s agitation will become substantially less and we will be able to harmonise with it and use it constructively.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. Are there any questions or comments? Yes.
Thank you once again for again very nice elaborate explanation. There is a comment and then a question following that. This idea of trying to control the mind by this method of harmonisation which you mentioned, which inherently involves a sense of restraint in the whole process.
So, essentially I am trying to understand that in terms of our communication of this technique, especially with my little interactions with people from the other side of the globe. Like for example, I work very closely with some climate action groups. So, the word which became very popular in the west is climate justice.
So, when this word climate justice was used in the Indian context, Indians did not understand anything. Because in India, the idea of justice and rights is culturally a very distinct concept. Because the western world, you see the history of western world has come from the oppressed and the oppressive and social reformations.
India traditionally believed in karma and internal transformation. So, the idea of communicating of rights and justice in Indian context didn’t work. So, they reformed the whole climate justice communication messaging into like Seva to Bhudevi and so on and so forth.
But then that clicked to the Indian audience. So, I am just trying to understand that likewise in our communication of this reformation, the method of harmonisation and restraint, especially when you are touching upon the sensitive topic of rights and justice, in your travels across the world, what was the response and how did you effectively communicate this? Yeah. So, you know, how do we sensitively communicate the idea of regulation to people whose whole focus is on rights and justice, especially in the western world? Yeah.
I think the best way to communicate is to not communicate it. At least in the initial stages. In the initial stages, see what happens is, everybody comes from a particular background and it is just like if a patient if a doctor is treating a patient, then if the patient has a particular case history, one particular medicine may be very good for curing the patient.
But if that medicine is going to have side effects because of the previous case history of the patient, then that medicine even if it is good, cannot be administered. And knowing the case history is extremely important for the patient, for the doctor. It is the doctor’s responsibility, especially the doctor is going to treat.
Similarly, this whole subject is very touchy. Initially, when people come from ethos of rights and justice, then at that time to tell anyone you should do this and you should not do this, that just doesn’t work. So basically, I have observed that there are three broad ways in which we can share the bhakti message.
I call them as descriptive, normative and prescriptive. Prescriptive means you should do this. That just doesn’t work.
If you tell people you have to do this, don’t do this. That doesn’t work. Normative means this is the truth.
This is right and everything else is wrong. Who decides it is right? What is the basis for saying it is right? Because people don’t accept scripture. They have not taken the leap of faith which we have taken.
Descriptive means this is what I do and this is why I do it. That comes off as very non-threatening and very accommodating. And that is the way things work.
Say for example, if you apply this to a post-modern context. Say if a couple is addressing, if a middle-aged couple is addressing a group of young couples. We have been happily married for the last 30 years.
And then the young couple says, how did you make it work? Please tell us. This is what we did. If they tell, this is what we did, this is what we did, that is perfectly fine.
People are interested. But if they say, this is what you should do. No matter what happens, you never divorce.
And if you tell us never to do this, you get lost. If somebody says, divorce is a sin against God, those who divorce will go to hell. That is normative.
You go to hell. So, the prescriptive or the normative. This is what you should do or this is the right thing.
Neither of these work. But the descriptive, this is what I do. That works very well.
One of the most prominent Christian preachers in the Western world is Billy Graham. And Billy Graham, he calls it a Billy Graham rule. He says that he is a married person, but he says, he has been Christian pastoring for almost 60-70 years.
He says, throughout my life I have never been alone in any room, in a room with any woman other than my wife. Even if a woman wants counselling, he says, I will make sure that my wife is there or some other woman is there. So, now he doesn’t say this is coming from the Bible and everybody has to follow it.
This is a rule which I follow. And many people get inspired, they also follow it. So, in fact, this rule is known as the Billy Graham rule.
And people say, I follow the Billy Graham rule. Like that they say. So, what happens is that if we make something as didactic, this is what you should do.
It just doesn’t work. The whole appeal of, I would say, the journey home is because it is descriptive. It is not prescriptive, it is not normative.
So, memoirs are very very powerful because they are all descriptive. So, there is a group of Christians called Mormons. They were, they are heterodox Christians and many Christians actually rejected them as deviants because they accept a later prophet, Joseph Smith.
So, but there is a Christian, there is a Mormon girl who wrote her a memoir of how she grew up in a Mormon family. And that book became a New York Times bestseller. And that was the biggest, it is considered one of the biggest factors in changing the perception of mainstream America towards Mormonism.
So, if we present in a descriptive way, that this is what we do and this is why we do it. People, people are interested in things that work. Yeah, this works.
Oh, okay. So, we have to, we can present our message, but we have to present it in a descriptive way. Not in a prescriptive, normative way.
So, once we say this is what I do, this is why I do it, that works quite well. And as people start seeing that this works, this is actually making me more peaceful, making me more happy, whatever, then people start adopting from there. So, that is my small experience.
Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Yes. So, related that, like you gave this example, even in our tradition, the process of harmonisation, there is a fear that it can lead to dilution of principles from the ideas.
So, how do you benchmark and take a watch of it? Okay. So, can harmonisation lead to dilution, and how can we prevent that? Actually, non-harmonisation can also lead to dilution. Because, when we say faithfulness to tradition, the tradition itself has flexibility as an integral part of it.
So, faithfulness to tradition also means faithfulness to the flexibility of the tradition. Bhaktisaraj Prabhakar gives a classic example. When he would do his theistic exhibitions in Kolkata, actually 50% of the theistic exhibition would be simply mundane.
It would be science and technology. The greatest science and technology at that time, which would be there, it would be displayed. More than 50% actually.
They have huge grounds, and in those grounds, half of it would be the scientific developments, and scientists would come, eminent citizens would come, and they would come to see the scientific part. And then, as a part of that same big pandal, same event, there would be the teachings of Lord Chaitanya also described, and all this was described. And people would come and see that also.
So, some conservative people, they criticised, this is all mundane. This is not spiritual. Bhaktisaraj Prabhakar said that throughout history, the Ganga, she keeps changing course.
If you want to take bath in the Ganga, you have to go where the Ganga is right now. If you go to a place where the Ganga was flowing in the past, you may go there, but you will get no water, you will not bathe. Similarly, he says, the flow of the Bursi, the flow of the potency of the Parampara, the path keeps changing.
The flow of the Ganga is always towards Doshi. Similarly, the flow of the potency of the tradition’s teachings is to take all people towards Krishna. Krishna is like the ocean.
But the path it takes will keep varying. So, the principle that we have to, now when we say the Ganga path keeps changing, why does it change? Sometimes there are seismic disturbances. So, sometimes what was a river bed that just dries up or some landslide or some earthquake happens or whatever, then wherever the bed is right now or wherever the path is for the water to flow, the water will flow from there and move towards the ocean.
Similarly, depending on the culture, depending on the ethos, depending on the intellectual conceptions of people, certain ways of the flow of Krishna’s message work at certain times. And the same path by which Krishna’s message flew earlier, it may not flow by the same path, no. So, we have to be intelligent to accommodate, to say how is the water going to flow towards Krishna.
So, similarly, how are we going to attract people towards Krishna? So, it is that Krishna Prabhupada at one level, he said that don’t change anything. He said, I did not change anything. But then Prabhupada changed things.
Right from the altar itself. Most of Gaudiya temples had Radha Krishna and Gauranga Mahaprabhu. Radha Krishna separately and Gauranga separately.
So, right from the altar itself, Prabhupada changed things. So, when Prabhupada said, I did not change anything, what it means is the essence, the essence he did not change. So, the essential flow of mercy which Bhakti Shankar gave, that Srila Prabhupada continued.
And when we say we should follow Srila Prabhupada faithfully also, well which Srila Prabhupada? Srila Prabhupada himself did many different things at different times. Prabhupada’s preaching strategy in America was very different from his preaching strategy in India. He, in America he was primarily making people do devotees.
Becoming a devotee and moving into the temple. But in India nobody was interested in moving into the temple. So, Prabhupada just became a life member.
Prabhupada’s main preaching in India was making life members. They would take books, they would give some donations and Prabhupada built temples by that. Now, if you consider, life membership means there is not even a commitment to chant, there is not even a commitment to follow four regulative principles.
It’s just a commitment to give some donation and to take some books. So, now Prabhupada was ready to cast the net that far also. And that thing also.
So, Prabhupada himself was remarkably flexible in how, so if he had insisted in India, you have to move into the temple. Nobody was interested. And if you see in the history of India also, I have been studying this history quite a bit.
So, our movement actually took off in India in the late 80s. In the 70s very few people actually became devotees. If you see among Prabhupada’s disciples, how many are Indians? And how many are Indians who were introduced in India? Very, very few.
So, initially Prabhupada sent his main life members because what happens, Prabhupada himself was an Acharya, but most of his followers initially at least they adopted the same confrontational approach. Whatever life is all false, give it up. Just join the temple.
And nobody was interested in that. But then, over the years as Prabhupada’s followers stayed in India, they learned how things work in India, then the whole concept of congregation preaching started. Where? Beware when you are when you practise bhakti over there.
In fact, Rajdaswarapu writes an article about how congregation preaching started in the West. Something similar happened in India also. He said that, in the past whenever somebody would come for Sunday programme, our goal was to make him into a devotee.
Which means we get him to come to our temple. But, he said, people the Indians, we saw that after a few, after talking with them, they had no intention of moving into the temple. We just kept neglecting them.
So, sometimes these Indians came for months and years but we paid no attention to them. And, he said, if on the street somebody had asked these people, these Indians who are coming to our temples, which religious group do you belong to? They would say, Hare Krishna. But, if we had asked, are they Hare Krishna? No, they are not Hare Krishnas.
Because, they are not moving into the temple. They are not following our standards. But, eventually, year after year after year, we are coming.
And, especially, in the 90s, see, when Prabhupada went at a particular time, Krishna arranged, and that was the time of the counter-culture, that people in the West, they are rejecting mainstream culture. So, that rejection was what was the mood of people. Reject education, reject the normal way of family life, reject the government, reject the normal way of taking a job, just reject everything.
That was the mood. And then, Prabhupada, there he came and he gave them intellectual basis for their rejection and a constructive alternative. You reject, what do you do after that? The hippies, it was said about them, they are rebels without a they are rebels without a cause and rebels without a cause.
Everything they were rebelling against. Rebel, rebel, rebel, rebel. But, ultimately, you need to stand for something.
So, Prabhupada gave them something to stand for. But, that counter-culture started in 1960s. By the late 1970s, it had petered out.
And, similarly, our movement, if you see the graph, it was just booming at a particular time. And, once the counter-culture went, it just crashed. Nobody was coming to our temples back then, so to speak.
And, even people were not interested in taking our books because the hippies or the hippies who became devotees, they often distributed books in very passionate ways, very aggressive ways. And, they alienated people. So, in the 1980s, early 1980s, more or less, it was the Indians who started supporting our temples.
And, what happened was in America that the devotees who had joined the temple, their primary service was book distribution. But, if people were not taking books, then the temple couldn’t maintain their devotees. And, then the temple told the devotees, you can leave.
They said, where will we go? We dropped our education, we came here, what will we do now? So, it became a big mess at that time. And, then, for many of these devotees, western devotees, who thought these Indians are in maya because they are not serious like us, for them, when they decided to develop a Granth Ashram, for them, their parents were not a model because their parents were already breaking up families. So, they saw Indians, they have stable families.
And, in many ways, for the western devotees, it was the Indian Granthas, they became models. This is how we should live. So, of course, Indian Granthas may just be pious and not serious about spirituality.
But, now, they are becoming serious also. So, the point which I am making is that the world has changed. And, Prabhupada himself recognised that India and America were different.
And, Prabhupada’s strategy in India and America was very different. So, when we are faithful to Prabhupada, that means we are faithful to the purpose of Shri Prabhupada. So, the purpose of Shri Prabhupada was to attract people to come to Krishna.
And, however best that purpose can be served, we have to do that. So, if we don’t do that, we may say, I am just following the same process. Okay, I did this, this, this, this.
But, nobody is coming. What do you do at that time? So, if nobody is coming, you say, I was at a temple. And, at the temple, there is one very senior Prabhupada disciple.
He is a sanyasi and a guru. He has been doing college preaching for 15 years. I appreciate his dedication.
Every single day, whenever he is in that city, which is almost for 7-8 months a year, 6-7 months when the college is on, every day he goes and 3 hours he does Harinam Tukda in the college premises. He does Harinam and his students’ books. In 15 years, not one person has become a devotee there.
Now, I appreciate his faithfulness. This is what, for 15 years to do that service. But then, what is the result? So, conduct some programmes, cultivate some people.
No, this is not what we did at the time of Prabhupada. We just did kirtan, distributed books and people became devotees. It has been 15 years.
Nobody has become a devotee. Not one person. So, well, dedication is fine, but what is the result? If there is no result, then Prabhupada will be pleased by the dedication.
No doubt. But then Prabhupada is also pleased by whether the results come or not. In principle, Bhakti Sahaja Thakur said that if nobody comes for your programme, preach to the walls.
But in practise, if Prabhupada has adopted that, in India nobody has become serious, Prabhupada kept preaching in India. And he would have satisfied. He would have lived up to the letter of Bhakti Sahaja Thakur’s instruction.
Nobody comes, preach to the walls. But that doesn’t mean, preaching to the walls is what we do all our life. Isn’t it? Prabhupada went to America because he saw Indians were not serious.
So that means, if we are doing a service, if the results don’t come, we don’t become disheartened in the service. But results not coming itself does not mean that that is the way we should keep doing the service irrespective of the results. Prabhupada wanted results.
And Prabhupada was flexible in doing what it took to get the results. So similarly, if you see the last 20-30 years, the world has changed more than what it has changed in the last 200-300 years. It’s a rapid change.
And I was at an inter-religious conference in America. One Christian pastor was quoting that in 2005-2015, for them, among the youth, from the age of 15-35, more than 50% of young youth who have become Christians have come through online outreach. More than 50%.
Not just online means internet, but social media. So they have a whole network over there. IAS, the Islamic State, which is a terrorist organisation, they are very influential on social media.
They attracted people from all over the world to become terrorists and join them in Syria through social media only. So the point is that we have to see what is the bed where Ganga can flow right now. If the bed is here, but we keep trying to get the water to flow from here, well, the water doesn’t flow only.
Water is flowing nicely over there, okay, go from here. So based on the culture, based on the mindset of people, we have to find out how we can get Krishna into their lives. So dilution would be if we never speak about Krishna.
We speak things which please them. But if we speak that which pleases them, so that they develop some faith in us, not pleases them in a pandering sense, but pleases them in a sense that doesn’t agitate them probably. Agitate them unnecessarily.
Then, we avoid those agitating things, we present the message of Krishna Bhakti. Krishna Bhakti is actually very attractive. It can attract thousands and thousands of people.
Now we just have to present it appropriately. One more question. Yes, sir.
Hare Krishna. Thank you very much for your excellent explanation. You mentioned the point about attachment.
And you have given the example of cricket and baseball. The first step, what makes a person to behave a different attachment? Sometimes it is said, you do free will. But why do you do free will? One is attached to godly things and one is attached to non-godly things.
Okay. So, what determines our attachments? Why some people are attached to godly things and some to ungodly things? Krishna says दौव भूत सर्गव लोग के इसमें दैवा आसुर एवच्छन. That there are two kinds of living beings.
Daiva and Asura. You can see, when he describes these characteristics, he first describes अभयम् सत्व सम्चुत्तिर् in 16.123 and then he says, अभिजातस्य भारत. Similar in 16.4 it says, दंभो दर्पो विनाच्य खोधव पारुषि नियजान्य अघ्यानम् च अभिजातस्य पार्थ संपदमासुन.
अभिजातस्य. So, these are born with. So, basically, some people are born with godly inclinations, some people are born with ungodly inclinations.
Now, why are we born like this? That’s based on our past karma. But Krishna says that even somebody who is born in a particular way, तस्मात् शास्त्रं प्रमाणं ते कार्या कार्या वस्तु. They can also regulate themselves according to Shastra.
Now, how much they can regulate themselves according to Shastra, which particular directive of Shastra they can follow, that will vary according to person to person. But, our inclinations are determined by our past karma. So, different people get prone to be attached to different things based on the kind of karma that they have done in the past.
And you can say it’s past, not just in the past life. It’s also in this life. So, this I’ll be speaking more in future class.
But, broadly speaking, our behaviour, the way we act, is determined by five factors. One is our past karma, which we could say comes as our inherited characteristics, which comes as our genes. It’s an oversimplification, but just to take it in terms of modern terminology.
So, there is our past karma, then there is our upbringing, then there is our association. So, in psychology, this is called as genetic determinism. It is called as what is the second word? Genetic determinism, parental determinism and social determinism.
Genetic determinism is, this is the way your genes are. That’s inherited. Our upbringing has determined us.
So, in my childhood, I saw my parents were always drinking. That’s why I drank. My parents are alcoholics, so I became alcoholic.
The upbringing has caused it. It is association. Sometimes, children may be brought up in very good environments, but they go to hostels and their college campus and hostels, they get introduced to a world of sin.
And then, there, they become contaminated by that. So, that’s association. These are three factors, broadly speaking.
Our past karma, our upbringing, and our association. Beyond this, although these three are there, the fourth factor which determines our actions are freedom. All these three push us.
They don’t force us. So, this I’ll be talking about later. The mind can only propose.
It can’t impose. It can propose so persuasively that we may just unthinkingly accept it. But it can’t impose.
It can only propose. So, these three are pushers. They offer the propositions.
Our free will is always there by which we can either choose to act accordingly or choose to act differently. And our fifth factor is Krishna’s mercy, divine grace. So, divine grace can increase the potency of our free will.
Or divine grace can decrease the potency of the past factors acting on us. For example, for some of us, when we are practising bhakti, say we have a particular attachment. And then, at one particular point, the conviction comes, I’m not going to do this.
And when you say, some of your devotees who renounce, who take to the renounced order, they get their conviction, I’m going to renounce the world. So, what happened is, that kind of renunciation is the result of divine grace. When Sanatana Goswami surrenders to Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and he comes to North India to meet him, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu doesn’t appreciate, Oh, you have gone through so much trouble and surrendered to me.
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu says, the actions of the Supersoul are very grave. Although you had such phenomenal wealth, but by the mercy of the Supersoul, even in spite of all this, you have become attached. So, that conviction that comes, so that is like the boosting of our free will.
So, these three factors are pushing us in a wrong direction. Our free will is trying to push us in a right direction. So, Krishna’s mercy can come in terms of the boosting of the free will.
This is what I am going to do. So, sometimes, we may, our own conviction is not very strong. Yeah, I want to do it, but Krishna is good, but Maya is also not bad.
So, our conviction is not strong. So, Krishna’s mercy can come in the form of a very strong conviction. Our free will becomes, this is what I am going to do.
The second instalment of Krishna’s mercy can come also in the form of what is troubling us, that stops troubling us. So, we may all see that sometimes, a particular desire has been coming, coming, coming, and one day, we just don’t feel the temptation. Like say, somebody has been drinking tea for a, throughout their life.
And suddenly, Hare Krishna and suddenly, no need to drink tea. It’s not that you are resisting the temptation, the temptation itself stops coming. So, we can say the transformation happens in two ways.
One is the conviction which boosts our free will. And the second is the purification which weakens the impure forces within us. And both these are Krishna’s mercy.
So, whatever be the particular attachments that we have, we all can combat it by using our free will properly and by accessing Krishna’s grace by studying the scripture and practising sadhana. Thank you very much. Shri Prabhupada ki, Pranthara Shri Madbhagavatam ki, Gaura Bhakta Vrinda ki, Dai Gaura Prema Anandi.
Thank you. … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Walt Disney movies. This is actually science fiction.
Her cartoon has made a lot of… It is… I have realised, you know, that the movies and the media are the single biggest shaper of people’s ideas. Single biggest. So Walt Disney movies is fine, but that is not a from my idea.
I mean, the conviction with which you said, I don’t know what to say, I should have laughed, should have cried. Walt Disney movies. This was Indian or non-Indian? Non-Indian.
European. So this is the first half of it. The part of inherited and non-inherited.
Because you can really attach the idea that animals are no less than us. So without hurting that sentiment, the aspect of self-awareness which you brought out. There are two levels of intelligence.
One is extrasensory intelligence and other is the self-awareness intelligence. One of the most influential books, they call it the 21st century till now, is a book called Animal Liberation.