Maturity in relationships – Four principles – 1. Accept

[Seminar in Sydney, Australia]

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank all of you for coming today for this seminar on maturity in relationships and as was mentioned I will speak in four parts who is operating this you are operating it go ahead so talking about these four aspects how do we make ourselves more mature in our relationships and how we can make our relationships themselves more mature so these four principles I will quickly explain and then we will go into each of these except means that whenever we are having a relationship with someone, their family member some other devotee, some colleague whoever it is people are the way they are maybe the way they are is very unsatisfactory to us, very annoying to us but we have to begin where they are so that acceptance means accepting the reality of the situation I will use a metaphor here of if you are driving a car and somehow we take a wrong turn and go away from our destination if we want to come back on the route and get to the destination the first thing we have to do is accept, oh that I went off track if I am denying, no no maybe this is the right road why is this not taking me to the destination no you are on the wrong road, accept so acceptance of the status of the relationships, of ourselves of other persons acceptance is the foundation without that we just live in our head and we will see how it creates a lot of problems then when somebody is behaving in a very unreasonable way then ascertain ascertain means that we often think that this person is irresponsible this person is insensitive this person is like this but it may not be like that and to ascertain why people are the way they are try to understand them then after that, yes there is a negativity, there is some problems in others, there may be problems in the relationship problems in us, we need to shift our vision to the positive, appreciate ok what is good in the situation right now and then this doesn’t mean that we deny what is bad what is bad also needs to be dealt with and that will bring us to the last part act, what can we do to deal with the situation so in the car metaphor ok I am off track now ok what somebody may say this is the right track to go back but is it actually the right track or is there some other road I need to take ascertain where exactly I have gone wrong and how I am to set it right then after that appreciate ok I may be off track I may be late but at least my car is functioning, I have a map she will take me back on road then drive back on the right journey so act these are four broad principles and I will talk about each of them for about half an hour, 30 to 45 minutes and then we will have question answer and like that we will have four sessions during the day on each of these and if some questions are not answered then you could note them down, you can have question answer in two ways we can have either you can raise your hands and ask questions or we can have chits also which can be passed on and if at the end of the four sessions if we have some lot of questions remaining and if we have some time then we will have a question answer session at that time also so let’s begin with accept so now this is the first principle that don’t let your expectations of life come in the way of life what do I mean by this now all of us we have desires we have consciousness, we have dreams and therefore we come in with some expectations so we come in with some expectations of how things should be and then when things turn out to be something entirely different at that time that disorients us, that disturbs us that distresses us but we have to deal with life as it is now once I was in India and I was asked to go for a interfaith programme so some Christians had organised a programme on on aids and religion it was an interfaith perspective they had organised so they had invited a representative of ISKCON so I had gone now I had gone prepared a lot of statistics, lot of facts and figures, prepared a whole presentation in English and this was in Pune and I went there for the seminar actually all the people were total Maharashtrians so I had seen their committee of people it was father Thomas and father Joseph and father Ferreira and this I thought these people were international executives but they were all Maharashtrians and most of them couldn’t even speak English so they had all, they were all basically converted Maharashtrians and they had that particular church had a system that if in a village if one person if one person becomes Christian and converts 50 Christians, converts 50 people to become Christians then they had that international body which would fund the building of a church in that village and that person would become the father of that church so like that all these people they just didn’t know any English so I had prepared a whole presentation and when I went there I realised I can’t speak one of this one point in this because they were mostly from a mostly from a rural background and their way of thinking was very different before I spoke they were speaking and they were speaking in a typical rural dialect using that kind of term, that kind of language and then it was I had to completely recalibrate what am I going to speak to these people first of all I had to change my language which itself I am much more comfortable in English than in Hindi or Marathi and then I had to not only change my language, I had to change my content and more than that, language and content it was the whole expectation of the audience so I had gone there thinking this will be like a serious set of intellectuals debating some moral issues but soon after when they were talking I realised this was simply a PR exercise for the church they were doing this, oh we are also doing some social initiatives and to add like a cosmetic to their PR exercise then they wanted some people from other religion also to come so sometimes we may go into a particular situation with a particular set of expectations but we can’t deal with we have to deal with the reality as it is we can’t deal with our expectations and the frustration of our expectations let’s look at an example for this suppose we are rowing and we have learnt you know, how to row you take a oar, you move it like this and this is how the boat will move, the wave comes, move like this and we have been trained expertly in rowing and now it is the time, we are going out into the boat into the ocean and then we are going to show our rowing skills and we start gracefully moving the rope and getting the boat to move and suddenly, imagine a storm comes and the storm just overturns the boat and such is the force of the storm’s waves that we are knocked off the boat and the oar is also gone from our hands now we are in the water now suppose somebody in the water keeps moving the hands as if they are moving the rows keep moving the hands stop moving your hands, start swimming now now you have to swim otherwise you will drown over there so that person may have gone very well prepared to row but sometimes life throws such a curveball at us that the whole reality around us changes so now if that person who is in the ocean now sinking, if that person thinks this was supposed to be my exhibition of my rowing skills where is my rope, where is my boat forget that now now the reality is different so we as human beings can’t avoid having expectations it’s just natural but what we can avoid is being attached to our expectations we can’t live in any situation we go into if we are going to meet someone we may expect at least that person should at least greet me, talk nicely with me expectations are natural but attachment to expectations becomes undesirable when we are attached to expectations then we end up fighting two battles instead of one battle say for example this person who is drowning now they have to fight one battle that is the battle of staying afloat of not drowning in the ocean so that is a battle if they know swimming they should be able to fight it but along with that there is another battle that is being fought which is the battle of oh what happened to my exhibition where is my boat, where is my horse why did this happen so now this second battle which you are fighting it is entirely useless does it thinking oh why did this happen oh why why why does it help in any way in dealing with the actual situation no not at all, leave alone helping in any way it actually hinders us it takes away our energy suppose say there is an army which is fighting against aggressors and now they are fighting the enemies from outside but if there are some spies from inside then they have to fight two battles one is from the front and one is from the behind because much more difficult similarly for us the situation that we are facing may be difficult, may be disappointing, may be devastating but that is what it is and then you have to accept that reality and deal with it this is beautifully illustrated in the Ramayana where Ram at one moment is about to be the king, the prince regent and the king and he is celebrating, the whole kingdom is celebrating and one night of conspiracy what happens everything changes and he is told to go into the forest powerless, penniless with nothing at all so nowadays people often live a lot of fear if they invest money in stock market and if the market crashes, they lose money but still no matter how bad the stock market crash how many people will ever come into situation, one moment or one night, they are the kings of the world and the next morning they are meant to go to the forest wearing tree bark we don’t have to face that kind of situation but Ram had to face that and how was Ram able to accept that because he saw both this will come towards the end of the solution part but I will mention it here because Ram when this injustice was happening, this happened to him Lakshman was furious he said you should fight against this he said no he said that I accept this as the will of destiny so destiny is itself a whole different subject I have several seminars on it, I won’t go into destiny but suffice it to say over here he says that no Lakshman is angry, he says it is only cowards who accept injustice in the name of destiny heroes fight against injustice, they don’t accept injustice in the name of destiny Ram says for me what is most important is my duty to my father he said as a service to my father I was going to accept this kingdom and as a service to my father I am going to renounce this kingdom so the external form of what he was doing was radically different but the internal purpose remained the same that I am a servant and I am going to serve so that is one form of service this is another form of service so acceptance is what is foundationally required for us to deal with reality if the acceptance is not there then we simply increase the number of battles we are fighting now we may say no but why has this situation come in my life I didn’t deserve this this is unfair yes it may be unfair but then life is unfair that is just a part of growing up in life is recognising that life is unfair we may say that ultimately from the perspective of karma whatever happens to us is our own karma now we don’t know what we have done in our previous life in this life’s perspective from this life’s perspective life is unfair bad things do happen happen to everyone and maturity means not harping over why bad things happened grow up and move on bad things have happened this is not what I wanted, this is not what I dreamt this is not what I deserve ok, but move on this is what it is now in the Mahabharata there is one character who is considered to have been treated very unfairly who is that character Karna, yes so Karna he was a Kshatriya but then he was abandoned by his mother and he grew up as a son of a charioteer and he never got the honour of being a member of the royalty and that’s why it is said that he was treated very unfairly and deprived I have a whole seminar on whether Karna was treated unfairly or not but yes, agreed Karna, even if you assume from this life’s perspective he was treated unfairly but if you look from this life’s perspective even the Pandavas were treated unfairly they were just teenagers when their father died suddenly leaving them like orphans and they came am I audible? do we want to use the other mic then? so when he came back and the Pandavas ok, yeah, I think that will be better is it better now? I think let’s try it here because anyway when I move my face that mic also doesn’t catch it properly so if anytime the volume goes down because maybe this mic goes down so then just please raise your hand and let me know that I’ll just raise it up so even for the Pandavas when their father passed away and they had to come back to the kingdom suddenly they were thrust into a situation where their own cousin was out to kill them and their uncle was just passing what did I do to deserve this? the Pandavas were very cultured people, they were brahminical they were harmless and life treated them so unfairly Karna for all the bad things that happened to him there is no report in the Mahabharata of anyone conspiring to kill him nobody tried to poison Karna, nobody tried to burn Karna alive nobody tried to steal away Karna’s wealth through a gambling match, nobody tried to publicly disrobe Karna’s wife so this is not to say that what happened to Karna was fair the point is that the world is such a place where bad things happen, life sometimes treats us unfairly now of course the balancing part of it is that sometimes life gives us a better deal than what we deserve also when I do college programmes, sometimes I ask students, how many of you it has happened that you prepare for an exam and something else only comes in the exam although you have prepared well you get poor marks, so almost everyone raises hands and I say well how many of you it has happened that you didn’t prepare much for an exam but whatever you prepared that only came in the exam and you did better than what you deserve many of them they raise their hands so in a sense sometimes life gives us worse than what we deserve and sometimes life gives us better than what we deserve that means we may prepare a little bit but we may get a lot of good sometimes we prepare a lot and we get a little good so overall in the big picture the unfairness balances out with the what we don’t get when we deserve balances out what we get when we don’t deserve it also but irrespective of that right now the point is is it jolting or is it ok jolting lets try that one Hare Krishna it should not work Hare Krishna is it better ok good so even if life treats us unfairly we have to accept that that’s how it is right now and one significant difference between the Pandavas and Karna is that and Karna kept resenting.
And the Pandavas just accepted, this is how it is. Why is Dhritarashtra being so passive? Why is Dhritarashtra being so envious? Well, that’s the way they are. They have to deal with reality as it is.
So accepting does not mean, can you go ahead? Accepting is not agreeing, it is not condoning. Accepting is not capitulating. Agreeing means that whatever is happening is good, whatever you say is right.
It’s not agreeing. Accepting does not mean that the Pandavas, whatever Dhritarashtra is doing is right. It is not condoning.
What you do is not so bad. It’s okay. It’s a bad thing.
It’s a bad thing. It is not capitulating. Capitulating is giving up.
No. Accepting simply means calling off our war with reality. Calling off our war with reality means that this is the reality.
As long as I am fighting the reality, it is not going to help. I have to accept it as it is. Many years ago, maybe 15 years ago, I was very sick.
Almost for one and a half years I was in the hospital. On off, on off, almost for 8-9 months I was in the hospital. Continuously at one time.
So at that time, when I was in the hospital, there were other patients also. It’s there or it’s not there? It’s there. Okay.
So when I was in the hospital, I was talking with other patients. One of the things that I noticed for most of them was that they just couldn’t accept. Why did this happen to me? I was going through my life normally.
Why did this sickness have to come to me? And okay, from a practical perspective, what’s this going on here? Why is this happening to me? So, Hare Krishna. I just couldn’t accept that. And in Mumbai, we have a Bhaktivedanta Hospital, where they offer spiritual counselling.
And spiritual care or spiritual counselling, one of the aspects of spiritual counselling is that when people are physically sick, they are not just physically sick, they are emotionally broken. And that emotional brokenness often comes in the way of their physical healing also. So if they are given some emotional support, some spiritual wisdom, some spiritual care, then that helps in their healing.
But when we don’t accept the reality, we keep resenting the reality. Somebody has fallen sick. Well, we don’t have to say that sickness is a good thing.
Maybe in future, it may be revealed how it is a good thing. We don’t have to. When we are accepting, we are not saying it is a good thing.
We are simply calling off our war with reality. This is the way it is. This is, I accept it and then I move on.
When I was about 15, 16, at that time, I had not yet introduced to Bhakti. I had done very well in my 10th standard exam. And at that time, I was among the merit list and I was first in the handicapped category in the whole country.
So at that time, I was invited to a gathering of handicapped students to address them. And after that, I was talking with them after I talked about studies and these things. And then while talking with many of them, it struck me that although all of them were 12, 14, 15, 16, most of them were having a huge hangover.
Why am I handicapped? Why am I like this? And I looked back at myself, I found that I never had that. And I started thinking, why was it like that? Then I realised it was because of my parents. My parents accepted me as I was.
They of course tried to heal me, but they never let me feel that my handicap was a burden for me. And they often told me that God has compensated for your physical inability with your intellectual ability. So I realised, at that time, that interaction increased my gratitude to my parents.
Sometimes some parents, it is difficult to raise any child and a child who is physically challenged is even more difficult to raise that child. But the parents themselves are resenting it. The child picks it up, the child starts resenting it.
And when the child starts resenting it, that emotional handicap is actually more crippling than the physical handicap. Now for me, although I had to walk with crutches, it is just a fact of my life. It hardly ever occupies my consciousness.
It just, that is the way I walk and I move on. So when we accept our reality, then we can work to change the reality. Then we can work to make the best out of the reality.
But if we don’t accept it, then it’s just impossible. Because we are fighting unnecessary battles. For us, the soul, the mind is closer than the body.
The physical world is very close to us, but the emotional world is even closer to us. And the battle that is going on inside, at the level of the emotions, that consumes us much more than the battle that is going on outside. Many times when people are disturbed emotionally, they can’t function practically.
So accepting basically means that we call off our war with reality. This is how it is, I accept it. Now for us, actually for us the philosophy as well as the bhakti can help us.
Philosophically we understand. Why is it like this? Maybe it was some karma from me in the past. And from the bhakti perspective, okay whatever it is, Krishna is in control.
Krishna is my well-wisher. Krishna has some plan. Krishna will bring some good out of it.
So acceptance can become easier. It’s never easy. It’s difficult, but it can become relatively easier with the philosophical understanding.
But the important thing is, unless we accept, this is how it is. Maybe the relationship with someone and we expected that person to be a particular way, that person is entirely different. Now what do you do? You have to accept.
We keep saying, why are you not like that? They are not like that. Just our condemning them, why are you not like that, that is not going to change them. Now that doesn’t mean the way they are is okay.
That’s not the point. But the way they are is what we have to accept and then we have to work to improve the situation. So maturity, all these, I am going to correlate maturity with all four of these things.
Maturity begins by accepting reality. Children sometimes when they are not getting something, they start crying. And they think that by crying, I’ll get whatever I want.
Now maybe when they are crying and they are small, they want some toy, the parents may be able to give some toy. But if they grow up, some people grow up physically, but they don’t grow up emotionally. And people may not cry, literally with tears, sometimes they may cry also, but sometimes they may cry internally in the form of depression, in the form of self-pity.
And well, it’s all not being able to accept reality. Just by denying the reality, it is not going to change. So of course depression can be a clinical issue also in some cases, where it may require some medical treatment.
But depression is often because we are just not willing to accept the reality. So acceptance, as I said, it is simply calling off our war with reality. When we accept, what happens is our frustration decreases.
Now what frustrates us is not just the reality, it is the gap between our expectation and the reality. And if we could just remove this, then the reality, yeah, okay, it’s not pleasant, but it’s manageable. Suppose, say, now cricket is a widespread sports, both in India and Australia, quite popular.
Suppose the team goes for a cricket match, and they go in expecting that this wicket is very suited for spinners. And they pack their team with spinners, and actually that pitch offers no turn. And naturally all the plans of the captain, the players, it’s all disoriented now.
It’s frustrating. But okay, the pitch is more suited for batsmen or for fast bowlers. And then you have to see who are the best fast bowlers in your team, who are the good batsmen in the team, and focus on them, and let them perform.
So, but why is the pitch like this? Why is the pitch like this? And that’s no use. So, frustration is, the emotion of frustration is there, but the reality can be dealt with if we don’t have to deal with this gap. You want it like this, but it is like this.
So, at this point, acceptance is simply something which saves our energy. It saves our energy so that we can use it constructively. And not accepting simply dissipates our energy.
That means the reality is problematic, and it is difficult to deal with it. But that problematic reality, say if it is like a 10 kg weight, you know, we expect it to just go cheerful, and somebody has to carry this 10 kg weight. Okay, I thought I was just going for an enjoyable walk, but I have to carry this 10 kg weight.
We will not be able to enjoy the walk, but still 10 kg is okay, it’s manageable. But our frustration, our irritation, our resentment, that can become like a 50 kg mental weight. Why do I have to carry this? A 10 kg weight is okay to carry, but a 60 kg weight will almost be unbearable.
So, the reality is problematic, but our frustration with the reality makes it, the reality means the gap between our expression of the reality, that makes it much much worse. Next slide. So, another example of failure to accept is Dhritarashtra.
Dhritarashtra was born without eyes, and that disqualified him from becoming the king. And he somehow couldn’t accept that. And Dhritarashtra was actually himself not a bad person.
He was very attached to his son, and his son was a bad person. But throughout his life, he was fighting a battle that he had already lost. He was not going to be the king.
And because Yudhishtira was born earlier than Dhritarashtra, so Yudhishtira was supposed to be the heir. Anyway, Pandu had become the king, so Pandu’s son would be there, would be the next king. But even if there was some indecision, still Yudhishtira had been born earlier.
So, actually speaking, despite his not having eyes, still he lived in royal comfort. He had a wife who was chaste to him. He had many sons.
He had prosperity. But somehow he just couldn’t accept, why can’t I be the king? And that attachment, the very name Dhritarashtra, that indicates in the epics, they are arranged by the Lord. And the characters in the epics are also given names which have binary meanings.
So, Dhritarashtra, the common meaning, which is a negative meaning is, one who is very attached to the kingdom. So, one who just wants to hold on to the kingdom. And in Indian politics, when a particular politician, their stay by age expires, when they become very old, and still they are holding on to their chair.
Their common insight is, you are like Dhritarashtra. You are like Dhritarashtra, just holding on to a chair which you should give up. But Dhritarashtra, that is the negative meaning of it.
Dhrita, one who holds on to the kingdom. But it also has a positive meaning. Positive meaning is Dhritarashtra.
Dhrita means to sustain. So, one who sustains the kingdom. So, the name was given in the positive sense.
But in his life, he lived in the negative sense. But because he couldn’t accept that idea, he became a part to many evil acts, horribly evil acts. So, fighting a battle that is already lost.
It’s no use. It’s over. Now, the reality is what we need to deal with.
So, this is actually Sattva Guna. Sattva Guna means we understand the reality as it is. And then we deal with it.
So, for us, in our relationships, there will be frustrations. People will not be the way we hoped they would be. And one aspect of maturity is accepting the reality, accepting things as they are.
And then we can work to deal with those things. But as long as we are not accepting them, that resentment will come off us and that will alienate others and that will hurt us also. So, I’ll summarise.
Then we can have some questions. And then after the next session, after a brief break, then we’ll go to the next part where we talk about act, about assertive. So, I talked about, to become mature in relationships, four principles, accept, assertive, appreciate and act.
So, I was focused on accept just now. So, in accept, I talked about how we all have to begin where we are. If we have gone off track while a car journey, accept that I am off track and then work to change the situation.
Sometimes, our expectations of life come in the way of our life. They prevent us from dealing, living with the life that we have. So, accepting does not mean that we agree or approve or condone or capitulate.
It simply means we end our war with reality. I gave various examples. Somebody is sick and they are resenting their sickness.
Somebody is handicapped, they are resenting their sickness. So, Karna was resenting, why did not I get what I deserve? Pandavas also got things they didn’t deserve. Life from this lifetime’s perspective is unfair and in the overall analysis, sometimes we get far less than we deserve, sometimes we get far more than we deserve and balance is out.
So, in our mind, the times when we have not got what we deserve, that is what pops up very forcefully. So, at that time, if we just, this is the reality, I accept it, how can I deal with it? And this acceptance saves our energy from fighting unnecessary battles. They are unnecessary battles and their battles are already lost.
So, we have certain physical energy but consciousness comes through the mind to the body. But when that consciousness is caught in fighting a mental battle, why is this happening, why is this happening? Then energy is available less for dealing with the physical world, physical situation. It is like if you have to carry a 10 kg weight, that is the actual difficulty, actual frustration in the relationship, the disappointment.
But the 50 kg weight is the extra, is the gap between our expectation and our reality. So, that is how we end up not being able to deal with the situation because of a failure to accept it. And accepting it frees us to deal with the reality and then we can work constructively to change the reality.
So, by not fighting unnecessary battles or fighting lost battles, not fighting lost battles, we can actually become more equipped to work with the situation that we have. Somebody may be practising oaring, using an oar to board. But if a storm has knocked off the board and knocked off the oar, then they have to swim.
So, similarly, sometimes life just completely changes the basics of what our plan was. But then we have to work with the reality as it is. So, we discussed the example of Ram, of how he accepted both being enthroned as a Prince Regent and being exiled because of his service attitude.
And Dhritarashtra just couldn’t accept it. And that is how he keeps sinking to more and more immoral things, sanctioning them and even condoning them. So, by accepting, we can move forwards to changing the situation, having our energy to actually deal with the situation effectively.
So, are there any questions or comments? Yes, Ram. Many times we do things because we have an expectation that we’ll get something out of it. And if we go into the activity without thinking about it, okay, I may or may not get anything out of this, then it’s going to demotivate me to do anything at all.
So, when bad things happen, it’s not that we don’t know that we need to accept it, it’s more that we were so attached to the expectation. How do we get rid of that? So, is it that we should not have any expectations before? Okay, yeah, good question. So, often it is the expectation of getting some result that motivates us to work hard.
And then if we say that we should not have any expectations, then what will motivate us to function? Yeah, it’s a good question. And I would say that we function at various levels. This is actually going to come in the later part of the session, but I’ll explain it briefly here.
See, for all of us, we have multiple levels of identity, and we have multiple roles. So, some of us may be parents, some of us may be husbands, wives, some of us may be professionals, some of us may be preachers, bhakti-bhakti leaders, mentors, we all have various roles. Now, in all these roles, we are expected to execute certain responsibilities.
And when discharging those responsibilities, we are expected to get some results. So, expectations are simply a part of life. And we can’t function without expectations, as you rightly said.
At the same time, Arjuna’s dilemma in the Bhagavad Gita was, because he had two roles, and those two roles were conflicting. He had one role as a Kshatriya. His one identity was as a Kshatriya, and his duty as a Kshatriya was, is that he has to punish those who are aggressors.
As Kshatriyas are martial guardians of society, and they are meant to punish those who violate Dharma. And the opponents were violated Dharma, he had to punish them and establish Dharma. But he had also another identity, that is as a Kuru Nandana, as a member of the Kuru dynasty.
And as a member of the dynasty, he had a duty to protect the dynasty, to respect the elders of the dynasty, to protect the dynasty. So, his Kula Dharma and his Varna Dharma, they collided. And he just didn’t know, what am I supposed to do right now? So, Krishna’s answer at the end of the Gita is that, sarva dharman parityajya, mam ekam sharanam vraja, give up all dharmas and surrender to me.
So, I was at a Hindu programme where they had a Gita recitation by some children as a part of the Gita Jayanti programme, they had invited me. And the kids were reciting this, some of the selected verses of the Gita. And they came to this 18.66. And they recited, sarva dharman parityajya, mam ekam sharanam vraja.
So, they recited as sarva dharman parityajya. Then after that, I asked them, you know this verse is dharman, why did you recite it as dharman? Then they quoted some Gita commentator. And he said, actually, Krishna comes to establish dharma.
Dharma samsthapanarthaya. So, why will Krishna tell us to give up dharma? Therefore, he said, actually, when over the centuries when the Gita was being written down every time, somebody forgot to put a a. And that’s why the adharman became dharman. And now we have put back the a now.
So, Krishna is telling us, give up adharma. Well, it might seem to be a logical explanation, but it is not a contextual explanation. Because Arjuna was such a virtuous person, for him, he didn’t have to be told to give up adharma.
For him, adharma was not an option only. For him, the conflict was among two dharmas which to choose. So, what is Krishna’s answer? Krishna’s answer is sarva dharman.
Mam First of that verse is not give up dharma. Prabhupada says in a lecture that sarva dharman parityaja, even the hippies were following that. They had given up their family, their jobs, their career, their personal hygiene, everything they had given up.
He says, I taught them mam ekam sharanam vraja, how to surrender to Krishna. So, the point of the Gita verse is that when various dharmas conflict, should I do this, should I do that? So, at that time, go down to the foundational ideas. That is, I am a servant of Krishna.
How can I serve Krishna in this situation? And for Arjuna in that particular situation, the way to serve was by fighting. So, Arjuna fought the war not as a kshatriya. He fought the war as a bhakta acting in the role of a kshatriya.
So, similarly for us, it’s natural that we set goals, we have expectations and we work to the best of our capacity. At the same time, if things don’t work out, then we have to, that forces us to go back to our fundamental identity. Okay, I thought as I am a preacher, I am a speaker, I am giving this class, but suddenly I forget some points.
Okay, and I am a servant of Krishna. I may have a preacher’s pride, I never forget any words. I don’t need to refer to any notes, I can speak without that.
But if I have forgotten, okay, it doesn’t matter, I can refer to some notes and continue. So, sometimes you have to recalibrate. So, basically the Bhagavad Gita tells us, कर्मन्यवाधिकारस्ते माः फलेषु कदाचण, do not be attached to the fruits of the work.
So, interesting words, because again the same question comes up, how can you work if you are not thinking of the fruits? But Krishna is talking about phala, there is a difference between phala and dheya. Dheya is a goal. Every day of the war, the Pandavas would set goals.
Famously on the 14th day, Arjuna set the goal that before sunset today I will, yeah, I will kill Jaidrath. So, now at that time Krishna did not tell Arjuna, Arjuna you forgot, maah phaleshu kadachana. Why? Because there is a difference.
See, goals are set before we do the work. So that they help us become absorbed in doing the work to the best of our capacity. Results are what come after the work is done.
So, Krishna is saying don’t be attached to the results. He is not saying don’t set goals. The whole focus of the Gita is, it is focus on your karma, focus on your duty.
So, before we do our duty, before we do some work, setting a goal inspires us to put in our best effort. Say a student wants to, I want to get grade A. And they got 5 papers in 5 days. And they study very hard and they do quite, and they are prepared well, but the first paper goes off not so well.
Now, ok, the student studied in such a way that they could get grade A, but the first paper has not gone well. Now, ok, next the second paper is there, focus on that. If they are attached to the fruits, then what will happen? Oh, why does paper go bad so badly? Why does paper so go badly? And because of that they will not be able to prepare for the next paper.
So, basically detachment from results when Krishna talks about, what it simply means is that, what is, after you have done your work, the result is not in your hands. So, don’t obsess over that. So, it is actually, it is not saying that we should not have expectations.
But it is just that we don’t become attached to the expectations. We be willing to accept reality as it comes. And sometimes reality may be worse than our expectations.
Sometimes reality may turn out to be better than our expectations also. Ok, thank you. Any other questions? Sir, there is one question.
Yeah, I will come to you. Hi Krishna Prabhu, I have got two questions. One is, in Ramayana where Rama’s kingdom, or all nine decisions, the whole situation changed.
And we took it as a part of destiny. First question is that, when Sita was kidnapped by Ravana, he still went and fought for Sita. So, what was the difference in his attitude that he didn’t take it as destiny? That’s the first question.
Yes, one question at a time. Just answer that. So, why did Rama not take Sita’s abduction as destiny? Yes, that way if you start taking, that is called the ideology of fatalism.
Fatalism means everything is fixed. Life is a fixed match. Nothing is in our hands.
That is not the Bhakti philosophy at all. I was in South America a few months ago. And there, some of the South American tribes, the Spanish compensators came over there.
And they were small in number. And these tribes were huge. But they wanted to conquer them.
So, some of their priests, they infiltrated, they gave some medicines and they won their trust. And then one of the tribals, I think it was the Incas or the Aztecs, one of them, they told that in their community there was a belief that if on a no-moon night, if a white horse without any rider comes riding into their village, that means their kingdom is going to be defeated. That means they are going to be defeated.
That was a sign that they are going to be defeated. So, they had this belief. And as soon as this priest came to know about it, he told the compensators.
And they arranged for a horse to come at that time. And these were thousands and thousands in number. The horse came that night.
And the next day, the Spanish people came, just a few hundred people. And when they came, all these tribes surrendered to them. And then afterwards, they just massacred.
So, civilisation that had existed for 2000 years, from 1529 to 1531, in two years it was annihilated. What remained was just, now the ruins are there. So, basically, this is fatalism.
The idea that nothing is in our hands. That is not the Vedic philosophy. The Vedic philosophy is that it can be explained in terms of equation.
There is karma plus daiva plus kala leads to phala. Karma is our action. Daiva is destiny.
Kala is time and phala is the fruit. So, when a farmer sows the seeds and ploughs the land, that is the karma. The drains coming in time in proper quantity, that is the daiva.
The season changing so that the crops grow and harvest, that is the kala. And eventually, the harvest comes. So, fatalism is the idea that daiva determines everything.
That was there in some traditional societies. And sometimes that is thought of as the Vedic idea. But that is not the Vedic idea.
The other extreme which is much more common in today’s world is called as karmavada. That everything is in our hands. If I just work, I set my mind on something, I will achieve it.
It is not like that. No matter how hard we work, sometimes life may just completely disorient us. We can’t do anything about it.
So, when Ram, when Sita was abducted, Ram’s focus was, what is my duty? I am, she is my wife, I am her husband, I am bound to protect her. And to protect her, I will do whatever it takes. Even ready to fight a war for that.
So, when certain situation makes us want to give up our duty, then we avoid that temptation to give up duty by remembering that destiny is also there. Just by giving up my duty, I will not be able to change things. I will give an example for what I mean.
In the Bhagavatam 10th Canto, there is a description of how Kamsa wanted to lock off the head of Devaki. Grabbed her by the hair, wanted to kill her. When he heard that, her 8th son, child is going to kill him.
At that time, Vasudev tries his best to stop and uses various arguments. So, one argument he uses is, ultimately death is destined. And what is destined can’t be avoided.
So, why do something so sinful as killing your sister? There is sin, there is sin square and there is sin cube. So, for Kamsa, it was sin cube. For a Kshatriya, who is meant to be a protector of society, especially protector of women, for him to kill a woman, that’s horrible, that’s sinful.
For a brother to kill his sister, that’s even more sinful. And to kill someone on the day of their wedding, it’s a very holy day. To do that, that’s even more sinful.
So, it’s a sin cube for him. So, then he said, why are you doing such a sinful thing? If death is destined, it’s going to happen. Now, Vasudev could have turned that argument around his thought.
Devaki is destined to die, she is going to die. Why am I trying to stop Kamsa? He didn’t think like that. Why? Because as a husband, it was his duty to protect his wife.
So, on the other hand, for Kamsa, he was deviating from his duty. So, the Vedic understanding, the philosophical understanding is not destiny-centred. It is duty-centred.
We all have to see in every situation what is our duty and focus on doing that. So, for Ram, protecting Sita was his duty and that’s why he fought, he aggressively fought to regain Sita. Thank you.
Can we come back to you later? How many others have questions? One. You had a question here? Two. We’ll come back to you later.
Any Matajis have questions? Feel free to ask or you can send a chat also. Yeah, here there’s a question. There’s a question here, I think.
My question is to accept. What is good, what is bad? It’s easy to accept. But the country that we come in, which is good, which is bad? So, we might know something good, but other people say something bad.
Okay, I think we are going ahead. It’s easy to accept when something is good. But if something is bad, when we don’t know what is good or what is bad, how do we accept it? No, here we are not talking about good or bad in those terms.
We are simply talking about the reality as it is. If something were wonderful, there would be no question of accepting, we’ll be embracing it. Obviously, what we are talking about is something bad only.
But, now what you are saying is that whether accepting is a good thing or a bad thing. I think that’s your question, isn’t it? No, no. So, if something is good and something is better, which should we choose at that time? That’s not exactly relevant right now.
Because right now, if we consider the situation, what we are talking is that a particular situation has come in our life. We formed a relationship, we expected somebody to be like this, but that person has turned out to be like this. Then in that situation, first thing is we have to accept that reality.
Now, afterwards, how to deal with it? Whether we work to change the other person, we work to ourselves to become more tolerant, or we decide this relationship is not working. There are various options. And that can be discerned afterwards.
That will be the last part of our session. Act. I’ll talk at that time.
But, right now we are focussing not so much on what are the various options before us. Right now we are focussing simply on the fact that this is the reality before. I have gone off track, now I have to go back on track.
Is root A better, root B better, or root C better? That’s a later thing. First is, I have to accept that I have gone off track. That’s the focus right now.
Thank you. Yeah, there’s a question here. Yes, somebody has a question.
Yeah. Okay. Ask.
Swamiji, this accepting the reality and moving on is almost the karma plus the yoga plus kala is equal to phala. So, once you get the phala, and it’s not as per your expectation, then it results into frustration, and then you have to accept it and move on. That part is understood.
But, you also said that one has to actually put their best effort and work to the best of their capability. So, how do we know that we have operated at the best of our capability because the gap and frustration is primarily because there is an expectation that I could have done better. Okay.
I understand. So, if you find that the frustration, that the gap between the expectation and the reality is possibly because we ourselves didn’t do well, didn’t perform optimally. Say, a student doesn’t get good marks because they themselves didn’t study well.
Then, what do we do at that time? There is a time for self-evaluation and there is a frame of mind that is required for self-evaluation. Externally speaking, the mode of goodness and the mode of ignorance look very similar. In general, if you want to understand the modes, you can say that there is action and there is contemplation.
We act in the external world, we contemplate inside. So, in the mode of passion, there is first action, then contemplation. In the mode of goodness, on the other hand, there is first contemplation and then action.
Think and then act. Some people speak to express their thoughts. Some people speak to discover their thoughts.
I didn’t mean to say that. Slip of tongue. So, what happens is, at that time, the action happens first, the contemplation happens later.
So, goodness means contemplation first, action later. Passion means action first, contemplation later. Ignorance means neither contemplation nor action, only delusion.
It has lost in the head. Somebody does something to me in passion, I’ll hit back at them. You think you can do that, I can do this much to you.
In passion, somebody does something. In ignorance, somebody does something to me. Everybody treats me like a wet blanket, like a carpet.
Everybody just pushes me around. I just get a victimhood mentality. I feel sorry for myself.
That is useless. That doesn’t lead to any solution at all. So, why I was talking about this is, that if we want to look back and evaluate whether this frustration happened because we did not do our best or whether we could have done something which would have helped us to do better, that kind of reflection requires us to be in the mode of goodness.
If we are in the lower modes, in the mode of passion, in the mode of passion, we are just trying to do firefighting, fix this, fix this, fix this. We can’t really think much. Action, action, action.
In the mode of ignorance, if we look back, we’ll simply beat ourselves up. You are such a fool. You are so lazy.
You are so irresponsible. You can never do anything in life. You are useless.
And the mind will make us powerless by that. Yes, we may have done something wrong. And we may have to learn how we could do it right.
But when we are in the mode of ignorance, we keep lamenting about what happened. The lamenting can be about, why did this happen to me? Or lamenting can be, why did I do it? Well, again, you did it. It’s over now.
Move on. So, when we are in the mode of goodness, when we have prayed, we have studied some philosophy, we are calm and reflective, then we can take our thoughts back and look at the back. Okay, this happened, this happened.
At this point, I could have done like this, but I did like this. And then we learn from it. But in the mode of goodness, we are in control of our mind and we take our mind backwards to think about the past and learn from it.
But, in the mode of ignorance, the mind is in control and the mind takes us back to the past. See, you did like this, you did like this, you did like this. And basically, at that time, we don’t learn from it, we just feel worse by that.
Oh, I am useless, I am good for nothing. So, that is no use. So, there is a time to learn, but usually, it is when we are in the mode of goodness, then we can introspect or retrospect, go back and learn from it.
Thank you. So, we will have a 10-minute break now. Is that okay? We will have a 10-minute break and then we will reassemble at around 12.20. So, that time we will talk about the second part, that is assert.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. So, those who want some water, what is the name for the entrance on the right?