Nourishing our lives with the Bhagavad-gita

[Sunday feast class at ISKCON, London, UK]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna! Thank all of you for coming here today evening and I will speak on the topic of nourishing our lives with the Bhagavad Gita. The Bhagavad Gita is an ancient spiritual book spoken thousands of years ago as a conversation between Krishna and Arjuna and this book has been read and commented on and meditated by millions for millennia and what is the book about and how can it nourish us? When you use the word nourish normally we say food nourishes us. We need if there is a small child who is growing up, the children need an encouraging loving environment to grow up.
So, if there is we are gardening and the garden needs a supportive environment again to grow up in. So, nourishment means that which enables us to grow. That which fulfils our need and enables us to grow.
So, what need does the Bhagavad Gita fulfil? Actually, in today’s world our needs and even our comforts are in many ways fulfilled much more than in the past. Luxuries that were unimaginable for most people a few thousand years ago, say such as air conditioning, such as mobile communication these even royalty could not have. It’s a common place today and despite having such extraordinary comfort at the physical level still there seems to be enormous amount of distress at the mental level.
The most extreme example of distress at the mental level is suicide where people end their own lives. There is something inside us, there is a voice that goes on inside our head and sometimes if some people say that, oh I hear a voice inside my head then you may say, is that person crazy? You want to get them to a doctor and have them treated but actually there is a voice inside the head of all of us and not just a voice, many voices and when a person this voice can sometimes start hurting us that voice can replay negative stimuli this is terrible, that is terrible, that is terrible why did this happen, why did this person do like that how life and how unfair life is and as this negative voice starts speaking, speaking, speaking we start becoming more and more agitated we become disconnected from the world because of this negative voice inside us and somehow this voice inside us has become stronger and stronger because of which the inner distress has increased World Health Organisation statistics say that 1 million people commit suicide every year and that means one suicide every 40 seconds since I started this talk about 8 people have committed suicide already scary and I just came from America and there is a lot of concern there, there are guns easily available and people shoot innocent students especially in schools it’s a serious concern but far more than number of people who are killed by crazy people with guns are the number of people who are killing themselves when the number of people killing themselves every year is actually more than the number of people killed in murders and wars combined together so more than number of people killing others are the number of people killing themselves and of course suicide is just an extreme expression of the mind attacking the body there are many lesser expressions also where people break down, people have anxiety attacks people have depression so we are physically comfortable but we are mentally distressed so we could say in today’s society people are comfortably unhappy they are comfortably unhappy so what is the cause of this is there some need that is not being fulfilled the Bhagavad Gita begins on a battlefield this battlefield this battle is about to be fought against invaders who have been atrocious who have tried to dishonour Arjuna’s wife publicly, they have tried to dispose their kingdom, they have tried to burn them, they have tried to poison them and the Pandavas have tried every possible way to resolve the issue peacefully but they are not able to resolve it and the opposite party is just not ready for any understanding so at that time the Pandavas have to fight Arjuna is the leader of the Pandavas he is one of the prominent warriors among the Pandavas they have to fight, but at that time Arjuna starts thinking how can I fight, these are my relatives and he asks a question he just puts aside his bow puts aside his bow how can I fight and as he starts thinking if I fight I kill my relatives that’s a loss for me, if I don’t fight they will kill me, that’s also a loss so what should I do and he tells Krishna, please tell me what am I meant to do please tell me what is Dharma the word Dharma has a profound meaning Dharma is that which nourishes us, that which sustains us the implied understanding is that there is an order to the universe and to the extent we understand the order and harmonise with that order, to that extent our life is nourished so if we are travelling in a plane now while travelling in a plane we, tomorrow I will go to India, I will be concerned that whether I have got my passport or not I have got my ticket or not but I won’t worry is the plane having adequate fuel or not I won’t worry if the pilot is drunk there is a higher plan over there there is a higher plan, there is a bigger organisation which takes care of that, now we have to play our part and we take care of our part and the whole will take care of the whole now when we go into a plane and instead of going to the pilot’s seat we go into the cockpit and say I want to drive, now that will not be allowed so in the broader system what are we meant to do a very deep rooted human need is a need for purpose what am I meant to do in my life now this need is not felt immediately because we have immediate needs we have need for food, we have need for clothing, we have need for shelter however there is a difference between what we live with and what we live for what we live with are the necessities of life just like when a car is being driven the car needs fuel so we drive with fuel but we don’t drive for the purpose of getting fuel occasionally we drive for that but the purpose of the car is not just to get fuel so what we live with is not what we live for the necessities of life are not the purpose of life the necessities of life are required but they alone do not make for a fulfilling life if life does not have a purpose the necessities may be abundantly there but they will not lead to any fulfilment many times when people commit suicide it’s not that they are lacking in necessities it’s curious that even people in very great poverty often they fight for life but sometimes people with great comfort and wealth they end their life so what when people become suicidal or people become mentally distressed is that they lose their purpose of life either they never had a purpose for life or they had set up some purpose and they lost that purpose so for all of us Arjuna actually represents all of us in the Bhagavad Gita and when he, he is a warrior he is about to fight his bow is upraised but he puts aside his bow I can’t fight so his upraised bow represents our determination, our enthusiasm most of us don’t have the fight physical battles but still in many ways we have to fight we live in a competitive society we have to fight for our jobs we have to fight for space we have to fight for our needs ultimately we have to fight against our mind which is distracting us in a hundred directions all the time so Arjuna when he puts aside his bow that similarly represents we lose our morale when Arjuna asks puchcha mitvam dharma samudh vicheta please tell me what is dharma what it means is what am I meant to live for what is the purpose of life so all of us have a certain sense of the purpose of life but sometimes life brings us to a situation where that purpose seems to be permanently thwarted somebody’s purpose in life is to become an athlete and then they become they suffer a grievous injury by which they can no longer be an athlete and they don’t know what am I meant to live for so in leadership language it’s called Arjuna says that whatever option I see it leads only to distress so it’s like he was in a loose loose situation whatever I do it doesn’t work at that time on the battlefield Krishna and Arjuna discuss what is the purpose of life the setting the Bhagavad Gita is not a book that calls for violence it is a book in a battlefield setting meant to drive home the substance that this philosophical discussion is not just an abstract discussion for armchair speculators it’s right in the middle of action this question is not answered what am I meant to live for a person can become empowered so just as our body needs food our life needs purpose and the Bhagavad Gita nourishes us with that knowledge of purpose so the setting is meant to dramatically draw attention suppose there is cricket world cup final today the IPL final is going on in India so suppose there is cricket some big tournament final is there and there are thousands of people in the stadium millions watching all over the world and the toss is done the fielders are in place and the bowler is in the run up about to bowl at that time the batsman calls the non-striker and the two start talking and they keep talking and they just keep talking everybody will wonder what is so important come on play the match now you can talk later sometimes some players if the match is going against them they may try to slow down the tempo so that they can regain some ground that’s not good but if these players are not known to be using those kind of underhanded techniques then everybody want to know what is so important in the middle of the cricket field while keeping everyone else waiting you want to talk about this so similarly the Bhagavad Gita is in such a dramatic setting all the warriors are arrayed, the war is about to begin and everybody stops at that time they were honourable warriors so discussion going on they all stopped so the knowledge of purpose is vital and sometimes when we are going through the routine course of our life we may not feel it that important yes I have a job I have a family, I have this thing to do I have that thing to do we stay occupied but sometimes this occupation, staying busy might just be a way of distracting ourselves from the emptiness and the purposelessness of life actually who do you think today are the most paid professionals which group of people are paid the most footballers footballers sportsmen that’s true I agree with you footballers, sportsmen they fall in a broad category what do they belong to, what are they doing actually they are playing sports but what are they offering us entertainment entertainment entertainers are probably the most paid professionals isn’t it this cricket tournament is going on in India now, the Indian Premier League the amount of money that is spent on this, these players in 50 days they earn more than what most people earn in 50 years and the amount of money spent in this cricket is actually more than the amount of money that is needed to feed all the starving people of India in one tournament so, if entertainers are being paid so much, as you said football a person who can a doctor who can cure a foot earns barely one tenth of somebody who can kick a ball with a foot so why are entertainers being paid so much entertainment has always been a part of human society but the obsession with entertainment which is there today is unprecedented when we say entertainers are being paid so much where is that money coming from that is from the people who are being entertained they are ready to pay that now that means what we what we value or what we pay for reflects what we consider important that means if people are ready to pay so much money for being entertained that means they consider entertainment such a vital need now entertainment whose need is it is it a physical need at a physical level playing sports might be better than watching sports isn’t it but then whose need is it it’s a mind’s need and you could say yes life becomes burdensome, I need a break let me be entertained but for many people actually they live in such a way that life is a break from entertainment not that entertainment is a break from life that means the real thing to do in life is turn on your phones, turn on your TVs watch sports, surf on the net in between talk with people do your family responsibilities take care of your job and then come back, this is the real thing in life why does this happen now entertainment if you see when people go to watch a movie say they go in a theatre now in a theatre they go to watch a movie, most people take something like popcorn something to eat now in entertainment what is the nature of the pleasure the pleasure is by projection we think oh this is my team which is winning if a hero and heroine are doing something romantic, hugging each other this audience thinks oh if I was there, I would enjoy so much so it’s vicarious pleasure which we get so now it is by projection or imagination, projection of our imagination into the movie theatre but in reality we are not getting anything that’s why when people go into movie theatres, they often have some popcorn or something to eat everything is imaginary so basically entertainment as a break from life is fine but when life becomes a break from entertainment when entertainment becomes what people look forward to and live for then that entertainment is actually being used for something else not just as a break from life but it is being used to numb oneself to the pointlessness of life to deaden oneself to the emptiness of life so actually this frenzy, entertainment is not bad entertainers are also not bad talented people work very hard but the way people use entertainment, it is to numb oneself to the deeper emptiness in life to the pointlessness, what am I living for? what is my life meant for? so actually entertainment is a poor substitute for enlightenment enlightenment is not just an abstract conception where we see some light enlightenment essentially means we understand our purpose in life so our inner need is that we need some purpose in life and when we don’t get that purpose then we try to substitute that with anything that offers some stimulation something that offers stimulation by which I can forget the emptiness of life so we could say, if a person is sick then if they are sick and they are in pain at that time they need some medicine that will cure them a curative medicine and they may also need some pain medicine to manage the pain so in our life entertainment is like the pain medicine whereas enlightenment is the curative medicine enlightenment is what helps us to understand what is the ultimate purpose of life but if the pain medicine is used not as a complement to the curative medicine if it is used as a replacement to the curative medicine then the result is the patient’s disease worsens and worsens in general and although they feel I feel good but in turn the disease is worsening and that’s why after sometime that pain medicine stops working and then you need more intense dose of pain medicines and if that also stops working then even more intense dose of pain medicines higher dose of pain killers and we see isn’t that what is happening with entertainment few years ago entertainment few decades ago entertainment one hero fighting with few villains now entertainment means cosmic wars a big building is blown up that was fun if you see in cricket 5 day matches then we had 1 day matches 1 day matches also the dosage of pain killer is not enough you want more excitement so then we had T20 matches and even that is not enough then we had the IPL people from different countries come together and then we played all together so basically we are increasing the dosage of pain killers and sometimes people say now we have 100 channels thousands of websites in the past people didn’t have anything how bored they must have been actually it is despite we having so much still we are bored so basically entertainment is like a pain killer and it doesn’t work in the long run we all need enlightenment and that enlightenment is the Bhagavad Gita begins by explaining enlightenment in 3 parts first is we have an aspect to us which goes beyond our biology our essential identity goes beyond our biology there is a non material indestructible side to us that is known as the Atma the soul and this can be understood by simple inference all of us want to live forever even people who want to commit suicide it’s not that they want to die it’s just that they feel my life is so painful they think death will be less painful but all of us we want to live and live forever most movies, most novels are about romance and most romantic movies and novels they end with H E A happily ever after the idea is ever after, I want to live forever and I want to love forever now where does this longing to live forever come from if you consider the world around us nothing lasts forever I was in New York just a few months ago twin towers were there, huge and when they fell it was not just the fall of the towers it was the fall of what they represented the promise of security and prosperity but that huge tower is also not permanent huge mountains are also not permanent nothing in the world around us lasts forever so A, everything around us is material and nothing material lasts forever if we were simply material creatures why would we have this longing to live forever where would it come from if there is a child living in some remote tribe in Africa unconnected from the whole world and one day the child goes to his mother and says mom, mom, I want a pizza the first question the mother will ask what will she ask what’s a pizza or even if she knows she will ask, how do you know about a pizza there is nothing in her environment in their environment which can give them knowledge about a pizza similarly if all of us there is nothing in the world around us which lasts forever and yet we have a desire to live forever where does this desire come from that desire comes from something beyond matter so the Bhagavad Gita explains that we at our core are souls the soul is eternal and not knowing that we are souls we are now trying to eternalise our physical life the soul is in a particular body, just as a person may be in a car so the soul is eternal the body is temporary but we are now seeking eternal life at the level of the soul so in understanding life’s purpose, the first step is to understand, who am I and that question of identity takes us towards spirituality the second step is okay I understand my identity now what is this whole world what am I meant to do in this world so the Gita describes that the soul is a part of the whole the whole existence is interconnected and the interconnectedness is through a personal bond of love the Gita explains that there is, that we are finite consciousness and there is an infinite consciousness this infinite consciousness is understood in different ways and different traditions of the world the Bhagavad Gita reveals this infinite consciousness to be an all attractive supreme person by the name of Krishna and we want to live forever and love forever so we are meant to love the infinite we are meant to love Krishna and we are meant to love everyone in relationship with Krishna so our life’s ultimate purpose is love is to offer love and to receive love and of course we all understand that we want to become wealthy, we want to look good, we want to have power so that we hope that someone will love us, we will become lovable enough in someone’s eyes but when we are seeking love, we are seeking it at a horizontal level with people in this world however our life is temporary their life is temporary that’s why this cannot lead to lasting love so yes these relationships are important but our longing for lasting love is filled at the vertical level fulfilled when we connect with Krishna and the process for connecting with Krishna is called as Bhakti Yoga it is a yoga of devotion, yoga is not just about physical exercises, they are important to maintain health but say there is a batsman we often use the word yoga postures yoga postures in batting different batsmen have different postures, some batsmen may stand with their bat raised up, some with their legs spread apart, some with their bat right on the ground now the purpose of postures is not just to make a style statement the purpose of the postures is when the ball comes, hit the ball as forcefully and as far as possible similarly the yoga postures are meant for a purpose that purpose is to raise our consciousness raise our consciousness upwards towards the spiritual level at the spiritual level we connect with the supreme we connect with Krishna and he is all attractive he is the ocean of all love and connecting with him there is supreme happiness so our purpose is to offer love and to receive love and the Gita offers a vision of a love that transcends all limitations we can offer this love in various ways, we can see our family members as parts of God and we love them in a mood of service to Krishna we can see our profession also as a gift from God the talents that we have we didn’t create those, we didn’t engineer those talents when we were in our mother’s womb we just got them so those are gifts from God and they are meant to be used to make a contribution in a mood of service to God and we can also directly connect with him through the practise of Bhakti by this practise we understand that this is the ultimate purpose of my life whatever I do, I do it in a mood of loving service loving service to my lord and everyone in the relationship with my lord, that gives us an indefatigable purpose imagine a river which is flowing towards an ocean and many rivers have tributaries or channels, water flows, sometimes if there is a lot of rocks or stone or islands, some water flows here, some water flows here, some water flows here keeps moving towards the ocean similarly for us Krishna is like the ocean and our hearts in motion is meant to flow towards him and there are different channels in life we all set some intermediate purposes I want to get this job I want to develop this relationship I want to do this thing, that thing these are fine as intermediate purposes but we need an ultimate purpose and if we have this ultimate purpose then even if some intermediate purpose is thwarted it doesn’t matter that much we will move forward this channel gets blocked, let the water move forward through this, this gets blocked let the water move forward through this this gets blocked, let the water move forward through this so we will be able to move forward in our life no matter what happens if we take shelter of Krishna, if we direct our hearts and emotions towards Krishna and that is the Gita says life’s ultimate purpose I’ll conclude with one story I’ve been travelling all over the world for a few years now the first year when I went to America I went to a college and I was speaking there on the topic of regulating our mental diet so after the talk one American student came and told me that just before this class I was contemplating suicide he had been in a relationship with a girl and she had broken up with him so he said as I was walking along gloomily through the campus I saw the notice I saw a notice poster about my programme, something within me said go and attend this programme he said when he came he said now I understand it is not I who want to commit suicide, it is my mind which is acting as my enemy telling me commit suicide, commit suicide so I told him this is a precious insight which you have got from this class and I encourage him to study the Bhagavad Gita which helps us to differentiate between us and our mind and I encourage him to connect with the Bhakti Yoga club that was there in the college, I also write daily on the Bhagavad Gita a small blog at gitadaily.com so I encourage him to read that whenever he could and then every year when I go to America I would meet him last year when I was there he told me he faced a similar situation he had been in another study relationship and that girl had just broken up with him again as soon as he got her text I am breaking up, don’t try to contact me, I am going to block you now so he just went felt completely like a fog inside him went straight to his room went straight to his room he closed the door pulled down the drapes shut the windows, turned off the lights and he had been practising Bhakti Yoga for some time so something within him suddenly said and he liked to sing, so he had a violin with him, he picked up the violin and he started singing Hare Krishna and he told me he sang Hare Krishna continuously for 6 hours pouring pouring out his heart calling out to Krishna and he said I experienced myself being bathed in some sublime light being comforted by a supreme loving presence I experienced Krishna at that time the same time same moment which would normally have been very depressing became one of the most enriching moments of his life and he got the experience because he through the Bhagavad Gita his inner need one need was a relationship but a deeper need was the need for enduring connection he understood subconsciously percolated within him he is meant to connect with Krishna and this purpose was thwarted that did cause frustration but the purpose of connecting with Krishna was still there and that purpose enabled him to move on so when we talk about the Bhagavad Gita nourishing our life it is not just in psychological or spiritual sense physically it can save our life and not only it can save our life physically but it can also save our life by infusing it with the ultimate purpose at the end after hearing the Gita Arjuna picked up his bow in readiness to fight so his bow represents our determination by hearing the message of the Gita by understanding that we have an ultimate purpose we are meant to love and be loved and that love cannot be thwarted by anything material that infuses us to again rise and to march forward through our life’s difficulties towards the fulfilment of eternal love that is the gift that the Bhagavad Gita can offer each one of us if we enrich ourselves with its wisdom I’ll summarise what I spoke I spoke on nourishing our lives with the Bhagavad Gita I started by talking how the Bhagavad Gita is spoken on a battlefield setting and the dramatic setting is, it’s not a call for war physically for everyone it is meant to dramatically illustrate the need for a purpose in life. Arjuna asked what am I meant to do? Dharma like on a cricket field just before a world cup final is about to start the striker and non-striker start talking.
It will rivet everyone’s attention. So this need for purpose is vital we have necessities of life what we live with is not what we live for. In today’s world we have physical needs and physical luxuries far better than in the past and yet we are distressed because we have lost sense of purpose and this purposelessness we can rectify by enlightenment by getting a holistic understanding of life but instead society and culture offer us entertainment and that simply numbs us so because this inner need of purpose is so strong and not having it fulfilled is such a great vacuum within us that we try more and more entertainment to somehow numb that need so for our life enlightenment is the curative medicine.
Entertainment is like the pain medicine and the pain medicine cannot replace the curative medicine. Entertainment can’t replace enlightenment and what does enlightenment mean? First of all it is understanding our spirituality we all desire to live forever and love forever everything around us is temporary this desire to live forever where does it come from? like an African child who wants to know about a pizza our desire is out of place because there is a part of us which does not belong to this place that is the soul the soul is eternal and it longs for an eternal love towards an eternal object of love that object is the infinite consciousness that is Krishna and bhakti yoga is the process by which we can connect our consciousness the ultimate purpose is eternal love to offer our love to the infinite and relish that infinite love for us and that is inclusive. We can do it through direct bhakti yoga activities we can do it through our job we can do it through our families in every way we can permeate our life with love so all these are like channels in the river for our consciousness to flow towards Krishna and then I concluded talking about this boy whose life was saved when the purpose of establishing a horizontal relationship was thwarted whereas earlier it becomes suicidal now he became more spiritual he intensified his vertical relationship and that which is a depressing experience became transformed into an enriching experience just as Arjuna picked up his bow in readiness to fight by understanding the message of eternal love similarly we all can become enthused and determined by understanding and internalising this purpose of enduring love.
Thank you very much Hare Krishna Are there any questions or comments? You have a question? So when we feel disconnected from love at that time what do we do? The word love has multiple meanings now love can refer to somebody one person may say you don’t love me that means love is there as an expectation now I expect you to do something you are not doing it for some people say I am in love what does that mean? that means they feel overwhelming attraction towards another person so love can refer to an expectation to be loved love can refer to an attraction love beyond all this also refers to an intention that generally people they fall in love the faster they fall in love the much faster they also fall out of love why? because that attraction itself may be there but the nature of the mind is fickle the same two people who say one day I can’t live without you after a few months they say I can’t live with you so if we stick to love simply as an emotion of attraction then it is not sustainable what we need is love as an intention that means the attraction may be there if it is there it is good but sooner or later the mind is such that it will become fickle and will not feel attracted at that time love has to be as an intention I offer love, I act in a mood of love how does love mean? love practically means service, we do something practically to help to assist, aid, to express our care for the other person so when we feel disconnected from love it may be that the other person is not doing what we expected them to do, so you don’t love me it may be that we felt attraction towards someone, we are not feeling their attraction now so these love as expectation or attraction is not in our control but love as intention love as action, these are always in our control and of course we have a human need for reciprocation we can’t simply keep acting lovingly if the other person is not reciprocating so when we feel disconnected at that time we have to focus on love as an intention and action and as I said we have a vertical relationship with Krishna and we have horizontal relationship with others so if we focus on this vertical relationship when we feel disconnected from love come to the temple, participate in some musical meditation, some kirtans pray to the deities, hear some spiritual wisdom and we will start feeling better start feeling better because we are coming in the presence of the supreme love so just coming to a place where spiritual love is being discussed and relished that is love as intention I express my intention through the action of coming and when we do that we start experiencing some joy some comfort and that comfort is actually the infinite reciprocation with us we may not see spiritual reality right now because we are not at a spiritual level of consciousness but spiritual reality can be felt as the relief as the shelter as the joy that we experience within when a baby is very small the baby doesn’t even know that there is someone called my mother baby just feels there is a nice soft object from me, something nice, sweet comes and just chews and drinks it and as the baby grows up, there is a person over there, she loves me suppose that baby is sleeping at night and feels cold, the mother sees the cold and the mother puts a comforter around now the baby’s eyes are closed and the baby doesn’t know the baby doesn’t consciously see that my mother has come and put the blanket around but what the baby feels is comfort warmth, relish of shivering now the baby feels comfort similarly for us we are in a spiritually sleeping state right now but when we come in the presence of Krishna we hear the kirtan we hear the message of Krishna our mind will be agitated by this that, this, that, so many problems we just come in the spiritual presence, we will feel relief it’s as if a blanket is pulled we feel comfort and this comfort, this relief is actually God’s love being experienced by us at the present and as we grow up spiritually, as we wake up we will start perceiving that love more and more so yes, feeling a disconnection from love is a state that we may all go through and if our love is directed only at the horizontal level this person, this person, this person, nobody cares for me, nobody loves me we feel like that then there is God who always cares for us and if we try to connect with him we come in his presence, we invoke his presence then we start feeling comfort and relief and that’s how we will again start feeling lovingly connected thank you, any other questions? yes yes please thank you for the class and I would like to know when we are with negative thoughts for the moment they are a bit to suffer mentally by the same matter what is the beginning for thank you for the class what is the way to give the Bhagavad Gita to people who are in materialistic mind and believe in their inner voice ok so so if somebody is believing in the voice in the head and there is materialistic and how will you give the spiritual knowledge of the Gita to them yes actually even people who claim to be materialistic are not actually materialistic what do I mean by that Albert Einstein was one of the brightest scientist of the last century or all of history also and he recognised that if we believe completely in materialism the implication would be that that we don’t have any free will now if I take this phone and I drop it I won’t drop it but if I drop it it doesn’t have any free will whether to fall or not fall it is going to fall so Einstein is attributed to have said famously that gravity can explain the falling of objects but it cannot explain people’s falling in love so actually he recognised that if we said that everything is simply materialistic then that would mean the Nazis who killed millions of Jews they are not responsible for their actions because that’s how their brain told them to act and they acted now if I come and slap one of you why did you slap me? ok my brain told me to slap you you know the neurone particles in my brain I am controlled by them I have no free will they made me slap you you will say my neurones are telling me to slap you and you may slap me back so basically nobody acts in a way as pure materialist and the very fact that we feel this voice inside us and what is that voice? that indicates that there is something more than matter there is something beyond physical reality if I have a computer in the computer there is a hardware there is a software and there is a user so the body is like the hardware the mind is like the software and the soul is the user so in today’s society we have worked fantastically to improve the hardware but unfortunately the software is corrupted by viruses and we are just thinking oh the software is corrupted get a new computer or get a better hardware but still software keeps getting corrupted so basically this voice inside the head how do we counter it? the Bhagavad Gita explains that if we as souls are here the mind is here but here there is inside another voice that is the voice of God that is the voice of Krishna so the more we try to connect with Krishna the more we tune into Krishna so hearing Krishna’s message in the Gita studying the philosophy chanting the mantras all these we tune into Krishna’s voice and the more we tune into Krishna’s voice then whatever this mind is saying slowly it starts getting silenced slowly it starts getting silenced so we can’t silence the negative voice in the mind negative voice inside the head but what we can do is if we have someone else to hear someone else to engage with so imagine if you are in a room and the room is silent except for one person who is speaking something now we can’t not hear our eyes we can close our eyes but ears we can’t close our ears we are trying to plug them but suppose there is no plug available out there so if that person is speaking, speaking, speaking we can’t stop them but if somebody else is there in the room and we start talking with them now this person is still speaking and that will distract but as we get involved in the discussion we get engaged then this person will go into the background and after some time this other person says this person is not listening to me only they will stop speaking so similarly the negative voice inside our head we can’t silence it but we can turn away from it if we try to shut up actually if we try to make it shut up it will speak louder we can’t silence it but we can transcend it we can turn away from it and go beyond it so we have the mind which is like an inner enemy inside us but we have also Krishna who is a supreme friend inside us and to the extent we get connected with Krishna to the extent we become shielded from the negative voice inside our head ok thank you ok yes please Jai Shri Krishna and thanks for this discourse and purpose of life I have been actually thinking about the same question for some time so I have two fold question in touch is the purpose of life quantifiable and is it really correct to quantify the purpose of life the reason I ask is the thing that we do in our daily life which we consider quantifiable is like a moving goal post we just think of achieving one thing we achieve that we move on to the next and next and next at least that’s what I have seen so far I have lived so that’s my question ok so is the purpose of life quantifiable we said go set purposes but they are like moving goal posts I decide I want to crack this I want to pass this exam get this degree but then some other goal comes up yes that’s true it’s a I would say what you are talking about is not quantifiable, quantifiable means you put a quantity or a number to it what you are asking is that the process of purpose of life is tangible no it is so yes and I said love is the purpose of life to love Krishna and to love everyone in relationship with Krishna love is as much a direction as it is a destination it is love is endless flow of the heart it is something which never stops that means whenever we set goals in our life if we achieve a goal then after that we feel ok what next our life feels purposeless till we set up another goal for ourselves and if we don’t achieve a goal then we feel defeated so both ways when we try to set up some goals in this world for us then there is frustration if we don’t achieve it and there is anti-climax if we achieve it because the goal doesn’t really fulfil us and then we don’t know what to do next but when we see love it is an ongoing process and it is an eternal emotion it is an eternal reciprocation and in that sense it is tangible, it is specific but it is not limited to tangible and specific things say your mother my mother, she loved me if I want to put a quantity on love can we do that? we can’t nowadays there is so much anxiety when we try to form relationships with others with all our scientific technology can we have something like we have a thermometer can we have a love-o-metre you know you know develop a relationship, put a love-o-metre in their heart, do the real love we can’t do that, love can’t be quantified but just because it can’t be quantified doesn’t mean it is not real it is real it is an experience of the heart so similarly love when we make it as the purpose of our life that means we will set up certain goals ok, I would like to do this and I would like to express my devotion through this but if that doesn’t work out it’s ok, it is not the end of the world one of the most well-known and possibly least understood verses of the Bhagavad Gita is karmanyeva adhikaraste ma phaleshu kararachana, Krishna says work but be detached from the results as in America and one student was asking he is a religious studies student he said that this doesn’t make any sense we work for the results so be detached from the results and how do you work it’s like drinking from an empty glass what is the point of drinking so the point over there is when Krishna is saying be detached from the results he is not saying be detached from goals Arjuna would set goals in the Kurukshetra war so goals are what we set before we do the work and that inspires us to do the work wholeheartedly but results are what come after the work is done and the results are not always in our hands we may study very well but if in a competitive exam others do better than us then we may not get the desired result so in the if we get too fixated with the external goal this is what I want to achieve sometimes we may not get it also and that will frustrate us despite our best effort we may not get it so what the Gita is saying is that through our work we are meant to offer our heart to Krishna so if the result comes we would like to offer the result to Krishna also but the important thing is to offer our heart to Krishna through our endeavour and this makes Krishna supremely fair the world often is unfair because the world judges us not by our endeavours but by the results a student may work very hard for an exam but just before that exam they fall sick from the world’s point of view they just failed, they didn’t pass the exam so sometimes despite our best endeavours we may not get the results because of factors beyond our control and all our endeavour may seem worthless but when we are trying to serve Krishna our endeavour itself is appreciated Krishna sees our endeavour and he rewards us for that endeavour so when we see love as a purpose of life then no matter what circumstances come what results come they come, they don’t come we can still keep offering our love towards Krishna we can still keep moving towards Krishna so in that sense love is not quantifiable but it is real it is real and it is invaluable in empowering us to move forward through and beyond life’s ups and downs so thank you very much