Politics, Social Organization and Bhagavad-gita

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you for coming today.
Recently I was in America, I was giving a talk in Stanford University. So after that, one person came and told me, he said, I thought, I used to think that the Bhagavad Gita is too pessimistic and too transcendental to be practical. So too pessimistic and too transcendental, which is an interesting observation.
So I have addressed some of the things in various talks, but today I’ll focus on when we talk about the Bhagavad Gita and the broad application of Bhagavad Gita, how does it apply? So I won’t talk so much about directly about personal application in terms of, say, chanting or worshipping the deities. But when we talk about application, it means how can the Bhagavad Gita’s knowledge help us to deal with life’s, what most people say, real issues. Now we can say that there is fear of war, there is terrorism, there is economic instability, there is inequality, there is hatred.
So I won’t go into all of those issues, but I’ll talk this class in three broad parts. First part is, you know, what is the basic problem that we all are trying to face in life? Second is, what is the problem with the solution that we come up with? And how can spiritual consciousness help us to deal with this? So at a basic level, the problem of life is that life is full of problems. So if we started at a very basic level, that our body has iterative needs.
The same, say for example, food is something which we keep needing regularly, again and again and again. So similarly, water, we need to take care of our health, we need to take care of, so there are certain needs which are basically required for survival. And they themselves are sometimes a struggle to get.
There are many people who live in poverty. And we may, so at one level, our survival depends on certain things whose provision is not guaranteed for us. So now to solve this problem, we have created some social structures.
Say we need food, we need water, we need security against crime. If we consider for all these things, we’ve created some arrangement. So the basic problem of life is there’s something which we need for survival.
And the provision of that, how to arrange for that, because that is not guaranteed for us. But there’s something more. We as human beings don’t just want to survive.
We want satisfaction. And satisfaction comes not just by providing for the basic needs for survival. If we don’t have food, sometimes people say, there are so many people who are hungry in the world.
Now why are you people just spending so much time chanting Hare Krishna and doing this bhakti? Okay, we can say it’s true that there are many hungry people in the world. And hunger is a serious problem. But we could turn that question around and say, are all the well-fed people in the world problem free? Not necessarily.
Everybody has their own problems. So hunger is one very urgent problem. But along with that, there are many other problems.
Now, in general, to solve the problem that we face in life, we need some kind of structure, some kind of hierarchy. Why is that? Because certain people are more expert at doing certain things than others. Say, for example, at one level, we could say that we all need food to eat.
Now, not everybody is equally good at cooking. So if somebody who is poor at cooking and somebody who’s good at cooking, if somebody who’s good at cooking cooks for a group of people, everybody will be benefited by that. Similarly, if we could consider, say, we have to earn money so that we can get food.
Now, not everybody may be equally good at earning money. Now, of course, earning money doesn’t necessarily mean one job. But if you consider any job, there are particular people who are more competent at it than others.
And, say, if we consider at a basic level, we need security. So the Bhagavad Gita also tells us, the Mahabharata, which Bhagavad Gita as a part tells us that we have these four basic drives. Food, sleep, reproduction and self-defence.
Say, for example, now we have created a system for self-defence. That is, we have police, police within the state, and we have military at the border. Now, just by having this, immediately a hierarchy is created.
There are some people who have weapons, some people who don’t have weapons. Now, in America, there’s a lot of concern. They say that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.
That is their logic. Now, of course, the government also has them. But criminals will anyway get guns.
And that’s their great fear. So there’s a hierarchy over there. Some people have guns, some people don’t have guns.
And some people say that, oh, these guns will fall in bad hands, and they will kill so many people. And that’s a real danger. Say, whenever any hierarchy is created, the people who are at the top of the hierarchy can misuse their power.
And every hierarchy can tend towards tyranny. Tyranny is where people start exploiting, abusing, even destroying those who are under them. So one set of people may say, oh, this hierarchy is very bad.
So what we should do is, why should only the police have guns? Let everybody have guns. Anybody who wants, let them have guns. Okay, that means what happens? We will try to get as many people as possible at the top of the hierarchy.
But the very nature of the hierarchy is that not everybody will be at the top. Hierarchy means, even if you say, even if you assume that let everybody have guns, but still not everybody is going to be equally good at shooting with a gun. And sometimes placing at the top of the hierarchy people who are not good enough to be there.
You know, it’s a, if there’s a danger to have a gun can be helpful if the gun is in the right hands. If the gun is in the wrong hands, that’s harmful. But even if the gun is in the hands of a good person who has a bad aim, then also it’s a problem.
So what happens is, hierarchy is something which is inevitable in human society. Because by nature, some people will be better at some things than others. So now we see that we are moving towards more like a knowledge economy or information economy.
The American government has said, the American army has said that if any candidate has an IQ less than 83, they need not apply for the army. Now this is discrimination. But they say that if people don’t have presence of mind to know how to fight, if they can’t process, oh, this enemy is coming from here, this friend is here, we should shoot here.
They can’t process, there will be a big liability. So the simplistic idea that everything should be equal, that everyone should be equal, that just doesn’t work in real life, because people are not intrinsically equal. So this might seem a little remote to many of you, but I’ll bring it to more practical levels gradually.
But see broadly, in politics, you hear of these two words left and right. Have you heard this? Now, technically, now specifically, the different people can be labelled as left wing or right wing. But broadly speaking, originally what it meant was, in our society, there has to be order, and there has to be innovation, modification.
So those who are on the right, usually, they are in favour of order. Order means hierarchy. This is how things have been.
And things have gone on well for a long, long time. So don’t mess with them very easily. So those who are on the right, they say that we should preserve the order.
And those who are on the left, they say, actually, this order creates so much tyranny. It leads to so much exploitation. So many people have been abused.
So down with the order. Now, if you consider the Bhagavad Gita, generally, the right is often associated with religion. Because anybody who’s a religious candidate says right wing.
So for example, India, the current government is said to be a right wing government. Although, if you see, practically speaking, they’re not done much right wing. But now why is religion associated with the right? Because religion, by its very nature, creates some structure and hierarchy.
At a very basic level, in every religious group, there will be the priests. In Christianity, they’re called the clergy. And there’s the lady, the general people.
So immediately, a hierarchy is created. Or it could be in any religious tradition, that without a structure and a hierarchy, religion itself cannot be practised. Because if you want to do certain rituals.
Now, if you want to do some Vivaha Yajna, and if you say, you know, let everybody be equal. So you have a person who’s doing the work of a priest. And they don’t know any mantras.
They don’t know any rituals. That’ll not work. Somebody has to have some power.
So somebody has to, not power in the sense of, they have to have some knowledge, some competence, and some skills. So the right is generally about maintaining the hierarchy. The left is about destroying hierarchy and creating equality.
But now, in principle, you might say equality is very good. But in practise, it doesn’t always work like that. Say, for example, in a family, if we say that the parents and the children are equal.
Well, in principle, you can say they are equal. But if the child says, I don’t want to study. And the parents.
If the child doesn’t want to study, the parents have no right to discipline the children. And without hierarchy, nothing will work. Isn’t it? Now, of course, the hierarchy, we have to take care that the hierarchy doesn’t become abusive.
The hierarchy doesn’t become so violent. But if we say that there is complete equality, many times what happens is that especially you may have better experience than me, but I have heard extreme stories, even among devotees, that especially in ultra-westernised families, actually the children control everything. And the children control everything, not in a loving sense, but in a domineering sense.
And when these children grow up, they have no discipline. So then the children, it’s like childishness in a child is good. It’s appealing.
But childishness in maybe a 25-year-old adult is appalling. So hierarchy is required to maintain some kind of discipline. Now, what level the discipline can be maintained? That has to be decided.
There was one devotee. I was in America. And this is an American girl.
She started coming to the temple and she heard our philosophy and she heard about our practises. She liked it. And she came to the temple during Damodar, when Damodar month was going on.
And Damodarila was going on. And she came and there was this sweet, the Damodarashtakam, if any of you have heard, it’s a very sweet song. She came there and she liked the song.
And then she came to the temple and she came in front and she offered the lamp to Damodar. She took the lamp and as she was offering, she looked carefully, he screamed. She dropped the lamp and ran away.
Those who are cultivated here ask what happened? So normally we have the picture of Krishna is tied and Yashoda is nearby. So Yashoda sometimes has a stick in her hand. She says, you people are worshipping an image with child abuse.
Now how can a mother tie up a child like this? Mother tying up a child that has a stick is child abuse. Now obviously it’s not child abuse. But for her, that imagery triggered that in her head.
So now the specifics of how to discipline, how much to discipline, that sensibility may vary. But the principle of disciplining is required. And disciplining requires having a hierarchy.
So the left goes towards the extreme where it says that because hierarchy tends to become authoritarian, because it tends to become tyrannical, therefore hierarchy should be distorted. So this can happen in various ways. Now one of the most common ways in which this concept of hierarchy comes up is that between the genders.
There are many people who feel that women have been suppressed for many, many centuries and women have been dominated. And now women are coming out of this and women’s rights are being asserted. So at one level it’s definitely true that wherever there is power, there can be abuse of power.
But some people, see what happens for many people, if you have a hammer, everything seems to be like a nail. So some people reduce, those who are feminists, often they reduce all of history down to a story of exploitation of women by men. I wrote a book on the Ramayana and I’m writing my second book.
So I did some review of how academic scholars study the Ramayana. And the whole Ramayana, they say, is filled with men exploiting women. Really? Now Kaikeyi, she sent Dashrath, because of her desire, Dashrath went to the forest.
So Dashrath sent Ram to the forest. Now this is, how is this a man exploiting a woman? So it’s fascinating how they’ve reinterpreted it. They say that.
Why did Ram send Sita? Now this is a complicated question and in my book I have given an elaborate answer. The idea of seeing everything as a hammer, everything as a nail. So what this particular author writes is that after Sita came back and Ram and Sita were very happy.
Ram and Sita were living as king and queen. And then Sita was expecting a child. And then at that time Ram feared that he was becoming too attached to Sita.
And he had seen what was the consequence of becoming too attached to a woman. In seeing how his father had been controlled by Kaikeyi. And in order to prevent that, he sent Sita out.
This is the most ridiculous explanation I’ve ever heard. Actually speaking if at all there is any correlation, it is not a correlation between say Dashrath and Kaikeyi. It’s rather the similarities between how Dashrath and Ram, neither of them really wanted to go to the forest.
Dashrath didn’t want to send Ram to the forest. But it was duty that called him. And just as Dashrath and Ram was there, similarly Ram and Sita.
Ram did not want Sita to go to the forest. But the situation was such that Sita had to go. And just as Ram is not considered to be a victim.
That oh he was victimised and he was deprived of his kingdom and sent to the forest. Sita never treated herself as a victim. Although it was very painful for her when she went away.
But Sita saw that this is what is required as a call of duty. It’s a painful duty she accepted. Sita’s going to the forest is not a sign of her weakness.
It is not a sign of Ram’s expertise. If it were like that, then Ram could easily have replaced Sita with another queen. Ram never did that.
So the point I’m making here is that in today’s world we are moving more and more towards egalitarianism. Egalitarianism is where everybody is equal. Equality.
Now it’s gone off. So we are moving more and more toward equality. And in fact, this is becoming, like I said, so there are structures and structures involve hierarchies.
And there has to be some system of protection by which the hierarchy doesn’t become exploitative. But trying to destroy the hierarchy itself doesn’t work. Because in any area, rather than thinking of history as men have been exploiting women, throughout history, life has been tough.
Even if we accept the modern idea that we are a very progressive society, then that means in the past living conditions were much tougher than what they are now. So when the living conditions were tougher, it’s not that people had time to exploit each other. Everybody was basically trying to do their best to face the challenges of life itself.
So whether it is man or woman, husband or wife or parents or children, everybody faces challenges. And everybody is doing their best to face those challenges. Now these two ideas that there is hierarchy, which is supported by the right.
And there is equality, which is supported by the left. Now both can go towards extremism. If we insist only on the hierarchy at all castes, then that’s where the Varanashram became the caste system.
The Varanashram is a hierarchy. But Krishna says the hierarchy was based on guna-karma-vibhagya. It is a hierarchy based on competence.
You are competent at administering, you are a Kshatriya. You are competent at teaching and studying, you are a Brahmin. So now this hierarchy is needed.
But when that hierarchy became absolute and people were relegated to the lower rungs, it was not based on their qualities or ability, activities, but simply based on their worth. And more importantly, people on top maintained their position without doing their obligation. So then that is when the hierarchy became exploitative.
But the caste system is many times there are Brahminical priests who don’t know anything about, they don’t know scripture, they don’t teach scripture, they don’t even do the proper rituals. And they claim privilege. When that happens, whenever the hierarchy becomes exploitative, sooner or later some kind of rebellion comes up.
So now when sometimes we say that the animal world is, might is right. So and we don’t want human society to become like the animal society. At one level, might is right is true.
It is in the sense that any person who has power, they will be, they can control. But even the animal world doesn’t operate only based on might is right. It’s interesting that scientists did some research in animal behaviour.
The study of animal behaviour is called Ethology. So now they founded, for example, mice. Now if mice are going to play, animals also play.
Not just animals, like dogs may play with humans, but dogs play among themselves also. So they might play their own version of wrestling. So two mice fighting and who can push the other mice down, who can dominate the other person.
They have a rough and tumble kind of game. Now imagine if one mouse is about 20-30% bigger than the other mouse. Then what will happen? The bigger mouse will naturally win.
But what researchers found is that when the bigger mouse starts winning, if the bigger mouse keeps winning, keeps winning, then the smaller mouse doesn’t want to play. And the bigger mouse wants to play. And if you are always losing in a match, say like the World Cup is going on.
Now if you know one team is very good and other team is very poor, then if there is no equal match, then people are not inspired to watch the match. What is there to watch? Isn’t it? So that applies to spectators and that also applies to players. Of course, the players get paid over there.
Even if they lose, they might still play. But it’s interesting that they found that if the bigger, after some time, when it becomes clear that the bigger mouse is the obvious winner, then the two won’t play unless the smaller mouse invites the bigger mouse to play. Let’s play.
And then by nature itself, the bigger mouse has some intelligence by which it lets the smaller mouse win about 20-30 times, 20-30 percent times. Out of four badges, let the smaller mouse win once. And because of that, the smaller mouse keeps having hope.
I can win. So the hope is there and then the play goes on. So the point I’m making is even in the animal kingdom, it doesn’t operate simply based on might is right.
At one level, you could say the strongest lion or the strongest tiger. They will become the king of the herd. But if that king starts dominating everyone, starts disrespecting, abusing in their own way, whatever it is, then the two lions who might not be as neither of them might be as big as this one, but two of them can come together and kill this person.
So even in the animal kingdom, just a hierarchy based on power alone will not function. And that’s why what we need. Why am I drawing at this point? That we are looking at what is the Bhagavad Gita’s vision for organising society in a way So one way we could say is that if you have a hierarchy, the hierarchy can organise itself solely based on power.
But that is not sustainable. Because if somebody starts abusing their power, there will be rejection. There will be rebellion against it.
So what is required is even those who are in power, they have to understand that we cannot we cannot extract obedience from others. We have to get cooperation. We have to get cooperation.
And if we don’t get that cooperation, then we can’t go on for a very long time. And that has to be the expertise of those who are at the top of the hierarchy. I can do this better than you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to keep all the fruits.
Now, obviously, if somebody is doing more responsibility than others, is doing a better job than others, then they need to be rewarded better. Isn’t it? It’s imagine now many of you have kids over here, you go to school. Imagine if at the start of the school itself, you’re told, you know, everybody is going to get the same marks.
You know, how will you be inspired to study? Well, those who are those who are lazy will never study. I’m going to get good marks. And those who are those who are talented, they will also feel I’m not going to get any reward because of study.
So why should I study? So having like equality and reward, which is like the left idea, that is not going to work. So the king, if you consider the Vedic context, the king would have a lot of regal obedience. The kings would be wealthy, they would have big palaces.
But the idea was that the kings were also expected to exercise responsibility. In terms of one of the characteristics of the king is that the king is meant to defend. One who is ready to protect others from hurt and is ready to himself take hurt.
So the Darwin idea was survival of the fittest, which is true. But that is not the only truth. The Kshatriya idea is that Kshatriyas are driven by the principle, not survival of the fittest, but sacrifice by the fittest.
And that if a war is going to happen, those are the fittest members. They will fight for the protection of the society. So sacrifice by the fittest is what is required to avoid unnecessary casualties.
For example, when the Twin Towers were falling in America, at that time many trained firefighters ran into the towers, even though they knew that the towers might collapse at any moment. And they could all die. And they were able to survive.
They were able to save the lives of many people. But imagine if instead of that, ordinary civilians had gone inside. They had neither the training nor the capacity and it would simply have made things worse.
So those who are at the top of the hierarchy are meant to not just get the privilege, but they are also meant to sacrifice. They are also meant to take up the responsibility. If you look at the Bhagavad Gita, first of all, it talks about Varanasi, which is a hierarchy.
But in bhakti, bhakti itself, Varanashram itself is not spiritual. Varanashram is basically a way of organising society in a way that people are engaged according to their particular inclinations. That itself need not be spiritual.
But bhakti in many senses is not hierarchical. What Krishna says about bhakti is, for example, ma bhi partha ga paashitya ye pisyu paapa yo naya. Whoever takes shelter of me, every one of them will be liberated.
And even if people are considered low born, people who are at the bottom of the hierarchy. So you could say the normal way of rising up in the hierarchy is from here you come here, from here you come here, from here you come here. So the idea was that if you are born as a shudra and if you do your duty as a shudra dutifully, then in your next life you can become a vaishya.
Then if you do your vaishya duty responsibly, then you will become a kshatriya. Then you can become a brahmana or even go to swarga. So you move up the hierarchy linearly.
But bhakti, Krishna says, that it is this hierarchy exists. But you could say the hierarchy is like this. And bhakti can pick up anyone from anywhere and everybody can get liberated.
So in that sense, the process of bhakti yoga is universal. And if you see many of the, if you know a little bit about Indian religious history, many of the great saints were from the underprivileged sections of society, the lower caste. In our own tradition, Haidas Thakur was not just from lower caste, he was what would be called outcaste.
He was born in a Muslim family. But he is considered namacharya. And there are so many other saints like that.
I come from Maharashtra and many of the great saints in Maharashtra were actually from the lower caste. Some of them were potters, some of them were like that from very menial professions. But they are considered exalted saints.
So the idea is that the hierarchy is required for functioning in the world. But the hierarchy is not meant to limit people to their particular roles alone. Bhakti transcends the hierarchy because it allows everyone to grow spiritually.
And either we now, so in any social structure, whatever it may be, we need the hierarchy. But we also need, so we need the right which emphasises the hierarchy and we need the left which will make sure that the hierarchy does not deprive people. There is basic, at least at some level there is equality in terms of the availability of opportunities.
The availability of the basic necessities of life. So now if you consider, say, the major form of government in today’s world is democracy. Sometimes some devotees quote Prabhupada and say, Prabhupada said democracy is demon crazy.
Now that is, Prabhupada said that once and it’s an oversimplification. See the concern that Prabhupada had was that if people are not wise enough to make their choices, then such people elect somebody, that person, people are, can already be driven away by emotions. They can be manipulated and they may elect an unwise person.
That is true. But practically speaking, we see that Prabhupada was ready to engage with leaders however they came. Prabhupada, however they had come about.
Prabhupada had a meeting with Indira Gandhi. Prabhupada had a meeting with Murari Desai. Prabhupada was ready to meet with heads of states or head, most of people who were democratically elected.
And in today’s world, if you see, it is the countries where we have democracy, that’s where we have opportunity to practise Krishna consciousness. If you go to the Middle East countries, they are mostly theocracies. And there are some other countries we can’t practise at all.
Other countries we can practise, but only, only privately. And with China, well, China is a peculiar country. Its government is, you could say, they have some kind of elections, but it’s not really democracy in a formal sense.
So it’s capitalistic in its economic, but in its quality, it is more communist. Not exactly communist, but still. So there also we are not, it’s not, because it’s not exactly democracy, we can’t practise.
We are not allowed. In fact, we as Krishna consciousness, Hinduism itself is not an officially recognised religion over there. So there are problems.
So in the real world, if we consider as we are members of a particular society. So now, say, some of us might be in a particular country with a particular dispensation, with a particular political dispensation. Now, for us, at one level, for most people, their primary purpose, they want to get on with the business of their lives.
Now, we want, we have our family, we have our social response. We want, we want to get on with our responsibility. And traditionally, most people are not of an activist nature.
There are some people who have some kind of zeal for activism, but most people just want to get on with their own lives. And if you consider whatever the government, the more important consideration is how does the government affect me or it doesn’t affect me. And if you consider our spiritual practises, we also want to get along with our spiritual practises.
Now, as far as social transformation or social, all that I’m talking right now is the second part, that what is the problem with the current solutions. So one set of problems could be that we can say that wherever there is a hierarchy, wherever there is a religious dictator, any kind of dictatorship, whether it is religious or non-religious, we have had non-religious dictatorships in terms of Hitler or Stalin, and they have been horrible. We have been having equality in terms of democracy.
But that has also led to problems in the sense that often people who may not be really worthy leaders, they become elected as leaders and they can lead people down a terrible path. So the whole point of the Bhagavad Gita is that it focusses on the individual. Krishna is speaking to one individual, that is Arjuna.
Now, of course, we can say Arjuna is a very influential individual because he’s a member of the royal family and he has the responsibility of establishing the government. And the government that he was a part of was a monarchy. Now, monarchy is different from autocracy which we have experience of.
Because the monarchs were well trained and there was a check and balance system. The Kshatriyas had political power, but the Brahmins were considered higher than them. So I’m not going to go into that system.
But the stress is that it was focused on the individual. And the Bhagavad Gita’s main stress was that we all have to take up responsibility for our particular role in society. Now, going back to this left and right, and I’ll draw this to a conclusion that the left focusses very much on the rights.
This has been deprived. You have been victimised. This is said this right.
You have this right. You have this right. You have this right.
You have this right. And they keep agitating. Oh, this has been wrong.
You have to provide these rights. You have to agitate for these rights. That’s the left which agitates about the rights.
On the other hand, what about the right? They say that you have your responsibilities and we will tell you what you should do. And you just do this. In fact, things became so bad in the Soviet government’s rule that a farmer who would grow crops would not have the right to use their own crops.
Whatever crops would grow, everything would go to the government. And then the government would allot the crops to people. And it was such a messy system that because they had a centralised system, they would take the crops from the village to the towns.
And from the town, they would again bring back to the village. And because they didn’t have refrigeration, the crops would get spoiled. It is horrible.
After the whole thing came up, it said that in the communist rules in Russia and China, over a hundred million people died. It was various kinds of starvation, mismanagement, all kinds of things. It is just, it is horrible.
So the idea is that in the hierarchy, just you are told, you do this, that’s your responsibility and we will decide what your right is and we will provide it to you. So now the Bhagavad Gita’s mood is that if we consider Arjuna is told by Krishna, not that in the right, you are given your responsibility and you are told you have to do this and you will get this and that. Everything is predetermined.
But the whole mood of the Bhagavad Gita is that not that responsibilities are allotted, but responsibilities have to be adopted. That we have to take up an individual responsibility. So at the end of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna, Vimrishayita dasheshena yathej siddha guru.
Deliberate and do as you desire. You deliberate and then you think and you do as you desire. And that is the foundation.
Individual responsibility is the foundation of any kind of social order. Individual responsibility can mean at a very basic level, parents have to take care of the children. And if that individual responsibility is not there, then who’s going to take care? The parents’ roles can’t be replaced.
Now we can say that the police has to take care of crime. Well, that is true. But the parents have to take responsibility that the children don’t go towards criminal directions.
If there is no parenting, then everything will just come up on society, come up on the government. You cannot police a group of completely irresponsible people. So there has to be a basic ethos of responsibility.
And how does responsibility sometimes has a negative connotation. It’s a burden. I don’t know this.
But actually, it’s quite different. You know, it is responsibility that brings meaning to our life. To the extent there is responsibility, to that extent our life has meaning.
Why is that? Suppose we say that, OK, we all want to enjoy life. Yes, everybody wants to have a happy time. But suppose somebody told us that from tomorrow onwards, you have no financial obligation, no family obligation.
From morning to night, you just watch comedies. You know, it would be very comical after some time, isn’t it? Maybe for a few hours. But after that, I want to do something.
We all need something meaningful to do in life. And we can do something meaningful to the extent we take some responsibility. It is responsibility that brings meaning.
And what does responsibility mean? So any social order, the right has the idea that we have to have a hierarchy. But even within a hierarchy, every individual has to voluntarily accept their role in the hierarchy. And even if they have equality, you voluntarily, even within equality, everybody has to take up what it is that I am going to do.
If everybody simply claims rights and doesn’t do responsibilities, we will have nothing right going on. So the Bhagavad Gita, for example, when we talk about adopting responsibility, it’s that all of us, we earlier talked about how we need food, clothing, shelter. But we don’t just need that for survival.
Beyond survival, we want our life to have some meaning, some fulfilment. And so at a basic level, we take responsibility for providing our needs. But at a higher level, we take responsibility so that our life becomes meaningful.
And that is where a spiritual vision comes into picture. So spiritual vision doesn’t reject. So when this person was telling me that the Bhagavad Gita is very pessimistic or very transcendent.
So the idea is what? See, there is pessimistic means you can say that, oh, in this world, that is what they say, don’t take life very seriously. Why? Because no one is going to survive. So now the idea is that everybody is going to die.
Why are you so pessimistic? There is so much of a life to be lived before you die, which is true. But to deny the reality of death is also a problem. So when people say it’s pessimistic, it’s like the Bhagavad Gita is not pessimistic.
The Bhagavad Gita is not telling, Krishna tells Arjuna, this world is dukkha leya. But the Bhagavad Gita does not tell Arjuna, this world is dukkha leya, therefore stay dukkhi. This world is a place of misery and stay miserable.
Far from it, at the start of the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna is in misery. He is crying tears. He is crying because of this horrible war in front of him right now.
And by the end of the Bhagavad Gita, he has regained his composure. So, sito smigata sandhe, he has become calm. So which indicates that the Bhagavad Gita’s wisdom removed his distress at least to some extent.
So when the Bhagavad Gita says this world is a place of distress, it’s just, it’s just reality. That life is tough. Everybody has problems.
And all of us have, each one of us has one or the other painful inadequacy. We want to do something, but we don’t have the capacity, the ability, the endowment to do that. And so basically we are limited and our existence is limited and our existence is finite.
Limited in time, finite in scope. While we live also, the amount of control that we have is limited. And how long we have that control, that is also limited.
So, this limitedness and finiteness creates problems for everyone. So, that’s just a fact of life. So, it’s not pessimism, it’s simply realism.
And somebody says Bhagavad Gita is too transcendental. I mean, they are saying that we are not worried about this world at all. We are just thinking about going beyond the world.
But that is not the point of the Bhagavad Gita. The point of the Bhagavad Gita is that we want to live in this world in a way that we can go beyond this world. Bhakti has two aspects to it.
There is world transcending and world transforming. When Krishna says he descends to this world, dharma samsthapanathaya sambhavami yuge yuge, that is world transforming, not transcending. He is establishing dharma in this world.
So, 4, 8 in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna talks about establishing dharma in this world, that is world transforming. And then he says, if you understand my purpose, janma karma chimai devyam evam yogati tato taha, tyaktva deham punar janma nayanthina aham eti suvarjuna, that is world transcending. You will go beyond this world and attain maya bodhi.
So, both of them are there. There is world transforming and there is world transcending. But world transformation, whatever we are to do, it cannot begin with a utopia.
It is somebody who is sick and we tell them that you can be healed, but it has to begin by acknowledging that you are sick right now. So, the world transforming aspect of the Bhagavad Gita is that how we can live in this world in a way that our material needs are taken care of and we have adequate resources available for creating a meaningful life, for growing spiritually, for nourishing our souls. Now, how exactly, because now what has happened, the traditional social structures have been disrupted very rapidly.
They have been continuously disrupted for many centuries, but probably in the last 500 years, the world has changed much more than the past 5000 years. And in the last 50 years, the world has changed more than the last 500 years. So, social structures are getting very disrupted.
And when structures are disrupted, people just don’t know what am I to do in my life? What am I to do in my life? So, the meaning begins with adopting responsibility. And what the Bhagavad Gita tells us is that we have to first of all take responsibility for ourselves. उद्धरेद आत्मनात्मानं नात्मानं अवसाधेद आत्मैवय आत्मनो बन्दृ आत्मैवरिपुरात्मना Elevate yourself with yourself, don’t degrade yourself with yourself.
Or you can be your own friend and you can be your own enemy. This is 5 in the Bhagavad Gita. What this means is that treat yourself as if you are someone you are responsible for.
Treat yourself as if you are someone you are responsible for. So, I’ll conclude this point with two examples. That say, many people when they get some sickness and the doctor prescribes some medicine.
People just don’t take the medicine. I had TB about maybe 15 years ago, severe TB. And the doctor told me, I had a 9 month course or maybe 1 year course, long course.
He said after 2 months the symptoms will go away. But he says don’t stop taking the medicine. Because otherwise if you stop it, you’ll have a relapse.
And the germs they mutate and then you have something called resistant TB. And that’s all very very difficult to cure. So he said you have to take the medicine.
So many times the disease becomes worse because people don’t take the medicine. But it’s interesting that many people nowadays love their pets. I had gone for a walk in LA.
We had gone to a park. And in that park there were no children. Only dogs and cats.
The whole park was filled with dogs and cats. So what happened was… So the point I’m making about dogs is that many times people love their pets so much that when their pets fall sick, they go to vet doctors. So it has been found that people are more responsible about giving medicines to their dogs than to take medicine for themselves.
So why is it like that? There is something about responsibility that brings the higher side out of us. When we feel we are responsible to someone, now of course you could say there is a little bit of the opportunity to control someone. Hey, you’ve not taken your medicine, take this.
But in general responsibility brings out the best of the person. At least the higher side of us. That’s what universally works out.
So if we could adopt that attitude toward ourselves. Okay, this is a person over here. This person has these abilities, these limitations.
And take responsibility. And this Krishna says you can do if you understand that you are different from your body and your mind. So right now who we are… See, we can’t know ourselves as souls directly.
We can intellectually understand that consciousness comes from something different than the body. But the resources we have for working in the world are basically the body and the mind. So understanding that I am not the body and the mind can actually enable us to become more responsible in handling our body and the mind.
It’s not that I don’t care for the body. Okay, this is the kind of body I have, this is the kind of mind I have. How can I take responsibility? And once we start doing that, then from there things grow.
So the Bhagavad Gita is in one sense a very small book. Actually, if you consider typical newspapers, Times of India or New York Times or whatever, if you consider the front page and the back page, the number of letters on the front page and the back page of a newspaper would be more than the number of letters in the whole Bhagavad Gita. If you just take the 700 verses.
So the Bhagavad Gita is relatively speaking a very small book. And if you can speak Sanskrit fluently, you can have the whole Bhagavad Gita narrated within an hour or two hours. So the Bhagavad Gita is not an exhaustive compendium about how to live in the world.
For example, the Bhagavad Gita is followed by a war. But the Bhagavad Gita does not talk anything about war strategies. How to fight a war? It doesn’t talk about that.
Because the specifics in the world will be many. In this specific situation, how do you deal with the situation? In that specific situation, how do you deal with the situation? But what the Bhagavad Gita focusses on is that how to take responsibility and see our life to be meaningful. That we are souls, we are all parts of God.
And whatever situation we are facing in our life, every one of us has a God-given power to make a positive difference. Of course, we have a God-given power and with that we can make a positive difference or we can make a negative difference also. And it’s such that if we don’t strive to make a positive difference, each one of us can end up making a negative difference.
No matter how bad a situation is. Say, I have this health issue, I have this family issue, I have this job issue. Now we all can say that I have a lot of problems in my life.
But no matter how bad a situation is, we always have the power to make it worse. We are never so powerless that we can’t make a terrible situation more terrible. They say that it’s never too old, you’re never too old to learn something new.
You could just twist that and say you are never too old to do something stupid. We can make things worse no matter whatever situation we are in. Like some people fall sick and then they start complaining, abusing, becoming so resentful of their caregivers that they are sick and their caregivers become sick of them.
Whatever situation we are in, we can always make things worse. And if we can make things worse, that means we are not as powerless as we think. If I have the power to make things worse, then I have the power to make them better also.
So if we have this understanding that we can look at today’s political situation, social situation, cultural situation, this is a problem, that is a problem, they are all there. But if we understand that I am the situation and I have a God-given capacity to make a difference, then with that potential, if I take responsibility, each one of us can make a difference in our particular food circle. It might be a family, it might be our job, it might be our community.
And each one of us by our karma can be given either a small circle on which we can create an influence or it can be a big circle on which we can create an influence. That will vary. But more important in a sense than whatever influence that we can have on others is the influence we have on ourselves.
So the Bhagavad Gita is essentially about we recognising our spirituality and letting that spirituality empower us. It empowers us to transform our own body and mind so that we use it as responsibly as possible. And then we can transform our family situation, we can transform our professional situation, we can transform our financial situation.
Now in each of these, how much we will succeed will depend on various factors. That’s not in our control. And this is where karma nivadhika raste comes in.
You have a right to do your work, but don’t be attached to the result. Not that you don’t care for the result, but don’t be attached to the result. When we take responsibility, the purpose of taking responsibility is primarily to bring meaning into our own life.
It is not primarily to get the result. Of course, you want the result. Like if somebody studies a particular subject, so that they want to become a teacher and teach that subject.
Naturally, they want others to learn that subject so that others can also become learned in that subject. But just if they do that, this is the way I can make a meaningful difference. And even if it doesn’t make a difference to anyone else, it makes a difference to us.
So the idea of detachment is actually again empowering. Because detachment frees our endeavours from dependence on the results. If I’m always thinking, I get the result and I’ll get the result.
Then we can be either half-hearted or whole-hearted. If you feel I’ll get the result, otherwise I’ll become half-hearted. But if we understand that I’m taking up responsibility so that my own life can become meaningful, so that I can do the best that I can, then even if it doesn’t make an external difference, it will make an internal difference.
And this is what is seen in the Bhagavad Gita at the end. See, Bhagavad Gita is a dialogue at two levels. Krishna speaks to Arjuna and Sanjay speaks to Dhritarashtra.
So at one level, you can say Krishna’s speech to Arjuna is successful. Because Arjuna is confused, Arjuna becomes enlightened. But Sanjay’s speech to Dhritarashtra is not successful.
Because Sanjay still remains attached. But what the Bhagavad Gita shows is that Sanjay himself becomes enriched. In 1876 and 77, two of the penultimate verses of the Bhagavad Gita, is described how Sanjay, by having spoken the Bhagavad Gita, has become immersed in remembrance of Krishna.
Krishna’s form and Krishna’s message. Rajan samsmutya samsmutya Samvadham adhutam Keshavarjuna yo punyam Hrishyamiche maharmaham Tatya samsmutya samsmutya roopamatya adhutam pare Vishmayome mahan Rajan Hrishyamiche punhapunham So that remembrance of Krishna has enriched Sanjay. Now Sanjay could have been pessimistic.
Dhritarashtra is so attached, nobody is going to listen to him. He has not listened to Vyasadevi, he has not listened to Parashurama, he has not listened to anyone else. He is not going to listen to me.
Why should I speak the Bhagavad Gita? He did not let that kind of a pathetic attitude overwhelm him. He spoke that as he took responsibility. I have been given this role of acting as a messenger.
Whether Dhritarashtra listens to the message and transforms or not, that is not my problem. If it doesn’t happen, still because he tried to convey Krishna wholeheartedly, he became enriched. And similarly, if we take responsibility in whatever role we are in, to do our best to make a difference, whether we succeed or not, that is secondary.
In a sense, we will succeed because our life will have meaning. Otherwise we can always be resentful. This is wrong in my life and this is wrong and that is wrong and that is wrong.
Almost anybody in life, if you ask, can you list all the things that are wrong in your life? Anybody can make a long list of that. Even people who feel they are very comfortable and very successful, they can also make a long list of what is wrong in their lives. That is not very difficult to do.
But while the things that are wrong in our life, how can we create something positive? That is what the whole Bhagavad Gita is about. So it is about creating that inner empowerment by which we can all move forward and make a positive difference in our lives. So I’ll summarise.
I spoke on this theme of how the Bhagavad Gita can make, how the Bhagavad Gita can guide us practically in our lives. So I started by talking about, I spoke in three parts. First part is what is the basic problem of life? Basic problem is that we want to survive, we want survival and we want satisfaction.
But survival itself requires certain things like food which are not in our control to get. So how do we get the needs for surviving and how do we gain satisfaction in life? That is the universal problem that everyone has. And conventional solutions have broadly fallen on a spectrum which can have two extremes.
Basically for providing necessity of life, some people are more competent than others to get this. So then it’s beneficial to have a hierarchy by which those who are competent can get it and provide it for everyone. So those who are better at fighting, they can protect the whole society.
So hierarchy is required and so the right talks about hierarchy, but hierarchy can very easily become exploitative. So then we have the left which talks about equality. So we have to get this hierarchy knocked off so that everybody can have equality.
Now both of these can go towards extreme and if you say only equality, then there is no reward for competence and society can be deprived of those who are competent from bringing their contributions. And the Bhagavata talks about Varanashram as a hierarchy, but it also talks about how this is an organic hierarchy based on qualities. It is not like an imposed hierarchy based on birth.
So when it became exploitative, it became fossilised and exploitative, then there is a lot of resentment and challenge against it. So in today’s world, we see the world is moving more and more towards left instead of egalitarianism. Let everything be equal.
But practically, parents and children cannot be equal. Practically, roles have to be divided according to competence. So when we, whether it’s the right or the left, I talk primarily the Bhagavad Gita, it has the principle of Varanashram which you would say is right, but it talks about Bhakti which is universal.
So Bhakti in the sense is, it’s trans-hierarchical. There is a hierarchy like this and there is a procreation. Bhakti is like, from wherever you are, you can rise up.
And many of the Bhakti saints in mediaeval history were outside the hierarchy, were at the bottom of the hierarchy. And that’s how they rose. So then I talked about the central focus of the Bhagavad Gita is one individual speaking to another individual.
It’s like individuals have to take responsibility. And whether it is a system which is centred more on hierarchy or more on egalitarianism, the important thing is that if individuals don’t take up responsibility, nothing will work. And responsibility is, the problem is the left focusses only on rights, whereas the right focusses only on your duties, which is like imposed on you.
But what the Bhagavad Gita says is voluntarily accept responsibility. I talked about how responsibility brings out a higher side, that how people are more conscientious about giving medicine to their pets than to take medicine for themselves. Somehow responsibility brings out a higher side within us and responsibility brings meaning to our life.
So we can begin by taking responsibility for our own mind and body and mind. So understanding that I am the soul different from the body and the mind, it is not, it can actually make us more responsible for the body and the mind. Because this is what I have.
The Bhagavad Gita is not pessimistic. It is realistic because distress and death are just facts of life because we are finite and limited beings. And it’s not just too transcendental because it talks about both world transcending and world transforming.
So by understanding our body, minds, particular strengths and weaknesses, then we can take responsibility for doing our best and we can make a difference. How much it will be that will depend on karma. And that is where karma nivadhika arasthi comes into the picture.
If we are detached, then we are free and our endeavours become freed from dependence on the results. Just as Sanjay became enriched internally, even if he couldn’t transform Dhritarashtra externally. So if we do our best, then we can each one of us make a positive difference in the world in whatever sphere of influence we have been given.
Whether it is our family, our profession, our social circle, our devotional circle, whatever it might be. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.
So any quick questions or comments? Sanjay is the narrator. Sanjay was basically one of the assistants, you could say, secretary of Dhritarashtra. Dhritarashtra did not have eyes.
So when the Kurukshetra war was going to happen, at that time Sanjay was given the power by which he could see the Kurukshetra war and he could act like a commentator. So the action was happening and he acted like a commentator who narrated what was happening to Dhritarashtra. So thank you very much.
Shila Prabhupada ki Jai. Gaurabhakta Vindaki Jai.