SB 11.23.29 – The austerity of fixing the mind on Krishna is the pathway to the ecstasy of pure devotion

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so now the avanti brahmana is making a resolve so earlier he has said that i have become an old person what can i do but then he thinks i’m not yet dead i still have some time remaining so whatever you know whatever is whatever call is for me what will i do in that car i will tolerate i will tolerate whatever bodily miseries come my way and while tolerating these miseries i will focus without becoming infatuated by the promises of wealth and other worldly pleasures i will pursue that which is my actual swartha that which is my eternal self-interest which is actually self-realization and krishna realization so yadi syad siddha atmani yadi syad now he’s uncertain how much time he has if at all any have i have any time during that time siddha atmani i will stay self-satisfied so instead of choosing craving for new new things for my satisfaction instead of chasing after wealth as i had done earlier now i will stay siddha atmani i will stay self-satisfied and while being self-satisfied i will focus on akhila swarthe i will focus on my actual interest so wealth is not our actual interest spiritual enlightenment is our actual interest and that is what we need to focus on now we may not be old and nearing death like the avanti brahmana is but we also do not know how much time we have with this yaad how much whatever time we have we may not be able to devote it entirely for self-realization but at least the time that we set out for our spiritual practices for our direct connection with krishna through mantra meditation through shastra study so through prayer that at least we should be able to offer wholeheartedly and if we are not offering that wholeheartedly then that means we are we are infatuated still by material false material promises and are being taken for a ride by the mind and the senses by contemplating on scripture by meditating on the realizations of great souls like the avanti brahmana and by reminding ourselves unsentimentally about the realities of life about the ultimate futility of everything material and about the supreme glory of devotion we can free the mind of its infatuation we can make the mind from pramatta to apramatta as the avanti brahmana has done by his introspective meditation so also we can do introspective meditation to make the mind apramatta now chanting itself can make the mind apramatta also but sometimes when we are too distracted we chant and just uttering the words and we’re not putting our heart into it so many times the way to the heart is through the head so when we contemplate and bring ourselves to a basic level of sobriety through that contemplation then thereafter it becomes easier to take shelter of krishna when he manifests the holy name because we feel the need for prayer we feel the need for krishna we feel the need for an eternal shelter when we realize that the temporary is sooner or later going to leave us shelterless and this is what has happened in real life to avanti brahmana and after he has become shelterless materially now he’s realizing that instead of pursuing any other false shelters which is what people are doing due to being pramatta he says now i will become apramatta and even if some austerity is involved in the single-minded focus on on my enlightened self-interest i will endure that austerity so we do not have to perform much physical austerities but there is the austerity of trying to fix the mind in krishna and whatever difficulty might be there in that austerity if we accept that then that austerity will become the way eventually to ecstasy because by exercising to fix the mind on krishna gradually the mind will become attached to krishna and therein will be our akhila svartha our supreme interest because when the mind is attached to krishna then soon we will also return to krishna krishna says the symbol of the characteristic of your devotion is that the mind is attached to krishna the attachment will come gradually by gradually by sustained practice so contemplation should guard us to perform the austerity knowing that it alone is the pathway to ecstasy as the avanti brahman has realized and has resolved so can we also become realized and