Self-acceptance – Comparing Vidura and Dhritarashtra

[Sunday feast class at ISKCON, Mira Road, Mumbai, India]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna. I am grateful to be here amongst all of you today and today we will be speaking on the topic of the power of self-acceptance.
I will talk based on a contrast between the life and character of Dhritarashtra and Vidura. Am I audible behind? So, in some ways, life is like a card game. When you play cards, we all get a hand in the beginning.
Some people get a good hand. Some people get a bad hand. Now, the hand that you get, you could say it’s chance, it’s luck, whatever it is, that’s what you got.
And after that, how you play your hand, that is where your expertise comes in. So, for all of us, we get a hand at life. At the start of our life itself, we get some kind of hand.
And in some ways, it is good, some ways it is bad. So, actually speaking, everybody, the hand that they get, is bad in some ways. For some people, it may not look bad.
Last several years, I’ve been spending almost six to eight months outside India, especially in America. And in India, we think America is a very prosperous, wealthy, it’s like a dream land. In fact, when I completed my studies in engineering, I was supposed to go to America, but I was introduced to Krishna Consciousness, so I decided not to go.
And then maybe 20 years later, I went as a Mahabodhika speaker. And after that, when I came back, all my relatives, who had been very disappointed with me, when I didn’t go to America for higher studies, they said, now your life is successful. You went to America.
So, the point is that actually, we think America is a wonderful place. Now, yes, at a material level, in terms of physical facilities and physical prosperity, it’s good. It’s much, much better than India.
But there is something called, there is, you know, we talk about wealth in terms of financial wealth, but there is also social capital. Social capital means that the kind of relationships that we have, the kind of family and community support that we have. And that is cripplingly lacking.
The people are extremely lonely. Even small children, they, their parents don’t have time for them. If the parents have time, they don’t know how to deal with their children.
It’s, it’s, neither can children relate to parents, nor can spouses relate to each other. It’s a very lonely society. The point here, I’m not saying to trash America.
The point is that people in America get a different kind of car. And in India, they get a different kind of car. Normally, if you meet a college student, one of the things you ask is, okay, what do you do? Where do you come from? What do your parents do? So I was told that it is not proper in an American college to ask students, what do your parents do? Why? Because often there is quite a sad story behind it.
Many of the monks are separated and it brings up painful memories for them. They say, better, they talk about it, don’t talk about it. Now what is the normal, just a social enquiry is considered impolite over there.
So everybody gets a particular hand. And now, we all need to firstly accept the hand that we have. And then, we play it as well as we can.
But if we refuse to accept the hand itself, and we resent the hand, then it becomes almost impossible to play it well. So I talk about Dhritarashtra and Vidura and we’ll draw some parallels from there in our lives. So both of them at one level got a bad hand.
What was the bad hand that Dhritarashtra got? Yes. He was born blind, without eyes. And what was the bad hand that Vidura got? Sorry? He was made his servant’s child, made his servant’s son.
So although in one sense, he was born from a royal father, because he was not a royal mother, so although he was born in that family, right from birth itself, he was deprived of the opportunity to inherit the kingdom. So in general life, everybody gets a bad hand. Some way or the other.
After they get the bad hand, what do they do? So if we look at Dhritarashtra, what happened is he was not the He could never accept that I can’t be the king and he was always craving, can I somehow become the king and eventually if I can’t become the king, my son must become the king. Now, this desire at one level is natural. If anything desirable is available for us, we naturally want it.
If we don’t get it, we may want our loved ones to get it. So, the desire itself is not bad. In any situation that we are in life, we all want to progress naturally.
Say if we are in a job, we would like to get promotion. If we are staying in a particular house, we want to visit the house. That’s the desire to progress is natural.
However, if that desire makes us lose sense of dharma, lose sense of what is right or wrong. If one desire becomes everything for us, then it becomes what is called an obsession and obsession is dangerous. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita in the 7th chapter, 10th verse, धर्मा अविरुद्धो भूतोष्य। भूतेजु कामो स्मीप्रतारिष्यवा। This calm refers generally to desire.
We all have desires, but our desires, our ambitions, the ambitions should not cross over the line of dharma. Now, when ambition, say, goes beyond ethics, then it becomes greed. Ambition is natural for everyone, but when the ambition makes us cut ethical corners and do wrong things, then that is greed, that is destructive.
So Dhritarashtra’s ambition at one level was natural, but his ambition, his aspiration, it made him lose perspective, lose perspective. It’s very striking that when we look at the world, we don’t look at the world as it is. Basically, the world is extremely complicated.
I was in Massachusetts University, and there they’re working on artificial intelligence. So I was talking, I gave a talk on science and spirituality over there. After that, I was talking to other professors, so MIT in America is a pioneer in artificial intelligence right now.
So they said one problem with designing artificial intelligence robots, now we have a lot of things you add up, which you do a lot of, a lot of machines which do a lot of things which earlier were not possible. But vision is a very complicated thing, because when we pursue things, so right now you’re sitting in this room, if I ask you, how many chairs are there in this room, now you’re not really concerned how many chairs are there in terms of count. You’re concerned, is there a chair for me to sit? So there is knowledge of matter, and there is knowledge of what matters.
Knowledge of matter is how many chairs are there in this room. Knowledge of what matters is, is there a chair for me? So now, of course, if you consider the organisers over here, they will need to have proper planning. Okay, we have got maybe 120 chairs, maybe more people come, we might need to get more chairs, do we have a stock? So basically when you come into the room, you don’t enter and start counting how many chairs are there.
So where do you want to sit? Is there a chair where you can sit? So the same principle applies to the world at large. The world is so complicated that we don’t take in the whole world, we can’t, we’ll be overwhelmed by its complexity. So we look at the world in basically three basic terms.
What is my way? What will come in my way? And what will help me along my way? These are the three basic things that we look at. So if, say, you go to office and you are working with a particular colleague, now that colleague might have that whole personal life story. Now if you develop a personal relationship with them, you might want to know about it.
Otherwise, okay, what, my job is here. What is this colleague meant to do, which they can help me? And what is it that if they don’t want to trouble me? So this is how we basically look at the world. And this is a functional reduction of the world.
As I said, the world is very complicated, but we do a functional reduction of the world centred on our purpose. So based on our purpose, what is my purpose? What will help me in my purpose? And what will hinder me in my purpose? This is knowledge of what matters. So there is knowledge of matter and knowledge of what matters.
And when we look at the world, we focus on knowledge of what matters to us. However, here it’s vital that our purpose be positive, be healthy. So if Dhritarashtra’s purpose is I want to become the king, then for him throughout his life, there is nothing but frustration.
Because just at that time, now we could say that in the government, there is a separation between the politicians and the military. So many times the politicians just sit in their air-conditioned armchairs and give orders to the soldiers to go and fight. I was in a retreat of several Americans recently.
They had come to India, they had taken them around. So one of them was an American soldier who had retired because of injury. The soldiers were telling us that actually, many of the wars which America gets into, there’s no real American interest to it.
It is the politicians who want it. Because they can make arms sales and they can get a lot of money. So the point I’m making over here is that today the politicians might not have any great physical prowess because they are not on the ground fighting.
The military has to have physical prowess. But at those times, the king was also a practical fighter, leading the army from the front. So because of that, for him, for Dhritarashtra, there was no way he could become the king.
Sometimes in Bollywood movies, you might see a blind person also fighting. Now that is just, okay, it’s good for entertainment, but it’s a crippling limitation. It doesn’t work so easily in real life.
So if there’s a limitation, it’s a limitation. But what happens if we decide a particular purpose for our life, then our vision shrinks around that purpose. And that’s required at one level because we need to function.
But if that purpose itself is not attainable, you could say, why is life so unfair? Why can’t a blind person become a king? Why was I born blind? Why is the system like that that a king cannot be a blind person? You could rail against the system. But if that is the system, you have to accept it. If we don’t accept it, the only result of that is we end up shrinking our vision.
Shrinking our vision. And then, say for example, this is the way I want to go and there’s an unbreakable wall over there. And all that happens is I keep banging my face, banging my head, banging myself against the wall, and the wall doesn’t break.
Only my fists and my head and my body breaks. So for Dhritarashtra, his vision shrunk like that. He said, I want to be the king.
As the wall is not breaking, then what do I do? If this wall is not breaking, then I will blow up the whole house. So basically, when we set up a particular goal for our lives, say A, we are in a particular job and we want our boss’s job. But, now if the boss is incompetent, the boss will fire him.
And then we might become the boss. But if the boss is very competent, and the boss is actually more competent than us, then if I decide that my happiness will be if I get that boss’s chair, I may never get it. So what has happened is we can’t change the situations in our lives sometimes.
Not all times, but sometimes it may not be possible. But then we can change our definition of happiness. Somebody might say, my definition of happiness is I want to become the boss in my office.
My definition of happiness is I want to earn more money than my brother. Or my definition of happiness is I want a bigger house than my relative’s house. Whatever.
Now we all have certain definitions of happiness, which either we have consciously chosen or they are unconsciously imposed on us. Either way. And then our vision gets shrunk around that.
So, Dhritarashtra, because he could never accept that, why am I blind? Why can’t I become the king? So throughout his life, he was constantly craving, when will I become the king? Why can’t I become the king? And Dhritarashtra, in a sense, was not a bad person. He was a weak person. And in general, wherever there is weakness, wickedness is nearby.
Weakness is where a person has anger, has lust, has greed. And based on that lust, anger, greed, that person might occasionally do something wrong. That’s weakness.
But wickedness is where the person is cold-blooded. Weakness is hot-headed. Suddenly you are angry and do something terrible.
But wickedness is a person cold-bloodedly plans. How can I hurt this person the most? So now this is like a slippery slope. At the top of the slippery slope is weakness.
At the bottom of the slippery slope is wickedness. So Dhritarashtra was at the top of that slippery slope. Who was at the bottom? Duryodhana.
So Dhritarashtra had weakness. Duryodhana had wickedness. So wherever there is weakness, somebody with wickedness will come there and grab that opportunity.
So somebody cannot face the difficulties of life. They are not internally strong. That’s weakness.
So when something goes wrong, they just become very depressed, they go into self-pity, they start feeling very sorry for themselves. That’s weakness. And everybody will feel like that because life is tough.
Sometimes all the little happen. But when there is weakness, say for example, a college student, feels, oh, I’m not good enough to get good grades in my exams, all the other students are better than me. Now in colleges, especially in modern colleges today, there’s so much pressure that you have to have a partner.
Oh, I’m not attractive enough to attract a partner. And then they feel inferior because of that. And then there’s weakness.
And in that college premises, there are people with wickedness. There might be a drug. You’re feeling down? Just take this drug.
You’ll feel good. You take it once, you take it twice, you take it thrice. Now when somebody does drug peddling, they are not selling drugs to the students.
They are selling students to the drugs. They’re selling students to the drugs. In several universities in America, it’s a disaster.
American president has declared drug abuse as a national emergency over there. It’s there in India also, in some parts, especially Punjab and other places. But it is a serious issue.
So whenever there is weakness, there will be somebody with wickedness who will want to exploit, who will want to exploit. So when there is weakness, we need to deal with that weakness in a healthy way. We don’t deal with that weakness in a healthy way, then there is somebody with wickedness out to exploit.
If somebody is unhappy in a relationship, now you have to work to improve the relationship. But if somebody is unhappy, there will be somebody else who will be out there to tempt you, to allure you, to get you to break heaven, destroy the family. So whenever there is weakness, wickedness is not far away.
That person may not be wicked, but the wicked person will make a weak person wicked. So this is, if a person doesn’t accept the situation that they are in, this is the hand that life has dealt me with. If you don’t accept it, then we make things much worse.
Weakness, if it is not accepted and worked on, then we succumb to wickedness and everything becomes infinitely worse. And that’s what Dhritarashtra’s life story is. From a person who was business-blind, he ended up becoming a person who was evil.
He had his own daughter-in-law being disrobed in front of him. Any half-decent person would stop that. But he didn’t.
He was ready to have such monstrous dishonour happening right in front of him. He didn’t do anything at all. And eventually, the consequence was that all his 100 sons were lost.
So when we don’t accept our weakness, that weakness combines with the wickedness and then everything can be destroyed. And that weakness deprived us of one thing, but we give in to wickedness and then we end up deprived of everything. So Dhritarashtra did not have a kingdom, but he had 100 sons.
But eventually what happened? He neither had the kingdom nor he had 100 sons. He lost everything. So I take this class in three parts.
The first part I talk about how the lack of self-acceptance can lead to destruction. That is based on Dhritarashtra’s story. In the second part, I’ll talk about Vidura and how self-acceptance can lead us on a healthy path.
And in the last part, I’ll talk about how we can walk on this path of self-acceptance. But after each part, we’ll have a short break and we can have some questions. So at this point, are there any questions or comments? Yes, please.
When we are weak, how do we come over that weakness in the path of devotion? Is there any solution without devotion or do we have to take devotion in that sense? Okay, whenever there is a weakness in our life, is devotion the only solution or is there a solution apart from devotion also? See, we don’t have to have an exclusive idea of devotion. Devotion doesn’t just mean coming to a temple and doing some chanting of Hare Krishna. Devotion also means that we redefine our whole life as a way of service, as a way of how can I make things better.
In fact, this idea of overcoming weakness is what I’m going to speak in the second part, which is about Vidura. So basically, we can say that bad things happen to everyone. And one question which we all get at some time or the other is, why do bad things happen to people? Yeah, why do bad things happen to people? That’s a question which comes upon everyone also.
Now, yes, you can go into philosophy and try to answer this question. But more importantly, for practical purposes, not the question why bad things happen to good people, but when bad things happen to good people, what do good people do? When bad things happen to good people, what do good people do? Do they let those bad things make them bad? Or do they choose a path by which they try to bring some good out of their bad situation? So let’s look at the character of Vidura. So Vidura also, I’ll answer the question that you posed, because the question was related to the next part of the class.
So now Vidura also had the situation where he could never become the king. Now, if you look at the history of, say, Islam and how Islam has expanded, the expansion of Islam from the 6th century onwards to now is one of the most dramatic expansions of any religious political power across the world. But if you see, the history is filled with intrigues, violence, murder, and it is, people feel that, oh, Islamic terrorism is a big problem.
Yeah, it is. But one of the biggest victims of Islamic terrorism is the Islamists of Muslim world. In the current conflicts over there, so many people are being killed.
The point is, I’m not going to analyse Islam over here. The point I’m making is that we see the situation, if you look at the history, that this person becomes a king, and then maybe his nephew or his uncle comes and kills him, and then he becomes a king. And Islam exists soon after Muhammad itself, the next several caliphs, one of them after another were killed.
And then this person, every person died, not dead naturally, but it was murder. So here what is happening, that when somebody finds that I want to be the king, I can’t be the king, then they start going on a murderous path. And this is not just in Islam.
That’s recent history, so I’ll just give an example. But it can happen anywhere. And you could say, Duryodhana also chose that path.
If somebody, if I can’t, somebody can’t become, if I can’t become the king, who is in my way, I destroy it. And Krishna talks about this in the Ramayana. He says, this enemy I’ve killed, and that enemy I’ve eliminated.
And once I eliminate, then I will become the supreme controller. So that mentality, that is the path of Vitharashtra, or the ancient path of Duryodhana. But Vidura did not go on that path.
He did not take, oh I can’t, who says I can’t be the king? Whoever says that, I will eliminate you. He did not choose that path. He accepted.
So life has given us certain cards. Now with the cards that we have, what is the best game that we can play? So Vidura, right from his early childhood, he was recognised for his wisdom. Some children, right from their childhood itself, you can make out some characteristics.
Some children are quite studious. Some children, when they, all children cry. But some babies when they cry, it’s like they bring the house down by their crying.
Even when they are in their crutches, even when they are in their crutches, they are lying down and thinking, when am I going to take the house over? This is not necessarily in a negative sense. They have that zeal to, you could say they have the Kshatriya power. So Vidura recognised right from his childhood that I, that he had wisdom.
So rather than saying, why can’t I become the king? He groomed himself for the role of an advisor. He, now somebody might say that actually the role of an advisor is for the Brahmanas. That is among Kshatriyas.
I am Kshatriya. He is not exactly a Kshatriya. Some people could have argued about that.
But rather than resenting that situation, he accepted and he groomed himself accordingly. And soon, he was, although he was very young, now Bhishma was the level of the father of Dhritarashtra. And that means he was also the level of the father of Vidura.
But Vidura became so expert that even Bhishma would listen to the advice of Vidura. And he became an indispensable part of the ruling team. After Pandu retired, Dhritarashtra became the caretaker king.
None of them had children till then. So then Dhritarashtra was on the side of the throne. But Bhishma took care of all the Kshatriya aspect of ruling, fighting and subjugating miscreants.
And Vidura took care of all the Brahminic aspects, that means administering justice, hearing the cases of people and resolving issues. And Vidura gained a lot of influence just by that. So what did Vidura do basically? So normally if somebody is, at least in traditional society, if somebody is born in a particular family, you could say that their birth, to a large extent, determined the trajectory of their life.
If you are born in a Brahmana family, you grow up to be a Brahmana. Not that everybody had to, but more or less that was the culture, that was the upbringing, that was the training and it was easy for people to become Brahmanas. So their life trajectory was charted out.
But now he realised that if somebody is born in a Kshatriya family, the life trajectory is that I become a Kshatriya Guru. But that path is not working. So like I have these hands and with these hands I cannot be a winner over you.
So then, Chini Yogesh, what can I do with what I have? Sometimes you may feel in my life, all the doors are closed. My life is so terrible. This person doesn’t understand me, this person doesn’t understand me.
This person doesn’t care for me, this situation is so terrible, this is like this. Sometimes we feel like all the doors in our life are just closed. Now at that time, if we feel like the whole game of life is stacked up against us, one thing we could do is, life is itself not worth living.
And then, this is a thought which is straying very close to suicide. Life itself is not worth living. Or that thought can go even worse.
Not only is my life worth not living, if my life is so unhappy, what right does anyone else have to be happy? So then that is not just suicide, that can go towards genocide. It can then go towards homicide, where you kill one person. Genocide is where you kill hundreds and thousands of people.
So, many of these people who become mass killers, one problem with them, again it’s complex and you can’t generalise, but they have let resentment take over their life so much, and if I can’t get what I want, then whoever has what I want, they don’t deserve to live. And that’s why I’m going to kill indiscriminately. There are people who are terrorists, you just go and kill innocent people.
Now what are those innocent people? And what have those people done, anything to harm them? But their idea is that you are the whole part of the system that is depriving me of what I wanted in my life. And therefore, I will destroy you. This is a very dark way of thinking.
So instead of thinking in this way, if the game of life seems to be stacked against me, then instead of thinking that my life is not worth living, or nobody deserves to be happy, nobody deserves to live a happy life, instead of that, we can think, okay, maybe with the hand I have, this is not the game I should be playing. Maybe I need to change the purpose of life. Maybe I need to change the definition of my life.
You remember I said earlier, we don’t see the world in its totality. We see what matters to us. And what matters to us is determined by our purpose.
So when we are pursuing a particular purpose, then maybe it seems all the doors are closed and we feel life is so unfair. But if we just change the purpose. So Vidura decided that I can’t become the king.
So for that, the order is completely stacked against me. That’s not going to work. So then we just change.
And if we change the purpose, if we use the hands that we have and start playing the game accordingly, not resenting the hands, but accepting the hands, we find that there are opportunities which are still there. So if I want to go this way, and there’s a wall and it’s an unbreakable wall, instead of banging my head and my body against that wall, do I really need to go this way? What if I go this way? Oh, here’s a door. Is the door open? Oh, I can open it.
So what happens? The same situation in which we feel all the doors are closed, if we just accept that situation, then that acceptance can enable us to start finding a better way, a better way of living. It is not that the bad thing that has happened, the bad hand that I’ve got, is suddenly going to change. But in any situation that we are in, if it’s a typical situation, a terrible situation, if we are resentful and try to beat against the situation, we only hold ourselves.
But if we accept, this is the situation I am in, now what is the best I can do about it? Maybe we readjust our purpose, try to look for some other path. I have had a door open for us, a door which we hadn’t even noticed will be there for us. It will emerge and open, and a path will be shown for us.
So because we don’t look at the world as completeness, the way we see the world is based on our vision. So the way we see the world is based on our purpose. If we change our purpose, basically we change our world by that.
Because our world is not the whole world. Our world is a reduction of the actual world based on what is our way, what will get us along the way, and what we’ll get in our way. Now, if I change my purpose, this way is not okay, this is my way.
And what will get me along the way? And what will get in my way? Can I remove it? Maybe this path, the obstacles are not removable. But this path, the obstacles are removable. So even when things are bad for us, it is not the end of life.
It doesn’t have to be the end of life. Accept the situation for it. Accept the situation for it.
Accept doesn’t mean we are passive. It doesn’t mean we just say, oh, life is so unfair, I can’t change anything. This is the way I am.
This is my destiny. No. Within that situation that you are put, you see what is the best that you can do.
And once you start seeing what is the best you can do, you’ll find that there’s a lot of power that you still have. So Vidura used that power. Now Dhritarashtra did not accept his advice.
And therefore Dhritarashtra lost. Yudhishthira recognised the virtue of, virtuousness of Vidura. And Vidura used his virtue.
He was not only just virtuous, but he was also shrewd. He understood the way real politics work. And he protected the Pandavas.
He protected the Pandavas from the many dangers that they faced. But Yudhishthira says later on, oh Vidura, you protected us the way a bird protects its baby birds. Although he had no father, you acted like our father.
And you protected us from many dangers. So Vidura did what he could in that situation which he was in. And eventually when Dhritarashtra lost everything, that was the time Dhritarashtra had no one.
But still he had Vidura. The same Vidura whom he had rebuffed, whom he had neglected, whose insight by Duryodhana he had not stopped, that same Vidura came to his rescue. So, although you could say comparatively speaking Dhritarashtra had much more royal privilege than what Vidura had.
But because Vidura played his hands well, not only did Vidura create a bright chart for his life, he also at the end of his life of Dhritarashtra, brightened that life. He ensured that Dhritarashtra’s life did not have an inauspicious end the way Duryodhana’s life had an end. So even if our situation is dark, not only can we do well in that situation, but even those who have a better situation than us, we may be able to help them also.
So this acceptance, self-acceptance and acceptance of the situation around us, that helps us to wield power within the situation that we are in. Many people today, they think power means the power to change the situation. And if you don’t have that power, you become very resentful, very resentful.
So many people, especially in the western world, in the westernised world, have this idea that actually throughout history, men were in power and men exploited women. And now women are rising and they will not allow men to exploit women anymore. Now this is such a distorted view of history.
It is not, yes, there have been cases where men have abused women, no doubt about it. But then there are also cases that the men who used to work in various places, they were abused by their master. The world is an abusive place.
And everybody gets a bad name. And the important point over here is that, I was giving a class in America and I was talking about history and I was making this point. And then one girl walked up to me and said, why did you use the word history? I said, what’s wrong with the word history? I said, history is his story.
It should not be his story. It should be her story. I said, I don’t even know whether whoever coined the word history had his story in mind.
It is a name for a subject. Well, everybody, if you see, life was tough for everyone. And different people in their different situations get into trouble.
And everybody has to deal with the trouble. Why I’m giving this example is, today, especially today is one, if people think that if I’m in a difficult situation, I just want to end this, end this relationship and get out of it and just put an end to it and move on with my life. That’s my fault.
Now that’s not the only way to accept fault. You accept the situation and then work within the situation. And there’s a lot of power that can be exerted within the situation also.
Sometimes we reject the situation. Rejecting situations is very easy. But what is the consequence of that? So there’s a lot of complications that comes with that also.
So acceptance doesn’t mean that you have to accept being victimised by others, others being loved. There is a limit to acceptance also. Pandavas did not just accept everything the Kauravas did.
When a particular limit was crossed, the Pandavas fought against it. But the point here is that we shouldn’t think of power means, oh, this is a bad situation. I won’t accept the situation.
I’m just going to fight against this. There are sometimes some situations where fighting against those situations is almost impossible. Or fighting against those situations takes so much energy that then you have nothing left to do.
You have no energy left to do anything else after that. Okay, accept the situation and work within that situation. And when you work within that situation, you discover that you are not as powerless as you thought you were.
There are things we can do even within the situation that we are in right now. So Vidura, as I said, created a brighter trajectory for his life. So much so that he even brightened the path and life of someone who had created a dark trajectory for himself.
It was Dhritarashtra. So this is the second point I was going to speak about, how Vidura, what he did was he changed the purpose of his life. And then he found laws only.
He couldn’t become the king, but he had the natural abilities to become a sage, a raj initiate. And that he became in a sense. So I’ll complete the third point and then we can have questions in the end.
Now, what does this all mean for us in our particular situations? Basically, when we talk about acceptance, there are two ways of looking at it. One is to say that everything is perfect the way it is. And other ways, everything is lousy, everything is terrible.
Reality is never in the shades of black and white. It’s always in various shades of green. So some people, especially some psychologists, people have low self-esteem and then they say, oh, you know, whatever the world says, you are perfect the way you are.
I don’t know if there’s anyone in the world who can say I am perfect the way I am. All of us have crippling deficiencies and all of us have many areas in which we can work at it. So self-acceptance should open the door to self-transformation, not close the door.
Self-acceptance means this is where I am and I accept where I am. But after I accept, then I move to Jesus. Say there is who we are presently and then there is who we are potentially.
So if you tell someone you are perfect the way you are right now, then what we are doing is who they are potentially, we don’t allow that to manifest. So really respect for a person is not just I respect you for whoever you are. Yes, that’s good, but I respect you for who you are presently, but I also respect you for who you are potentially.
And from what you are presently, you should go to what you are potentially. And that is the whole idea of parenting. Parenting means parents love their children as they are presently, but the parents also see what my child can be potentially.
And parents try to mould their life in such a way that the child who is there presently can become who they can be potentially. And that applies to us also. So self-acceptance doesn’t mean passivity, it means intelligently directed activity.
This is where I am, how can I move forward from here, how can I move forward from here. And for parents, now spiritual life or the principles of bhakti yoga can be very empowering. Why? Because at one level we understand that whatever situation we are in, it might be because of this thing, okay, I am like this because I was born this way, because my parents were like this, my neighbours were like this, the locality which I was born was like this.
But beyond all these circumstantial factors, there is a transit. The way we are presently, ultimately it is under Krishna’s power. And from wherever we are presently, if we let Krishna mould our lives, then Krishna can make us who we can be potentially.
So when we practise bhakti, bhakti has two aspects to it. One is transcending, the other is transforming. Transcending means, in the situation you are in, just raise your consciousness above the situation and connect with Krishna.
Or you have this problem, you have this issue, that issue, it doesn’t matter, just connect with Krishna. That is transcending the situation you are in. And we all need to do that.
Say for example, when we come to the temple and just absorb ourselves in Krishna Keertan, Krishna Katha, when we do our japa, these are the times when we are transcending our situation. Along with transcending our situation, we also can and should work to transform, transform ourselves, transform the situation. But, and bhakti has both these aspects.
So Krishna, for example, in 4th, 7th and 8th in the Bhagavad Gita, the famous verses, paritranaya sadhunam, vinam shari cha vishkatham, dharmasamsthapanam, sambhavapi yuge yuge. So now this is world transformation. Those who are wicked people in power, Krishna says I’m going to eliminate them.
And those who are virtuous, I’m going to enthrone them. And this way, I’m going to establish them. This is world transformation.
But 4th, 9th, the words immediately after that is, janmakacchavidinam, evam yogetikathuraham, tyaktvadevam bhuvanjanam, naitimameti sarvajanam. So Krishna says over there, that those who know me, those who have become absorbed in me, they will rise beyond this world of distress and death. They will attain me.
This is transcending the world. So for all of us, both these aspects are there. So now when we have certain weaknesses, if we just repeatedly define ourselves as a weakness, oh I am like this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this.
We self-identify with our weakness, then that only disempowers us, as it fills us with bitterness and resentment. Okay, this is the way I am. However I am, Krishna still loves me.
I’m still a part of Krishna. Now Krishna is still present in my heart. Let me connect with him from wherever I am.
That is the aspect of transcending the situation. But once we connect with Krishna and then we get strengthened by that connection with Krishna, then Krishna says, te shamsad-karimdana, bhajatam pripurvam, tadami buddhi-yogam tam, ye nama-mukti-yogam So Krishna says, tadami buddhi-yogam tam, ek veto bhakti priti-purvam If we do it affectionately, if we affectionately serve Krishna, then he will give us the intelligence by which we can make wise choices. Okay, so any situation that we are in, let’s connect with Krishna, let’s pray to Krishna.
And then, okay, what is the best way I can handle the situation? Sometimes we feel that the situation is so terrible. I just can’t do anything in this situation. I’m just powerless.
Have any of you felt like that? That I’m in a situation that there’s nothing I can do in this situation. I’m completely powerless. And if you have felt like that, yes, many of you have felt.
Those of you who have not felt, you will feel soon in future. I’m not making a negative prediction, but that’s just the way your life is, unfortunately. So we all feel powerless at times.
Now when we feel powerless, there is one way in which we can challenge this idea of, oh, I just can’t do anything about this. One thought exercise. What is that thought exercise? It’s no matter how bad things are, can I make them worse? Who wants to make them worse? They’re already terrible.
It’s not that we should make them worse, but it’s just an exercise. No matter, thought exercise. No matter how bad things are, we are never so powerless that we can’t make a bad thing worse.
Say, if I get a fracture and I’m immobilised for six months, six weeks, I am in a fracture. I mean, my foot is in a cast and I’m in a bed. That’s a miserable situation.
I may say I’m powerless, but even in that situation, I can take a hammer and crack my other knee. Now, obviously, we shouldn’t do that. But the point is, we are never so powerless that we can’t make a bad situation worse.
And what this means is, if we can make a bad situation worse, that means we are not as powerless as we think. If we can make things worse, then we can make them better also. We can make them better also.
Sometimes when people fall sick, and then they are not sick, they are on the bed, but they have become so irritable, so disagreeable, that they are sick and their caregivers become sick of them. Oh, what will happen? If, yes, you’re sick and it’s terrible. It’s not beginning to be sick.
But even in that sickness, there are people who are graceful. There are people who are calm, who accept the situation. So no situation is so bad that it makes us completely powerless.
We all have some little power in the situation. If we can make a bad situation worse, then we can make it better also. And if we just decide this, make this intention, okay, in this situation, this is a terrible situation, how can I act in the best possible way in this situation? If we just make this decision, then we’ll find our world will change.
What do you mean? How will the world change? The world is the same. But as I told you earlier, our world, we don’t see the world as it is. We see the world reduced according to what matters to us.
So if my purpose is, okay, this is a terrible situation and I accept it, but how can I make this better? How can I act in the best possible way in this situation? As soon as we make that intention, we find there are opportunities. Oh, I can do this. I can do this.
I can do this. No, I’m annoyed. I’m irritable.
But for the next one hour, I will not snap at anyone. I will not be rude to anyone. I will be polite to everyone.
And if you smile at someone and talk politely to them, and they talk politely to you, and they smile back at you, you feel good. Oh, then after a while, you just, if you think for the next life, the rest of my life, I will be polite. And then at the next convocation, we’ll say, our mind will say, you leave politeness for the rest of your life.
And we’ll snap at you at that time. So when things are tough, don’t think of the rest of your life. Just reduce your working frame to a very short limit.
Just for the next one hour, can I be the best that I can be? And for one hour, I can be. Do your best for one hour. And then at the end of that one hour, appreciate yourself.
Good job. Thank Krishna. Thank you, Krishna, for giving me this opportunity to do what I want.
And then look at the next one hour as another limit. So if you work in this way, we’ll find that even the darkest of situations, we can find light. And we can create a better situation for ourselves.
And we can create, be a source of light for ourselves and others in dark situations also. And those dark situations are not going to stay forever. They are going to end.
And when they end, we will have become tougher. We will have become stronger. We will have become wiser.
We will have come closer to Krishna in those situations. So both these aspects, transcending and transforming, they work on the foundation of self-acceptance. This is the situation I am in.
I accept it. It’s not a good situation. In fact, it’s a terrible situation.
I don’t deny it. But this is the hand that I am in. What is the best way I can deal with it? Let me just pray to Krishna, rise above the situation.
And then when I rise above the situation, then my vision is not restricted to what I wanted to do. I can, when I rise above the situation, I can look at the situation from a different perspective. Okay.
From here, this path is blocked. If I risen above it, oh, this path is not that bad. I can move this way.
So we’ll find that door was a door and Krishna will empower us to walk through those doors. And we will discover the difficult situations that we were in. They, at one time, might seem like a dungeon for us, in which we are trapped.
But a new course will discover that the situation was not a dungeon, but it was a tunnel. And we walk through it, come to the end of the tunnel, and we see that it’s right at the end. So to summarise what I spoke today, I spoke on this topic of self-acceptance and the power of self-acceptance.
I started by talking about how life is like a card game. And we all get a bad hand at times. Or there’s something bad about the hand that everyone gets.
So, but what is in our hand is how we play with the hand that we already have. So we talked about how Vidura and Dhritarashtra, both of them, had a bad hand. Dhritarashtra was blind, while Vidura was low-born.
Now what happened for Dhritarashtra, he kept craving and craving for the kingdom that was just impossible for him to get because of his blindness. And that craving shrunk his vision. So to have desires and ambitions is not wrong.
But when our desires make us go beyond dharma, that is when it becomes terribly wrong. So I talked about when we look at the world, we don’t look at the world in totality. We look at it, we take in a functionally reduced picture of the world, which is based on primarily three things.
Not knowledge of matter, but knowledge of what matters. Not how many chairs are there in this room, but is there a chair for me? That means, what do we look at? What is my way? What will get in my way and what will get me along my way? So Dhritarashtra, he had the weakness of constant craving for the kingdom. But wherever there is weakness, there will be somebody with wickedness who will exploit that wickedness.
And that will make a weak person a wicked person. Or at least make a weak person act in wicked ways. Just like there are students who can’t cope with the pressures of college life and there are drug peddlers.
They don’t sell drugs to the students. They sell the students to the drugs. They ruin lives.
So we need, so what Dhritarashtra did was he became so despotic, so evil that he was openly watching him glee, waiting for his own daughter-in-law to destroy him. So what happened? He, in a dark situation, he let resentment make him even darker. So when somebody becomes resentful, they think life is not worth living and they go towards suicide.
Or they think, if my life is not worth living, how dare anyone else have a life worth living? And then they go towards homicide or genocide. These are very dark areas to go towards. Vidura chose to open the gate.
He recognised that he couldn’t become the king. So he readjusted his goal. This is, so let me become advisor to the king.
And when he readjusted his goal, he found that he don’t open for him. He had natural intelligence by which he could become such a virtuous and wise person that he even be shunned by the advisor. And so much so that Dhritarashtra, whose life had become dark by his own dark choices, Vidura brought light into them.
That dark light toward the end of his life. So we all can, by accepting the situation that we are in, ensure that our life doesn’t become like Dhritarashtra’s, but become like Vidura’s. And for that, I talked about three broad principles toward the end.
First was that just when we find that the game of life is stacked against us, then just see if you can change your goal. And then you’ll find that door is open. So don’t let your definition of happiness deprive you of happiness.
If I can’t be my, if I can’t get the position of my boss, okay, what can I do? So change your purpose. And for that, I talked about how buddhi can enable us to transcend the situation and then transform the situation. When we transcend, we rise above the situation and then realise this is not the only path I had to follow.
I don’t have to beat against a wall that can’t be broken. This is also a path. And then we raise our consciousness by connecting with Krishna.
Then Krishna gives the intelligence to find out how to take steps forward, which path to follow. And then we are in a bad situation where we feel powerless. Then the third point was that if we can make things worse, we can also make them better.
So just take, reduce the working frame to small manageable units. For the next one hour, can I do the best that I can? Can I take this one step forward? And if we do that, just take one step, one step forward, eventually we’ll find that the dark phase that we were going through was not a dungeon in which we were trapped, but it was a tunnel. And we’ll come to the light at the end of the tunnel, having become wiser, stronger and tougher.
Thank you very much. So any questions or comments? Thank you, Swamiji. Swamiji, you said that weakness, the weakness is there, wickedness is around, and the wickedness exploits the weakness and ruins a person’s life.
So if I have weakness, how do I magnify the wicked person around, so that I may stay in the weakness and try to get above, at least I would not be exploited by the wicked person? Okay, how do we identify who is the wicked person around us if we have weakness? So basically, those who, you can sit, thank you, those who draw out, those who fan and fuel the dark desires within us, we have lust, we have anger, we have greed, somebody who just fans and fuels it, we can say that if the effect of that person, associating with that person is that, I start feeling more angry, more resentful, more greedy, more or maybe more depressed, see, anger expressed outward is aggression. Anger directed inward is depression. When I’m so angry with myself, why am I not good enough? Why can’t I do this? Why don’t I look good enough? Why can’t I speak fluently enough? Why don’t I have a good enough memory? Why don’t I have this? Why don’t I have that? Anger directed inward leads to depression.
So whenever we interact with people, especially people with whom we interact regularly or people who influence us a lot, then after our interaction with them, we can observe, what is the effect on our consciousness? Is it that our resentment increases, our negativity increases, if the weaknesses within us are increasing, and we start getting more and more darker ideas about how to act on those weaknesses, then we can understand that that person is a wicked person who is drawing out the weakness within us. So in the Ramayana, Kaikeyi, Kaushalya and Sumitra, they were living reasonably happy, they were co-wives, so naturally there was some tension between them. But it was the same acceptable level of tension that is there in any family.
Who acted in the wicked way over there? Antara. And then Kaikeyi ended up in something wicked. So she had some insecurity, how will Kaikeyi will assert my position? But then, Mantras started exploding like that.
So we basically see, look at the effect on our consciousness in terms of our desires and our emotions of people’s association, based on that we can understand. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes, we do have one.
Okay, that’s actually, yeah. Pradeep, as you said, in this last question, we can identify the wicked person. But in the age of Kali, both wicked person and good person are within us only.
So if we will identify someone as wicked person, then we will be very angry upon him. So, isn’t it that our mind is the weakest, most wicked one? Outside, we should not see anyone wicked. Okay, it’s a good question.
Isn’t it that ultimately the wicked person is also inside us, and the good and bad centre that are inside us. If we see somebody as, identify somebody as wicked, then we will become angry with them. Well, it’s true, let’s put it this way, that whenever any dark desire arises within us, so there is an impression and there is a provocation.
Say for example, somebody has the urge to drink. Say somebody’s, their home is over here, and their workplace is over here, and in between there is a bar. Then there are two people staying over here, and one of them has never drunk and has no interest in drinking.
When they pass by, when they pass by, they don’t even notice the bar over there. Because there is no impression within them, so there is no provocation caused by them. But somebody who is drunk regularly, then, because that impression is there, as soon as they pass by the bar, they drink.
No, no, I have a lot of work to do, I can’t drink today. No, no, if you drink, you will be more relaxed, you will work better. No, no, last time I did that and I couldn’t work at all.
No, no, last time you drank too much, now get a little clueless. So, you know, the whole tuck of war will go on with them. So, now while that, you could say, is the bar the cause of the desire for alcohol? Well, yes and no.
The bar doesn’t trigger the desire that the person has never drunk because there is no impression within. So, if there is no impression within, the external will not cause the provocation. But, if we know that the impression is there within, now we can’t eradicate the impression very quickly.
That will require purification, that will take a lot of time. So, then during that time, we need to avoid the provocation. So, when we say somebody is a wicked person, it’s right, we don’t want to label people as wicked, but we could say that, okay, this person, the effect of this person’s association with me is negative.
So, we could say, maybe the dark side within me gets activated because of this person. So, then, I’m not saying this person is bad, but it is more than the effect of this person’s association on his bad performance. And then, we need to keep a distance.
Sometimes, even in the temple, we may come and there are some devotees whose association inspires us and induces us to serve Vishnu. Some devotees will come to the temple and he’s complaining about, the prasad is not good, the puja is dressing, the dressing is not done properly, the kirtan is out of tune, the management is like this, this is like that, and they’re constantly complaining. Now, yes, there may be things which are wrong and they need to be fixed, but if we don’t have the power to change that, and they don’t have the power to change that, then talking about it may not be very useful.
So, if we can talk with somebody who can fix things that are not good, by the way, just talking about it, how is it really helping? How is it enhancing Krishna consciousness? So, everybody is saying, okay, I can’t do anything about this right now and I don’t want to get involved in this. So, I’m not associating with this person. So, we’re not saying that devotees are bad devotees.
They’re also devotees. But the effect of their association on us is not devotional for us. So, we do acknowledge that it is not that people make us bad.
There is something bad within us which is maybe triggered by the association of some people. Now, sometimes they may themselves be malicious and they deliberately want to bring the bad out of us. Or sometimes they’re not malicious, but somehow the circumstances are such that their association brings the bad out of us.
So, if that is happening, then we need to guard ourselves. Does that answer your question? Yes, there’s a question. Hare Krishna.
Thank you very much for your good words. I just have one doubt. Having a bad hand when it comes to everyone, because we have a materialist future and it will come only in material terms or it will come as a bad hand to everyone? You said that everyone will get a bad hand.
So, as devotees, we will, material life and spiritual life, both are there, and is it come only bad hand for material things or is it come to the spiritual also? Okay, so when we say get a bad hand, we might get a bad hand in the spiritual life also? Well, it depends on how you define a bad hand. But suppose, say, we grew up in our devotional life in a particular community. We’re introduced.
I mean, we grew up when we bought a very nice house for those devotees and we grew up over there. And then somehow afterwards, maybe our job or family required us to go somewhere else. And then we go to some other community.
And maybe that community has a very different mood. And then we are not able to bond with that mood. Maybe we are in a community where there’s a lot of emphasis on a discipline, preaching, somebody else will be good, where else we go? And then the emphasis is primarily on deity worship or building a new temple.
Then we might not be able to gel with that. So, you could say that comparatively speaking, that is a better situation for me than this situation. So, we could call it a bad hand in some ways.
But we might find that sometimes when we go to a community different from where we were trained, instead of just criticising, this community doesn’t have that mood or this mood, you can say. Maybe it is an opportunity for us to broaden our conception of bhakti. That bhakti can be practised in this way.
People who are doing this are also practising bhakti in that way. Maybe they are not exactly practising the same way I’m practising. Maybe it’s not the same level of seriousness or whatever.
But that’s also, we can see that. But it is true that in a devotional life, we all do have our particular preferences. Say, we may like to hear the classes of a particular devotee.
We may have a particular relationship, close relationship, particular duties. We may like to go to a particular bhakti. These are all preferences.
And if what we feel naturally connected to in bhakti, we get more and more opportunity to do that, we can say that’s a good hand. And circumstantially, we are put away from those situations. We could say that’s a bad hand.
But it doesn’t necessarily mean that the opportunity for bhakti is lost for us. Or that the opportunity to practise bhakti in a particular way may be lost for us. And then we can try to practise bhakti in whatever we can in that situation.
And even if we maintain the desire, that was so wonderful. It was so nice that I could do that. If I could hold his palm, if I could associate with this devotee, if I could do this service.
And even that longing will purify us. When that longing will help us move forward in life. Okay.
Thank you. Thank you. As I put that question before, this is a question I’m asking you that, in this particular world, there are many wickedness against your weakness.
So go up with them. Everybody is jealous of everyone. It may be your brother, it may be your friend, or it may be your neighbour.
So how do we understand that this person is wicked and he is stamping out all my weakness and how should I get off from that? Okay. If you understand that everybody is jealous of everyone else. So how do we understand that this person is wicked and how do we get out of that situation? See, it’s not that simple.
Actually, everybody, you could say at one level, is like a monkey with snakes around them. That means we all have a mind which is like a monkey, restless. But it’s not just like a monkey which is restless, it’s also like a snake.
There are many snakes like this which are vicious. And if we are naive, the naive way of looking at the world is, everyone is a good person. If we are naive, we will be terribly hurt.
Because people will be jealous. We will be set up for disaster. So we cannot live naive in the world.
But the naive is one extreme. The other extreme of the pendulum is to go towards scepticism and cynicism. Everybody is a bad person.
There was one atheistic philosopher who was asked, do you believe in hell? And when he was asked, he obviously said no because I don’t believe in God. He said, no, of course I believe in hell. What is hell according to you? Because hell means other people.
So such a terrible, bad way of looking at things. So this is, if we start thinking everybody is a bad person, we will become paranoid. We can’t live.
So in between the extremities of naivety and cynicism is the courage to trust. That means I understand that there are many snakes inside me and there are many snakes inside me. But still I trust that you will not let those snakes come out of you and bite you.
And I will not let the snakes inside me come out and bite you. Now that trust has to be based on intentions. And sometimes they may go wrong.
But generally if we trust, if we use our reasonable intentions and trust, that trust also inspires others to bring out their best side. And it is through responsible relationships where we each bring out the higher side. So now with respect to some people who we see that they are wicked or they do seem to speak negatively about us, hurt us, backbite against us, then we have to do what is required to protect ourselves.
But the wicked persons never attack unless you are with all the weakness around you and we cannot do anything. There is a wall in front of us and we cannot break that wall. It’s like that.
And then you understand, you realise that yeah this is something wicked going on. But from the beginning till the end you cannot recognise that he is wicked. That’s the way my life is.
Life doesn’t ever come with a guarantee of right decisions. So we all make decisions. Sometimes we make the decisions right.
Sometimes we make the right decisions. And sometimes we make the decisions right. And I took this decision.
Now what is the best I can think of in this situation? So yeah, it’s that if there could be a way in which we could look into the heart of anyone before we form a relationship with them, we might think that, you know, then I can safely form relationships. But you know, if we could look into others’ hearts, then others would look into our hearts also. And then nobody would want to form a relationship with us.
Isn’t it? We all also have dark sides in us. So in that sense, there is a little bit of risk. And that’s why along with the horizontal relationship that we have with others, we yield the shelter of the vertical relationship with Krishna.
So it is when I’m relating with someone, I’m not simply relating with that person. I’m trusting Krishna. Using the intelligence given by Krishna, seeing this person as a part of Krishna, I act in a moral sense.
And sometimes when we act responsibly, when we act in a kind, respectful, responsible way, the other person also responds in a kind, respectful and responsible way. And then the relationship grows. But if the other person doesn’t respond in that, then we have to re-intelligence and say that, OK, this particular thing is not OK.
That doesn’t mean I reject it. But then I have to create some safety barriers and protect myself. Why? That doesn’t mean whatever I did in that relationship was simply a waste.
If I was doing this as in a mood of service to Krishna, that I’m relating to this person, but I’m relating to this relationship is also a way in which I’m serving Krishna, then we will spiritually evolve. We will grow through that relationship, even if we don’t grow in that relationship. That relationship may not grow, but we will grow through that relationship.
Thank you very much.