The Monk’s Podcast 5 with Shyamananda Prabhu- Living in the present – The bhakti-yoga way
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Thank you once again for joining today and we will continue our discussion on our monk's podcast discussion. So today we'll talk about living in the present and broadly we can discuss several points as we move on but I thought of discussing why living in the present is important, then why living in the present is not sufficient or and then how the Bhagavad Gita teachings can help us to live in the live fully in live fully in the present and beyond it also. So live in the present in my understanding it has basically the the focus that we often get caught in the past or the future.
We may lament about the past or we may crave for the future and that's how we miss out on whatever is available in the present. So the Bhagavad Gita talks about this as shochati and kankshati and Krishna says na shochati na kankshati do not anchor and do not lament. So in that sense living in the present can help us to experience life fully and also the tap the opportunities of the present fully whereas if we are not living in the present we are in the past or we are in the future or we are in some fantasy world which is a product of some random combination of our past of our thoughts from the past from the future and some imaginations of the mind.
So in that way we don't experience life fully. So in that sense to experience what the present is offering us as well as to tap those opportunities living in the present is is helpful and empowering. What are your thoughts about this? Yeah thank you for that nice beginning.
My thoughts just to begin to give you an overview of this topic that is living in the present and taking over your past. So if I see my life now I will divide my life into the phase where I'm not introduced to Bhagavad Gita Wisdom or Bhakti Wisdom and when I am introduced so there will be a difference in that. So before getting introduced to Bhakti Wisdom or Lord Krishna's way of understanding this universe past is pain, past is regret.
Oh that memory is very painful. Oh I missed out on that opportunity. I regret not doing this.
I regret doing that. Future more like a dream. How nice it would be if somehow I get that job.
How nice if I just get that H1B visa. How nice if I just could marry this particular person. How nice if I could be placed here.
Somehow if things go well I could get this lottery. So mostly it is a dream and a fantasy world and now if I have pain and regret behind me and just an empty future or a dream fantasy world in front of me the present is bound to be plain pure unadulterated bewilderment. I cannot take any action because sometimes the pain is too much which is in the past.
Sometimes I cannot take action because the sweetness of my dream I don't want that to be broken. So it's just like you have a very sweet dream and the alarm goes off and then you curse that alarm for stopping your enjoyment when actually it is telling you to spring into action now. So I lose that present and so what could be the difference? There are so many quotes and so many philosophers who say live in the now, live in the now and let go of the past.
I feel let go. Is it something like I hold the control button or do not dream about the future. Again I am powerless.
So the Bhagavad Gita first of all about past, present and future is time. So I am introduced to this very novel principle that Krishna says time I am. What do you know about time that is me.
So if you waste it you are wasting an energy which is me. If you are utilizing it properly then you are doing a favor for yourself and if you use that time to come towards me to approach me or to traverse on the path which I have shown then suddenly everything becomes right side up. Your decision to traverse on that path is correct.
You need to not so much dwell on your fantasies that is available and also to get out of that bewilderment I get those resources. So all of these things come into play when I make what Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita when I make that the goal of all my activities and I am happy that Arjun as a householder, as an administrator, as a warrior, as a prince, as a husband of three wives is not told to change any of these extraneous things just so that all the multitudes after the battle of Kurukshetra is over that means you, me and everybody today that you want to live in the present, let go of the past and not dwell too much in the future, you don't need to do these extraneous changes. You just need to make gaining transcendental knowledge or coming closer towards Krishna the goal and then at least you can make a beginning.
So these are my kind of foundational thoughts on how to live in the present. I agree it is not that easy because the Gita doesn't promise us cheap fruits, it doesn't promise us that paradise is just the next bus stop and you hop down into hop into paradise. No, it's never like that.
So for a student of yogic wisdom, yoga wisdom or bhakti wisdom, there are the same pains and the same travels and the same trials, tribulations but at least there is a definite goal and that is why you should not live in the past. You know exactly why you should not hanker about the future and then you know how you are able to live in the present because there is a lot of help given from within. So another way we can say thank you for these thoughts.
I like especially the point that the Bhagavad Gita can provide us a philosophical grounding to understand how to actually live in the present or how to not get caught up in the past or the future. One of the fundamental teachings I feel the way the Bhagavad Gita adds to this discussion is to help us get a flashlight for looking at our inner world. So that means inside us we are there and also our mind is there.
So we and our mind are two distinct things and it is our mind that oscillates going to the future, going to the past and if we understand this principle that I am different from my mind, then my mind may go to the past or may go to the future but I can, I as a conscious observer of the mind, as a spiritual being can observe my mind and can bring it back. So that differentiation between ourselves and our mind can give us a philosophical understanding of how to live in the present. Now, you want to add anything on this? No, no, you finish up your point.
One thing I find that this continuing the same theme of the philosophical mode of discussion that often without philosophy we can use certain techniques and they can help us but they can help us only up to a particular point. So now live in the present is good. At the same time, we also want to live for something more than the present.
We human beings are innately driven by the hope, the aspiration, the ambition for creating a better future. Say, right now with a global pandemic and most of us having to stay indoors, live in the present is actually something which is quite, can be quite unpleasant. If somebody is sick and they are in a hospital bed and we tell them live in the present.
Well, okay, but my present is full of pain, my present is full of powerlessness. So there is living in the present but there is also living for the present. We need a purpose and that purpose has to expand beyond the present.
In fact, to think about ourselves is to think about ourselves not as a isolated being in space and time but as a being who extends over space and time. That means if I have to take care of myself, I take care of myself not just right now but also I take care of myself in a way that the future me will also be taken care of. So if I have a delicious feast to eat in front of me and if I just binge on it, I may feel I'm taking care of myself, my needs, my desires but I'm not taking care of my future self.
So living in the present, if you consider from the Bhagavad Gita's perspective, it can also lead to a very passionate way of living. The Bhagavad Gita talks about these three modes, goodness, passion and ignorance. And if living in the present means being conscious of what all is happening in the present and be conscious of what we are doing and doing it well, that is good.
But if we start living for the present, that means whatever pleasures I have available for me right now, I just chase those pleasures and enjoy them and don't think about anything else. So if somebody who is young and healthy right now, if they live for the present, their future may well be very dark. If they don't take care of their health, they get into some habits that take a toll on their health in the future.
Smoking might feel good right now in the moment but what about the future? So that means we live in the present but we need a purpose bigger than the present. So when we have a bigger purpose and then we see how our present actions can contribute to fulfilling that purpose or at least progressing toward that purpose, then that is the most meaningful way of living in the present. Can I join? Yeah, please.
So I think it was when Prabhupada was discussing Albert Camus, the French existentialist, and he made a comment that the only question you can ask is whether to commit suicide or not. Now the suicide, as I learned later, is not the commonly known thing in Indian life. He had some different meaning behind it.
But a point Prabhupada made was that somebody may not agree with the Gita's whole saying, that is, whether Krishna is God, whether understanding Krishna or serving Him should be the goal of your life. That is allowed. There are many people during Krishna's time, after his time, and today also, may be even reading Krishna's words and they may say that it is not to the person Krishna that we need to supplicate or we need to be a disciple of.
It is the unborn speaking through Krishna. So this is that classic, Prabhupada wrote an essay called Muni Ganeer Brahma. That means how the high and mighty intellectual giants are also deluded.
And he quoted another Gita verse itself to show that how they are deluded. That just because you have some material attributes doesn't mean you will understand that the goal of life is like a surgically precise thing. Become my devotee.
That's your goal. So why am I bringing this point of past, present and future? Just to take another angle, my past could be rich with experiences which I need to remember so I don't repeat that mistake. There is a famous adage that the only thing man learns from history is that man never learns anything from history.
Yeah, right. So I need the past and also I need to have some understanding of the future. We see how Swami Prabhupada destitute, forlorn, alone in New York is telling a Subway conductor, temples, devotees, books, whole society of a worldwide congregation of devotees all existing.
Only time is separating. Now of course we may say that Swami Prabhupada could be a personality who is beyond time or that could be said about that. So just to round it up, I know that I need to have one clear goal in life.
At the same time, just because having a goal, like we have very fashionable statements made today in some religions or sects that you just repeat this prayer and it's done. Now you don't even need to follow the basic rules and regulations. You are saved.
Your behavior could be anything but just because you are saved in the name, you are still in the blood or you are following a particular prophet or a messenger or a messiah or whatever. You don't need to do anything now. I find this not only cringeworthy but actually debilitating.
It goes against the grain of what we believe in. A person who has his likes, dislikes, all he needs to do is to change his choices, have a particular goal in life. So this saying that work as if everything depends upon you and pray as if everything depends upon the Lord, this gives me a good combination that when I am supposed to overcome a habit, help my fellow participants, show some gratitude, show determination, agree to my shortcomings.
There, if that is called work in a spiritual discipline, I have to do it as if everything depends upon me. I cannot say that why didn't you, why are you not showing determination? Maybe Krishna doesn't want me to do that. No, I need to do those things as if everything depends upon me.
So this is my external side and my inner cycle is I am asking for determination, I am asking for my past demons to leave me. I need to be aware, I need to be happy that I have a blissful future. Like a very important thing in the recent ILS in Mayapur, one very senior person related how another senior, his godbrother and a leader in ISKCON told him that, it is your job to be blissful.
As a spiritual leader, it could be one of your job description that you have to be blissful. Now of course, it is said in a lighter sense also, but it has a serious side also. It means for the sake of those whom you are leading, you have to be blissful.
They need to look it up to you. At the same time, you also have your own challenges and those private moments when you want to let go of the past, not being so much in the present, so that moment of prayer has to be in such a way that everything depends upon the Lord. We will just round it off with one comment from the 10th Canto.
Vishwanath Chakravarthy says that for a seeker, Vishwanath Chakravarthy Thakur is a stalwart Vishnu commentator. He appeared in the last few centuries ago and like a sadhaka, a seeker's day begins with trying to live in the moment, trying to live in the moment and then the whole day's work goes by and by the time you retire, you are painfully aware of how many things you did were just some baggage of the past, how much time was spent in daydreaming or how nice it would be if I could get this in charge ship or I could be made a temple president or whatever, whatever you feed or even in your own material life, whatever goals you want to achieve and then the present is who you see in your mirror and the painful awareness that I still have a long way to go. I didn't do much progress as far as my own criteria is concerned but I promise I will try to give at least the same effort if not more tomorrow.
So that hope keeps that small flame alive and I think these small moments coming together they can help you. The last thing is I don't think it is in my own personal experience, it is like you achieve it one day, it's like there is Mount Everest, you start off, you climbed it and then at 29,000 feet you are there and there is no more peak to climb and you are a conqueror of Everest. So staying in the moment doesn't seem like that, it's more like jumping on a trampoline and trying to touch a ceiling, you touch it momentarily again you fall back but as long as you fall on a trampoline you have something to help you again go up.
There is no trampoline, you are just on hard ground, that's very difficult. So the wisdom of Bhagavad Gita gives you that trampoline which has its own inbuilt mechanism to push you up. So you are comparing our daily life like walking on a trapeze and… Trampoline is something you jump and it helps you jump back, you have seen a trampoline? So if it is just hard ground then you don't need a push from the mechanism itself.
That's a good example. I think that, just going back to a few points which you mentioned, that it is our responsibility to be blissful, that can be correlated with Bhagavad Gita 1716 where Krishna talks about austerity of the mind and the first austerity of the mind that he says is Manah Prasada Saumyatvam. So Manah Prasad is translated sometimes as satisfaction, it can also be translated as cheerfulness.
So cheerful, being cheerful is an austerity of the mind and to the extent we are cheerful, to that extent actually we not only feel better but we also help others to be radiate positivity toward others and this can sometimes be a cover-up or a mask where one just denies the existence of inner problems or inner pain or it can be a recognition that the mind is fickle and the world is always going to have some problems or the other. So we are doing what we can to deal with whatever problems we have and during that time if we are realistically acting with awareness of our problems, then dwelling on those problems and feeling bad is not going to make anything better. So even if the mind is feeling bad, we push aside the mind and its feelings and try to cultivate cheerfulness.
The cheerfulness doesn't have to be a denier of problems but it can also be a result of being aware of reality and pursuing a purpose bigger than the problems. How far do you feel that cheerfulness can be borrowed from someone? Is it something like you can take somebody's help to be cheerful? Is it like a resource, extra money or like extra fine miles? Yeah, there are people who are quite uplifting. Just by being with them, we feel energized and uplifted.
So I feel certainly being with people, is it something that we consciously seek or it just subconsciously permeates into us? Sometimes they may speak some words of appreciation, encouragement that may cheer us up. But sometimes even if they don't do that, just being with them uplifts us. So I would say both are possible, both like a conscious upliftment or a subconscious upliftment.
So apart from just understanding with our intelligence that we need to cultivate cheerfulness, associating with cheerful people is also helpful. Any spiritual examples you know of people who you can say relatively that looking at their lifestyle, we can say they always lived in the present. There are many occasions when Prabhupada was remarkably conscious of the around him or he was very much in tune with what people were feeling and that's how he connected with people.
Mukunda Maharaj, who was Michael Grant at that time, in the initial days when he met Prabhupada for the first time, he said that he attended a talk of Prabhupada and after that he said I had attended many many teachers or celebrities talks or performances but after that they were just in a hurry to leave. But he said Swamiji seemed to have all the time in the world to talk with me and he seemed genuinely interested in me. He said his experience before was that most celebrities would be interested only in how I was their fan and how I admired them.
But they wanted to know how interested I was in them. But Prabhupada, I was amazed, was interested in me. So in that sense Prabhupada was quite attentive and in the present and we also see going on morning walks where it was not a planned lesson but you just observe things in nature and he was in the present but he was also with Krishna and he was using present, the present settings which he was in to impart timeless lessons about Krishna Bhakti and spiritual truths.
So that could be an example of somebody in the present. You have any other example? Yeah, I was just thinking that Prabhupada kind of prepared for almost four decades for his great adventure of coming to the western world and another aspect of his living in the present was the simplicity. He went to New York and he said my godbrothers tried in London because London was the center of the universe and now I came to know that New York is a center.
So I thought if I had to fail, let me fail in a different place. So there was no there was no bravado, there was no bragging about that because I feel I am the chosen one, things are going to be very easy for me. So if we see it was from the beginning of losing the Bhagavad Gita commentary, losing the Bhagavatam copy, a business coming crashing down and no success in a small fledgling project in Jhansi and then to top it all the icing on the cake of this misery was the two heart attacks and again one year no success in New York.
So he would mention on and the hint is when some of the senior devotees, those who became senior at that time of course four or five years and you could be a very senior person that Swamiji we miss those good old days of 26th Avenue in New York and Prabhupada's simple answer was these are the good old days. So I take that hint that you live in the present. Just to take a stop of ISKCON today, some of our book distribution efforts, there could be that nostalgia for the dreamy past where thousands of books would fly right from the book table or the book van and airports are available for book distribution and people were buying books, people were reading books.
For somebody caught up in the past it's very difficult because there is a massive shift in people just not reading so much hard copy, they are reading online. I think what you and me are doing today could be also part of living in the present because Zoom was there and we could have done so many things but we didn't choose to do because we were flying out of every continent once every two or three months and saying I'm busy, I'm busy, now this one tiny unseen even non-living thing has changed everything and people are talking in the language today is this is the new normal, get used to it. So living in the present from a perspective of a spiritualist in today's world would mean that we need to be aware of the present situations, the limitations as well as the opportunities of present situation and to harmonize with it.
Otherwise sometimes as spiritualists we might be like Rip Van Winkle who slept for several decades and woke up and was still expecting the world to be the way it was in the past. So tapping the opportunities of the present from a broader perspective, not just an individual perspective, individual trying to deal with the challenges of life but also from the perspective of a spiritualist who is trying to live spiritually and share spirituality with others. It's important to be in tune with not just the technology and opportunities that it may open up but it could also be in terms of the cultural and intellectual trends of the times.
If we consider the Gaudiya tradition, we have our Acharyas, we have them writing Krishna, plays based on Krishna. So Nakhtiya and Kavya were quite prominent and active during the medieval times in Bengal and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his followers used them quite extensively whether it is some of the Lalit Madhava Vidakta Madhava written by Rupa Goswami or it is Chaitanya Chandra Udaya Natak. Any idea that they were performed while Rupa Goswami was there? Do you have any references? That's a good question.
Or was it more like a literary form of entertainment plus edification? We have two distinct things. We have say for example a description of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Nityanand Prabhu's childhood where it is said that they would perform plays centered on Krishna. So as a childhood play it is an indication of how they were spiritually inclined and when the culture was spiritually inclined at that time.
Now as adults whether there were plays performed, we don't see it say Pratap Rudra going to watch some play about any particular character. So we have plays being performed and we have plays being written but whether the plays that were written were performed at that time, we don't have any indication of that. If you look at Bhaktivinoda Thakur's life and then which is almost 200 years later.
There are occasions when he, there is one occasion where he had to go for a play in which he was a government officer and he was expected to go but it also involved some kind of inappropriate or indecent scenes according to the culture standard at that time and he refused to go at that time saying that I will not lend dignity. It was more of not indecent in an explicitly sensual sense but in the sense that the Radha Krishna Leela was depicted in an inappropriate way. Some intimate pastimes were being depicted and he refused to, he lent the dignity of his presence to that occasion.
So from what I have heard at least there is in Ayodhya as well as in that part of North India what is called as Ram Leela. Ram Leela is a dramatic depiction of Ram that is very common and in fact within that character say if they are going to perform Ram Leela for a few days then before the start of that Leela they have, by Ram Leela they refer to the depiction of the Ram Leela and they actually perform a Aarti of the character who is going to play Ram and who is going to play Sita and it is that it is said that during that time then they obviously know he is not Ram but during that time they say it's like a Avesha of Ram enters into that person and even the father will bow down to the son if the son is playing the role of Ram. So there seems to be quite a vibrant tradition and that tradition goes on even now of course the number of people participating are lesser but I read that the first time into the 1950s there was a movie made about Ram and when first time Ram appeared on the tv screen everybody from the audience got up and offered their obeisances to Ram on the movie screen in the theater and even the Ramayan serial that was being depicted people would often wait with their Aarti plates as Ram would appear they would do Aarti of Ram.
So there is an understanding that during the dramatic depictions some divine presence comes up so but coming to our point of using contemporary trends or contemporary technology to revitalize spiritual traditions again if you connect it in a circle like that the Ramayan is a good example the televisation of Ramayan is a good example of or was a good example a few decades ago and even now also when it is being redisplayed rebroadcast it is still having its readership and its popularity. Yes. So we could conclude that you it is important for us to live in the present but at the same time we need to have a devotional understanding so that we like you mentioned just to conclude some of the points you round off some of the points you said that when we talk about work as if it depends on you and pray as if it depends on the lord that means we live in the present and work as well as we can but at the we understand that there are bigger factors than us involved and when you asked about living in the present one example struck me was Arjuna when he had to shoot the arrow to target a effigy of a bird at that time he said I don't see the tree I don't see the bird I see only the eye of the bird so is living in the present the same as concentration? Concentration often has a connotation of intentional focus whereas living in the present has often has a connotation of openness and receptivity of okay what is in the present let's experience it but overall they have a similar sense isn't it? Yes it is more like a choice I choose not to dwell in the past and if there is anything to be forgiven I do that as a conscious effort I choose not to daydream about how rosy or how nice the future could be so this these two choice things require a lot of internal resources and only when you satisfy both like the mind will always play the game of tell you about your past regrets tell you about your past failures or even past successes and or about the future and you need to kind of like these are rockets ready to be launched and precious fuel is being utilized there so you have to always kind of take out the fuel tanks because that precious fuel is example okay and precious fuel is it has to be utilized for the present so so hankering and lamentation rob us of some vital fuel at least in the beginning sadhaka stage and then later we have like people reminiscing about their life writing their memoirs that is entirely living in the past but that is good because what lessons they have learned would be useful for people in the future otherwise if a normal person is that whatever I've learned is like this there is a hollywood joke one 24 year old supermodel says she's going to write her biography so somebody questioned what exactly has happened in these 24 years that you feel that is the that is something so valuable to the world to learn mostly people go through all the so many decades of life and then they go on and back into us so in the current generation there is more of just trying to cash on whatever is available so this is also the other side of living in the present that a dream be merry for tomorrow we die so I might as well enjoy today that's exactly the wrong understanding of living in the present hmm that's true so actually this brings to another point that when we talk about living in the present and how that will interact with spirituality and bhakti there are great saints who go in that go into trance and at that time they are not at all living in the present yes completely disconnected from the present so for example chaitanya mahaprabhu would be completely sometimes in internal consciousness and that is considered a very spiritually exalted state so in fact there are three broad levels of how chaitanya mahaprabhu might be would get disconnected from the present sometimes it would be that he would be in the present but he would see something which is not seen to others for example he would see krishna behind a tree where others would see there is no krishna over there so one is like a vision of the vision of something paranormal the second so he would run toward that tree in the physical reality which we are in but he would be perceiving something different the second would be that he would just faint and he would be lost in his lost in a trance and he would be experiencing some other reality and third would be that not only was he experiencing another reality but the experience of another reality would bring about transformations in his body in this reality yes so there is a perception then there is consciousness and then there is physical transformation because of the experience so now i think the difference between these two would be that when we talk about say the physical reality the mental reality and the spiritual reality when we talk about living in the present it is don't run off with your mind into the past and the future but when great saints are having spiritual experiences it's not that they are running off with their mind they have transcended the mind and they have gone to the level of the soul and at the level of the soul they are perceiving realities so rather than getting caught in mental constructs we need to actually relish spiritual reality so in a sense for a devotee living in the present is not the perfection it is living with krishna is the perfection and sometimes a devotee may live with krishna in the present if there is a portion to serve krishna right now in the present the chaitanya mahaprabhu would look at jagannath and would completely lost in beholding jagannath in the temple but he would also sometimes get into a trance where he was not aware at all so living with krishna is the most important thing for a devotee yeah no one last yeah one last point maybe i would like to mention and you can add some things see there is this principle of remember me and fight so i was once asked this question that is this principle against living in the present now is it that a devotee has to have two compartments to the consciousness where in one compartment the devotee is remembering the lord and the other compartment the devotee is doing whatever is the duty so is it if you have to compartmentalize your consciousness is it that one time we are conscious of this and the other time we are conscious of that or is it simultaneously we're conscious of both things what are your thoughts about that i think it is something of both uh and and that that could be requiring a little bit of practice it may not be available immediately as soon as you become a disciple or become a student yes thank you it was wonderful talking with you thank you thank you very much.