The Multiples Conflicts within the Gita

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Bhagavad Gita as we know has 18 chapters and the first chapter is called as Sainya Niriksha Yoga observing the armies in the battlefield or it is also known as Arjuna Vishada Yoga the lamentation of Arjuna so the way I will be taking this overview is in three parts before I go into the chapter I will look at the introduction in the setting of the Gita briefly then we won’t recite the verses but I will talk about how the verses flow and what the rough content of the verses is and then we will discuss some associated themes while explaining the verses now the Bhagavad Gita as the name suggests is the song of God Bhagavad Gita now interestingly the question comes up if it is the song of God is it that all the words are spoken by God? No.
Baldevidya Bhushan in his commentary explains that that proximity shapes quality that means that in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna is not the only speaker there is one verse the first was spoken by Dhritarashtra then there are many verses spoken by Sanjay in fact the the first chapter almost entirely spoken by Sanjay then the 11th chapter and towards the 18th chapter Sanjay speaks quite a bit and of course Arjuna asks many questions so there are four speakers in the Bhagavad Gita and yet it is called as Bhagavad Gita what is the reason for that because the majority is spoken by Krishna and just as a red house even if it were not entirely red if it were largely red then it is called as a red house so similarly if a house is similarly because most of the Bhagavad Gita is spoken by Krishna so it is called as the song of God now in the Bhagavad Gita the first verse is spoken by Dhritarashtra so the setting as most of us know is that both of the Kauravas and Pandavas are about to fight a war and when they are about to fight a war they have a confrontation in terms of a visual perception of each other and it is that time onwards that Arjuna’s resolve starts changing so the first verse is spoken by Dhritarashtra so now because the Bhagavad Gita is a book of violence many people get the question that Bhagavad Gita is a book of violence in the sense that it is spoken at a violent setting and after the book ends a war takes place so is it a call for violence actually the Bhagavad Gita is a book neither of violence nor of silence it is a book of transcendence the essential message of the Bhagavad Gita is one of transcendence transcendence means that the Bhagavad Gita talks about how to live in transcendental consciousness in loving harmony with the Supreme Lord and by living in such harmony sometimes one may have to act violently and sometimes one may have to act silently so violence is not the essential message of the Gita it is the context it is the setting and the setting is arresting it is attention revetting now most people put off philosophical discussions saying that I have too many important urgent things to do now what can be a more urgent situation than a war in a war you know one moment of inattention can lead to destruction so nothing in real life can be all can come much near the urgency that is there in a war so the setting of the Bhagavad Gita on a battlefield is used to illustrate that even on something as urgent as a battlefield in the midst of a war we need to have spiritual wisdom so the Bhagavad Gita is a book for action but it is an action that is guided by vision you know it is said that vision without action is a dream and action without vision is a nightmare so vision without action is just passive if somebody just thinks and dreams but doesn’t do anything that is useless on the other hand if somebody action without vision if one is thoughtless in one’s actions it is a nightmare one often ends up creating bigger problems than what one started off to solve so the Bhagavad Gita emphasizes the need to harmonize vision and action so now what do we mean by vision everybody of us has vision we have eyes with which we can see but our eyes only show us a partial picture of reality and that’s why we need the eyes of wisdom now if a graph on a paper shows a downward curve an uneducated person will think this is just a scribble but a person educated in economics knows that this indicates a recession this indicates a global slowdown and it can lead to serious economic problems it is indicator of that so even in our day-to-day life we see that we don’t just understand and comprehend with our eyes you know our eyes are the beginning of comprehension but the central comprehension happens based on the knowledge that we have and how we connect our knowledge with our perception so the Bhagavad Gita offers us knowledge so that we can see better so the Bhagavad Gita’s readers can oscillate to two extremes one is to take the violence literally and say that oh that Bhagavad Gita is a call for violence there is a there is a fanatical Hindu nationalist who wrote a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita and his thesis is that you know India’s greatest mistake is that it has not followed the Bhagavad Gita now that is true but what is his idea of correcting that mistake he says if India had followed the Bhagavad Gita within one day of the creation of Pakistan India would have conquered over Pakistan since India would not have been finicky about violence so the Bhagavad Gita really doesn’t talk about violence at that level so one extreme is to take the Bhagavad Gita as a book that is a call for violence the other extreme is to deny the violence entirely and to say that the Bhagavad Gita is simply talking metaphorically in fact there is a famous commentator on the Bhagavad Gita you know he goes to such an extent I had read his commentary before I was introduced to ISKCON and to Srila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad Gita as it is and he goes to such an extent to say that not only is the Bhagavad there is the whole battlefield setting metaphorical but he even goes to say that the author Vyasa has chosen a outrageously wrong metaphor so he’s saying that this metaphor can be used as a license for waging war and that would be a disaster and therefore he says with all my humility I strongly reject as outrageously wrong the metaphor that Vyasa Dev has used of a war field so now Srila Prabhupada strongly against such metaphorical interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita especially when the metaphorical interpretation is used to supplant its essential means supplant means to replace so of course Srila Prabhupada was not entirely against the metaphorical interpretation if it was used to supplement the literal meaning so Prabhupada during the second ceremony in which Hayagriva Prabhu and other devotees were initiated in 1966 so that is documented by Hayagriva Prabhu in his book the Hare Krishna Explosions Srila Prabhupada told the devotees that now you should not lament because Krishna has become the you have handed the reins of your chariot to Krishna and Prabhupada explained the Bhagavad Gita setting so the body is like a chariot we know the famous chariot body analogy that comes in the Upanishads and from there we know that the charioteer is the intelligence so when Prabhupada said that Krishna is the charioteer you have made Krishna the charioteer that means what now we are using Krishna’s intelligence to act in our life and we are handing over the reins of our chariot to Krishna that means we are letting our life be guided by Krishna’s influence so Prabhupada give this explanation also so metaphorical explanation is not wrong but it shouldn’t replace it it shouldn’t be used to do away with the literal explanation so the metaphorical explanation can supplement but not supplant supplement means give additional understanding but not supplant supplant means to replace so the Bhagavad Gita was spoken at the start of a historical war which did occur but if we look at the flow of the Bhagavad Gita that message will come several times in the second chapter and then it comes a few times once or twice in third chapter once in the fourth chapter once in the fifth chapter but if we look from the sixth chapter onwards you know the Yudhya Swa doesn’t come even once after that the only reference to Yudhya that comes again directly literally speaking is in the 11th chapter where Krishna displays the Vishwaroopa and there he reveals how all the warriors are being devoured by the Vishwaroopa and there Krishna gives a call to Arjuna therefore Arjuna fight in 11.32-33 he says that by my will everybody is destroyed and in fact 11.33 is the last call for fighting before that the last call comes in before the previous call comes in 4.42 the last verse of the fourth chapter and after so after 4.42 and then 11.33-34 thereafter there is no reference to war and even at the end of the Bhagavad Gita in the 18th chapter Krishna doesn’t tell Arjuna to fight he says surrender to me so then at the end of the Bhagavad Gita Krishna tells even Arjuna doesn’t say I will fight what does Arjuna say Arjuna says I will do your will that’s what he tells in 18.73 and in only in 18.78 where Sanjay is speaking there he says that where there is Arjuna and there is Krishna there surely will be victory and he refers so there there is some indication of war but again again it’s not a direct reference to war so the point I’m making through all this is that as the Bhagavad Gita’s discussion becomes more and more philosophical and profound then it leaves the context far behind so the context is real and the conversation did really take place on a war field and the war did really take place after the Bhagavad Gita was spoken but that is not the essential message of the Bhagavad Gita the essential message of the Bhagavad Gita is a call to transcendence when Krishna is telling Arjuna he says give up all varieties of religion surrender to me 18.65 and 66 in both cases he’s telling to Arjuna to become transcendental give up all varieties of religion so what does this refer to actually here Krishna is using the word dharma in the sense of material religion and therefore he says that give up all varieties of material religion so but what should does that one should does that mean that one should become irreligious no not at all because the next line says mam ekam sharanam vraja so in the Vedic culture there are two levels of religion there is aparadharma and there is paradharma aparadharma is material religion where religion is practiced for material well-being that means people practice religion for the sake of getting making their material life better now that is not wrong that is also a part of the Vedic program it is part of the four purushartha dharma artha kama and ultimately leading to moksha so dharma artha kama these are material moksha also in one sense is material because the focus even in moksha is on oneself in moksha the focus is i am suffering and i want to get rid of i want to become liberated from suffering so certainly moksha is much better than aspiring from dharma artha kama because when one aspires for material improvement and material enjoyment and material prosperity through religion then one is basically going to stay on in material existence with all its inevitable sufferings but although moksha is better it is not the best because even in moksha one cannot experience this ecstasy of pure love that ecstasy of pure love can be experienced only when our consciousness shifts from ourselves and moves towards krishna so the bhagavad gita talks about the rising from apara dharma that is dharma for material purposes dharma artha kama to para dharma para dharma is transcendental religion that is practicing religion for the of developing love for god so that is prema as chaitanya maha prabhu has taught us prema pumartha mahan puma artha puma artha means meaning artha is meaning puma is for a human being so what is the meaning what is the goal what is the purpose for a human being the puma artha mahan the supreme goal of life for human being is prema to develop pure love for so what krishna is telling at the end of the bhagavad gita is that you develop pure love for me and fix your mind on me offer your whole being to me that is surrender so when krishna talks about surrender to arjuna his focus primarily is on a surrender that grows out of love so i’ll focus more on this theme of conflict and understanding the conflicts in the bhagavad gita now as i told the essential conflict that is there in the bhagavad gita is between apara dharma and para dharma apara dharma is material religion and para dharma is transcendental religion so when we see arjuna fighting a war and that too against his relatives that is never a pleasant thing to do and in fact from the point of a material religion it may seem a sacrilegious thing to do to fight against one’s own relatives today there is a pacifist movement which says that war is always bad and they would want to have no war fought against anyone at all but even to avoid war in the united nations and other countries have to use peacekeeping forces now see the paradox peacekeeping forces now force has to be used anyway and war is also one use of force so we may say that we don’t want war but why because war involves force while war involves violence war involves destruction but then we can’t avoid that’s a essential element of human existence and even to have peace we have to have peacekeeping force and sometimes that force has to use violence so we can’t do away with violence in material existence so now when krishna is telling arjuna give up all varieties of religion and surrender unto me there is a there is a rendition of the bhagavad gita by done by some people and they just can’t digest the idea of giving up dharma so how can you how can krishna tell us to give up dharma and this also seems to be contradictory to krishna’s earlier declaration in the famous verses 4.7 and 8 4.7 and 8 are the verses that many hindus know very well yada yada hi dharmasya and paritranaya sadhuna vinashaya duskrtam dharma samstha panarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge so dharma samstha panarthaya so krishna is telling i come to re-establish dharma now if krishna is coming to re-establish dharma then why is he telling arjuna sarva dharman parityajya give up all dharmas give up all religions so this contradiction can be resolved only when we understand that there are multiple levels of religion religion is not just in the vedic understanding it’s not just one level because the vedic culture understands that different people are at different levels and not everybody can practice spiritual life at the same level so accordingly there are levels of religion and one who’s at a lower level is complimented for practicing religion at that level but one who’s at a higher level that person is discouraged from coming to a lower level from there a simple example to understand this suppose in a family there are two children and both of them are in a school and both of them have brought their got their results now one of the students is brilliant and that student gets say one of the sons say their two sons say one of them gets 80 marks very good marks and the other barely scrapes through the exam and gets just 40 marks so when today the results come both of them have got 60 percent and when the father comes and gets the news the father the mother whole family is there the father you know pats the back of the first the child who used to son who used to get 40 percent has now come and is just i’ve got 60 percent and the father pats his back and shabash i’m proud of you and then the second son comes and his father i got 60 percent and the father hits him on the back and he says in displeasure not violently he says he says i’m ashamed of you what happened now the second son may say both of us got the same percent you complimented him and you’re chastising me why the difference since the difference because the level is different for a person to rise from 40 to 60 is good but for a person to fall from 80 to 60 is bad same way for a person who is atheistic and godless for that person to practice religion even at a material level is good so for a person such a person to practice religion for the sake of material things that is also good that is like a person rising from 40 to 60 because the person is at least understanding the need for a higher authority and the need for harmonizing oneself with a higher authority that is good but for a person who is at 80 that means a person who can practice who can understand spiritual truth and practice knowledge at a pure spiritual level of selfless love for that person to descend down to the level of material religion where we may practice religion for the sake of arranging material goodness good materially a good material life for ourselves enjoyable material life for ourselves that is descending to a lower level from a higher level that is like 80 percent student getting 60 percent so what is the bhagavad-gita’s message the bhagavad-gita’s message is progressively evolving and in the the bhagavad-gita comes to establish dharma but what kind of dharma that dharma is the 80 percent religion that means the dharma of pure love and when krishna is telling you have all varieties of religion that doesn’t mean that he is telling you become irreligious now mam ekam sharanam vraja you surrender to me that means you practice that religion by which you can become devoted to me you can learn to love me you can surrender to me that means krishna is telling give up a lower variety of religion so that you can practice a higher variety of religion and we see at the end of the bhagavad-gita also arjuna did not become irreligious what did arjuna do arjuna actually did activity and he served krishna as a devotee carrying out his will so the bhagavad-gita’s the conflict between bhagavad-gita within the bhagavad-gita is far bigger than just arjuna deciding whether i should fight or not and the conflict is not just the conflict between the kauravas and the pandavas that is definitely there and arjuna is also caught in about the decision in indecision should i fight or should i not fight so that is definitely true but the essential conflict of the bhagavad-gita is not just so simple if it were just something whether person x should do something or not now that would not have had resonance for millions of people over millennia and it would not have resonance to us in our modern times today so the bhagavad-gita’s resonance is because it is not just talking about only about whether arjuna should fight or not yes that is there there is one element within the bhagavad-gita but essentially it is talking about what is the best course of action for us all of us whatever be our situation how should we live what should we live for that is the essential question that the bhagavad-gita addresses and that question is addressed by giving an answer that goes far beyond the material level the answer is work what should we live for we should live for love we should live for love love for krishna and love for all living beings in relationship with krishna now we wonder if we are meant to live for love then violence and killing seem to be the opposite of love so how can there be how can violence and killing be a result of love and how can bhagavad-gita call for that kind of violence if it is a message of love so the essential message of the bhagavad-gita is a call for bhakti bhakti yoga the bhagavad-gita talks about many different yogas but ultimately it concludes with bhakti yoga so so instead of going into the technicalities of the first chapter as i said i’ll focus on the theme of conflicts and we will see how this relates with the conflicts within us too so why do we need to decide what to do because you know the world presents us externally and the minds present presents us internally with hundreds of options of what we may do the mind may say you can watch this movie you can go for the shopping you can go you can do this you can do that and the world also presents us so many allurements so many advertisements so many enjoyments so even for ordinary living one has to make choices and decisions okay i will do this and if i do this that means i won’t do that so even in our day-to-day life we have to decide what we will do and the question is on what basis do we decide what we will do so most of us have some basis which can come from four broad sources the first source is that it might just be the culture okay why do you why say why do you watch rugby you know for example if indian in india people don’t even know about rugby but suppose an indian goes to america that person may become a become completely captivated by rugby so why do you watch rugby why do you play rugby well because everyone does it so one reason is culture means everyone does it why do i do something because everyone does it the second reason is tradition why do you do something oh because we have always done it we have always done it that could be the second factor that means in many parts of the world meat-eating is a part of the is a part of the tradition itself so most people eat meat without even thinking about whether it is right or wrong the people children love their pets and they cry bitterly if anything happens to their pets but there’s some children they don’t even think that you know murderous pain has been caused so that they can have what they are eating in their breakfast and their lunch and their dinner so why because they just don’t think about it it’s like a default decision that has been made based on tradition now their parents used to eat meat their grandparents used to eat meat their great grandparents used to eat meat so they also eat meat so just because something has always been done that doesn’t necessarily make it right but that’s another factor that shapes our decisions that’s tradition then third can be mood mood means i felt like doing it why did you do that i felt like doing it that’s what i enjoyed doing and fourth can be logic logic means it made sense why did i do that so if a doctor is told a patient comes with a severe problem and doctor says we have to do surgery now based on the problem and based on the possible treatment surgery might seem to be the most logical thing to do but logic is also not infallible maybe the patient was brought in a sudden situation emergency situation and the doctor doesn’t know that the patient has got has got brain damage because of which if that patient is given anesthesia there is a high probability that person may never come out of anesthesia person may develop a coma or may even die so once this factor comes into the picture that’s earlier decision of opting for surgery which seemed logical now seems could now seems disastrous so logic itself is a good criteria for deciding but it’s not always the best criteria so mood as i said third criteria was mood mood also is we feel like doing something now but then afterwards we feel why did i waste my time doing that i shouldn’t have done that so so many times we just say we start watching tv and you feel i like this i like this i like this and then i we watch with one two three four hours and then hey why did i waste so much of my time i felt like doing it at that time but afterwards my feelings change and i start beating myself mentally why did i waste my time like that so mood is also not a reliable criteria for deciding what we will do so now these four criteria culture tradition mood and logic we all use generally one of these for deciding what we will do and they have their utility but we cannot grant them finality in our decision making guidelines the most important authority for us based on which we can decide should be scripture the word of god because the scriptures are manuals they are the manuals that help us to understand what is right and thereby to make the right decisions so just as an instrument works best with the manual now our life works best with the manual and that manual is the bhagavad-gita the bhagavad-gita in 16.24 urges us to therefore choose our action based on scripture therefore act according to shastra understand what is to be done what is not to do and act accordingly so now we will see in our day-to-day life we face so many conflicts about what we should do and what we should not do the conflict can range from okay should i purchase a new cell phone or not or should i go in this university or that university should i take up this job or that job and like that we have so many indecisions and conflicts in our day-to-day life and these conflicts all originate in the mind and all these four factors if we see for four factors that we use for decision making either consciously or subconsciously culture tradition mood and logic they all also act at the level of the mind and yet they we can visualize them as four different ropes which pull us in four different directions and we often become like puppets pulled by invisible strings which make us dance to different tunes and often two things conflict at two of these pulls they pull each other in different ways the culture for example if a student is in a college there is a say the culture is that there is it’s a almost like a free sex culture in most colleges and that student has been brought up in a cultured in a conservative family then the tradition is telling one thing the culture is telling another and there is a conflict between culture and tradition so like that there can be conflicts between all these four things and these conflicts make our life indecisive and miserable so this is an inner conflict that goes on between all of us within all of us and we all need guidance for deciding what we should do now when the bhagavad-gita is talking about say para dharma and apara dharma we may think that these these concepts are not so immediately relevant for us in our life okay i have so many practical things which i have to decide in my life what has got this conflict between para and apara dharma between material religion and spiritual religion got to do with us but if we go beyond the specifics of para and apara dharma the essential challenge the bhagavad-gita is facing is simple it is how should we act what should we do so the bhagavad-gita tells that we should act out of love out of love for krishna and love for all living beings in relationship with krishna so as i was telling now how does love the concept of love gel with the concept of violence and bloodshed as happens in the battlefield so the bhagavad-gita first of all starts way by changing arjuna’s framework of thinking in the first chapter in verses 1 to 26 that is the as i told earlier the sainya niriksha yoga arjuna is observing and commenting and then he says krishna please take my chariot between the two parties and then from verses 27 to 46 that is called arjun vishad yoga arjuna starts lamenting how can i fight how can i fight and he gives five different reasons why he cannot fight and at the end of it what happens in 1.46 it is described vishrujya means to give up so shara is arrows chaapa is bow so arjuna gave up his bow and arrow and what did what a situation shoka samvigna manasa arjuna became filled with lamentation moroseness and he basically put aside his bow and if you look at the end of the bhagavad-gita 18.78 yatra yogeshwara krishno yatra partha dhanur dhara tatra shrir vijayo bhutir where there is yogeshwara where there is krishna who is yogeshwara and where there is arjuna so the significant in the address is yatra partha dhanur dhara dhanur dhara refers to arjuna who is the the wielder of the bow so arjuna is holding on to the bow aloft dhanur dhara so that means what has happened from the end of the first chapter to the 18th end of the 18th chapter is that arjuna had put aside the bow has now picked up the bow so that means arjuna has become ready to fight the war but that is only one part of the understanding essentially as arjuna has told in 18.73 i will do your will arjuna has become ready to do krishna’s will and in the battlefield context in the battlefield setting that will was to fight the war but essentially what has happened is arjuna has regained his determination to act according to krishna’s will so arjuna’s gandiva bow represents our determination our determination in this world when conflicts come and different courses of action open for us and we are unable to decide then that slackens our determination if we are traveling from one place to another nowadays of course we have gps but if there was no gps then we’re traveling and we come across a fork the road is going in two directions then if you’re not sure what happens is we which which is the way to our destination we put a brake and we stop or even if we choose one of the roads we go we slow down because we are always thinking maybe if it’s the wrong track then i will not be able i’ll have to turn back and go all the way back so like basically whenever we are unable to decide things then that leads to a slowing down that leads to indecision and that leads to in inactions that’s what happened to arjuna he had put down his bow so the nature of life in this world is that it puts us into perplexities perplexities means situations from which there doesn’t seem to be any easy way out and because of those perplexities we metaphorically put down i can’t do anything better let me not do anything at all but by hearing the wisdom of the bhagavad gita our determination gets restored our confidence gets restored and we become rejuvenated we become invigorated to again act act in the service of krishna and act for the welfare of all ourselves and others around us so the specifics that we may face in our life situations will be different and when we say bhagavad as a manual it gives us broad principles of how to act the essential principle is we act with a desire for loving service we act out of love and love is expressed through service so how exactly we will serve that will vary according to time place circumstance so that is something which we will over a period of time learn but once we have the principle that i am i am meant for loving service then once that comes up then a lot of conflict goes away because if we want to be the controllers and the enjoyers of things then we need absolutely things to go in a particular way if i want to enjoy good food then all the food has to be cooked properly first of all the menu has to be according to my liking the cooking has to be according to my liking and the serving has to be according to my liking my digestive power has to be according to my liking and then i will enjoy so when i have to enjoy then i have to be able to control things and whenever control goes out of my hands then i can’t enjoy so enjoyment is always conditional to so many factors that determine whether we will be able to enjoy or not and that’s why enjoyment is always unreliable we may be able to enjoy we may not be able to enjoy and that’s actually Prabhupada would use the word conditioned soul the soul whose enjoyment depends on so many conditions that’s a conditioned soul in contrast to a conditioned soul is a liberated soul liberated soul is one whose enjoyment does not depend on anything is liberated from circumstances liberated from conditions the liberated soul can be happy in all situations because the happiness of the liberated soul doesn’t depend on situations it depends on this not situations but not on situation but on disposition the condition the liberated soul has a disposition of loving service towards Krishna and service can be done in all situations we may not be able to do a specific kind of service in all situations but some or some way or the other we can always serve and the service which you can always do no matter what happens is we can always remember Krishna and Krishna is like reservoir of happiness so just as if we put our finger in electric socket electricity runs through us we become electrified so similarly when we connect with Krishna we put ourselves we connect ourselves with say the Krishna socket then Krishna being a reservoir of happiness happiness runs through us and that’s what the Bhagavad Gita at the end in 18.76 and 77 Sanjay who has heard the Bhagavad Gita he is telling and again he’s saying I’m rejoicing at every moment I’m rejoicing again and again so what is causing me to rejoice it is Krishna’s message of love he says this extraordinary conversation that I’ve heard that has revealed to me the transcendental nature of Krishna’s love and it has helped me to understand that beyond the upheavals of this world whatever may happen in this world beyond it all there is Krishna’s love which never fails which never lets us down and once we connect with Krishna’s love therein we find everlasting happiness so practicing Krishna consciousness does not remove the miseries of lives of life but it raises us to a level where the miseries don’t trouble us so much if we are if the weather is scorching hot and we are sweating and puffing and then we come to a room which is air conditioned what happens is the heat outside is still there but the air conditioning provides us relief similarly when we remember Krishna it’s like we come to a Krishna conditioned room there’s the remembrance of Krishna provides us relief and when we remember Krishna that is yes we can remember that there is a person who wears a peacock feather and who has a blueish black complexion yes that is remembrance of Krishna that definitely but essentially when we remember Krishna we remember Krishna’s love for us how Krishna loves his devotees how Krishna invites us to become his devotees and Krishna loves us even when we are not his devotees and he wants us to become his devotees so we can relish his love and thereby we can experience greater and greater happiness just like the air conditioned room is there but if I am outside the air conditioned room I cannot experience the relief from heat I have to enter into that room so similarly Krishna loves us even when we don’t care for him but when we don’t care for him it’s like we are staying outside the room so we can’t relish his love and we can’t relish the happiness that comes through remembering him so when we chant Hare Krishna when we study the Bhagavad Gita these are means by which we are entering into the Krishna conditioned room and that brings us the supreme relief and the supreme happiness progressively as we become more and more attached to Krishna the more is the happiness that we experience so Krishna is telling Arjuna is saying that my touch of samskriti samskriti as I am remembering Krishna I am remembering Krishna’s message I am remembering Krishna’s glories what is happening I am experiencing I am rejoicing at every moment so the Bhagavad Gita’s conflict is between and now and I talked about the conflicts which we have in our day-to-day life in our minds about what to do how to do now let’s see how this relates with the Bhagavad Gita’s conflict Arjuna is by no means a atheist or a gross materialist Arjuna is a religious person and Arjuna can’t understand how it can be right for him to fight and that to fight against his relatives he knows that the Kshatriya his duty is to fight but how can one fight against one’s own relatives so the first message that Krishna gives to Arjuna is that for love to be real it has to be based on reality for love to be real it has to be based on reality sometimes we may see a novel or we may read we may sorry see a movie in which the hero and heroine are loving each other and they are doing all the activities that people will love to do and it seems so real at that time but you know if we look at it in real life those people may have a bear those two people who seem to be such intimate lovers in the movie may well not be able to even tolerate each other or they may have been cozy at one time now their relationship will be beyond all will be intolerable to each other so you know was the love which they enacted in the movies real well it seemed real at that time but when we understand the foundation is not of reality then it is it seems real but it isn’t last so what is built on a foundation of illusion may have a semblance to reality but it will not be real in the sense that it will not last so similarly the relationships that we form on the platform of illusion are not lastingly real what is the platform of illusion the platform of illusion is the bodily conception to mistake that i am the body and based on the conception that i am the body then when i start thinking about love i think about relationships i think about emotions the platform itself the foundation itself is not stable it’s not sustainable that does not necessarily mean it’s false but it’s just that we can’t let it become the primary decision fact deciding factor in our life Dhruv Maharaj’s mother tells him when she’s about to send him off to the forest in search of Lord Vishnu she tells him Lord Vishnu can offer you love that is millions of times greater than whatever love that i can ever offer you what does this mean now if the love of Lord Vishnu is millions of times greater that means the love that his mother is offering is also real you know if the love that his mother is offering were false if it were just zero then millions of times of zero is also zero only so Dhruv Maharaj’s mother is telling us i also love you my love for you is real but don’t let this love hold you back away from the Lord’s love for you that love is much greater so this love is like a drop and that love is like an ocean so the drop is not false the drop contains water but the water in a drop can’t satisfy us so the drop should act as like as a pointer and a reminder for the ocean not that the drop replace the ocean if we imagine that the drop can replace the ocean then we sentence ourselves to a to thirst and a parched life without water adequate water similarly if we assume that the love of this world can satisfy us then we sentence ourselves to disappointment even heartbreaks and to unfulfilled love at best so the love of this world is meant to remind us of the supreme love so in the case of Dhruv Maharaj also he had to make a difficult choice now he had to leave his mother who loved him to go for the sake of attaining Lord Vishnu’s love and he did that so in the in the case of the Bhagavad Gita it’s not when Arjuna is being asked to fight a war that war is not just for a property conflict it’s not that yes the Kauravas and Pandavas both wanted the kingdom and because they both wanted the kingdom so they were fighting over property and that is not the issue that may seem to be issue but the heart of the issue is you know what would bring about good for everyone Krishna has come to do dharma samsthapanarthaya dharma samsthapanarthaya is to re-establish dharma and for a person to for for a person to openly molest and violate a respectable woman in a public assembly there can be few things which can be more adharmic than that now in India there is a huge hue and cry over the violence against women especially the gang rape that happened in Delhi several months ago then recently something happened similarly tragic happened in Mumbai so now this happened in in places where people were not witnessing it but imagine somebody doing this in public in front of everyone what can be more scandalous and irreligious than that and to allow a person who would dare to do such a thing not just to live as a citizen but to live as a ruler that would lead to total adharma so when Arjuna is being told to fight the war it is not over a property dispute it is over the it is a issue of having an administration that will maintain proper law and order law and order not just materially but also spiritually so when Arjuna is being told to fight he is told that don’t let the drop come in the way of the ocean what does the drop and the ocean refer to over here now the drop is the love and the affection that he has for his relatives and the love and the affection that his relatives have for him so now there is now the Kauravas there is not much love lost between them the Kauravas were right from the beginning inimical to the Pandavas so Arjuna he certainly didn’t want to kill anyone what to speak of the Kauravas his relatives but especially he was concerned about he was wondering how can I kill my grandfather and my teacher so he asks in 2.4 and 5 in the Bhagavad Gita he says he says that for one’s elders one should offer them garlands and offer them respect he said I should be offering them flowers not sending them arrows how can I fight with arrows with them it’s a valid question but Krishna’s answer to Arjuna is that yes you love you love them you respect them they also love you and respect you but in this present situation don’t let the drop block you from the ocean don’t let the drop block the world from the ocean what is the drop drop is the affection that we experience that the relationships the affection the love that we experience at the material level that drop should not stop us from going towards the ocean the ocean is Krishna’s love for us so if a devotee like Yudhishthira is the king then he will ensure that the government is such that all the people are guided to live in live in an attitude of devotion towards the supreme lord so everybody can progress towards the ocean can progress towards learning how to experience Krishna’s love and learning how to love Krishna and thereby ultimately return to Krishna’s world of eternal love and experience everlasting happiness so the conflict between aparadharma and paradharma which I talked about which is what is embodied in sarva dharman parityajyamam ekam saranam vraja is you know in the Vedic culture the material religion is not rejected material religion means the order that is maintained so that one can have material affairs going on properly India was a phenomenally prosperous country for many many millennia even from the point of view of modern historians and that’s why so many invaders came to India that’s why so many Muslims came to India and that’s why the Portuguese the British the French they all came to India the Europeans came so India was prosperous and thus prosperity came from it dharma so dharma artha kamas dharma does lead to artha so the Vedic culture is not against material religion so when I said don’t let the drop come in the way of the ocean that doesn’t mean that all the time one has to give up the drop for the sake of the ocean in many situations the drop can be used as a pointer and a reminder for the ocean that means we can have our material relationships in such a way that they help us to develop our spiritual relationship with Krishna’s if our family members are devotees then we practice devotional service along with them and our our love for them our caring for them our duties towards them they all help us to move towards Krishna so in the Vedic culture as well as in the religious culture of the world the bond of marriage is considered to be a sacred tie why because unlike animals which can’t think of anything beyond the physicality of the relationship between the genders the humans understand that there is a higher purpose to life and marriage is a bond in which the relationship between the male and female is meant to help both of them move towards the ultimate goal of life that is to live in harmony with God and to move towards God so the horizon as I said the drop can also be help used to move towards the ocean but in some cases the drop may keep us away from the ocean or the drop may take us away from the ocean that means a worldly relationship can drag us away from the spiritual relationship with Krishna so now this happened in a most blatant and horrible way for Arjuna Arjuna if Arjuna had to act out of affection for his relatives then he would have had you would have to consent to letting an irreligious wretch like Duryodhana rule the world and if Duryodhana ruled the world then he would bring about unrighteousness in the world so when Krishna tells Arjuna to rise from the bodily platform to the spiritual platform the bodily platform is not necessarily false you know we have a body and we have to take care of our body but whatever love and happiness we can experience at the bodily level that is just a drop as compared to the oceanic love and happiness that we can experience at the spiritual level so we cannot neglect our body now we have to eat we have to maintain our body we have to take care of our health even for practicing spiritual life but if somebody just takes care of the body and doesn’t think about the soul at all then one is getting so caught with the drop that one is forgetting the ocean now we may not think of the happiness and the promises that are available to us at the body level to be just like drops you know there is such an exciting life available i’m young i’m healthy i have intelligence i have a bright career there is so much i can do yes it may seem like that and there may be a lot we can do at a material level also but as compared to eternity and as compared to the eternal happiness that is available at the level of the soul the even the best material happiness is just it’s not much more than a drop so the essential conflict of the bhagavad gita is that don’t let the drop come in the way of the ocean when we have to choose between the drop and ocean we choose the ocean so sarva dharman parityaja mam ekam saranam vraja sarva dharman parityaja means arjuna may think that oh i have a dharma not to attack my relatives my dharma should be to protect my relatives but that is dharma but don’t let that dharma give up that dharma if it comes in the way of the supreme dharma the para dharma is the dharma of loving and serving krishna and helping others to love and serve krishna so mam ekam saranam vraja so how does all this relate to the indecisions and the conflicts that we face in our life it is nothing in life comes with pat answers but when we get broad principles then those principles provide us frameworks for choosing and acting so the bhagavad gita offers us this broad principle that whatever we are acting for we act