The soul longs for meaning, but the body settles for pudding

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. The soul longs for meaning, but the body settles for pudding.
The search for meaning lies at the very heart of being human. And we are in many ways like the rest of the living beings in creation. Just as they are to struggle for existence, we too have to struggle for existence.
Just as they are driven by the bodily drives to eat, sleep, mate and defend, we are also driven by similar bodily drives. But whereas the existence of the non-human world is largely consumed just in fulfilling these drives, we also have a higher consciousness that strives to seek, that strives for meaning. That strives to make sense of it all.
Why do I exist? Why does the world exist? Why does anything exist at all? What is the point of everything? So, these are questions that we seek answers to in various ways. And art, literature, science, these are all ways in which we take some part of the universe or we take some part of our human experience and we try to create some meaning in it. We try to find some meaning.
We create an islet of meaning in a vast ocean of meaninglessness that seems to be swallowing us. So, an artist makes a picture and gets some sense of satisfaction. This is what it means.
A novelist writes a book and gets some kind of satisfaction. Now beyond this all, what is there? There is much beyond this. Though some people seek meaning like this, what swallows us quite often is not the ocean of incomprehension, but it’s distraction.
Most of us, we get distracted from seeking meaning by petty pleasures. The soul wants meaning, but when we catch sight of pudding, then the body drags us to that and we enjoy it and in that we forget. We lose ourselves in the oblivion of modern sensation.
Now moving forward, pudding of course here refers to any superficial indulgence that keeps us away from the search for meaning. Now, the Bible refers to our vulnerability to distraction when it states the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And unfortunately our culture has created, we have used technology to create a whole culture of distraction wherein so many gadgets and so many avenues we have to keep ourselves superficially titillated.
Now, one of the greatest impetuses for seeking meaning is our own mortality. You know, how can I just sit salivating over some pudding when death is swooping down on me relentlessly? Yet, what is the culture’s answer to this question? Some new looking pudding. Browse some new channels, surf some new site, play some new game and forget it.
Don’t bother to think about it. And in this way we lose ourselves. And now, unfortunately, the point of all this is that we can’t settle for pudding.
Although we think, okay, as long as I get something to eat and enjoy, I’ll be happy. We can’t because death is coming relentlessly. Our situation is like that of goats who are on a slaughter line, soon to be slaughtered, but just because they have some grass to munch, they feel satisfied.
They don’t think about anything else at all. So now, the tragedy of this all is not just that we don’t get meaning. We actually don’t enjoy even the pudding.
What does that mean? We are meant for seeking higher meaning, higher fulfillment. And if we just go only for bodily pleasures, because we are seeking higher and the lower, we try to expand, we try to increase and we try to engage in those things unrestrictedly. And the result of that is that we suffer even at the material level.
We have created so many facilities to try to enjoy material pleasures more, but actually we are suffering worse than the animals. Animals never get stressed, animals never get anxiety disorders, animals never get depression, animals never get addictions, animals never commit suicide. So, now we are losing meaning and we are not even enjoying the pudding.
That is the tragedy that we bring upon ourselves when we try to settle for pudding. Because we can’t settle for pudding. We are made in such a way that we need to seek meaning.
So, if we decide to seek for meaning, then Gita system stands ready to guide us in our search. Now, it welcomes us by saying that those who are seekers of meaning, they are manushyanam sahasreshu kashchidhya siddhaye, tam api siddhanam kashchinvam vityadvata, that such people who seek for some meaning, seek to understand life’s ultimate purpose, they are one among thousands, one among millions in fact. And then it coherently answers life’s questions.
And not only does it answer the questions in a theoretical sense, but in a practical sense, it integrates meaning and pudding in the holistic framework of bhakti yoga. What does that mean, integrating meaning and pudding? It doesn’t say that we have to give up this world for attaining the other world. For finding meaning, we don’t have to give up everything in this world.
We can actually engage in this world in the mood of devotional service and also practice bhakti yoga by doing directly devotional activities. And as we keep doing this, we will relish more and more the joy of a meaningful life of eternal love, of a love for Krishna, love that transcends and conquers death and eventually transfers us to a life of eternal meaningful love. Thank you.
Hare Krishna.