The Spirit of Diwali – Light the inner lamp to see beyond the painkiller of entertainment to the cure of devotion

[Sunday feast talk at Austin Vedic Cultural Center, Austin, USA]

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hey Krishna.
I am grateful to be here amongst all of you today. And… As mentioned I will be speaking on the topic of the spirit of Diwali. So I’ll talk in three parts.
First I’ll talk about the importance of festivals in general in human life. Then second I’ll talk about the cultural and the spiritual aspects of festivals. And third I’ll talk about specifically the significance of Diwali.
So I’ll ask a question in the beginning first. In today’s world who are the most highly paid people? Who earns the most money in today’s world? IT people, doctors, movie stars and sports stars. In India we have the Premier League cricket competition and the money that is spent on IPL, it’s just a few weeks of competition, that can actually feed all the hungry people of India throughout the year.
So now why is it that entertainers, be they actors or the sports stars, why are they paid so much? Entertainment is a basic feature of human society and throughout history it has been there. But never before have people who are entertainers been paid such absurd outrageous amounts. So if there are 100 doctors who can heal a cut leg, you know one person who can kick a ball with a leg gets more than those 100 doctors.
So we can see the values of a society by seeing what it values. And one way we can understand what it values is by looking at how much it pays home. So if entertainers are being paid so much, that means that their services are needed so much by people.
At one level if somebody is dying and a doctor saves their life, that is much more needed. But entertainment feels such a great need. In fact one social critic has said, the whole entertainment industry is actually a boredom industry.
It’s a boredom industry. So what it means is that life in the material world is on an average boring. Sometimes it becomes distressing, sometimes it becomes enjoyable.
Most of the times it is boring. Now why is that? At one level the more culture, more society becomes materialistic. Then what does materialistic society mean? Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that in the 16th chapter, from the verses 7 onwards till verse 22, he analyzes a materialistic society.
And then he says the definition of happiness is that worldly pleasure. असत्यम् पतिष्ठम् ते जगदाखु रनीश्वरम् अपरस्परसं भूतं किमन्यत् कामहैतु कम् 16.8 he says that such people simply want worldly pleasures. Now if we consider worldly pleasures, then what is the nature of those pleasures? Many of you may have heard about a group called Alcoholics Anonymous.
So there are people who get addicted to alcohol. So there is another group, in Jacksonville I met some members of that group, they call us Foodaholics Anonymous. So they just eat.
They basically have eating disorders. Either they eat too much or they eat too little. So these eating disorders, and we may laugh at it, but it’s not a laughing matter for them.
It’s a very serious matter. So now if somebody is living only for eating, they think that eating is the goal of life. Now if you think like that, what is the nature of the pleasure available? Yes, we can eat and we can try to cook great food and we can eat the great food, but we can’t eat 24 hours a day, isn’t it? Now we eat and afterwards we become satiated.
We can’t eat much more than the Egyptian pharaohs. Some of us may know about them from the mummies in which their bodies were preserved. The Egyptian pharaohs tried to expand the body’s capacity for enjoyment.
So what they did was, they would have these elaborate gold bowls in which they would get bowls and plates where they would get feasts and eat it. And after they would eat it, they had their physicians make painless vomiting pills. And they would take the pill, vomit everything out.
And then eat again. Because they were so desperate to enjoy, they thought that okay, the stomach is filled but I want to enjoy more. So just get whatever is in the stomach out and eat again.
But it didn’t work. Why? Because it’s not just a matter of space being there in the stomach. No, actually when the food goes inside, it has to go through the alimentary canal and the body has to process it.
Because it’s exhausted. So on the second biggest Egyptian pyramids, it is written that, there’s a quote over there, that you live on one-fourth of what you eat. On the remaining three-fourth lives your physician.
So why are we talking about this right now? That when people live for eating, how much can we eat? We can’t eat 24 hours a day. So when we have good food to eat, we find it enjoyable. When the food turns out to be not good, we feel irritated.
And in between, all the remaining time, we are bored. If eating or sense pleasure is the goal of my life, when I get sense pleasure, it’s enjoyment. When I don’t get it, or I get the opposite of sense pleasure, I get sense pain, then it is distress.
But in between, it’s all boredom. So the more we live for sense pleasure, the more life tends to become boring. Because all the period in which sense pleasure is not available, what do you do in that time? There is nothing to live for.
So as society has become more and more materialistic, that means people are more and more pursuing sense pleasure as the goal of their life. Krishna says, कामो पभोग बरमा एतावदिति निष्चितः In 16.11 he says, such people have decided, Srila Prabhupada translates that as, they have ascertained that the prime necessity of life is sense gratification, pleasure of the senses. Now this results in all the time when pleasure is not available, life becomes boring.
And what do we do when pleasure is not available? Then try to create pleasure in some other way. The whole entertainment industry is what essentially? It is basically other people enjoying and people who are watching think, if I was there, it would be so nice. A hero and a heroine are dancing.
And then people who are watching, they think, oh, you know, if I had been there, I would be enjoying so much romance. Some sports players are playing and everybody is fantasizing, if I was there, it would be so nice. So usually when people think they want to go to theater and watch movies, then they always want to have some popcorn or something to eat.
Why? Because everything is imaginary. Something has to be real. We need some sensual stimulus which is actually real.
Otherwise it’s all imaginary. So essentially entertainment offers us secondhand pleasure. Somebody else is enjoying and I imagine if I was there, it would be so enjoyable.
So why do we want this? Because life itself is not that enjoyable. So we try to identify with someone else and we try to enjoy through them. So now the more life becomes emptier and emptier, the more people need entertainment more and more.
The more real life becomes boring, the more the entertainment life has to become more stimulating. And we see this even in the nature of the entertainment. Maybe if we look at movies, say 50 years ago, 30 years ago, some action would be there, some fighting.
But now if action is in a big building, it blows up. Masa ho gaya. Now it’s some fun.
Because real life is so boring that we need something which is very stimulating, very agitating. Even sports, if you consider India’s national pastime, cricket. Now we had the five day test matches.
But then they found five days is so long. And we had one day cricket. One day cricket also was not enough.
Then we had T20 cricket. And then after that, we have? Yes. Day night of course was there.
So basically India had two main forms of entertainment. One was Bollywood and the other was cricket. About 10 years ago, both of them got married.
And their child was IPL. So here there is an intense dose of entertainment. And there is nothing wrong in entertainment per se.
The point is the compulsiveness, the obsessiveness with which people seek entertainment. The sheer sense of proportion that is lost when people get obsessed with entertainment. That is what is a matter of concern.
Sports as an enjoyable activity is fine. Sports when it is done as a health, it is healthy to be active and to play sports. But when sports becomes a way of escaping from the emptiness of life.
Sports becomes usually commercialized. Then it becomes not an entertainment. It becomes an escape way.
And basically we try to escape from the boredom of life through what is called a spectator sports. Some people are playing but others are just spectators watching. So basically the human heart needs fulfillment.
So we are spiritual beings. And our existence is three dimensional. Body, mind and soul.
So body is what we perceive ourselves at an interpersonal level. We see each other’s bodies. Beyond that everybody has their feelings.
We all have our feelings which matter. Sometimes people may be externally looking very cheerful, appearing to be cheerful. But their minds may be distressed.
So our feelings matter just more than our looks. A few years ago there was an American comedian, William Robbins. He committed suicide.
Now many famous VIPs have committed suicide. Even Hollywood stars have committed suicide. But a comedian committing suicide was alarming.
Because normally comedians, they make others laugh. So we think they must be happy. They make others happy so they must be happy.
But actually no. Making people laugh is just a talent. Some people have the talent to sing well.
Some people have the talent to speak well. Some people have the talent to manage well. Like that some people have the talent to crack jokes.
They may be paid phenomenally. But that doesn’t mean that they themselves are happy. So at our level of emotions, things that happen to us, they affect us a lot.
However we are not just our emotions. We are something more. We are the feelers of our feelings.
That means we experience our feelings. But we are not our feelings. Because we see the feelings come and we see the feelings go.
If somebody shouts at us. Why is this person shouting like this? And then after that we just walk away from there, disturbed. And then we meet that person again.
Why did you shout like that? I am sorry, I was angry at that time. That means I was angry. What does it mean? Anger was an emotion that came to me and it went.
So I am not that anger. So emotions are something which are felt by us. Krishna says that we need to become the observers of our emotions.
प्रकाशम्च प्रवृत्तिम्च मोहमेवच पाण्डवन द्वेश्टि संप्रवृत्तानि दन्यूरृत्तानि कांख्षति उदासीन वदासीनं गुणेर्योन विचाल्यते गुणावर्तन्तियत्येव योगुतिष्ठतिनेंगते In 14.22 and 23, he says that different emotions get stimulated within us. And when they come, we should observe them. It’s like if we are sitting in an office or if we are sitting at a counter in a major store.
So different people will come in. Some people will be in a good mood, oh I’m going to shop. Some people are in an irritable mood, oh come on, these people are there to fleece all my money.
I’ll give as less and get as much as possible. Some people are in their own world, just come to escape. So now we observe these different people coming.
If we have to deal with them, we deal with them. But we don’t have to identify with them. Just as we may observe different people in different moods coming in, Krishna says we observe our emotions.
They will come, they will stay for some time and they will go. So the point which I’m making is we are not our feelings also. We are the feelers of our feelings.
So the emotions arise in the mind. But they are experienced by something other than the mind. The experiencer of the emotions is the soul.
So there’s the body, the mind and the soul. And most of what we call as entertainment today is either at the physical level or at the emotional level. So at the physical level as I said when we are watching movies or watching sports, we are not doing much.
But at the emotional level we are taking things in. And we are trying to get enjoyment at that level. But we are spiritual beings.
Now we need physical nourishment also. We need emotional nourishment also. But essentially we are souls.
So our most fundamental need is spiritual nourishment. So say today is Ekadashi. So some of us may fast on Ekadashi.
And say tomorrow morning, say if I’m fasting today on Ekadashi, tomorrow morning I’m hungry. And then instead of giving me food, somebody comes and offers me a garland. He says, thank you very much, I’m very grateful to you.
Yes, thank you, I’m happy to come. But I’m hungry. They come and give me one more garland.
I’m hungry, one more garland. Now, garlands are fine, but they will not satisfy the need for food. Isn’t it? We have, say, if we have needs at different levels.
And satisfying the need at one level does not satisfy the need at another level. So that means that the spiritual need cannot be satisfied by increasing the facilities available at the physical level or at the mental level. Most of the society today focuses on changing things externally.
We have phenomenal amount of facilities available at the physical level today. But the nature of attention is that when we focus on one thing, we get distracted from other things. So when we focus on the physical, we tend to neglect the mental and neglect the spiritual.
And that is why we see that although physically there are so many facilities available for people, people are not happy. People are agitated, people are distressed. The WHO says that one million people commit suicide every year.
One million means one suicide every 40 seconds. That means since I started this talk, almost 30 people have committed suicide. So why is that? Because we have provided for our physical needs, but we have not really provided for our emotional needs.
And that’s why people feel lonely, people feel hurt, people feel hopeless. They are in their lives. So we may be comfortable, but we are miserably comfortable.
We are unhappy internally, physically I am comfortable, but internally I am distressed. And the emotions, so what has happened, at the level of emotions there is enormous distress and disorder. And we try to bring order to it through entertainment.
So the physical needs of food, clothing, shelter, for most people in the world today, especially in the developed world, they are provided for. That is not a major challenge. But the emotional needs are not provided for.
And people try to fulfill those emotional needs for stimulation, for excitement, for satisfaction by entertainment. And entertainment does fulfill that need. But because we are not just our emotions, our physical and emotional side is important.
But essentially we are souls. So our physical and emotional should be harmonized with the spiritual. In today’s world, the spiritual is mostly neglected.
Yes, many people talk about spirituality. But their idea of spirituality is basically emotionality. Anything which makes me feel good is spiritual.
Well, it may or it may not be. I’ll come to the difference between emotional and spiritual a little later. But the point I’m making here is that because our physical needs don’t satisfy our emotional needs.
So emotional needs are, we try to satisfy them through entertainment. But when the physical and the emotional is not connected with the spiritual, then it doesn’t really satisfy us in a sustainable way. And that’s why whatever we get at the emotional level, the stimulation, it is like a painkiller.
It is not a curative medicine. Ultimately, the curative medicine is that which takes us to the spiritual level. And we are souls.
We are Atma. The Atma is by nature Sat, Chit, Ananda. Atma is by nature joyful.
But the Atma is currently caught in material things. And it experiences emotions in relationship with everything material. In 13.22 in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, purushah prakriti stho hi bhunte prakriti jan gunan karanam guna sangosya sad asat yoni janmasu So it says purushah prakriti stho hi.
The soul has become situated in material nature by the projection of its consciousness. And then whatever happens in the material level, that causes happiness or distress. karyakarana kartrutve hetu prakriti ruchite purushah sukha dukkhana bhaktrutve hetu ruchite Krishna says that the ups and downs in the material world will happen.
But we experience pleasure and pain accordingly, corresponding to the ups and downs, because our consciousness is caught in these things. Say, a child is sitting at home. And the mother is at home itself.
It’s a nice air-conditioned home. And the child is watching a horror movie. Now, the child is watching the horror movie and some shape-shifting monster is there and it’s about to catch someone.
And then the child is trembling, scared, horrified. Actually, nothing has happened to the child. But the child is experiencing pain.
Why? Because the consciousness is projected into the movie. If the mother sees that the child is getting too scared, the mother just one button switches off the TV. Child will be initialized today.
Yeah, I’m safe. Nothing will matter. So, what has happened? Actually, it is the projection of the consciousness that causes us to experience emotions.
I think a couple of months ago, there was India-Pakistan cricket final in the Champions Trophy. India was expected to win, but India lost very badly. So, after that one boy came and told me that I couldn’t sleep for three nights.
I said, how could India lose? He was in India, the match happened in England, but the consciousness was projected there. So, we experience emotions in relationship to wherever our consciousness is. And when our consciousness is projected into something, when there is pleasure or pain, accordingly we experience pleasure or pain.
So, the heart ultimately needs shelter in the supreme spiritual reality, Krishna. Krishna says, He says, we are His eternal parts. But when we forget that, then the mind and senses promises various things.
Come on, eat this, watch this, touch this, enjoy this. And we keep chasing after this. And we get a little pleasure, but then it gets over.
And then what? We want it in more dosage, more dosage. Because if I get more, then I’ll get more pleasure. But the heart is actually longing for Krishna.
So, at the spiritual level, we need to connect to the supreme spiritual reality. That is what will provide us lasting fulfillment. But not knowing that, we try to seek more and more at the physical level and more and more at the emotional level.
And this, that’s why for the heart, the devotional connection with Krishna is the curative medicine. But physical and mental gratification that is disconnected from spiritual understanding, that is like a painkiller. And if somebody takes, there is nothing wrong in taking a painkiller.
If there is a lot of pain, doctors will prescribe, you take a painkiller and you take the curative medicine also. But if the patient thinks, this curative medicine is so expensive, this painkiller is so cheap, I’ll just take painkiller, I’ll be okay. And what is going to happen? The painkiller actually doesn’t kill the pain.
It kills our sensation of the pain. The pain is there and the pain is increasing. And as the disease keeps worsening, the pain keeps increasing.
What happens then? Then you need more and more dosage of the painkillers. So that’s why the spiritual connection, the spiritual understanding, spiritual growth is like the curative medicine. And as society has become more and more materialistic, people have stopped taking the curative medicine.
And that’s why the pain is becoming more and more. And that’s why the dose of painkiller that people need is more and more. And that’s why there is this fervent obsession, frantic obsession, almost manic obsession with entertainment.
Because that’s the painkiller that people desperately need. The heart is so empty, life is so pointless. So what do we do? Basically entertainment for people is just some way to forget the emptiness of life.
And the more bombastic, the more bombarding the entertainment, the greater is the forgetfulness of the emptiness of life. So when the painkiller replaces the medicine, then the patient is actually hurting oneself, fooling oneself and hurting oneself. So in the balanced program, there is the painkiller and the medicine.
Both are taken properly. So in the Ishopanishad, it is said, विद्ध्यांच विद्ध्यांच यस्तद्वेदो वहेंसा, that material knowledge and spiritual knowledge, material growth and spiritual growth, both need to come together. Then that is like the painkiller and the medicine coming together.
When the painkiller alone is provided, no matter how much the dosage is increased, it is never enough. For some time it feels enough, but afterwards we want more and more and more. In Thailand, there was one boy.
He surfed on the internet for 76 hours continuously. And he was so caught in surfing that he forgot. He was playing some video games and watching some things.
He forgot. He forgot to eat, he forgot to drink. And there in front of the entertainment itself, in front of the internet itself, he crashed.
Crashed out of starvation. He was rushed to a hospital and somehow he survived. So what has happened over here, I talked about how we are depriving ourselves of the spiritual, but when we start getting hooked on to the painkillers, somebody may get so caught in the entertainment that they may deprive themselves of even the physical.
Not just the spiritual, but even the physical they may deprive themselves. There are many countries, especially in Europe, which are welfare states. And in welfare states, if a person is not employed, the government provides them some unemployment allowance.
So now, many of the people who are unemployed, they, instead of using this government allowance for getting food for themselves, they prefer to take drugs. And they get stoned. So they are hungry, but they are stoned.
Why? Because once we lose touch with reality, then the mind just makes a fool out of ourselves. So we imagine that actually entertainment is more necessary than food. It’s more necessary than water.
Think that drugs are more needed than food or water. So our values can get so distorted that not only we neglect the spiritual, but we neglect even the physical. So in the routine course of life, we’re talking about festivals.
That was the first major part I was talking about. That in the routine course of life, festivals are arranged so that the normal life, which is often boring, which is often sometimes distressing, there is some positive stimulation in that. And if the festivals are God-centered, then that stimulation is not just physical or emotional, it is also spiritual.
So all over the world, whether it is in India it is Diwali, in the West it is Christmas, whatever the festivals, their idea is that there is the physical, the emotional, the spiritual, all aspects are there. Physically we wear new dresses, in Diwali for example, we clean our houses, we get new dresses, we decorate our houses. Emotionally we get together with each other, we meet our friends, we meet our loved ones, we spend time with each other.
We get some emotional nourishment. And this is spiritual. So if the festivals do not address the spiritual aspect, then the result is that people just focus on the emotional and the physical, and then often they get completely disconnected from the purpose of the festival.
So in India, Ganesh Otsav is a big festival, especially in Maharashtra and some other parts. So now once I was invited to give a talk at a Ganesh festival, and I went there, and it was very elaborately arranged pandal, but there were no bhajans of Ganesh going on, there were Bollywood songs going on. So then I asked the organizers politely, this is a Ganesh Otsav, you can have Bollywood songs anytime.
So why have Bollywood songs in Ganesh Otsav? So I got a fantastic answer. They said, actually Ganesh is Bhakta Vatsala. So whatever pleases his devotees, pleases him.
So his devotees are pleased with Bollywood songs, so he is also pleased by Bollywood songs. This is a complete distortion of the idea of Bhakta Vatsala. The Lord is a lover of his devotees, and his love is manifested by the fact that he delivers his devotees.
He raises them to spiritual consciousness, he frees them from miseries. Not that he comes down to their level and enjoys the things which they are enjoying. So what has happened over here in the Ganesh Otsav, they just divorced the purpose of the festival and it just become something for emotional and physical titillation.
So the spiritual aspect is important. Even Christmas in the western world, for most kids, Christmas is not about Jesus, it is about Santa Claus. Most people, many of them, Christmas, many of them they don’t even really know much about Jesus.
They know yes Jesus was there, but the real thing is Santa Claus is going to give me some gifts. So that’s what it’s become. So if the festival, the spiritual purpose is not kept in the focus, then they also become sources of simply emotional and physical gratification.
And then they just go the same way. And that’s why many festivals nowadays have just become so commercialized. The commercialization of festivals happens because it’s become disconnected from the spiritual core.
So traditionally festivals are meant to help, provide us a break from the humdrum, the monotonous nature of life. But that break shouldn’t just be something else at the same physical, mental level. That break is meant to take us to the spiritual level.
That’s why the festivals are meant to be celebrated with God in the center, with devotion as the central aspect of the festivals. When that is there, then we get not only a physical change, not only some emotional stimulation, but we also get spiritual nourishment. And for this we need philosophical understanding.
Srila Prabhupada, when he started ISKCON, he wanted the Krishna Consciousness Movement to be having centers for spiritual education. The idea is not just that people come as a cultural center. Yes, culture is important.
But an important part of culture is also the discussion about Krishna. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita 4.9, janma karma cha me divyam, evam yo vetti tattvatah, tyaktva deham punar janma, naiti mameti savarjuna. He says that tattvatah, those who understand janma karma, my pastimes in truth, philosophical understanding, tattvatah understanding, then they will become liberated, they will become elevated, they will attain me.
Without tattvatah, without the philosophical understanding, that even if we hear Krishna’s pastimes, even if we hear Lord Ram’s pastimes, that will also be simply entertainment. It may definitely be a better form of entertainment than just some mundane self-gratificatory movies or sports. But still, it is entertainment.
So, nowadays, much of the Puranic stories are displayed on some channels. There is Ramayana, there is Mahabharata, there is Hanuman stories, Shiva stories, and people watch them. And if there is no philosophical understanding, then it just becomes, I watch Ramayana, I see how Jatayu is fighting with Ravana, and Jatayu is killed.
It’s depicted so beautifully. I start getting tears in my eyes. And then the Ramayana ends, I change over to sports channel, then I see Virat Kohli, he’s got out for zero, and I start crying again.
So, that was one form of entertainment, this is another form of entertainment. Qualitatively, is there a difference? There is definitely a difference. But if there is no philosophical understanding, then the qualitative difference is not understood at all.
And what happens is, because of this, we can’t get shelter of the Lord. The process of Bhakti is that we don’t reduce the Lord to an entertainment commodity for ourselves. We want to take shelter of Him.
He is the supreme reality. So, there is the cultural aspect where every tradition has its religion, which becomes a cultural aspect. So, for example, there is Ram Katha, there is Krishna Katha, there is Bhagavata Katha, many people go for that.
But for many of them, it may just be like a pious form of entertainment. And it’s good that they are going for that kind of entertainment instead of impious forms of entertainment. But still, that will not get you the shelter of Krishna.
So, there is cultural and there is spiritual. And what takes us from the cultural to the spiritual is the philosophical. So, cultural Bhakti means, yes, it’s a part of my culture.
My parents did it, my grandparents did it. So, on Diwali, we should go to some temple. On Janmashtami, we should go to Krishna temple.
Many people, on Janmashtami, I meet them and then I ask, I come regularly to the Krishna temple. So, how regularly? Once a year. On Janmashtami.
So, for them, it’s simply, it’s good that they are at least coming once a year. We appreciate that. But still, the point is, it’s simply a part of culture for them.
So then, it is only when we get the philosophical understanding, then we come to the spiritual level. So, cultural Bhakti is, it’s something which is a part of my culture, so I do it. But spiritual Bhakti means, I have spiritual understanding.
I have understanding that I am the soul, that Krishna is, Krishna, Lord Ram is the Supreme, manifestation of the Supreme Lord. And developing Bhakti for them, developing love for them, is life’s ultimate goal. So, this understanding comes through philosophical discussions.
And that is what Srila Prabhupada especially wanted. That if we have philosophical understanding, then we’ll rise from cultural Bhakti to spiritual Bhakti. That doesn’t mean we neglect the culture, but we don’t see that only as culture.
We see it, this is cultural, which is meant to take me to the spiritual. My introduction to the Bhagavad Gita was as a child, in a shloka recitation competition, maybe when I was 5 or 6 years old. So I participated in that, I memorized the verses, I won a prize, and I was very happy.
And when I was around 20, around 18, 19, in my college days, so one of my friends who happened to, I used to think that I was a very intellectual kind of person. So this friend was very materialistic. So one day he came and gave me a Bhagavad Gita.
And I saw that he completely changed. Became very serious, sober, gentlemanly kind of person. So when he gave me the Bhagavad Gita, my first reaction was, I have already read it.
I know it. But then, when I started talking with him, I saw that he was such a changed person. And I met him for the first time, and I asked him in Marathi, Tula kya jala? What happened to you? So he told me, Tula ko hoi lata.
This is going to happen to you also. So then when I started talking with him, and I saw that he was deriving so much inspiration and intelligence from the Bhagavad Gita, I started thinking, hey, maybe I have not read the Bhagavad Gita. I have read it, but I have not understood it at all.
So, what happens, at the cultural level, even the Bhagavad Gita is seen as a cultural book. It is not seen as a philosophical book. It is something, as we often say, people take Bhagavad Gita as it is, and keep it as it is.
They hardly ever read it. So, it is, only when people read, understand, the philosophical aspect, then they see this is a whole different universe of which I had no idea at all. So when we practice festivals, when we participate in festivals, at that time, there can be many festivals that happen throughout the world.
But it is the spiritual aspect that distinguishes the bhakti festivals from other festivals. And the spiritual aspect is appreciated through hearing about Krishna, through understanding the philosophy. And then, when we do kirtans, when we participate in hearing Katha, we are not just doing it for some pious entertainment.
We are doing it to take shelter of the Lord. We are doing it to raise our consciousness to the spiritual level. To find deep amount of, to find deep spiritual strength therein.
So, I’ll come now to the third part. First part of what I spoke about, the significance of festivals in human society. Second part was about the cultural and the spiritual aspects of festivals.
The third part will be specifically about Diwali. Actually, Diwali is a whole set of many different occasions being celebrated. I’ll focus on one, which is probably the most important.
That is, why do we have the lights being lit? The idea was that when Lord Ram, he was sent on exile because of a conspiracy that was hatched by Mantara. And Kaikeyi became her puppet in that. And he went to the forest.
And when he came back from the forest, after 14 years of exile, at that time, he started from Lanka and he came with the Pushpak Viman. And by the time he came, it was evening. So, the Ayodhya Vasis wanted to welcome the Lord back and to commemorate, to signify the mood of celebration that they wanted to have.
They lit the whole path to Ayodhya and the city of Ayodhya with lamps. So, the idea of the lamps was, they wanted to welcome the Lord back into the city. It was dark and they wanted to have those lights.
For them, the Lord, who was the light of their lives, was returning back. And they signified that by lighting the lamps. Madhavacharya, in his commentary on the Vedanta Sutra, explains that the epics can be understood at multiple levels.
There’s literal, ethical and metaphorical. Literal means, this is just, epics are describing incidents that happened long ago and just hearing about them is purifying us. Ek ek aksharam pumsa, maha paataka nashinam.
In the Valmiki Ramayana, Mahatma Yeta said that just hearing about the Lord’s pastimes purifies us. That’s at the literal level also we can get, just hearing it purifies us. At the ethical level means, that we look at the characters.
Okay, that Kai Kai got manipulated by Mantra. We have to be careful, we should not get manipulated by others. Now, how Ravana got captivated by lusty desires.
I should not get captivated by such desires. So, these are ethical lessons we can draw from them. And beyond that, there is the metaphorical.
The metaphorical is not at the expense of the literal. It is in addition to the literal. The Ramayana is describing incidents, but the incidents can also be seen as representing certain things.
So, Ayodhya represents our heart. And, when Mantra, she poisoned, she poisoned Kai Kai, and she poisoned Kai Kai, Kai Kai just, she became a puppet. Actually, when Kai Kai first, when Mantra came and told Kai Kai, that, what are you doing sitting here comfortably, while you are losing everything? He said, what is the matter? Kai Kai knew that Mantra was a little bit of a sullen kind of woman.
So, she was used to her bad moods. He said, what is the matter? And, he said, how do you know that Kaushalya’s son is about to be coronated as the king? And, he spoke this, Kai Kai became so happy. She took out a jewel necklace and gave it to him.
He said, this is the best news you have brought to me in your whole life. And, Mantra was furious. She took the jewel necklace and hurled it at him.
You foolish lady! You don’t understand what is happening. You are being deprived of your right. He said, once Ram becomes the king, he will deprive Lakshmi, Bharat of everything.
He may even exile you. He may even kill, he may even exile him, he may kill him. He said, no, Ram is like my own son.
He will never do such a thing. Kai Kai said, if there was nothing ulterior going on, then why is this coronation happening? Why is this festival happening when Bharat is not present? Now, that was just a happenstance. Lakshmi Maharaj had felt the inspiration that I want to do it right away.
He had felt that I am growing in age now and I should do it right away. So, circumstantially, he happened to be awake. But, Mantra latched on to that.
And then, Kai Kai started hearing. What is it? He started hearing. As he kept hearing, slowly her mind started getting poisoned.
And then, Mantra had her own agenda. She was a hunchback lady. And, she used to be the object of jokes from others.
Now, not bad intention jokes, but still they were jokes. But then, when Dashrath married Kai Kai, Kai Kai soon became his favorite queen. And, Mantra had come with Kai Kai from her home with her.
So, she was very close to her. So, as Kai Kai’s position in the royal palace became elevated, Mantra’s position also became elevated. And, nobody could now make jokes at her.
So then, she felt that if Kai Kai is no longer the favorite queen of the king, then I won’t be the favorite maid of the favorite queen of the king. So, I will lose the special position. And thus, she became mad.
And, she poisoned the mind of Kai Kai. And, Kai Kai very heartlessly had Rama excited. And, it was only when Bharat came back.
And, Kai Kai very happily told Bharat that, actually, after great difficulty, the kingdom that was going to be seized away from you by the plan of your father and your brother, I have protected it and give it to you now. So, what? Where is my father? Where is my brother? He said that, my father, he said that the great king has departed from this world. And, Rama has departed from this kingdom.
He told the whole story. Bharat couldn’t believe. He said, you are not my mother.
He said, you are the goddess of destruction, Mahakali, incarnated in our family to destroy our whole family. It was when Lakshman totally rejected her plan. Completely debunked her whole conception of what she was doing.
Then, she came to her senses. What have I done? What have I done? By then, it was too late. Rama had already gone to the forest.
Dashrath had already departed. So, actually, Ayodhya is like the kingdom. Ayodhya is like our heart.
Kaikeyi is like the soul. Mantara is like the mind. The mind poisons us with various ideas.
This is wrong. That is wrong. This is not right.
This is not right. And, slowly but surely, what the mind does is, it exiles God from our heart. How does it exile? For materialistic people, it just says, God, what is God doing for you? Why do you need God? I can do everything in your life.
God is simply an interference in your life. So, we put God aside. For those who are devotees, the mind doesn’t act so brazenly.
What it does is, it just pushes God one rung down in the level of priority. Yes, God is important, but right now, your job is important, your family is important, your health is important. Then, slowly, you know, yeah, Krishna Katha is always there.
Now, cricket match is going on. Let’s watch cricket. Then, slowly, one by one, now, God never, we never reject God, but God goes from number one in our priority to one million one.
And then, slowly, we don’t exile God from our heart, but effectively, God has no place in our life. So, just as Mantra’s influence was that Ram got exiled from the heart of, from Ayodhya, similarly, under the influence of the mind, we keep pushing God to the sidelines. And, this is Diwali.
It was a time when Lord Ram came back. So, festivals like Diwali are the times when we are meant to invite the Lord back into our heart. Remind ourselves that He is the most important person in our life.
He is the goal of our life. He is the sustainer of our life. We have many relationships in this world, we have many responsibilities in this world, but ultimately, all of them, all of them are centered on Krishna.
Centered on the Lord Krishna, Ram. Now, He is the one who is enabling us to do everything in our lives. This, just as the lights were lit to invite the Lord back into the heart, into the Ayodhya, in Ramayana, similarly, when we light the lamps in Diwali, it is actually not just a physical lighting of the lamps.
There is the inner lighting of our heart that is to happen. With wisdom and with devotion. With spiritual understanding, saying that the Lord is the most important person in my life.
We all are His eternal parts. I’ll conclude with two points. What we mean by the Lord is the most important person in our lives.
There is the famous prayer, Tameva Mata cha Pita Tameva Tameva Bandhu cha Sakha Tameva Tameva Vidya Dravinam Tameva Tameva Sarvam Mama Deva Deva Good. So, you are my mother, you are my father, you are my brother, you are my friend, you are my wealth, you are my knowledge, you, O Lord, are my everything. What does this mean? What it means is that during our life journey, we often get support and shelter from different people.
When we are small, it’s our mother who carries us in her womb and nourishes us with her breast milk. So, it is the mother who is taking care of us. But it is not the mother alone who is taking care of us.
It is actually God who is taking care of us through our mother. Because when a mother nourishes a baby with her own milk, it’s one of the most intimate acts of affection. At the same time, if we think objectively, the mother, did she do anything special at that time to produce the milk in her breast? No.
The same Lord who sent a child into her womb and threw her womb into the world has also sent milk in her breast so that she can nourish that child. So, we are grateful to our mother, to our father, to our friends, but we don’t stop over there. We see that it is Krishna, it is the Lord Krishna Ram who is nourishing us through those who are nourishing us.
So, Dhruva Maharaj, he was a small boy, his mother was taking care of him. But when he was incited by his stepmother, he was neglected by his father, at that time, his mother, she told him that, I cannot help you now. Go to Lord Vishnu and He can offer you more love than what millions of mothers like me can offer you.
So, she is not denying the reality of her love. The love that we experience in this world is real, but it cannot be sustainable. She is saying that, whatever love I am offering you, millions of times more, Vishnu can offer you.
So, now take shelter of Vishnu. What that means is, that we, the verse, what this means, one way, whatever love, whatever shelter we get, we may get it through our parents, through our friends, through our siblings, and as we grow up and we study, through our degrees, we get some security. Through our salaries, we get some security.
Yes, these are important sources of security. But we see that actually it is ultimately God who is giving us shelter through all these things. When we see that connection, So, yes, through these channels we get shelter.
But none of these channels will give us permanent shelter. I may be very intelligent today, maybe 40 years down the line I will get dementia, and my intelligence will not be there for me to have shelter of. I may have parents today, but they are not going to be there all the time.
So, the ideal human society is where we have horizontal relationships in this world, and we have a vertical relationship with Krishna. The horizontal relationships are meant to strengthen our vertical relationship. The parents, the love that the parents offer for the children is very important.
It is vital, indispensable for the child to grow up. But the complete responsibility of the parents is, the parents don’t just connect the child with themselves. They are themselves connected with Krishna, with the Lord, and they connect the children with the Lord.
So, we get the horizontal and the vertical relationship together. Whatever shelter we get in the horizontal relationships also, we see that it is the Lord who is providing us that shelter. And with this vision, then we, when any particular shelter is lost somehow, somehow I lose my job, then I can get devastated.
But if I see that shelter which is provided through money, it is ultimately the Lord who is providing me shelter. Then we take shelter of the Lord, and we experience relief. Now, if we define ourselves in terms of any of our horizontal relationships, we set ourselves up for frustration.
If I define myself as an IT professional, tomorrow the IT industry goes down, and I lose my job. Then who am I? It’s not a philosophical question, who am I? It’s an existential question. I thought I was an IT engineer, who am I? If I define myself as any relationship, I define myself as the husband of so and so, the wife of so and so, the mother of so and so, the father of so and so, if something goes wrong in that relationship, then I just feel shattered.
Who am I? So, in Columbus I gave a talk on overcoming fears. So I was talking about the top ten fears that people have. There are two modern fears.
All the fears are always there, but two modern fears. One is fear of terrorists, and the second is the fear of rejection. Rejection.
People feel that what if I am rejected in the relationship I am trying to develop. So there is, if we define ourselves in terms of our horizontal relationships, we always will stay insecure. Yes, the horizontal relationships are important.
We perform our responsibilities diligently. But we don’t define ourselves in those terms. My defining identity is that I am a servant of the Lord.
And in my service to Him, I am someone’s mother, I am someone’s husband, I am someone’s wife, I am someone’s child, I am someone’s friend, I am someone’s brother, I am someone’s sister. If we have this understanding, then we will be able to do all these relationships responsibly in the mode of service. And if something goes wrong in that relationship, we won’t get inordinately disturbed.
Because our sense of self-identity comes from our vertical relationship with the Lord. So Diwali is not just a historical commemoration of the Lord’s returning to Dwarka. It is meant to remind us of what is the defining relationship in our life.
The relationship with the Lord is the most important relationship. And He is our ultimate shelter. Sometimes we pray to Him and we feel nothing is happening.
I am praying and this problem is there. I am hoping the problem will be solved. But the problem is not getting solved.
But it is not that the Lord is not listening to our prayers. See, when we approach the Lord, we have to understand that what is the proper way to approach Him. If we say, I have this problem and this is the solution.
Please solve this problem. Then what are we doing? We are forming a relationship with the Lord. But the terms of the relationship are my intelligence and your strength.
I know with my intelligence what the solution is. Only this person should change his opinion. This thing should change this way.
That should change that way. So when we approach the Lord in that way, what are we doing? We are half trusting the Lord. The Lord has two defining aspects.
He is omnipotent and He is omniscient. So we are trusting His power but not His intelligence. We think that, yes, I know that you are powerful.
But I think you are not clever enough to solve this problem. So here is my plan. You just execute this plan.
Actually, everyone likes to serve God. Did you know that? Everyone likes to serve God. In fact, atheists like to serve God the most.
How? As advisors. Everyone wants to serve God as an advisor. Do like this.
Atheists also argue, if God had existed, the world would not have been like this. That means they are advising God. If you existed, you should have done it like this.
So the atheist God, every time the atheists want to give advice, that God pops out of non-existence into existence, gratefully accepts their advice and then goes back into non-existence. What we need to do is, we need to trust God fully. So when we have problems, there is a purpose for it all.
And yes, rather than thinking, please solve this problem, instead, Prabhupada was asked, what is the best prayer that you can offer to Krishna? Prabhupada said, pray to the Lord, give me the strength to serve you. Give me the strength to serve you. Whatever situation comes in my life, give me the strength to serve you.
Sometimes the situation will be according to what I want, sometimes the situation will not be according to what I want. But if I have the strength to serve you, then I will go through that situation, I will grow through that situation. I will come closer to you.
So we need that understanding, that actually Krishna, the Lord has a plan which will be revealed in due course. So what happens with us is, we look at the present and we plan for the future. Krishna looks at the future and plans for the present.
So that’s why our vision and his vision doesn’t look alike. Now a child has some pain in the stomach, a child goes to a doctor, and says, doctor, please relieve me of this pain, I have a lot of pain. And the doctor does some diagnosis, and the doctor takes out an injection.
Hey, what are you doing? I have pain in my stomach and now you are giving me pain in my arm also. This is not fair, what are you doing? But the doctor sees the future, this infection is there, it is going to worsen. So the doctor sees the future and plans the present.
So similarly, God sees from a different perspective. So we have to have faith, not just in his strength that he can solve problems, but also in his wisdom, that he knows what he is doing. And even if right now problems are there, rather than demanding that the problem be solved, we try to take shelter of the Lord.
And if we take shelter of him, then we will find that we will get relief even amidst the problems. The problem may still be there, many times the problems trouble us to the extent we think about the problems. If I don’t think about the problem so much, that doesn’t mean the problem goes away, but it won’t trouble me so much.
Somebody has insulted me. Yes, that person insulted me, but next. Till I insult them back, I keep thinking about them.
Then that is what is going to cause the problem much more to me. So when we start practicing Krishna Bhakti, what are we doing? We are actually trying to become, to shift our consciousness to Krishna. When I first heard about ISKCON, I started thinking, International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
I just couldn’t digest it. I said, consciousness is scientific, Krishna is religious. What is this Krishna Consciousness? Why do we need an International Society for that? But, yes, consciousness is our energy.
And wherever our consciousness goes, as I said earlier, we experience emotions in relationship with that. So when we become conscious of Krishna, at that time we experience shelter in Krishna. So even if there is difficulty, to the extent we think about the difficulty, our mind will get agitated.
But if we can just withdraw our consciousness from that difficulty, fix the mind on Krishna, we will experience relief even then. Say, outside it is very hot, and I come into air-conditioned room. As soon as I come in, I experience relief.
Like that, when we think about worldly things, they all agitate us. We bring our thoughts to Krishna. We experience calmness.
We hear Krishna Katha, we hear Krishna Keertan, we do Krishna Puja. We experience relief. It’s like coming into an air-conditioned room.
We experience that relief. But unfortunately, what we do is, instead of fixing our consciousness on Krishna, even when we come to Krishna, we are not Krishna Conscious. We are Problem Conscious.
Krishna, please solve this problem. Solve this problem and we are not thinking about Krishna, we are thinking about the problem. That is like, we come to the air-conditioned room, but instead of entering the room, we keep the door open and wonder when the outside atmosphere will become cool.
That’s not going to happen. We need to come inside. So, the problems are there, the problems will come, the problems will go.
We don’t have to get obsessed with them. Just take shelter of Krishna. Let’s try to absorb ourselves in the remembrance of Krishna.
And we’ll find, even in the presence of problems, we will experience relief. There is release from problems when the problem goes away. But there is relief amidst the problems, when we raise our consciousness above the problems to Krishna.
And that is the purpose of Krishna Consciousness. So, what is the purpose of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness? To give us facilities to become conscious of Krishna. To experience the relief that comes by remembrance of Krishna, even when there are problems in the world.
And when we get that relief, that will give us the conviction that this spiritual reality is for real. Yes, I have so much problems, but in remembering Krishna, I got so much shelter. There must be something real about this.
Eventually, the problems will be dealt with. We will get the intelligence, Krishna says, He will give us the intelligence to deal with the problems. But we needn’t put the problem first and Krishna second.
Put Krishna first and then the problem, we will be guided how to resolve it. And even if we are not able to resolve it, we will get the strength to go through it. So, that is the ultimate purpose of lighting the lamp.
We light the lamp of wisdom and devotion in our heart, by which we learn to take shelter of the Lord. Rather than expecting and demanding from Him that He solve our problems, He will do that in due course. But we don’t expect or demand that from Him.
We focus simply on taking shelter of Him. And therein we will get the greatest shelter, the greatest security, the greatest satisfaction. And attaining that is life’s ultimate goal.
So, just as Lord Ram came back to Ayodhya, similarly, the Lord is meant to come back to our heart, to be enthroned in our heart, and to fill our heart and our life with supreme spiritual joy. So, I will summarize what I spoke today. So, I spoke about how the role of festivals in human society, human life, material life in general is boring, especially in the sensual level we live.
When the pleasure is there, it is intermittent, it is very occasional. Remaining time, it is just boring. And to get rid, the whole entertainment industry, where people stay so compulsively, is because people’s lives are so bored.
So, they need entertainment. So, there is physical, emotional and spiritual needs. So, the satisfaction of need at one level does not satisfy the need at another level.
So, a hungry person cannot be satisfied by giving garlands. So, similarly, technology is providing a lot of physical comforts, but very little for the emotional and the spiritual level. So, people are comfortable, but comfortably miserable.
And at the emotional level, also technology is providing us means for entertainment. But that entertainment, if it is not connected with anything spiritual, then it simply becomes like a painkiller. And the more I take a painkiller and get relief, internally this is increasing, so I need more and more dosages of painkiller.
That’s why you see the entertainment is becoming more and more intense. You could get from 5 day matches to T20, or movies from some simple action to huge bomb explosions. Dosages are required more and more.
So, what we need is, we are souls. And a soul is connected with the whole, with the Lord. And therein, we actually find lasting satisfaction.
So, we are like a person, we are spiritual beings, but like a child watching a horror movie and getting horrified, because our consciousness is caught in worldly things, that is why we experience agitation. So, we need to withdraw our consciousness and fix it on the Lord. That is where we will get shelter.
So, the process of Bhakti Yoga is like the real medicine. Now, when a patient is sick, we need both the painkiller and the medicine. So, it’s not that material entertainment, emotional or physical gratification is wrong.
But there has to be balance with the priority being clear. So, the treatment that is going to cure us. And when the painkiller is used to replace the medicine, then chaos results.
People become more and more distressed. While they are being more and more entertained, still they are getting more and more bored. So, spiritually when we practice Bhakti, Bhakti may also be reduced to the level of the entertainment.
Well, it’s a pious form of entertainment. So, people watch some Ramayana, Mahabharata and they watch some cricket match and they think both are equal levels of entertainment. That’s why moving from cultural Bhakti to spiritual Bhakti requires philosophical Bhakti.
We want to understand the philosophy, understand that we are parts of the Lord and we are going to get the ultimate shelter only in Him. And then talk about how, this is in Dwaraka, sorry in Ayodhya, Lord Ram came back. And he was welcomed with the lighting of the lamps.
Similarly, we want the Lord to enter into our heart, come back into our heart. And we want to light our hearts with wisdom and devotion. So, just as Mantra’s malicious influence caused Kaikeyi to exile Ram from the heart.
So, the mind’s misleading ideas cause us to push the Lord down and down in our priority list. Till we neglect Him entirely. So, we have many relationships and roles in this world, but it is our relationship with the Lord that is the most important.
So, our mother, our father, all our relatives, they may give us some love. We are grateful to them for that, but we see that it’s ultimately the Lord who is giving that love through them. The mother is giving the breast milk, but it’s the Lord who is arranging for the breast milk in the mother’s breast.
So, we see the horizontal relationships as connected with our vertical relationship with the Lord. If we define ourselves in terms of any horizontal relationship or any horizontal role, we set ourselves up for insecurity. Only when we define ourselves, first and foremost, I am a servant of the Lord.
And as His servant, I’ll play this role, do this responsibility. Then we can do those responsibly without getting overwhelmed when things go wrong. And when we come to the Lord, we have problems, we want relief, but we don’t make our bhakti conditional to the solution of our problems on our terms.
We understand that we should be fully trusted, not just my intelligence and His power, rather His power and His intelligence. So, Prabhupada said that just pray to Krishna, give me the strength to serve you no matter what happens in my life. So, Krishna, we look at the present and we think of the future and we think of our solution.
But Krishna sees the future and plans the present. So, he has a much more long term vision. So, rather than demanding release from problems, we can get relief amidst problems by taking shelter of Krishna.
Rather than demanding that the outside weather become cool because of the AC, come into the AC room. So, rather than thinking of the problem and thinking of when the problem will be solved, just fix the mind in Krishna and we will get relief. And not only we will get relief over there, but we will realize the reality of spiritual shelter.
And that is our greatest attainment. Because through that, whatever life sends our way, we will be able to go through it, we will be able to grow through it. We will get the intelligence from within.
When we put the problem not first, but second, we put Krishna first, then he will give us shelter amidst the problem and then he will give us guidance to solve the problems. So, lighting the heart with wisdom and devotion is the essential spirit of Diwali. Thank you very much.
The next part of the program will be on artists. So, we request everyone to please rise and play.