The Spiritual Significance of Thanksgiving – Occasion, Expression, Intention
[Talk at ISKCON, Connecticut, USA]
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Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
the spiritual significance of Thanksgiving I talked about three parts first was the occasion we want festivals because they bring the monotony and the humdrum nature of life they help us to come together and celebrate originally festivals, holidays are meant to be holy days but everywhere whether it is Thanksgiving or Christmas or Diwali the externals remain and the purpose is forgotten so then we talked about the expression of the festival so occasion, expression and intention in the expression I talked about how different people express their joy according to their culture and their upbringing so yes people celebrate Thanksgiving by killing a turkey rather than being judgmental about that we do make a judgment that is not good but we don’t become judgmental and condemn people if people are educated and provided an alternative, they can celebrate in a less harmful way also in a more wholesome way and then our momentum was on intention we need to give thanks, we need to be grateful if we are not grateful then we are great fools because we will be resentful and by being resentful we simply paralyze ourselves being resentful is like driving a car while pressing the brake we get nowhere and how can we be grateful bad things happen in our life we can’t be grateful for all situations but we can be grateful in all situations and for that I talked about the acronym ACE when a bad thing has happened look for the good around the bad look for the good that enables us to counter the bad and look for the good that may emerge from the bad and then I talked about this point especially how Krishna Consciousness helps us to see beyond the specific problem to always look for the good around to counter and emerge when we are materially attached our consciousness has shrunk to a puddle and that’s why that one thing is not working that’s our toy and losing that toy seems to be like the end of life for us but when we are attached to someone big the biggest being Krishna our consciousness expands to becoming like a ocean and Krishna Consciousness gives us a purpose that is bigger than the biggest problems that purpose is whatever situation we are in we can serve Krishna and then by that as our consciousness expands then even if problems come in our life we are able to deal with those problems because we have a big enough purpose that is we are attached to someone big you know Krishna is in charge, Krishna will take care of things we look at the good thing that Krishna has provided in our life ultimately what is the best thing he has provided that he has given us Krishna Consciousness everybody is suffering in life in middle existence but those who are devoted to Krishna they are like a sick person who has been diagnosed properly and is being treated properly and those who do not know about Krishna they are neither diagnosed nor treated properly and they are simply making their life worse many times so by looking at Sri Prabhupada’s sacrifice and giving us the opportunity to be Krishna Conscious we can see our problems as not all that big and we can cultivate the attitude of gratitude and gratitude can energize us so that even if there are obstacles in our life we are not like a slow-moving cycle that gets blocked by a tree but we become like a fast-moving truck which finds its way even through the obstacles and moves on thank you very much Hare Hare Krishna