We are like birds on a branch — our wings need to grow before the branch breaks

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
We are like birds who must develop our spiritual wings before the branch under us breaks. Birds often rest on branches on trees but they don’t live in constant fear what if the branch under me breaks I will crash to my death. Because they know they have wings.
And while the branch is their present shelter there is the strength of the wings that is their bigger shelter. So for all of us we are in a similar situation. We have various material shelters.
Our wealth, our social positions, our families our health, our body itself. All of these are shelters and they presently are very important for us. But at the same time all of them can break at any moment.
They are like breakable branches and they will break at some moment. And when they break we will crash down unless we have developed our spiritual wings. That means each one of us needs to strive to grow spiritually so that everyone of us can move towards the divine, move towards spiritual life beyond our bodily life.
So how do we develop our wings? Our wings are basically our spiritual inclination, our spiritual attraction, our devotional absorption in Krishna, the supreme spiritual reality. So all of us when we start exploring is there something more to life beyond matter and material things? That’s when our wings start budding, start emerging and then as we start exploring more and more then the wings start emerging and as we start practicing spiritual life doing sadhana, then the wings start flapping and flapping more strongly and as amid difficult situations we take shelter of Krishna diligently that is when our wings start growing so much that they can lift our weight and they can lift us from the branch where we are in and thus if some difficulty comes in our life, if at that time we take shelter of Krishna then we don’t get, we don’t crumble but we rise from that branch and fly enough till we get to another branch. During the course of our life, like this we fly short distances.
When one material shelter breaks and we find another material shelter during the intermediate time we take shelter of Krishna and eventually we become strong enough at the time of death when the branch under us breaks and we fly not just to the next branch but high into the sky to the supreme destination to Krishna. So if we can remember Krishna at the time of death with love, we attain Him. That, if we can remember Krishna at the time of death that means Krishna has become our foremost love by the time of death then we will attain Him and for doing this we need to as the bird has to develop its wings regularly lifelong, similarly we too need to develop our wings regularly, that is 8.7 says, therefore we need to remember Krishna constantly throughout our lives.
Therefore at all times we remember Him and even while doing our external work, yudhyacha, that means we are seated on the branch we are having a material shelter, we are doing our material responsibilities but we are also readying ourselves spiritually by remembering Krishna, by immersing ourselves in Krishna and thus we can grow to ultimately attain Him. By becoming sufficiently attached to Him throughout our lives we will remember Him at that time of death and thus attain Him. Thank you.