What does it mean to say that we are envious of Krishna?
From Pancha Pandava P
Many people say that they don’t even know Krishna, so how can they be envious of him?
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question from Panchipandha Prabhu. What exactly does it mean when we say that we are envious of Krishna and that’s why we are here in the material world? Many people don’t even know who is God. How can they actually be envious of God? How can we explain this concept especially to new people? Answer.
People may not know about Krishna as a person, as a new-ish black complexioned person with a peacock feather, but God is not just a person. God is also the absolute truth and as the absolute truth He is the source of everything and He is the source of especially everything attractive in this world and among all the attractive things in this world we can classify them into the six opulences. So, when we wish to become the best in any field, which is a desire which we often have, then essentially our desire is to become God in our own way because God is the greatest in every field and when we want to become the greatest in a particular field that is the desire to be God or the desire to assert the position of God and in that sense it is envy of God.
So, all of us have our own, shall we say, God project. We all also want to become in our own way Gods and the word envy may seem a little jarring but if we look deeply within our own hearts we will see that in whatever field we are we want to be the best, we want to be the undisputed best. Now, is that necessarily a wrong desire? Not necessarily always because we have been given some challenges and it is natural for us to want to use those challenges properly, to do justice to those challenges.
But when people want to become the number one in a particular field it is not just to do justice to talents or it is not just to do good to others with their talents. It is also for establishing one’s own superiority, even supremacy over everyone else and we see that most of the competition in the world is because of this and this definition of success that I will be successful when I am better than everyone else. This is the definition itself which was going to be the seed of conflict and suffering because in a class there can be only one number one, one topper.
In a cricket world cup there can be only one world cup champion and that means by this very definition of success there will be more people who will be miserable than the number of people who will be happy. So, this definition of success, even from a material point of view, even if we don’t consider God into the picture, still it is a problematic definition because it is a definition that is going to sentence us more to suffering than to pleasure or rather more people to suffering than to pleasure and far far more actually. So, there has to be something if this is the way to happiness then there is something fundamentally wrong with it because far more people will be unhappy, miserable because of this definition of happiness than will be the number of people who will be happy.
So, the scripture explained to us that this whole definition of happiness itself is a flawed definition because it is based on the idea that our happiness depends on our becoming the greatest. We don’t want to enjoy like God, we want to enjoy with God. That is the essential message of the scripture.
So, enjoy like God is, say, Ravana wanting to enjoy Sita by usurping the position of Rama. And enjoy with God is a Hanuman serving Lord Rama. So, when we say that we should not be envious of God that doesn’t mean that we don’t do special adventurous things that do justice to our talents that help others in their own way extraordinary and special but that we don’t do it with the motive of thinking that just by becoming greatest I will become happy because even if somebody becomes the greatest that position will be temporary and once that position is lost there will be greater misery that will come.
So, instead of that, the scriptures tell us that we should learn to love God and use whatever ability we have in His service for His glorification and therein when we use our talents to express our love to God and reciprocate love with Him that will bring us the greatest happiness in life. And so essentially the point is that normally if somebody is very attractive a person has a lot of wealth a person has a lot of beauty a person has a lot of intelligence it’s natural to become attracted to that person but often we will see that when we hear about Krishna we may become attracted but to some extent we may not become attracted also and one reason why we don’t become attracted is because there is that latent deep within the heart the subconscious desire to be God. So, if we understand that Einstein made a particular discovery E is equal to mc squared postulated the interchangeability of mass and energy then Einstein is considered the quintessential example of the brilliant scientist the brilliant intellectual so people use Einstein as an archetype a young boy is talented, he is going to be the next Einstein so normally when we see somebody with an opulence we feel attracted to that person but that doesn’t happen with Krishna so easily although Krishna’s words of wisdom, the Bhagavad Gita has profound wisdom that it doesn’t that its charm has not subsided despite the passage of thousands of years still we do not care now whatever Einstein discovered actually the principles of interchangeability of matter and energy were not created by Einstein they were only discovered by Einstein they were created within the fabric of the universe by some farm brain which is far greater than that of Einstein and that is the infinite brain of God so although God’s opulence is far greater than anybody that we know still it is difficult for us often to become attracted to him and the reason for this lack of attraction is that we don’t realize deep within that there is the desire to be God to assert the position of God and to become the greatest ourselves so when we become free from this desire to the extent we become free to that extent we will be able to delight in Krishna’s glory we will find that therein the happiness that we get is far greater than the happiness that we can get by developing and broadcasting our own glories so in this way essentially there are three points the desire to become the greatest in any field is a desire to be God because God is the greatest in all fields by very definition second is the desire to be the greatest is the cause of suffering because far more people will be unhappy because they will be defeated in this pursuit than will be the few handful who will be successful and thirdly by directing our loving propensity towards God by redirecting our attraction towards God which we will find difficult and the reason for that is our latent envy towards God our latent desire to obey him or to become the greatest it will obstruct us in directing our attraction towards Krishna despite the presence of opulences in him but if we are successful in doing that then we will get a far greater happiness than what is possible just by trying to establish and broadcast our own greatness so in this way by redirecting our love towards Krishna and recognizing that there is some factor which stops us from redirecting our love towards Krishna we can understand what that factor is why the scriptures may refer to it as envy and how we can overcome it