What is a human being’s purpose on earth?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you. What would you say is human being’s purpose on earth? Our purpose is love.
We all long to love and be loved. And that longing is meant to be fulfilled by being spiritually and holistically directed. What we are is God’s gift to us.
And what we become is our gift to God. So we are on this earth so that whatever abilities, whatever talents, whatever gifts that God has given us, we use them properly in a mood of service. We do justice to our darlings and we make abundant contributions to society in a mood of service.
And spirituality enables us to optimize our contributions because it gives us a lofty purpose for achievement. So we may think I want to become famous. I want to become a record breaker.
I want to become an achiever. All these are good. And if we have talents, we should use those talents.
But if we are motivated by ego and self-centered desire, then even if we achieve things, we will stay internally dissatisfied. On the other hand, if we are motivated by love, by a mood of service associated with that love, then whatever we do that will bring a greater contribution externally and that will bring us satisfaction internally. So we have a vertical relationship with God and we have horizontal relationships with others in this world.
And when we function in the world, if we rely only on our horizontal relationships with others, we naturally have over expectations in those relationships. And those over expectations lead to frustrations. But if we focus on developing our vertical relationship with God and experience through meditation and yoga, through the chanting of the holy names, non-material fulfillment in our relationship with God, then that enables us to become stabler and calmer by which we can function more maturely in our horizontal relationships also.
So in any life, we have these two features. We want to do things and we want to relate with people. So achievement and relationships are what we all strive for.
And when we connect both of these with God and we achieve things in a mood of service to God, recognizing that He has given us talents, then those achievements bring us fulfillment. And when we relate with others, seeing them all as parts of the one family of God and we relate with them in a spiritual mood, then those relationships also become stabler and sweeter. And ultimately, our purpose in life is to live and love forever.
At our core, we are spiritual beings and we do not belong to this earth, which is a material planet. Beyond this world, there is an eternal world where there is an eternal life of love awaiting us. In the movies and novels, often the longing for an everlasting relationship is expressed through the hope for happily ever after.
That longing for happily ever after, for a lasting relationship, that longing is fulfilled when we direct it towards God, towards Krishna. And if we live in a mood of devotion in this life, then at the end of our life, we attain the kingdom of Krishna where we truly live happily ever after with Him. Thus, the life of spiritual devotion can fulfill our life’s purpose in the most fulfilling way, both in this world and in the next.
Thank you.