What love is and what love isn’t
[Congregation program at Brisbane, Australia]
Video:
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Consciousness.
So, I spoke today about what love is and what love isn’t. I started by talking about how Arjuna had a conflict about whom should I care for, Bhishma or Yudhishthira. I talked about how conflicting emotions cause far greater confusion than say other kinds of conflicts.
While traveling on a road or choosing an option in a multiple choice exam, this information is required. But when emotions get involved, conflict becomes very confusing. I talked about how emotions work.
Each of us, the emotions that come to us, they arise not just from the external perception, external situation. The external situation plus the internal impression combined together in an unpredictable proportion. That causes emotions.
And that’s why all of us, we will seek love in different ways depending on how the combination of situation and impression play out. To want to love and be loved is natural to other souls and it is fulfilled eternally in our relationship with Krishna and the relationship with those who are devoted to Krishna. In the material world, this is expressed in different ways for different people.
So, a child may seek affection by being punctual, by being responsible, by being studious. Or a child may in a distorted way seek affection by being unruly, disruptive, noisy, even destructive. So, we may all choose to seek love or express love in healthy or unhealthy ways.
Talked about how alcoholics, if their partners become co-dependents, then they think we are expressing love towards them. But they are actually aggravating and perpetuating the alcoholic’s addiction. A parent may say, oh, you know, I will give everything the child wants.
Now, I will not force the child to anything the child doesn’t want. That the parent may consider as love. Somebody, a parenting expert may call that as irresponsible parent.
A child who is told, do you want to open your mouth? A child may refuse. Just open your mouth. So, sometimes this instruction is needed.
So, that way we all have certain conceptions of what love is and that we bring into our practice of bhakti also. In every relationship, there is some expectation and there is some contribution. So, growing up means that we learn that I can’t just have expectations, I need to make contributions also.
So, growing up in bhakti also means that we stop having so much expectations from Krishna and increase our contribution, in the mood of service to Krishna. When we approach Krishna, the knowledge that he is infinite can lead to infinite expectations from him. And he is not fulfilling what we want, we may see that as a sign that he doesn’t love me.
Or it may be that the understanding that he is infinite, we defer to his infinite wisdom and we let, we do whatever, we accept his plan. So, Krishna’s plan is ultimately for our good and for that I discussed the Indra Govardhan Lila story. That Indra was getting his sense of love from the adulation and admiration that he was getting by his position.
But Krishna took it all away, crushed him by which he could remember his position. So, when sometimes Krishna seems to be doing something or our life seems to be doing something where everything that is dear to us is being taken away, at that time rather than thinking that Krishna doesn’t care for me, you see that actually Krishna cares for us too much, so much that he doesn’t want us to waste our life and our consciousness simply at the physical or the emotional levels. That’s why Krishna is forcing us, Krishna is creating the situation to force us to raise our consciousness to the spiritual level.
And Krishna’s greatest blessing is his presence, is the shelter that he gives us in his remembrance. And if we take shelter of that first, if we see Krishna’s love first at the spiritual level, then he will give us the intelligence to either deal with whatever happens at the physical or emotional levels, to rectify it or to tolerate it. Krishna assures that if we become conscious of him, he will help us to pass over all obstacles by his grace.
So, by seeing his love first and foremost, not in his setting right situations in our life, but in his giving us attraction to him by which we can remember him. In his remembrance, we will be able to always feel sheltered in Krishna’s love and we’ll be able to go through life’s storms. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna.