When a loved one has passed away, isn’t it heartless to dismiss the resulting grief as mundane?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Question, isn’t it natural to grieve when a lover, and isn’t it hard-hearted to dismiss such sentiments as mundane? Answer, the point when we talk about material emotions and spiritual emotions is not to dismiss material emotions, but to not let ourselves be consumed by material emotions. We are living beings who currently exist at the material as well as the spiritual level.
We are souls who are in material bodies. So, when we are in material bodies, at that time, it is natural that we will have material relationships. And these material relationships can also be a part of dharma.
There is para-dharma, which focuses on our vertical relationship with Krishna. And there is aparadharma, which focuses on our harmonious religious relationships with our family members and other worldly duties we have, duty to race, duty to community, duty to nation, all those things. These are important, but they are not all important.
And beyond that, there is adharma. So, where a husband abandons the family and has some extramarital affair, or a person doesn’t take care of one’s aparadharma in different ways, that is not considered, that is considered adharmic. For a kshatriya supposed to fight in the war, the kshatriya betrays the king for whom he is fighting and goes to the opposite side.
That is considered adharmic for kshatriya. So, we may say there is no God involved in it, yes, but as for adharma, it is wrong. So, the point is that most people, there are two extreme attitudes.
One is some people think that aparadharma is all that is there to dharma and that there is nothing higher, required or necessary. Aparadharma is all that there is. And the other extreme is to think that paradharma is all that is there and aparadharma is entirely to be neglected.
Aparadharma is entirely mundane. Yes, aparadharma may be material, but it is material that can be used as a building block to come towards the spiritual. Now, when we talk about the concept of, the concept of say, dharmapatna, we consider marriage as a sacred union.
So, it is aparadharma where husband and wife come together and then they continue on in the practice of spiritual life also together. So, aparadharma and paradharma are meant to go together. Only when the aparadharma interferes with one’s paradharma, then is it considered to be something which one has to give up.
But other places aparadharma can be used as an assistant, as an aid in the practice of paradharma. So, naturally, therefore, when we develop relationships, we will naturally have affection with our family members, our loved ones and say, if a spouse or a parent or a child, some loved one passes like that, it is natural to grieve. And we see Arjuna, who heard all the instructions come from Krishna about being equipoised with happiness and distress, he lamented bitterly, he grieved bitterly when Abhimanyu was slaughtered.
And he did not say, oh, all these emotions, I am going to neglect it. Nor did Krishna tell Arjuna, you know, have you forgotten the Bhagavad Gita? I told you, give up all these emotions as false. No, actually, Krishna solaced Arjuna and told him that, inspired him to direct those emotions in a way that would increase his service and his devotion.
So, it’s natural that we will feel grief when a loved one passes away. And it’s not that we have to suppress the grief thinking that it is material. No, we may have grief and we can express it.
But along with that, if we do not know about our paradharma, about our eternal relationship with Krishna, then what will happen is we will get consumed and devastated by the loss of a loved one. But when we have the knowledge of paradharma, paradharma is our relationship with Krishna, then there are two ways in which misunderstanding can solace us. First is that the person whom we love, that person is not just not just destroyed.
The existence is not ended. That person is gone somewhere else. And wherever that person is, Krishna, the Supersoul, is with that person and Krishna will continue to guide and care for that person.
And in the material conception, there is nothing we can do for a person who has died. That person doesn’t exist or we don’t know where that person is. But in the devotional understanding, we understand that if we pray to Krishna for the well-being of that person, Krishna will help that person.
Narasimha Dev tells Prahlad Maharaj that because you have become a pure devotee, 21 generations of your family will be delivered. The point is not literally 21 numbers. The point is that everyone connected with Krishna through devotion gets benefit.
I mean, everyone connected with Krishna’s devotee also gets benefit. So even if our loved one has passed away, we can benefit that person by our prayer and by devotion. And also in our relationship, we understand that ultimately whatever love we have experienced through different people, it is Krishna who has sent those people in our lives.
And those people naturally have loved us and we may have loved those people. But ultimately, it is Krishna’s love that is manifesting through them. Now, when a mother has a child, the mother naturally loves the child and the child loves the mother.
The mother offers her breast milk to the child. So that is the way the mother is nourishing her child with her own body, with milk coming from her own body. That is intimate affection.
At the same time, we also understand that it is not the mother did something special by which milk started coming in her breast. It is the same Lord who sent a child into her womb and sent milk into her breast. So what we understand is that we have experienced love from some people, some of our loved ones.
And that is a small glimpse of the love that Krishna is offering us through those people. So therefore, we are grateful for the experience of love that we have and we understand that Krishna can offer us much, much more love. So therefore, we learn to take more shelter of Krishna.
Dhruva Maharaj’s mother tells Dhruva Maharaj that, you know, whatever love I can offer you, Lord Vishnu can offer you that much more love than what millions of mothers like me can offer. So she does not say that, oh, my love is false. Nor does Dhruva Maharaj consider that love is false.
Actually, they both agree that the love is genuine. But then they say that Lord Vishnu’s love is great. And therefore, out of her love for her son, when she can’t solve his problem, she directs him to Lord Vishnu.
So here we see the aparadharma helping one in moving towards paradharma, towards the pure spiritual relationship with Krishna of love. So similarly, when we are grieving at the loss of a loved one, it’s not that we have suppressed the emotion, but we redirect it towards Krishna, understanding that Krishna had given us this loved one and now Krishna has taken. But whatever love Krishna was offering us through this particular person, Krishna himself can offer it and much, much more to us.
And this is the more Vishnu Chaitanya Mahaprabhu also has when Haridas Thakur passes away. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu says that Lord Krishna was merciful and he gave me the association of Haridas Thakur. And Lord Krishna, being supremely independent, now has broken that association.
And then what do the devotees do? The devotees do kirtan. And they try to increase their devotion to Lord Krishna. And they try to offer that.
This way they try to come together closer. So it’s not hard. We shouldn’t be hard heartedly dismissing the grief that we feel when loved one passes away to be mundane.
But we should not be ignorant of the facts of life. And the fact of life is that all relationships are temporary. That doesn’t mean that they have to be considered illusory and rejected.
That means they have to be connected with Krishna. So if we don’t connect them with Krishna, then we will be consumed by grief. And that grief may become resentment towards the Lord, rejection of his devotion.
And that will make us vulnerable to greater material emotions, which will cause us even greater suffering. But instead, when we get an experience of love and affection within the pristine, within aparadharma, we are grateful for that and we use that experience of love to increase our focus on paradharma, our love for Krishna. And we offer our prayers and our gratitude for whatever love we had experienced in the relationship in our aparadharma also.
So the whole essence is that we don’t have to reject those emotions, but we don’t have to be consumed by those emotions. We redirect our heart towards Krishna and integrate our aparadharma, our love for our family members and others in our overall love for Krishna. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna.