When Krishna loves his devotees and can check karma, why does he let them suffer?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
the question is that sometimes Karmic reactions come in the life of a devotee in a very severe way so Karma is Krishna’s law so can’t Krishna stop it and does Krishna allow just so that the devotee will become more serious in Godly sometimes the devotee will not be accepted gratefully also and will become discouraged in Godly so how do we understand this firstly whole process of Bhakti especially when we talk about navigating in this world centers on a devotional reinterpretation of reality navigating in this world in Bhakti means doing a devotional reinterpretation of reality what does it mean devotional reinterpretation of reality that means say Prabha is an example two boys have been beaten but one boy has been beaten by the police a criminal the other boy has been thrown in the jail and some other boy extremely brutal but actually it will be difficult one is the root of law so it is the example that a non-devoted devotee may suffer severely but the devotee is Krishna so he will suffer now from just an external point of view it may not appear as if there is any devotee to be necessarily the extent of pain that a non-devotee if a devotee gets cancer it is extremely painful so at that time it is the devotee’s responsibility or the devotee’s guide’s responsibility to do this devotional reinterpretation of reality to see what does reinterpretation mean now generally somehow some words acquire negative connotations so we have to think that interpretation itself is negative there is no interpretation required every translation is an interpretation one word can have so many meanings so our normal interpretation of reality is if something happens to me bad, so I am suffering but reinterpretation means I have to find out how it is unpunctual how does unpunctual means when the event happens our mind assigns meaning to that why is he suffering Krishna doesn’t exist Krishna doesn’t care for me that is the meaning I interpret to that that is the meaning I add to that and I become discouraged but I can somehow devotionally reinterpret it actually Krishna exists and that is the that is actually one of the devotional verses to help somebody suffering devotionally reinterpret reality so Aravind ji then he tells the story of some of his disciples about his spiritual quest journey within is not accomplished then he talks about his life as a bhakti practitioner and a bhakti teacher so then he tells the story of several disciples how they faced problems and how they dealt with the problems so he tells this about Vishwaroop who is one of the directors at the hospital so when his wife was pregnant it was detected that the child who would be born would have multiple neurological and other problems and her chances of survival would simply be less and actually even after the birth and his wife mother already had cancer from which from severe therapy she had recovered and then this child even if the pregnancy was successful would not live for very long and even the wife would live in great pain constantly and the child would die after 3 weeks there is no hope for any bright life and then the pregnancy was ok but after that there were some complications and the child had to be in the like we have ICU there is ICN so all they had to do was to heal him and because of that the child was just completely underdeveloped so both of them were naturally connected as they were to Maharaj and then one day I asked Maharaj I said oh Maharaj how do you understand all that so Maharaj he said I prayed to Krishna and I told him that you have two choices either one you can believe that you know Krishna and things happen by chance and you are just unlucky or Krishna exists and Krishna has some man so Maharaj said we have been with Krishna and we have to believe Krishna which is not important what is important and Maharaj said in this world we are all servants that is our position but we very rarely do selfless service so even as parents we take care of our children oh my child will become famous and my child will add to my life Krishna has sent this child in your life to teach you selfless service like ordinary man he is able and they serve the children so that they become good Rohan Maharaj used to say that this child is a special soul sent by Krishna and everything that is used in this child you see that is a service which is being offered to Krishna and through this child Krishna gets something that serves him and I am talking to the doctor he said that his whole perspective changed man was completely rejection, frustration and he said he is also a child servant so you see what happens to parents who have a child like this Krishna becomes famous then they started doing that and then they realized actually they got so many more heroes that this child is so they would come and pray for the child chant for the child and the baby girl was born so she would be showered with devotional prayers and they said that she is in such a body that she will never be able to do it well and she is going to get so many devotional impressions and she whatever suffering she has got she will get exhausted this will be her last birth she will get so many devotional impressions and whatever bad she might have done she is going to get exhausted we have the opportunity to sing this song our child has to go on singing this child and then they found that whenever Krishna would hear Krishna would constantly cry it is very painful for a hero like this it is a painful creature then they found that whenever she is going to hear the baby she will hear some words so she becomes silent and happy so then she had an elder sister she said that for my elder sister I will try to mimic the sound of her there is a national park over there she will go there early in the morning and she will hear the birds and she will start coming and she will start singing those birds and her sister will become very happy and just by that practice she became a very good singer and now her elder sister she is one of the very celebrated singer not just in Jodhpur but in the entire college and her talent and if you don’t have that talent you don’t have to practice so much all that came out and then basically they found that this whole experience of having this child brought them closer to each other and closer to Krishna and helped them to see things that are not in their reality so this art of devotional interpretation of reality that is vital when a Brahmin is suffering terribly what is his conclusion he says this very beautiful words I forgot what he says that surely the lord must be pleased with me because of which that renunciation which is very difficult to get he has practically dropped it in my laps by bringing this in front of me so rather than saying oh I have lost everything what he said so when Brahmins are suffering we have to be there with them to cushion the suffering to help them face the suffering and we need to help them understand that Krishna is not someone up there imposing the suffering on us Krishna is right here with us helping us in terms of the suffering helping us through the suffering so that’s why when we try to go into the cause there are no answers why something happens ultimately karma intellectually satisfactory answer but emotionally it is not satisfactory emotionally actually it is only Krishna’s love the experience of Krishna is sheltered and the experience of that love sheltered by the devotees that you stand at that time so rather than asking why this no philosophy will give us an emotional satisfactory answer to that question I would say that from the emotional perspective the philosophy of karma is the least unsatisfactory what are the other alternatives that we have this world is just by chance that is just a doctrine of hopelessness it is a complete doctrine of I am just an unlucky guy and there is a Christian doctrine of original sin and other Abrahamic religions have that that is because because Adam ate an apple millions of years ago because of that original sin now sin has got translated like a genetic defect through all of humanity and all the ancestors, all the earthlings all human beings all problems in this world are because someone ate an apple it just doesn’t make any sense and what that original sin doctrine original sin you can say there is a philosophical explanation for this yeah there may be an explanation for that but still there is ultimately it raises more questions than it answers because ok, if all of us are sinful because of that original wrong doing then why are there varieties in suffering in this world why is one person suffering more and another person suffering less the problem of evil is a painful problem to deal with but what makes the problem even more painful to deal with is the problem of discriminating if everybody gets afraid then it’s ok like the tsunami comes and everybody loses their hopes, we are all happy, we are all happy but in a community one person gets cancer everybody else is healthy so why me so there is no answer for that so actualistically for the why why this question we have no emotional satisfaction answers intellectually karma gives you satisfaction and we see the identities, accepting that everything happens by chance or accepting that everything happens by the arbitrarily will of God both are only emotional satisfaction, the karma doctrine is emotionally least unsatisfying but what will give emotional strength and soul is ask not how this ask how now Krishna how can we suffer now and this is something you can experience time and time again that amid suffering we try to take shelter of Krishna the remembrance of Krishna does help us to come to self it gives us something like Indra Shobha Chakra by which we start to remember Krishna so therefore what as a devotee community and as a devoted individual we all need to become skilled in this art of devotion and reinterpretation of reality so that when suffering comes if we are able to interpret in a way as it is unbelievable and by that we go deeper and deeper and we go deeper into Krishna’s right there so as a philosophical explanation we may or may not need a precise explanation of how or why something happens I used to do a lot of travelling preaching and after my fracture however I had that problem I got fractured and after that that problem became much more difficult for me so now that was my karmic reaction if I look back I feel it my karmic reaction had to come it came but Krishna gave that reaction to me in a least horrific way now what I think if I had lost my eyes if I had lost my mouth if I had lost my legs or my hands my cervix would have been much more adversely affected as it is I was not losing my legs much so if I got further damaged it did not affect my cervix so the reaction had to come but by Krishna’s grace it came in a way that actually least hurt my cervix and it has helped me to do much the right thing so I don’t want to say that I am very adapted to adversity but I can say 2-3 years down the line whatever happened at that time it didn’t make any sense to me but now I have to do some other kind of service so one major problem in this devotional reinterpretation of reality is our attachment to our conceptions of how to serve this is the way I want to serve Krishna when something goes wrong then why is Krishna doing this to me so rather than when something terrible happens even when one door closes in our life we often waste all our time glaring at the closed door rather we need to look up and see which door has opened and we find that surely some other door has opened for serving Krishna because ultimately nothing material can stop devotional service per se material things can stop specific forms of devotional service but nothing material can stop devotional service per se and that’s why ask your mind this ok things have changed terribly and all the previous plans are gone so how can I serve Krishna and once we think in those terms we will find that there are huge doors which Krishna has opened for us and we can imagine we find our life will actually become richer it will become more enriched with emotion by walking through the door which Krishna has opened for us