When life hurts 3 – When our good deeds causes problems – Prahlad pastime analysis
[Sunday feast class at San Jose, ISKCON Silicon Valley, USA]
Video:
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
How Krishna’s power to heal is greater than life’s power to hurt.
Today I spoke about how when we try to do something good, go out of our way to try to do something good, then that creates trouble for us. How do we deal with that? Prahlad Maharaj was so devoted and it was because of his devotion that he was facing problems. So, most people go to God because they have some physical problems.
I don’t have this. I don’t have that. Or nowadays people go to God because they have psychological problems.
I want peace of mind. Now, sometimes we may not get either of these by going to God. Rather we may seem to be losing these.
So, we understand, I talked about peace which may be at three levels. One peace is by creating a peaceful situation. The second is by removing the impurities within us that take away our peace.
And the third is by developing the conviction that Krishna is in control and Krishna is my well-wisher. So, if peace is all that we wanted, then why would we form any relationship at all? Every relationship brings some unpredictability with it. And that unpredictability can disturb our peace.
But our heart longs for something more than peace. It longs for love. And bhakti is about love.
So, if the practice of bhakti seems to be agitating us sometimes, taking up service, taking up responsibility is agitating us, we see that this agitation is not because of my devotion. It is simply because I have Rajoguna within me and that if I don’t take up responsibility of service which agitates my mind, then my mind will create some other agitation somewhere else. So, better let me serve Krishna.
So, if we don’t do something wonderful for Krishna, then we will become envious of those who are doing something wonderful for Krishna. So, better we take up responsibility and try to serve Krishna. And for us, when obstacles come externally, we see those as impetuses to purify our devotion.
I am serving Krishna not to get anything from Krishna. I am serving Krishna simply for getting Krishna. Krishna’s greatest blessing is Krishna himself.
And when with this internal change we make that Krishna, I want only you, then the external situation that we have to deal with, we can have three approaches for it. Tolerate, mitigate or immigrate. And tolerance means to keep small things small so that we can focus on big things.
However, if too much tolerance is there, then that can lead to abuse and violence and negativity. On the other hand, if there is too less tolerance, then that can lead to complete lack of commitment and constant instability. So, the balance is found by a service attitude.
If we have a purpose, then that will provide us perspective. This is my purpose. This is the big thing in my life.
And for this big thing, I can tolerate the small things. If I have to get to my destination, if somebody is pushing me in my train, I will move aside. But if somebody starts pushing me out of the train, I can’t tolerate that.
So, when we keep that big thing in our mind, our service to Krishna in mind, then how to deal with which situation, whether through tolerating, mitigating or immigrating, we can all do that in a proper way. If we tolerate and repress our feelings, then we will explode sometime. If we mitigate in a revengeful attitude, then we will get distracted from Krishna in seeking that revenge.
Our purpose is not to get even, but to get out of the world, get out of material consciousness. So, when somebody is creating some obstacles for us, our purpose is not to get back at the person, but to get on with our service to Krishna. And when we immigrate, it’s not running away from something, but it’s walking away, because we have some higher purpose to fulfill.
And when we are going through difficulties in our life, if we understand that Krishna is not far away, Krishna is close to me, He is in my heart, He is just one thought away from me, then if we take shelter of Krishna, then there may be many problems in our life, but that remembrance of Krishna will give us inner calmness and clarity by which we can deal with whatever situations we are facing. So, the problems, the biggest problem for a devotee is a lack of enthusiasm and devotion. आलस्यं वेपनियं पक्ति सुल्लबं ध्यायस्वनारायनं If we devote ourselves to Krishna, He will enable us to go through and grow through whatever problems come our way.
Thank you very much.