When we can return to Krishna by love and devotion, why do we need to study scriptures?

From: charu

Krishna says in gita that one can come to me only with love and devotion then why is it necessary to read and understand so many scriptures

Transcript

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Question by Charu Krishna says in the Gita that one can come to me only with love and devotion then why is it necessary to read and understand so many scriptures? Answer, because reading and understanding scriptures is also a way to express our love and devotion love and devotion is certainly a matter of the heart but even matters of the heart need to be expressed by all our faculties if we if a wife says to her husband I love you then she doesn’t have that emotion in the heart but she also expresses it by cooking the food for him by taking care of the house by helping the children grow nicely and by doing practical things for him, similarly if the husband says I love my wife but doesn’t take responsibility of taking care of the household, doesn’t properly protect and take care of her in a practical sense then that love is mostly ethereal, that is not very tangible or real so love has to be expressed through actions similarly this principle applies to our love for Krishna and one way to express our love through actions is by using all the faculties that we have so if we have an intelligence if we have an intellectual faculty which all of us have some of us may have more and some of us may have less but all of us do have it then we use that faculty to glorify Krishna so in 18.70 in the Bhagavad Gita after Krishna has given this message of love he says that you can attain me, you should become my devotee he tells in 18.65 then he says just practice bhakti yoga forget all other dharmas in 18.66 then after that when he is telling the falashruti, he says that among all the devotees who are the most dear to me, those who share my message with others, this he says in 18.68 69 now how can we share Krishna’s message with others if we don’t use our intelligence to understand it so Krishna considers that sharing his message is actually an expression of our devotion to him and therefore he follows this up by saying even if we can’t share it, at least study it, that’s what he says in 18.70 and he says there he says that he says that if you study this conversation between me and Arjuna then you are worshipping me with your intelligence sometimes you may perform arati with incense stick and sometimes you may perform arati by using a tia but Krishna is saying that when you study my message, study the Bhagavad Gita you are worshipping Krishna with the paraphernalia of your intelligence so I mentioned two reasons, first is that to please Krishna by sharing his message, second is to worship Krishna by using our intelligence and third of course is that when you want to offer our love to Krishna there may be some residual doubts about why Krishna acts in particular ways and these residual doubts will check us from offering our love for Krishna and therefore when we have philosophical understanding of what is happening we may think I am trying to love Krishna so much but still so many things are going wrong in my life why is Krishna doing this to me? but when we study the philosophical message of the Bhagavad Gita then we understand it is not that Krishna who is making things wrong happen in our life, it is our own past karma which is causing these bad things and Krishna has given us the means to counter that bad karma by practicing this bhakti so this philosophical understanding is extremely important for us to maintain the loving and devotional attitude towards Krishna when the going gets tough in the world so therefore this also is the third reason to help us become free from doubts and misconceptions about Krishna so that we can authentically wholeheartedly offer our love to him fourth reason is that Krishna himself says that or rather the Prahlad Maharaj in the 9th canto describes that shravanam kirtanam vishnu smaranam that hearing about Krishna speaking about him and contemplating about him these three are the primary the first three of the nine limbs of bhakti, the Nav Vidha Bhakti has these first three limbs so when we are studying scripture, we are not just trying to conquer Krishna with our intelligence that is the attitude of the jnanis and that attitude backfires and that is the attitude that Krishna condemns when he says in 11.53 he says I cannot be known just by study of Vedic scriptures but then that lord same lord says that kasmat shastram pramanante karyakarya vyavasthita ghyatva shastra dhanoktam karmakartum iharasi therefore, oh Arjuna, understand from shastra what is to be done and what is not to be done and when you act in this way then you will attain an elevated destination so we don’t, our attitude is not to conquer Krishna with our intelligence our attitude is to serve Krishna with our intelligence and while serving Krishna we try to understand him as much as we can and that understanding clarifies our doubts purifies us and inspires us to share his best with others so that they can also come closer to him