Why do bad things happen to good people – QA

[Sunday feast class at ISKCON, Bergen Country, USA]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
All of you are good people, so, the bad thing that is happening to all of you, is that you have to hear my class. Another bad thing is that, this mic is too humble.
Now, it is too proud. It needs to be here like this. So, I personally had this question for many years, because when I was one, I got polio, and I just couldn’t walk normally, and then, there was still, maybe I was six or seven, it used to gnaw me, I couldn’t play like normal with other children, and then, my parents would always assure me, they would say that, what they told me, never really pacified me, but, when I was in school, and there was one friend of mine, so I had got full marks in maths, at that time, and then, he, had failed completely, and then I was trying to explain maths to him, simple maths, at the age of seven, what is the difficulty, but he just couldn’t get it, and then, I was thinking, it’s so simple, he just didn’t get it, then, at that time, it struck me, that, he was not, he was not lazy, he was not apathetic, just, didn’t have, later on, I understood the concept of IQ, he just didn’t have the IQ level, to understand that maths, so, it struck me, that, actually, life, is unfair to everyone, it will be unfair to me, in the sense that, I have some physical inability, but, for somebody else, it will be intellectual inability, and, at least in my case, you can say that, because the disability, is visible, so, I get some amount of sympathy, some amount of support, people help me, to carry my luggage, if I’m sleeping, somebody holds me, but, if somebody has intellectual inability, people just condemn him, why are you so, why are you not like that person, why are you so lazy, why are you so, incompetent, so, it struck me, that actually, everyone, has, some or the other, crippling, inabilities, some people can’t, just can’t speak, properly, they just start stammering, and stuttering, especially when they have to speak in public, some people have stage fright, so, some people, everybody if we consider, we all have something, which are deficient within us, and, life, is unfair, it’s unfair to everyone, the degree of unfairness, may vary from person to person, but, it is unfair, so, then that, raised the question, for me, why is it like that, so, my parents at that time told me that, actually, whatever, God, has taken in the, taken from you in physical ability, he has given you an intellectual ability, then it struck me, who is this being God, who has so much control over my life, that he can choose what to give and what to take, and, of course, I was still a child, and these questions would come, sometimes I would think about them, but, if you don’t get answers to questions, you just move on with life, it was in my, it was in my, engineering days, that, I stumbled across the Bhagavad Gita, and there, for the first time, I got, what, seemed like a reasonable explanation, that is, that actually, we, are souls, and we have been through many lifetimes, and, the situations that we face in this lifetime, they are often the result of what we have done in a previous life, so, some people are born wealthy, some people are born poor, some people are born healthy, some people are born sickly, why is this difference there, so, one explanation, basically, we can have three explanations for this, that, things happen by chance, and life is terrible, if some people are just unlucky, like life is like a lottery, and some people are losers in that lottery, so, if bad things are happening to you, just you are unlucky, that’s your luck, live with it, now this is a, very disempowering, world view, because, none of us, lives like this, at least from this life’s perspective, we try to look for causal connections, you know, if I am falling sick, maybe I need to take care of my diet, do some more exercise, take some proper medicines, and then, I at least, act on the assumption, that that will heal me, so, we implicitly accept, a cause effect connection, and we can’t function without a cause effect connection, so, when we accept this cause effect connection, in the sense that, if, somebody comes home with, a bruised face, what happens, you know, just the bruise came like that, what, how bruises don’t come like that, what happened, did you do, what did you do, did you get into a fight with someone, did you hit something, so, whenever we see an effect, we look for a cause, and, we have this, so, this is two ways, whenever we already see an effect, we presume there must be a cause for it, and, we often do actions, hoping that it will produce certain effects, like, if I am sick, I take certain medicines, hoping that, there will be an effect, that I will get healthy by that, so, we never live without the idea of cause effect, we can’t function without that, so, for the small things in our life, or for the many things in our life, we accept cause effect, but for the big things, what kind of family we are born in, wealthy or poor family, what complexion we are born with, dark or fair, what IQ level we are born with, is there no cause effect for that, it just doesn’t make sense that cause effect, we accept for most of things in our life, but for the big things in our life, there is no cause effect, how does that make sense, so, one explanation is by chance, the other explanation is, what is offered by the Abrahamic religions, the Abrahamic religions are Judaism, Christianity and Islam, they all accept Abraham as one of their prophets, so, these say, that all that happens in this world, is by God’s will, that means, that God made somebody poor, that God gave somebody low IQ, that God made somebody crippled, that God made somebody, with some learning disabilities, then, why would God be discriminating like this, and if God is discriminating like this, then how can we devote ourselves to such a discriminatory God, if we have to devote ourselves, we can devote ourselves to a person who is virtuous, who is fair, who is compassionate, if God is so discriminatory and so arbitrary, how can we worship or devote ourselves to such a God, so, in many ways, it is this belief, that, that, that God, that whatever has happened in the world is God’s will, and we have to accept it, this makes atheism, seem more, more, seem more preferable than theism, so, better than believe a God who is so unfair and arbitrary, is to believe that there is no God, so, atheism increases, then, if among, these are the only two options we have, that things happen by chance, or things happen by God’s, because God wants them like that, then better accept chance, but, there is a third possibility, the third possibility is that, things happen, neither by chance, nor by God’s will, they happen by our own past actions, if they happen by our own past actions, that means, that, we, from our past lives did certain good actions, certain bad actions, and those have accumulated, and they created the conditions in our life, and some of us have some good conditions, some bad conditions, that’s because of our own past karma, and this understanding, it both reconciles, on one side, our implicit acceptance of cause and effect, that, we do accept cause and effect, and cause and effect connection is there, it doesn’t deny that, and secondly, it also accepts, that God is fair, it is not God, who is causing the bad things to happen to us, it is our own bad actions, which are giving bad reactions, this, is the basic answer, that I got from the Bhagavad Gita, of why bad things happen to good people, that’s because, we ourselves, are our own past, so as I said, I wanted to keep this a short class, so I’ll stop over here, are there any questions, which anyone would like to ask, yes please, okay, so is there any evidence, that, there is a past life, from which something like this has come, it depends on, what we mean by the word evidence, if you want hard evidence, like logical observable facts, or like a, mathematical reading in an instrument, we don’t have that, it’s like suppose somebody asks, does your mother love you, what do you think, of course, why ask a question, you are insulting my mother, by asking a question like that, of course my mother loves me, what is the scientific proof, that your mother loves you, you cannot give a scientific proof for that, so, what we can do, is inference, I can talk about hundreds of incidents, the only reasonable inference, from all those incidents, is that my mother loves me, that’s why she did like this, when we talk about evidence, for many important things in our life, we don’t have hard evidence, like either facts, or mathematically rigorous proofs, what we have is inferences, with respect to past lives, what we can do is, look at it from an inferential perspective, is this a reasonable inference, that, there are certain things, which we can see and know, and, within what we see and know, some things we can explain, and some things we can’t explain, or rather to put in another way, sometimes, to explain the observable, we postulate something that is unobservable, say for example, Newton saw the fruit falling, which fruit was it? Apple, that time there were no Apple computers, otherwise people would have been confused, what fell down, so, when the apple fell down, some people say it fell in front of him, some people say it fell on his head, wherever it fell, so he, all that he saw was the observation, but how do I explain this, what makes this apple fall, so to explain an observable phenomena, he came up with an unobservable principle, gravity is unobservable, you cannot observe gravity, you can observe the effects of gravity, so, from the falling of the apple, you could say that, inferences there is gravity, so similarly, if there were a past life, let’s start with another way, that we see differences in the world right now, so how do we explain those inferences, so we postulate something invisible, to explain something visible, so the differences that we see in people now, a reasonable explanation for that could be, that they have acted differently in their previous lives, now if you want to be more precise about this, if you consider twins, twins, I was in London, I was giving a talk and I mentioned this point, and one person in the audience got up, so I was talking about, there are certain twins who are called identical twins, monozygotic twins, their genes are exactly same, not just nearly same, exactly same, and yet, these two twins who are identical, are not identical, they are genetically identical, but their personality wise different, so what makes them different, their biology is fully the same, there is something beyond the biology in their personality, that accounts for their difference, further, so again, this is an observation, what’s the inference, like I said, how do I know my mother loves me, how that night I was so sick, and my mother, she took me to hospital, although she herself was sick, or when my treatment was needed, she was ready to sell her own ornaments, to get money for that, there are multiple incidents, the only reasonable inference from those incidents is, my mother loves me, so like that, first is the inequities of life itself, why are they there, then the difference among identical twins, and third could be, scientifically researched past life memories, there are many stories, case studies rather, of scientists who have found out, children, who suddenly remember their past lives, Hare Krishna, what is your name, Abhinav, how old are you Abhinav, 10, oh you are too old, ok, who is there, Hare Krishna, how old is he, 5, ok, he is also old, no, why I am saying too old, sometimes there are children, who are just 3 or 4 years old, and suddenly, they come to their, mom, mom, where is my other mom, what, then they say, I want to go and meet my other mom, what do you mean by other mom, and then they start insisting, they have precise recollections, of their past lives, when they had another mother, and if they take you to that place, they have recognitions, oh this is my mother, this is my brother, this is my sister, they also remember, this is the place where I live, this is the place where I play, and there are behaviours, there are behaviours, which are similar, to how they would have behaved, there was a case of a boy named Titu, who claimed to be Rajiv Sharma, from a previous life, and he said, I own an electrical shop, this is Rajiv Varma, Varma Electricals, and this 4 year old boy, he said, I have a wife, and her name is Neeta, and then, his relatives went and saw, it was actually Varma Electrical Studio, and it was run by a widow, by the same name, and then he went there, and he recognised her, and now, children from a previous life, were older than this boy, but when he went there, he started fondling their hair, as if they were his children, and he treated this old woman, as if she was his wife, and not only that, he had been killed in a murder attack, he had been killed in a murder attack, so point blank he had been shot, when he had returned from his home in a car, so the bullet had entered from one side, and gone out from the other side, so at the place where the bullet, entry and exit wounds were there, the post mortem report showed, at that exact same place, this Titu, he had prominent birthmarks, so birthmarks at the entry point, and the birthmark at the exit point, was slightly larger, when the bullet goes out, because of the trajectory, it causes more damage, and it is not just one case, there are scores of cases like this, across all continents, so this has no explanation, no reasonable inference, other than that, there is a person who lived previously, and has moved here, so like that, from multiple evidence, to their previous lives, okay, any other questions? Thank you so much, for a nice talk, so you started by saying, why bad things happen to good people, and then we came to past life, it feels so hopeless, and helpless to see, that my past life, is depleting me, it feels so hopeless, to be pre-programmed, where are you pre-programmed, to ask this question? So, Harvey, somebody asked me a question once, that, you know, we don’t have any free will, we are all controlled, by our past, he says, then I replied, I also don’t have the free will, to answer this question, so, yes, actually, our past, determines our situations, it does not determine our decisions, it determines our situations, not our decisions, it’s like, if we are driving, the kind of car, that we are driving, the kind of weather, and traffic, that we will encounter, that is determined, but how we drive the car, is up to us, so, similarly, our body is like our car, Ishvara Sarva Bhutana, Mrityeshe Arjuna Tishtati, Brahman Sarva Bhutani, Yantra Rudhani Mayaya, so, Krishna says, we are all on this Yantra, the body is like a machine, on which we are all situated, so, this machine, the kind of car that we have, that is determined by our past karma, like I said earlier, our complexion, our height, genetically also our height is often fixed, our nationality, our IQ level, these may be fixed, the kind of car we have is fixed, and also, the kind of conditions that we will meet when we are driving the car, good weather, bad weather, heavy traffic, light traffic, our driving ability is something which we can learn and improve, so, therefore, our choices, our circumstances may be determined by our past, but our choices are determined by our present, therefore, it is not hopeless, because we can always choose in our situations, and if we choose wisely, then we can, somebody might have a very slow moving, noisy car, but if they drive carefully, they can reach their destination, safely, somebody may have a fast, shiny, big car, but if they drink and drive, they will reach the graveyard, not their destination, isn’t it? So, our past determines our situations, not our decisions, we are not programmed, does it answer your question? Yeah, okay, I will come to you, now we can ask, and we can come to you, yes, Hare Krishna, thank you so much, when you started saying, why bad thing happens to good people, that’s like an age old question, and then everyone that goes through that, especially when you are going out and talk to people, this is a very common one that is being asked, since the answers are exactly what you said, there is something governing the world, there are laws, but when a devotee goes through some situation, which is, I am actually personally encountering that right now, one of my devotee friend’s son, who is 20 years old, left the body, and while he was going through his recovery from blood cancer, leukaemia, my friend really tried to come up with a story that, ok, Krishna saved my son, at the end, something like that will happen, and because that did not happen, he is coming up with this notion of why Krishna is so cruel, and he will save my son, and my son was so much of a nice devotee, he did everything in cool, he went to Maya for this, so how do we, I mean, in one sense we understand Krishna does best for you, when you are trying to serve him, but on the other hand, when somebody is leaving the body, or some atrocities that they go through, we cannot really say that, that happens good for you, or something like that, so I just wanted to share that, and see what you think, I can tell my friend, thank you.
So if somebody has lost their young son, and they pray to Krishna, and hope that some intervention will happen, but it didn’t, and they start thinking that God is cruel, so how do we explain that? Yes, there are some times for giving an explanation, and there are some times for giving support, we shouldn’t think that every situation is a situation for giving explanations, so if we consider, something similar happened in Mahabharata, Abhimanyu, which is a 16 year old boy, and he was killed, brutally, he was a hero, and he was unfairly killed by 6 warriors, and Abhimanyu, when Abhimanyu was killed, Arjuna was shattered, and Arjuna, he lashed out at his brothers, he said, are all your ornaments, are all your weapons, just bangles, could any of you not protect your brother? And he turned and lashed out at Krishna, Krishna, you must have known, why didn’t you tell me? And Krishna was furious, and at that time, Krishna did not say, everything that happens is good, Krishna didn’t say, don’t question my opinion, what Krishna said was, oh Arjuna, your brothers, loved Abhimanyu as much as you loved him, he was not just your son, he was the son of all of us, your brothers are in as much grief as you are, please don’t speak words that increase their grief, we are all in this together, and then as Arjuna heard the whole story, he came to a conclusion, the conclusion was, that Jaidrath, his brothers told him, that he had a plan, that he will break into the Chakravyuha, and then we will follow, and then we would all, that was the plan to save our army from Nivabhali Chakravyuha, but then Jaidrath came in, when Jaidrath came in, that was the time, we couldn’t go in, and he deliberately stopped us, then Arjuna decided that Jaidrath is the cause, and he, in such an evil way plotted, so that my son would be separated from his helpers, that’s how it was plotted, then Arjuna directed his anger towards Jaidrath, so what is happening in this is, that anything that happens, we can put it in different causal boxes, causal box means, cause and effect, this is a box, so for example, right now, if this mic stops working, then I could put in a causal box, did I touch the button over here by accident, it turned off, that could be one causal box, the other could be, that has somebody, this mic itself could become defective, third could be, that has somebody switched off the power, the fourth could be, that may be the power supply in this whole area is broken down, the fifth could be, may be America has been attacked by terrorists, and all the power plants in America have been stopped, so now, every event could be extrapolated, or rather could be put in various causal boxes, so now, if imagine, if in your house you have someone, and the light goes off, and they start saying, hey America, hey America is attacked by terrorists, what happened, what’s wrong with you, why are you being paranoid like that, so if we, if we escalate something, to too large a causal box, then we can’t function constructively, right, so to be intelligent, to be able to function intelligently in the world, we need to place things in the most constructive causal box, not necessarily right or wrong causal box, most constructive, so if the mic is stopped working, then the most constructive causal box could be that, may be this mic is switched off, or may be this mic is defective, let’s start with the most constructive causal box, and then move upward, so, similarly, now if we consider sickness, now, if there is a causal box, in which you are going to put, why did the sickness come, why did the sickness not get cured, now, we could, somehow, how it works is, that, I read a book, which was like a comedy book, in which, the author in his acknowledgement said, that, everything right in this book, everything good about this book, is because of me, and everything bad about this book, is because of my editor, that is why he was joking of course, but it is very self-serving way of looking at things, so similarly, the, so, when, something bad has happened to someone, now, do we need to each time, escalate it to the God box, that, ok, why did this disease occur, well, because, cancer is just so widely prevalent in today’s world, and with that cancer is not able to cure, it is not, it is not that, just because we are devotees, we expect Krishna, to change the rules of the game for us, that is not bhakti, there are certain rules of the game, is it that, Arjuna did not ask Krishna, Krishna I am your devotee, so why do I have to fight, you just defeat all my enemies, no, Arjuna fought wholeheartedly, so, if we think that the purpose of bhakti, is to get God to change the rules of the game for us, then we will soon be disappointed, the purpose of bhakti, is to get us, to get us God’s blessings, so that we can play the game better, but the rules of the game will not change, it’s like say suppose somebody has diabetes, and then there is Gulab jamun prasad, and they take gulab jamun, oh this is prasad, how can I say no, and then they get a diabetic attack, it was prasad, you say prasad is spiritual, well, the rice dal chapati was also spiritual, isn’t it, why did you take the gulab jamun only, so, we don’t expect Krishna, to change the rules of the game, so at a material level, things happen, at material cause and effect, so it is not that, if somebody is sick, and we pray, necessarily God will intervene, and if God doesn’t intervene, that doesn’t make God cruel, there are things which happen in life, and okay, why did we get this disease, sometimes some diseases like, we just don’t know the cause of the disease, but we try the treatment, generally, whenever anything good happens to us, we don’t very often, escalate to God’s level, how did you succeed, I worked so hard, I sacrificed so much, why did you fail, fate is so cruel, well, it is said that, success has many parents, and failure is an orphan, so, it is difficult, I think, if you understand that, so basically, what happened, I will complete this answer, we may not be able to say all this to that person, but what I am saying is, Krishna also did not give a philosophical explanation over it, Krishna just was there with him to support him, and then Arjuna himself, placed that event, in the most constructive context, the most constructive context was, this Jaidrath, was responsible for the death of my son, so I will bring him down, and the next day, that was the worst day for the Kauravas, because Arjuna was infuriated, and they brought their whole army to stop him from reaching Jaidrath, and still Krishna, Arjuna penetrated through it all, so we need to help others, our purpose should never be, to thrust our philosophy down someone, who is down, our philosophy, our purpose should be, to help people, arrive at the most constructive explanation, for that situation, so, if somebody’s, son has unfortunately passed away like this, then, you may be, now, you love your son, but, at a physical level, he is not there with you, you can’t do anything for him, but his soul is still there, if you pray for him, if you worship him, if you do some bhakti for him, you can still benefit his soul, that is a constructive frame of reference to put it, or you could say that, oh, this cancer is incurable, maybe I will become a cancer researcher, or I will support cancer research, or, you could put it in some other constructive framework, actually, there are cures for cancer, but they are not so well known, if I had known about this cure, maybe I would have tried it, so, we have to find out, within our situation, what is the most constructive frame of reference, one constructive frame of reference could be that, we are in this world, we have relationships, the relationships in this world are temporary, we also need an eternal relationship, so, we have to help them, find the most constructive frame of reference, yes, Hare Krishna, thank you so much for a nice class, it was nice, because it was so short, open discussion, I mean, it is good to have open discussion, so, my question is, due to our past life, you are having some negative situations, in your life, in this life, so, how do we overcome those negative situations, so, how do we overcome other situations, stay positive, and think positive, so, we cannot escape the situations from our past life, so, how do we stay positive, broadly, any situation we are in, no situation takes away our power to do three things, I call it, open a new tab in your life, anything comes up on that computer, and then, we just open a new tab, I don’t want to see this, I will see something else, so, tab is, first, it is an acronym, thoughts, attitude and behaviour, that, whatever situation we are in, it doesn’t control what we think about, yes, there is a problem and we have to think about it, to see how much, so, if we can turn our thoughts towards something more constructive, ultimately, we can turn our thoughts towards Krishna, I am sick and I am on my bed, suppose, I am bed ridden because I have got a fracture, now, I can think about, oh, how unfair this fracture is, how everyone else is enjoying and I am suffering over here, I feel sorry for myself and I start snapping at others, I become irritable, so, instead of that, instead of thinking about myself and what a sorry situation I am in, if I turn and think about Krishna, maybe hear about Krishna, sing about Krishna, read about Krishna, think about something constructive, I am physically restricted, but nobody controls what I think, we always have the power to choose our thoughts, not 100%, because we have to think about our situations also, so, what we think about is in our control, then A is attitude, attitude is, with what attitude we look at that situation, we can say that, life is terrible, life is terrible, life is unfair and we just feel sorry for ourselves or we can look at it with a spiritually positive attitude, a spiritually positive attitude means that, I didn’t address that point in your question, sometimes we say that everything that happens is good, now, there is this Gita Sar, which many of you may have seen, which people put in their shops and other places, so, one of the things they say is jo hua, wo achcha hua, jo ho raha hai, wo achcha ho raha hai, jo hoga, wo bhi achcha hi hoga, whatever happened is good, whatever is happening is good, now, I have read the Gita hundreds of times and I have not found any verse like this in the Gita, the Gita is not so much talking about what happens to us, it talks more about what we do, so, the Gita doesn’t say that everything that happens is good, but what it does indicate is that everything that happens can be for good, it is not that everything that happens automatically is good, bad people do bad things, that’s bad, it’s not necessarily a good thing, but even from the bad, good can come, so, the universe ultimately moves purposefully, so, what does this attitude mean, let’s say if we are in a situation of order and then from order suddenly chaos comes up, what does that mean, that means all of you are sitting here, and order means when we do something and we get the expected result, so, you ask a question and you get a reasonable answer, suppose you ask a question and suddenly the person sitting next to you slaps you in the face, what happened, that would be chaos, what happened, so, when we do something and something entirely unexpected happens, that’s when our life moves from order to chaos, when it moves from order to chaos, a spiritually positive attitude means from that chaos a higher order will come, that chaos is there now, I can’t deny it, but if I act properly, if I grow, if I act purposefully, from that chaos order will come, it’s like say a woman is pregnant, now when the baby is inside her womb, it’s order, the mother is taking care of the baby and she is feeling the baby is fed, but then the labour pain starts, it’s chaos, now suddenly what pain from where, but if the mother tolerates, if the mother keeps pushing and then gradually the pain emerges, then there is a better order, new life is born, so order, chaos, so we don’t deny the chaos that is there in our life, but a spiritually positive attitude means from the chaos, a higher order will emerge, so now to give another example for this, which will relate to my third point, so thoughts, attitude, the third is behaviour, what we think about is up to us, with what attitude we look at our situation is also up to us, and how we behave is also up to us, how we behave means that we say no, this situation doesn’t allow me, if I have a fracture and I am bed ridden, what more my behaviour is going to do, I can’t go anywhere, but we are never as powerless as we think, no matter how bad any situation may be, it never takes away our power, no situation can take away our power to make the situation worse, that means I may have a fracture in one foot and I am bed ridden, but I can take a hammer and fracture my other foot also, now what this means is that if I can make things worse, then I can also make things better, I am not as powerless as we think, so now I might be able to go in a small way, small way is that while I am on the bed, let me do a little exercise so that my leg does not atrophy, so in that situation start with small simple steps, if we look at our own lives, immediately we can list three things which we can do and we should be doing but we are not doing, and we know if I do these things, I can make my life better, and we can list three things which we should not be doing but which we are doing and that is making our life worse, we are not talking about big changes, small things which are doable, just start with that, so we can all take small simple steps to create a better situation for ourselves, so a simple step, one step we can take is always turn towards Krishna, pray to Krishna, but along with that we can also do something practical, so even if we take small small steps, we can create a better situation, so this opens a new tab in our life that how we think, how we act, with what attitude we see, and how we behave, no situation controls that, we can choose that always, and by opening a new tab, we can create a brighter future for us no matter how bleak our present may be, any other questions? So in the Mahabharata instance that we spoke about Abhimanyu, I think Lord Krishna had given Abhimanyu how to enter the Chakravayu while he was in Subhadra’s womb, but he had purposely not explained how to get out of it, and if he wanted he could have saved Abhimanyu, so why did he not tell him how to exit and why did he not save Abhimanyu, what’s the story behind that? Is it that Krishna did not deliberately give the knowledge that Abhimanyu was killed? Well, that’s not exactly the story, it was Arjuna who was speaking to Subhadra, not Krishna, and Subhadra did the mistake we all do commonly, she went to sleep during her class, so Arjuna, Subhadra had asked, how do you break a Chakravayu? Now for her, it is more like a casual curiosity, she was not going to fight him, but Abhimanyu inside her womb was also hearing, and Arjuna was speaking to Subhadra, but after some she probably had worked very hard on that day or whatever, she nodded off, and Arjuna was speaking, speaking, and then he stopped speaking, so when he stopped speaking, Abhimanyu heard half the story, and Abhimanyu was just 16, so nobody thought that he would ever need to use Chakravayu knowledge, so others could have taught him, so all this Krishna’s plan, that’s very difficult, let me complete this, I take another incident, that before the Kurukshetra war, when Vyasadeva and other sages come and tell Dhritarashtra, that please stop your son from antagonising the Pandavas, if he doesn’t give the Pandavas kingdom back to them, there will be terrible war, and your whole dynasty will be destroyed, so at that time, Vyasadeva tells him, Dhritarashtra says, actually isn’t everything determined by destiny, maybe this war is also the will of destiny, and if that is so, then what can I do, so Vyasadeva becomes very brave, and he says, the workings of destiny are very difficult for us to know, what we can know is our duty, so contemplate deeply on Dhritarashtra, what is your duty in this situation, and act accordingly, after the war gets over, and all his 100 sons are killed, Dhritarashtra is lamenting terribly, at that time, Vyasadeva again comes to him, and Vyasadeva tells him, that, oh Dhritarashtra, do not lament, it’s the will of destiny, what’s going on over it, earlier he said destiny is very difficult to know, but now he says it’s the will of destiny, so the point over here is, philosophy doesn’t exist in isolation from context, ultimately the purpose of all philosophy is to help us to act in the most constructive way, so when something is going to happen in the future, and we are to choose some action, then we need to act to the best of our capacity, that’s why at that time he said, you don’t know what is destiny, but you know what is your duty, and act accordingly, but now something has already happened, now if he keeps thinking about this, oh maybe I should stop my son, why didn’t I stop the river, that lamentation will simply waste his energy, so then he is telling me, it has happened already, see it as the will of destiny, and move on, so then was the war Krishna’s plan, or was it not Krishna’s plan, you have to understand, that everything that happens may not be God’s plan, but God’s plan can act through everything that happens, are you getting the difference, that it was not Krishna’s plan that Duryodhana should be so evil, it was not Krishna’s plan that Dushyasan disrobed Draupadi, but they did those terrible things, now God is so expert, it’s like say, in a cricket match, if a captain is very expert, he has one bowler who is supposed to bowl very well, but that bowler has a very bad bowling, as he is bowling very badly, and that bowler is being beaten everywhere, and now the captain has a plan, this player is not playing the part, but then the captain sees that this opposite player is hitting one after another, and is becoming very over confident, and then he expertly brings another bowler, who just bowls in a way that deceives the batsman, the batsman has become over confident, and their plan was to get that bowler out, this bowler couldn’t do it, but the captain did that plan through another bowler, now resourceful captains can do that, that even if plan A doesn’t work, they have a plan B, so like that, we don’t have to think of Krishna’s plan like one fixed line, it is one direction, one purpose, so it is not that everything that everyone does is as per Krishna’s plan, we are not puppets, we all have free will, and sometimes some people abuse their free will terribly, but still, even if some people abuse their free will, still, that doesn’t mean that they will thwart Krishna’s plan, Krishna is so expert, that through it all he will execute his plan still, so therefore, the point over here was that he was telling Dhritarashtra, that at this point, before the war, think what your responsibility is, but now the war is over, your sons are dead, don’t lament over it, now look at what your duty is, accept that it has happened as a will of destiny, and move on in your life, so applying this to our context, the way Mahabharata analyses it, is that Abhimanyu’s death was because of Jayadratha’s nebulousness, and Krishna goes along with that explanation, so when bad things happen in the world, is it Krishna’s will, that’s a difficult question to answer, Krishna doesn’t want anyone to suffer, sometimes there is necessary suffering, just like when somebody has to go through surgery, but that doesn’t mean any cut inflicted on anyone is a surgery, there is some suffering that is necessary, but that doesn’t mean any suffering that is caused by anyone, is actually God’s will, if I go and insult you, why will you insult me, no, actually this insult is good for you to develop humility, I cannot rationalise my action like that, so if I am abusing my action, I am responsible, but the point is Krishna can act through anyone’s actions, Krishna can further his plan through anyone’s actions, or despite anyone’s actions also, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s action is Krishna’s plan, so this particular story I have not heard about it, at least Krishna is not speaking it partially, it is circumstance that Arjuna spoke and Subhadra did not hear fully, but she is not to be responsible, and Arjuna is also not responsible, Jayadratha is considered responsible. Thank you. So I think there is one question which everyone has, when will this class end? Shall we stop? We will say a little bit about Bhagavad Gita, it is coming up.