Why does God let difficulties happen in our life – please explain based on your personal life?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so we all have some difficulties in our life so why does god let such difficulties happen yeah from our personal life a personal life yeah ok so you know when I was one I got polio my parents were they took care of me very nicely and there is an anti polio vaccine that is to be given my parents very diligently took me and gave the vaccine but the doctor who administered the vaccine was careless and he gave a vaccine that was outdated despite the vaccine I got polio so my parents were distraught and as I grew up my relatives would come and some of my relatives friends they would come and I was good at my studies relatively speaking so my relatives would console my parents they would say that you know god has compensated for his physical inability by giving him intellectual ability so I used to wonder you know who is this being god how does he have so much power over me he will give me this he will take away this how does this all work out so but over the years I realized that I have a very introvert nature an introspective nature and my physical inability has worked out to help me develop intellectually not just that I had intellectual ability but it has helped me to develop so in general in life when we ask the why question you know it just has no answers no satisfactory answers why certain things happen now from the perspective of Hinduism we understand that the soul is eternal and the soul is going through multiple lifetimes and the starting point in this life is determined by where we left off in a previous life so that means that we all have different starting points and why do we have different starting points basically we can have three explanations for this one is first is all by chance some people are born wealthy some people are born poor so the explanation of chance is actually a very very insecurity inducing explanation life is like a lottery some people are lucky some people are unlucky if you are unlucky that’s your bad luck what can you do it’s a very disempowering way of looking at life that our starting points are determined by chance the other alternative is that the starting points are determined by God that God has decided that some people will be poor some people will be wealthy that some people will be born in poor families some people will be born in wealthy families God has said some people will have very good looks some people will have mediocre looks now if we accept this that makes God seem very arbitrary and discriminatory and devoting ourselves to such a God loving such a God becomes extremely difficult now how do I love such a God now you know God’s justice is different from our justice God’s will is for our good ultimately but still the point is not that we may say that ok whatever problems we are getting in our life they are tests of God that’s true they are tests of God but still the question comes you know if after this class say there is an exam for all of you and all of you get different papers some of you get a very easy paper some of you get a very difficult paper your question will not be why is there an exam your question will be why are there different papers isn’t it so like that the question comes up ok if life is like an exam and God is testing us then why does God give different exams to different people so if we have only these two options that our starting points in life are determined by chance or by God actually neither of them are satisfactory like many people feel that I can’t accept such a God who arbitrarily gives me gives different people different starting points and they may go towards atheism but there is third option and the third option is that our starting points are determined neither by chance nor by God they are determined by us by us based on what we have done in our previous lives so we all are at different levels in our spiritual evolution and based on the kind of action that we have done we all get some strength some weaknesses let me start off in this life this actually is an empowering explanation in terms of helping us understand that our destiny is in our hands now where am I that is determined by what I did in the past where I will go will be determined by what I am going to do now now with this understanding so I found that okay I was at a particular starting point but as I grew intellectually it helped me realize that my physical inability did not really limit me much and then after I became a monk about five years ago I was just walking in the temple in Mumbai and some water spilled over there so I just didn’t notice the water and I slipped it was a small fall but because my leg was already weak because of folio so the bone at the thigh level literally ripped apart 90% of the bone just came apart completely and the doctor told me that that time also I was a monk so I was travelling in India and the doctor told me you should not travel anymore you are not physically capable of travelling so I was a little taken aback because travelling and speaking was my life I didn’t know what to do so once I was in the hospital and I was giving some classes on Skype to some some young people and I was just speaking and I got lost in my speaking so I closed my eyes and I was speaking it was an audio class not a video class and while I was speaking at that time somehow the internet got disconnected and because I was giving a class so I had put my phone also on silent so the the people who were hearing the class they were calling me back the internet was not connected so they couldn’t call me on Skype they were calling on my phone but my eyes were closed I was just speaking and I spoke for almost 15 minutes and afterward I just opened my eyes and looked there were almost like a dozen missed calls then I realized that I was speaking and nobody was hearing I just felt irritated, wasting my time I wasted my time and then suddenly at that time the thought came to me that actually when I was closing my eyes and speaking I was happy I was absorbed and I was happy speaking about the Bhagavad Gita speaking about God’s glories and at that time it struck me that for speaking about God in our tradition we call God by the name Krishna for speaking about Krishna I don’t need an audience and that insight helped me to start online teaching where I started doing I started answering questions online where the audience is not there but if they ask questions I write answers then I did several online courses so I got an online education at that time and although I was not traveling anywhere just last year again I started traveling somewhat after I recovered sufficiently but I realized that that fracture limited me physically it actually released me digitally so quite often when one door closes in our life we have a certain plan you want to go in a particular way and that door closes so we tend to become so resentful and we keep glaring at that door in anger so much that we miss out that some other door has opened so God often has plans for us which are better than our plans for ourselves we all like to serve God but as advisors God do like this, do like that, do like that so if we have faith in God then we should have faith not just in his omnipotence but also in his omniscience to have faith in omnipotence means God I have this problem and this is the solution to this problem so please use your power and solve this problem that idea is what? you want to form a partnership with God the terms of the partnership is your power, my brains but God doesn’t work like that if we understand that God is not just more powerful than us but God is wiser than us then we trust God fully and ok, I have this plan I have this problem, I feel this will be the solution to the problem but if it doesn’t work out let me be open, God what can I do in this situation? how can I serve you? how can I contribute in this situation? if we are open then we will find that even if problems are coming, something better is going to emerge through those problems that’s what my experience has been yeah sure