In this material world, there is the concept of good and bad. A person in knowledge does not act out good nor bad actions. For actually sees that the truth. The Truth?
To discern the truth from ignorance one must have proper education. Proper education means taking shelter of a person who will lead you out of ignorance. 99 percent of the people do not understand real knowledge. Knowledge begins with understanding that we are not the material bodies that we inhabit.
Hence, our materialistic minds dwell on certain activities of the bodies as good or bad. A good action for one person might mean disaster for another living entity. For example, one who slaughters a cow thinks, "this is good so my family can eat." To another person seeing this action is bad because a life was taken unnecessarily. The learned person who understands that we are not these bodies can truly see the modes of nature are in control just like puppeteers controlling puppets.
This, as my wife says, is the greatest conspiracy theory. When you break it down, the main conspiracy that starts it all is: You have someone who has control of another person. Example: government controls the people. The modes of material nature are goodness, passion and ignorance. In the mode of goodness, one can gradually develop knowledge, but they're still controlled by that mode. We must therefore free ourselves from these ropes or modes.
How can one free himself from ropes? If you're bound up by ropes, you cannot free yourself (unless you're Houdini.) A person has to come and untie the ropes. This is the process found in all spiritual truths. Bhagavad-gita states: "This divine energy of Mine, consisting of the three modes of material nature, is difficult to overcome. But those who have surrendered unto Me can easily cross beyond it."
Therefore, we can understand that there are two processes of finding Truth. Revelation, or taking refuge in God and then receiving knowledge from Him. The other path is called sankhya in Sanskrit. This process entails that one analyze all of the 24 material elements very scrutinizingly until one finds the Truth. The last process is like being tied up in ropes and wriggling and pulling until the ropes loosen and then you wriggle and fight and pull and tug until it loosens some more. Finally you fight so much that the ropes give and you achieve freedom.
The problem with the last process is that this world is full of distractions. We can analyze the elements but there's always a chance of being captivated by those elements. In the other process, you are protected and cared for by the Higher Power.
Some people believe that you will never actually come to know Truth in full. This is because they do not know the Truth. That is why we must take shelter of those who have see the Truth. Will you go to a doctor who will guess about what operation he should perform on you? Problem.... Who should we trust and who should we keep away from? Which one is good or bad?
Beyond good or bad is knowledge that pleases God. The only real thing is devotional service to God, everything else is phantasmagoria. This might sound dogmatic, but when you get to the point, that's the Truth. The world around us will tell us differently. But, if you are not serving God, then you are serving your out of control senses and the senses of those people around you. Being nice and doing good to others are activities that can be performed by atheists, theists, and other eists you can think of. Those who serve God naturally serve others, but the quality is very different.
The example: A ship is sinking. Rather than saving the people, you save their clothes. Rather than perform activities that enlightens others, you just serve their material bodies. This DOES NOT MEAN WE BECOME HARDHEARTED!!!! We must act in such a way that both soul and body will be nourished.
Lord Chaitanya is the best physician. He came to teach us the easy process of chanting the holy names which cleanses the mirror of the heart and extinguishes the blazing fire of material existence. He taught that each person can have a personal relationship with God or Krishna.
Lord Sri Krishna Chaitanya taught that we must strive to be humble at all times. Humility and tolerance. We see this in His dear associates. Knowledge can only be obtained through humility. And good and bad is only a concoction of the mind. Transcendental activities are that which pleases Krishna. Activities that please Krishna, please everyone. Water the root of the tree and the entire tree will be nourished..........................
One instruction that always struck my heart is when Lord Vamana asks for three steps of land. The Lord had walked to the place by the Narmada river where King Bali was engaged in performing sacrifices. The Lord's body was so effulgent that the sages thought this person was either the sun personified, or a fire-god.
After hearing the Lord's request for three steps of land, Bali rebuked the Lord for not asking for more. The Lord then uttered these words: "O my dear king, even the entirety of whatever there may be within the three worlds to satisfy one's senses cannot satisfy a person whose senses are uncontrolled."
This is the problem of the material world. Because we are not satisfied within ourselves then we are forced to seek happiness outside of ourselves. This in turn keeps us in an endless cycle of consumerism which then leads to destroying our surroundings all in the pursuit of happiness. We are complete because we are parts of the complete whole.
One might then ask the question: If we are complete within ourselves then why seek the satisfaction of God? The answer is: "All different varieties of atmaramas (those who take pleasure in the spirit self), especially those established on the path of self-realization, though freed from all kinds of material bondage, desire to render unalloyed devotional service unto the Personality of Godhead. This means that the Lord possesses transcendental qualities and therefore can attract everyone, including liberated souls."
It is very difficult to understand the Lord's pastimes from a scholarly pursuit. One may memorize the pastimes and speculate on them from different angles, but this will not bring about the desired result. The true goal from hearing the Lord's pastimes is transformation of the heart. To achieve this goal, we must hear submissively and then try to practically apply the teachings from the pastimes into our daily lives.
We read in Bhagavad-gita that the Lord descends when there is a rise in irreligion. He also comes to protect the devotees and clear away the demoniac forces. Tomorrow is the holy appearance day of Lord Vamana, or the dwarf brahman. It starts when Bali Maharaja decides to conquer the heavenly planets. He performed many great sacrifices and therefore got the blessings of the descendants of Bhrigu Muni. He became very powerful and overtook the heavenly realm, making the demigods flee. The mother of the demigods became very sad and wanted something to be done. She was instructed by her husband to perform a special ceremony called payo-vrata, which consisted of many austerities and hardships. She, Aditi, pleased the Supreme Lord, and He appeared before her in his four armed form. He spoke to her about how He would take birth from her womb to protect her other children.
I was meditating on the fact that many devotees described in the scriptures started out desiring something other than pure devotional service. The Lord tells Aditi that I know this desire you have to see the mothers of the demons lament upon seeing the dead bodies of their sons. This seems to be a very materialistic desire. But, we can take Dhruva Maharaja as an example. He was a little boy who wanted a kingdom greater than that of Lord Brahma. His mother told him to go to the forest so he could see God, who was the only one who could grant him that boon. After seeing the Lord, Dhruva was completely washed of all contaminations. Narada Muni is another one. The lives of devotees are very difficult to understand. Some of them were placed in certain circumstances just for the Lord to perform pastimes.
Another instruction I was meditating on, was that Bali Maharaja pleased the brahmans and therefore was infused with brahma-tejas, or spiritual power. Because of his service to the brahmans not even the Lord could overtake Him with power. To make spiritual advancement we must constantly strive to please the devotees of the Lord. To serve the devotees is to please God. This is a very essential instruction. The devotees are even seen as expansions of the Lord in this material world. If you have the blessings of great souls, nothing can interfere with your plans.
Another day to feel gratitude and love, but my mind wraps around sense objects and other temporary subject matters. I struggle. I want to cry out for mercy. I want to drown in ecstatic love for God, but as Bhagavad-gita states: "One who is bewildered by material enjoyment and the opulences of this world cannot properly attain samadhi (a state of complete trance)."
The more I fill my mind with subjects that have no real essence, the harder it is for me to dive deeper into the goal of life. Distractions keeping me from truly loving and feeling compassion. Keeping me from giving compassion.
Yesterday was Radhastami. The day we celebrate the "birth" of Srimati Radharani, Krishna's most intimate devotee. Without Her mercy we cannot perform any activity. Yogamaya, Her spiritual energy allows us to engage in intimate service to Krishna. Her Mahamaya, or material energy keeps trapped in illusion unless we obtain the mercy of great souls or Krishna.
Lord Krishna upon seeing the beauty of Srimati Radharani becomes completely bewildered, in a very transcendental way. Everything Radha does, is simply to allow God to dive into His own pleasure potency. This is true love. God loves His devotee and the devotee loves God. But, She loves Him so much that She experiences more happiness than the Lord. The Lord is therefore greedy to taste Her love and so Krishna appears as Lord Caitanya to understand Radha's love.
The only way to dive deeply into these very high subject matters, is to constantly strive to focus on being lower than the straw in the street, more tolerant than a tree and constantly give all respects to others without wanting respect for oneself.
I'm very sorry that I haven't been keeping up the blog properly. This week, actually past few weeks, have been very blissful and very busy. Starting from Jagannath Ratha-yatra and ending this week with a visit by His Holiness Radhanath Swami, my beloved spiritual master. There's so much that I have realized, yet, I feel overwhelmed to put them all down in writing.
My greatest realization was being around a spiritually surcharged personality has a great effect on the heart. Last Sunday, my guru chanted for an hour and a half, this was after he gave a talk about spiritual foundation. Everyone was so enthusiastic to dance and cry out to the Lord. We were literally ringing sweat out of our clothes at the end. We didn't want it to end.
This is taken from Caitanya-caritamrita 1.1.44: "Every living entity is essentially a servant of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and the spiritual master is also His servant. Still, the spiritual master is a direct manifestation of the Lord. With this conviction, a disciple can advance in Krishna consciousness. The spiritual master is non-different from Krishna because he is a manifestation of Krishna.
"Lord Nityananda, who is Balarama Himself, the first direct manifestation or expansion of Krishna, is the original spiritual master. He helps Lord Krishna in His pastimes, and He is a servant of the Lord.
"Every living entity is eternally a servant of Sri Krishna Caitanya; therefore the spiritual master cannot be other than a servant of Lord Caitanya. The spiritual master's eternal occupation is to expand the service of the Lord by training disciples in a service attitude."
I witnessed my spiritual master giving every single person attention and guidance with such love and compassion that it should have melted my heart. He literally drains himself every time he visits trying to make sure everyone is cared for spiritually and materially.
Another thing I realized is, my spiritual master has so much intensity and deep knowledge. It's quite amazing to know someone that has a one-minded goal of constantly trying to go deeper into the spiritual. Very amazing.
I know everyone is focused on the Democratic Convention and the Republican National Convention, but at a certain point we really have to ask ourselves: Is a change in politics really going to solve the problems in this world. I was recently reading how prime ministers or brahmanas in Vedic culture we're never paid for their services. Instead, they would live off the earth and from donations that people would freely give. This gave them power over the King to instruct him. The people had such a relationship with the king as if he was their father. Nowadays politicians will say and do anything just so they can get some power. Lust, anger and greed which are the doors leading to degradation, will not be stopped by rules set up by the government.
Understanding that we are not these material bodies, but eternal, blissful servants of Sri- Sri-Radha-Krishna completely washes the false ego away allowing pure love to enter the heart. Chant Hare Krishna and be happy.
