Some sports fans become so maniac that when their favorite
team loses, they feel as if it is the end of the world. A few extremist fans
even end their life.
While a match result may be important in its context, that
context itself is not very important. It’s after all just a game – a game that
doesn’t matter; that doesn’t solve any real problems; that doesn’t provide any
real necessities. It’s a triviality. Even if people make the trivial
monumental, it still remains a triviality, at the most a monumental triviality.
Yet association can drastically distort our perspective. So
if we associate with people who are mad for cricket, we may find ourselves
maniacally pounding our fist in frustration at a defeat, a defeat that we
wouldn’t have normally affected us much. To protect us from such mania, theBhagavad-gita (13.11) urges us to stay detached from the general mass of
people.
Being thus detached doesn’t mean leading an emotionally
barren life – it simply means judiciously investing our emotions in the
consequential, indeed the vital.
What is truly vital?
That which lasts, lasts forever.
We are eternal souls who have gone through many lifetimes,
wherein depending on our physical, social and cultural contexts, we have been
maniac about many things – things that we now don’t even remember.
What always stays with us is our consciousness. What
determines our happiness is the state of our consciousness. What is truly
vital, therefore, is the attraction of our consciousness to Krishna, for he
alone is the source of everlasting happiness. When we invest our emotions in
Krishna by practicing bhakti yoga, the resulting emotional enrichment will be
so fulfilling that we won’t feel avoiding mundane mania to be a deprivation;
rather, we will see such mania as a depriver of the sublime satisfaction of
devotion
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