Krishna is not just our destination – he is also our companion

Suppose we flew to a distant land to meet a VIP whom we hadn’t met before. We landed, drove to his residence and knocked – and found, to our astonishment, looking at us the same person who had sat next to us throughout our journey. Having been hyper-excited about the upcoming meeting, we had paid little attention to our flight neighbor.

A similar lack of recognition often characterizes our devotional journey. When we practice bhakti and feel attracted towards Krishna, we start longing to see him. Such a longing is normally good, but the illusory energy can sinisterly use it against us. How? By making us depressed that we are so far away from Krishna. Such depression can make our practice of bhakti half-hearted and inattentive. With distracted bhakti practices, we can’t access his presence as manifest in our heart, and in his holy names, deities, scriptures and similar manifestations.

Why can’t we readily perceive Krishna’s presence? Because he is quintessentially spiritual, whereas our consciousness is presently material, being consumed by various worldly attachments. Earnest bhakti practice raises our consciousness to the spiritual level, enabling us to increasingly realize his presence. Over time, as we come closer and closer to Krishna, one day we realize that he was always close to us, being present in our heart throughout our worldly existence, as the Bhagavad-gita (18.61) states. And we also realize that his empowering presence was constantly accessible through his many merciful manifestations.

We will realize this divine non-difference eventually, but we can tap its benefit immediately. By using our intelligence to at least hypothetically accept the non-difference between him and his manifestations, we can serve those manifestations with greater reverence. Such intensified devotional practice will make our spiritual life more relishable and will accelerate our realization of Krishna’s eternal proximity.

Our willingness is more important than our willpower

When we strive to lead a principle-centered life, but falter and fall, we may lament, “I don’t have willpower.”

Such feelings are understandable, but they can be self-defeating if they make us believe that lack of willpower is something like a genetic defect – some people have willpower and some people don’t. Actually, willpower is not unchangeable like skin pigment color but is something changeable like muscles.

No doubt, some people have more willpower; some, less. Still, despite such differences caused by past karma, we all have some willpower, just as everyone has some muscles. And more importantly, we all can have willingness. Willpower is the capacity to do a thing, whereas willingness is the desire to do it. If we are unwilling, then even Krishna can’t help us. Though he has the power to do everything, he respects our free will and doesn’t impose himself on us if we don’t want him to. In contrast, if we are willing and strive to connect with him through prayerful remembrance, he empowers us by his omnipotence to overcome obstacles, as the Bhagavad-gita (18.58) assures.

Unfortunately, we often let our fear about our willpower deficiency steal our willingness – akin to a person who on thinking of huge weights refuses to enter a gym. By such misdirected contemplation, we end up disempowering ourselves.

Instead of sweating over principles that we fear we can’t follow, we can focus on ways in which we can joyfully absorb ourselves in remembrance of Krishna, for such remembrance is the most important principle. And from that remembrance will emerge, by his mercy, the inner satisfaction and strength to resist temptations and boost our willpower.

By focusing on maintaining our willingness instead of fretting over our willpower deficiency, we can let Krishna’s magical mercy raise us above our limitations.

Being correct is not enough; we need to be correctly understood

Sometimes when we speak something important or insightful, we may think that we have done our part. But if others haven’t understood what we said, then we haven’t yet done our part fully. And if we try to justify such partial communication by claiming that their incomprehension is their problem, then we have failed to understand the purpose of communication, especially spiritual communication on Krishna’s behalf.

Krishna himself demonstrates how to take responsibility for effective communication. After speaking the stupendous wisdom of the Bhagavad-gita, he doesn’t rest on his laurels, expecting Arjuna to be impressed and to shower praises. Instead, he concludes his talk with a concerned, compassionate enquiry: Has Arjuna heard attentively and has his illusion been dispelled? (18.72) Erudite Gita commentators such as Sri Vishvanath explain that Krishna’s enquiry reflects his willingness to re-explain any portion of the Gita that Arjuna hasn’t understood – or to even repeat the full Gita if necessary.

Following Krishna’s example, resourceful Gita teachers have for millennia explained the Gita’s message in a way intelligible and appealing to their contemporary audiences, thus ensuring that the Gita remains a living book that speaks to people, generation after generation.

By taking responsibility to communicate intelligibly, we too can play our part in continuing the Gita’s living tradition. Of course, we can’t make people accept, but we can do our best to remove the cognitive obstacles on their path to acceptance. Irrespective of their acceptance, we will become spiritually fulfilled by contemplating the Gita’s message, as happened to Sanjaya, the Gita’s meta-narrator. Though his sharing the Gita didn’t transform Dhritarashtra’s heart, still it enriched his own heart with ecstasy (18.76-77).

Our mood in sharing the Gita can be: if people don’t accept, that is their problem; but if they don’t understand, that is our problem.

Meditation shrinks our problems by increasing our awareness of Krishna’s greatness

Suppose in a cartoon when two characters are fighting, one character keeps growing bigger and the other, smaller. For the dwarfed fighter, the fight would become increasingly difficult.

A similar shifting of the odds happens in our inner world when we grapple with problems. To tackle troubling situations, we need to think about them. But, if we are not careful, such thinking often becomes obsessive-compulsive, wherein we keep worrying, lamenting, resenting. And the more we dwell on a vexing issue, the bigger it seems to become. Worse still, we too seem to become smaller; we become disheartened by the problem’s magnitude and feel ourselves increasingly running out of options to address the issue.

Worst of all, some problems often seem to come with a mental adhesive. Even if we know that worrying doesn’t help, even if others counsel us to stop obsessing over the problem, even if we resolve to think of other things that are in our power to influence, still problems seem to adhere to our consciousness.

To end our disempowering problem-consciousness, we need not just an alternative object of thought; we need the supreme object of thought: God. That supreme object in his most attractive manifestation is Krishna. When we think about him – and think not just cursorily, but steadily and devotionally – we feel enriched and empowered by realizing his omnipotent presence manifested in our heart. Contemplating the supreme spiritual reality is the essence of meditation.

Meditation makes us aware of Krishna’s greatness, of his benevolent connection with us and of our indestructible spiritual essence as his parts. Such calming awareness enables us to think clearly and devise intelligent ways to deal with the problem. Pertinently, the Bhagavad-gita (18.58) assures that when we become conscious of Krishna, we cross over our problems by his grace.

Don’t let the mind put your thoughts out of sync with your actions

We may have seen some crudely made videos wherein the sound and the action are out of sync. Suppose a fight between a hero and a villain is being depicted. Even before the hero’s fist hits the villain’s jaw, we hear the sound of the blow and of the bone cracking. An out-of-sync recording can make a serious scene seem humorous or even ridiculous.

What is frivolous in reel-life can be disastrous in real life. Important things can go dangerously wrong when our thoughts are out of sync with our actions. When our mind is uncontrolled, being buffeted by various desires and worries, then we end up thinking of things other than what we are doing. Indeed, the mind tends to think of everything except the thing that we are doing now. Aggravatingly, the mind thinks a lot about that thing after we have done it – and done it wrong due to the mind’s fickleness. Pertinently, the Bhagavad-gita (06.34) cautions that the mind is restless, infatuated, forceful and obstinate – akin to a stormy wind. Due to the mind’s restlessness, we are often active without being productive. Worse still, we may be active and be destructive instead of productive.

Spiritual wisdom brings our thoughts and actions in sync by revealing to us an inner center of stability and strength. When we understand that we are at our core indestructible soul, we calm down. When we further understand that God is ultimately in control and that we are his parts whoa are meant to do our best in his service, we can restrain the restless mind and focus on the task at hand, leaving the past and future in his competent hands.

By thus syncing our thoughts with our actions, spirituality helps us transform our activity into productivity.

God’s existence is based on not mathematical probability, but on definitional necessity

Sometimes God’s existence is inferred from empirical observation. From the complexity of material objects and their inter-relationships, and the sheer improbability of such complexity emerging by unguided chance, the mathematical probability of a designing intelligence is posited.

Such arguments for God’s existence can be persuasive, but it’s important to know that his existence is not based on mathematical probability. Suppose some future observations suggest that some material mechanisms could have produced complexity without any guiding intelligence. Of course, the capacity of such mechanisms to produce everything about organized living systems is questionable – these mechanisms are frequently neither verifiable, nor repeatable. Such mechanisms hardly ever comprise coherent, complete explanations; typically, they are atheistic “magic wands” to exile God from the cosmos. They resemble science fiction more than science.

But even if for argument’s sake, we grant that some tenable mechanisms were proposed – all they would change is the validity of inferring his existence from our finite observations; they wouldn’t change the validity of his existence. The Bhagavad-gita (10.39) draws our attention to the fundamental definition of God when it declares that nothing would exist without Krishna. Why? Because he is the source of everything, the cause of all causes, the first thing that is the foundation for all things.

Inference from observation can be a natural starting point for our faith. But the engine for our faith needs to eventually shift from such inference to appreciation of the philosophical coherence of a devotional worldview and the personal experience coming from bhakti-yoga practice.

Then we will understand that God’s existence is not dependent on the probability inferred from the existence of other things – it is the necessity for the existence of anything else. Without his existence, the probability, even the possibility, of the existence of anything else would be zero.

Don’t crave the feast in others’ plates – savor the feast in yours

Suppose we were invited to a feast in which everyone had slightly different delicacies on their plates. Suppose further that we got so caught in looking at what delicacies are there on whose plate as to not even notice the delicacies on our plate.

Such a pathetic misdirection frequently characterizes our present mindset. We all have some talents – these are akin to the delicacies in our plate. But our culture often glamorizes certain talents, thereby making us crave for those talents and overlook our own talents.

Aggravating our misdirection, the delicacies on our plate are visible, whereas the talents in us are often concealed. Some of our talents, we know about; some, others know about, but we don’t; and some, neither others nor we know. That’s why, to discover and develop our talents, we need to introspect and explore. But introspection and exploration becomes difficult, if not impossible, when craving and lamenting consumes us emotionally.

Gita wisdom counters such emotional misdirection by reminding us that we are all parts of Krishna and that he loves us for who we are, not for what we have. We can realize his love by elevating our consciousness – an elevation that requires performance of purificatory austerities. The Bhagavad-gita (17.16) recommends satisfaction as an austerity of the mind. Rather than treating satisfaction as an uncontrollable feeling that we hardly ever feel, we need to cultivate it as a discipline by consciously focusing on things that stimulate satisfaction and avoid things that trigger dissatisfaction. Instead of dwelling inordinately on the gifts that others have and we don’t, we can focus on discovering and developing the gifts we have.

By thus meditating on Krishna’s love and his gifts, we can gain inner satisfaction; and by tapping those gifts, we can make significant outer contribution.

To save time, we need spiritual elevation more than technological innovation

We are frequently over-scheduled, over-worked, over-stressed. So, we naturally feel eager for things that promise to save time. Catering to our needs, scores of apps offer time-efficient ways of doing things.

Many such apps do save time. But we often need to choose among several competing apps, each with its own pluses and minuses. And finding the one app that works best for us takes time. By the time we settle for an app, learn to use it and get habituated to it, our technologically innovative times provide some new, better-looking apps. And again we go through the time-consuming process of evaluating and choosing. If we aren’t careful, we may end up spending more time in selecting time-saving apps than the time saved by those apps.

To invest our time carefully, we need to train ourselves to see things in proper perspective without getting carried away by the lure of new things. The Bhagavad-gita indicates that clarity of perception characterizes the mode of goodness (14.11), whereas insatiable desire and hyper-activity characterize the mode of passion (14.12). So, we can gain proper perspective by elevating our consciousness from the mode of passion to the mode of goodness.

For raising our consciousness, we need to purify ourselves through spiritual practices such as meditation and scriptural study. These practices empower us to bring order in our inner world, thereby making us alert and adept. We become alert to catch and curb stray thought-patterns, thus saving the time lost in daydreaming, absent-mindedness and moodiness. And we become adept at cultivating and facilitating productive thought-patterns, thus using all our resources, including apps, more effectively.

If we can get our priorities right and focus more on spiritual elevation than on technological innovation, our endeavors for saving time will be far more successful.

The two endings of the Gita point to the same end

The Bhagavad-gita has two endings based on the two nested conversations that comprise its narrative. The outer, framing conversation is at Hastinapura between Sanjaya and Dhritarashtra – Sanjaya narrates to the blind king the events happening on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. The inner, central conversation is at battlefield between Krishna and Arjuna – the Lord playing the role of a charioteer answers the questions of his friend who has been overwhelmed by the prospect of fighting a fratricidal war.

The inner conversation ends with Arjuna’s declaration (18.73) that his illusion has been dispelled and his memory, restored – and being free from doubts he is now ready to carry out Krishna’s will. The outer conversation ends with Sanjaya’s declaration (18.78) that where the bow-wielding Arjuna is united with the supremely mystical Lord, there will manifest morality, victory and prosperity.

These two endings focus respectively on inner enlightenment and outer attainment. Arjuna is freed from the confusion that had overwhelmed him, and Sanjaya declares that such an enlightened and determined Arjuna is sure to attain victory in the upcoming war. While the focus of attention for both these speakers is different, internal and external respectively, a common theme links their statements. That common theme is the harmonization of the human will with the divine will. Arjuna’s statement conveys that the removal of illusions and doubts, as brought about by the Gita’s message, inspires us to become resolute instruments of the divine, irrespective of external obstacles. And Sanjaya’s statement conveys that such harmonization, as conveyed by Arjuna’s uplifted bow, which represents the soul’s readiness to do God’s will, results in outer success too.

Thus, the Gita’s two endings demonstrate the universally desirable end for all human beings – striving for inner harmony with Krishna and thereby contributing successfully in the outer world.

Our impressions go with us, but they don’t have to grow with us

Suppose we change from an old computer to a new computer. Once we log in using our id, our browsing information – such as bookmarks, preferences and search history – gets associated with the new computer.

Gita wisdom explains that we are eternal souls. When our body is destroyed at death, we transmigrate to a new body. And along with us are transferred to the new body our inner impressions that were formed during our previous lives. Whereas our browsing information is stored outside us in some server, our impressions are stored inside. The inner storage space is our subtle body that accompanies us during our multi-life journey.

Our impressions prompt us towards certain choices, just as Google supplies certain auto-completes for our searches. Yet we don’t have to search only according to those auto-complete options; we can search according to our present interests. Similarly, we don’t have to act according to the promptings coming from our impressions. We can instead choose to act according to our present values. Pertinently, the Bhagavad-gita (03.34) urges us to not succumb to our default attachments and aversions. If we have lived materialistically and self-centeredly in the past, our impressions will prompt us towards similar behavior, thereby reinforcing those materialistic values.

Thankfully, we can elevate our values by educating ourselves with Gita wisdom. It explains that our core is pure and transcendental, and it enables us to relish spiritual fulfillment by practicing yoga, especially bhakti-yoga. This fulfillment enables us to regulate our likes and dislikes, and make principled choices. Just as our present browsing choices will gradually change Google’s prompts, so too will our present behavioral choices change our inner promptings. By consistently making principled choices, we can transform our impressions, rendering them favorable, instead of inimical, for bringing out our spiritual potential.

Freedom to do what we like is not necessarily freedom

Consider alcoholics who want to break free from their addiction. They often place themselves voluntarily in rehabilitation clinics whose monitored environment takes away their freedom to do as they like: drink alcohol. Why do they give up their freedom? Because they understand that what they are giving up is pseudo-freedom. By drinking as they like, they will become more addicted. By doing as they should – by staying sober as per the clinic’s regulations – they will gradually gain freedom from the addiction.

The Bhagavad-gita underscores this counter-intuitive nature of pleasure. It states that sensual pleasures taste like nectar initially but like poison eventually (18.38), whereas refined pleasures taste like poison initially but like nectar eventually (18.37). Our “likes” are often determined by our infatuation with the initial nectar, while being blinded to the eventual poison. By acting on those likes, we sentence ourselves to that poison. When our intelligence is guided by scripture, our “shoulds” are determined by the resolution to reach the eventual nectar, even if it requires tolerating the initial poison. By doing what we should, we attain the freedom to relish that nectar.

Gita wisdom explains that we are at our core souls meant to relish eternal happiness in loving devotion to Krishna. But we can’t access this spiritual happiness as long as our consciousness is consumed by fantasies about worldly pleasures. And such pleasures, no matter how glamorized, are actually fleeting, unsatisfying and entangling.

By doing as we like and indulging in worldly pleasures, we lose the freedom to relish spiritual happiness and instead get entrapped in the vain pursuit of worldly pleasures. But by doing what we should and choosing to purify ourselves with actions determined by our scripturally-guided intelligence, we gradually become free to relish everlasting spiritual happiness.

Those who don’t hang together, hang separately

When we practice spiritual life, we engage in a war against illusion, which attacks us primarily by triggering our lower desires. Our fellow-devotees and we are comrades in the war against illusion.

In a war, comrades watch each other’s backs. In the spiritual war, our lower desires often ambush us by masquerading as our desires. Our spiritual comrades can protect us from such ambushes by reminding us of our higher values and aspirations.

Unfortunately, we sometimes let differences over relatively unimportant issues define our relationships with devotees. Overlooking the defining spiritual commonality that we are fighting the same enemy and serving the same Lord, we let minor differences distance us from devotees. Being thus isolated, we are left with no one to caution us when our lower desires sneak in. Beguiled by those desires, we unwittingly indulge in anti-devotional, immoral activities, thereby wrecking our spiritual prospects. Thus, by failing to hang together, we end up hanging separately.

On a positive note, association offers not just protection from our lower desires but also inspiration for our higher desires. And nourishing our desires to love and serve Krishna is the most effective way to immunize ourselves from self-centered desires. We can best nourish our devotional desires by associating with like-minded devotees whose definitions of spiritual success resonate with ours.

The Bhagavad-gita (10.09) states that devotees delight in discussing Krishna and enlightening each other about his glories. Such association helps us relish Krishna’s glories from various perspectives, thus strengthening our desires to serve him. Further, association helps us appreciate how other devotees are pressing on, despite obstacles and reversals, in their war for spiritual integrity. This appreciation inspires us to persevere resolutely in our war too.

When we subordinate our differences with devotees to our defining spiritual commonality, our devotional practices become safe, strong and fulfilling.