By Hansadutta das
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Text 15
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The body is worn out; the hair has
turned gray; the mouth has become toothless; and the old man goes about
clutching hold of a stick. Despite this condition, he has not given up
his bundle
of desires.
It is the force of desire which carries us from one
situation to another. In the Upanishads it is said, "As
man's desire
is, so is his deed, and as his deed is, so is his destiny." In the
West,
we have the saying, "Man is the architect of his own fortune or
misfortune."
This present life is the result of our previous life, and what we do in
this life will determine what kind of life we will have in the next
body.
In this way, everyone is moving under the impulse of desire.
There are some teachers who advocate becoming
desireless, but that is not possible, because desire is the concomitant
factor of a
living being. Just as fire must have heat, similarly everyone must have
some desire. The basic desires are to enjoy as much as possible, to
live
permanently and to know everything fully. These are the three desirable
situations: full knowledge, full pleasure, and eternal life.
However, we are in a situation which never gives us full
pleasure, full knowledge and eternal life. In fact, we experience all
misery, complete ignorance and a temporary life. Therefore, the Vedic
literatures, especially Bhagavad-gita, teach the
conditioned soul how he can actually experience this eternal life of
full knowledge and full pleasure. That instruction is known as yoga.
There are various types of yoga: karma-yoga, jñana-yoga,
ashtanga-yoga, and bhakti-yoga. Although people claim that
all the yogas are good and one should pick one according to his
particular inclination, we find from the Bhagavad-gita
itself that bhakti-yoga is the topmost stage of yoga
practice. It is the culmination of all yoga practice. Karma-yoga,
jñana-yoga, and ashtanga-yoga are stepping stones to
come to the platform of bhakti-yoga, or devotional service. In
fact, karma-yoga, jñana-yoga and ashtanga-yoga
are automatically included in bhakti-yoga.
What is bhakti-yoga? Bhakti-yoga means to engage
one's complete energy, words and wealth in the service of the Lord. In
bhakti-yoga there is no attempt to give up desire, to become
desireless, to become inactive, or to become void, impersonal, or even
to become one
with God. There is not even a desire for liberation. In that sense bhakti-yoga
is desirelessness, but in another sense bhakti-yoga actually
engages our natural desires for work in a purified manner. That
principle is explained by Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita
(9.27, 28):
yat karosi yad asnasi
yaj juhosi dadasi yat
yat tapasyasi kaunteya
tat kurusva mad arpanam
Whatever you do as work, whatever you eat,
whatever you give away in charity or perform as penance, that should be
done as an offering unto Me. By this principle of work you will be
freed
from all sinful reactions and come to Me.
Desire cannot be extinguished; we shall always be full
of desires. However, at the present moment, because we are in ignorance
of our eternal relationship with God, our desires are perverted because
we are acting on the bodily platform. We desire on behalf of this body.
Everyone desires his body to be very comfortable, very beautiful, rich,
and famous, but we cannot be happy pursuing such desires, because the
body
is not the self. I am not this body--I am merely a resident within this
body. Just as a driver is quite separate from the automobile and
naturally
cannot be satisfied simply by taking care of the machine, because the
driver
is not the machine. The machine requires some care, of course, but that
care does not satisfy the driver. Similarly, although we must look
after
this body by eating, sleeping, defending and mating, we should not
think
that simply by taking care of this body that we can be satisfied or
happy.
That is the mistake of the modern civilization. Society
has focused all its attention on taking care of the temporary, material
body without any consideration for the eternal soul within the body.
The
result is no one is happy in spite of material advancement in all
fields.
In fact, we find those who are most advanced materially are the most
unhappy
and frustrated. So a man goes through life, day in and day out, week
after
week, accumulating all kinds of advantages for his body; but he becomes
old
and diseased, his hair turns gray, and his teeth fall out. He is bent
over;
only with the help of a stick is he able to walk, and still he does not
give
up his material desires and try to understand Krishna consciousness.
This is the idea of this verse. Everyone is busy
with material desires, but we cannot be satisfied pursuing material
desire.
We must spiritualize our desires. We must purify our desires by acting
for
Vishnu.
Na te viduh svartha-gatim hi vishnum: Everyone
is in ignorance about this essential truth. "We are meant to satisfy
Vishnu." (Srimad-Bhagavatam 7.5.31)
yajñarthat karmano 'nyatra
loko'yam karma-bandhanah In Bhagavad-gita (3.9)
Krishna says, "One should work for the satisfaction of Vishnu." That
kind of work will keep us free from bondage; otherwise work binds us to
this material world. We are working, but the result of our work is that
we are becoming more and more entangled in the material existence. The
same work performed for the satisfaction of Vishnu or Krishna, frees us
from the material entanglement.
In Bhagavad-gita (8.12) Krishna says, "No
one can become a yogi unless he gives up the desire for sense
gratification." Sense gratification means unnecessarily laboring for
more to eat, a more comfortable arrangement to sleep and to have sex
and more
production of weapons for defense.
Krishna also says, "Yoga is not for one who eats
too much or eats too little, sleeps too much, or does not sleep
enough." (Bhagavad-gita 6.16) We do not suggest that one
should stop
eating, or stop sleeping, or stop sex life, or stop defending himself;
but
one should regulate his activity of eating, sleeping, defending and
begetting
children. That is yoga--decreasing the material necessities to
the
bare minimum. We would not put more gasoline or oil in the car than the
manufacturer has recommended, because that would damage the machine, so
similarly,
this body is a type of machine. In fact, in the Bhagavad-gita
this body is actually described as a machine, or yantra. Yantra
means machine. Krishna says, "The living entity is seated as if on a
machine made of material energy, and I am directing the wanderings of
all living beings all over the universe." (Bhagavad-gita
18.61) This bodily machine, which is constructed of the eight
elements--earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence, and false
ego--should be cared for in a very systematic and regulated way. That
is the purpose of yoga practice. For example, ashtanga-yogis
practice asanas and pranayama.
There are eight divisions of the ashtanga-yoga
practice. The purpose of the different practices is to cleanse the body
completely of all kinds of impurities, especially the nerves. The
nerves should be cleansed so that they can function at their top
potential. Then by pranayama, they are nourished with prana,
the life force of air. Then dhyana (meditation) and ultimately
there is samadhi. Samadhi means that the mind becomes
completely peaceful. In Bhagavad-gita (6.19) it is
described, "As a flame in a windless place does not flicker, so is the yogi's
mind who has attained the Supreme. It never moves. It is never
disturbed."
The purpose of the preliminary practice of yoga,
whether it is karma-yoga, jñana-yoga, ashtanga-yoga or
even bhakti yoga, is to completely purify
one's existence: first physical existence, then mental existence and
intellectual
existence. That will give us entrance into our eternal, spiritual
existence,
which is our real existence. The bodily or physical existence of our
life
is temporary. We are born at some time, then the body grows and
produces
offspring. It remains for some time, then dwindles and again it
vanishes.
So the physical existence is temporary--maybe sixty or seventy
years--and
then it is gone. Although bodily or physical existence is very
flickering
and short-lived, we find that the whole modern civilization is
concerned
only with the physical existence of the living entity. They are simply
busy
creating various types of comfort and sensual enjoyment for the
physical
body.
A few men are concerned with mental and intellectual
existence. They are fond of thinking, speculating, philosophizing. They
are on the mental and intellectual plane, but that also is temporary.
That
is not permanent.
In the Bhagavad-gita (15.8) it is said,
"The living entity carries his different conceptions of life from
one body to another, as the air carries aromas." The mind is the subtle
body. The mind is like a photographic negative: when you expose the
negative on photographic paper, you get a positive. In a similar way,
the mind is
the background of this gross body. When the gross body is destroyed,
the
subtle mind continues to exist, and according to the mental picture at
the
time of death, a person is born again in the next life and develops
another
gross body appropriate for that mental situation. Bhagavad-gita
(8.6) says, "Wherever and whatever the mind is fixed at the time of
leaving
this body, to that nature one attains without fail." We even use the
expression "mind over matter." The mind gives shape to matter.
But above the mind and the intellect is the soul. The
soul is the original source of the mind, intelligence and body. We
want to transcend the platform of the senses, mind and intelligence. We
want to come to the platform of purified spiritual existence, where
there is no influence of the material atmosphere with its birth, old
age, disease and death. On that platform there are no impediments such
as time and space; everything exists in its pure, original,
unadulterated, harmonious state.
To come to that pure, spiritual, eternal and joyful
life, we have to accept some process. There is a procedure, just as in
science. In order to arrive at a particular conclusion, you have to go
through a procedure or process. We want to come to the purified stage
of
life, and to do so, we must accept the process for purification. That
process
is outlined in various Vedic literatures and is popularly known as yoga.
People take yoga to be something fashionable
or at best something to improve our health and peace of mind, but
actually yoga is not meant for improving our health
nor our peace of mind. It is really meant to help us permanently get
out
of material existence--not to improve our material existence.
Improvement
of our material existence is an automatic by-product of yoga
practice,
but that is not at all the aim. The real aim is to give up material
existence,
no matter how nice it may appear to be.
Generally, we find that in youth our senses are very
powerful, our mind is clear, and our health is in order, so we tend to
waste our youth pursuing sense gratification. Young boys are after
young girls, earning money and having friends. In this way, "eat, drink
and be merry" is the prevailing mood. But we find that when youth has
faded away, our senses have become worn out, due to indulgence in sense
gratification. Even when an old man can no longer eat properly, when he
can no longer
enjoy sex with young girls, when he cannot sleep at night, and when he
can hardly walk straight, still he has not given up his desire to enjoy
material life, although the prospect for enjoyment is out of the
question.
Here Shankaracharya says, "Although the man is
in this condition, unable to enjoy sense gratification, still the
desires
for sense gratification are with him." Youth has passed, old age has
overwhelmed him, and death is looming; still, he is carrying about a
big bundle of desires. An old man will look at young girls and think of
enjoying, although he cannot. This kind of life is condemned. We should
learn how to become free from
material desires by practicing bhakti-yoga, dovetailing our
desires
for the satisfaction of Krishna.
Narada Muni has instructed that this practice should
begin from the age of five--not at the age of fifty, when we are worn
out and habituated to sense gratification. It is almost impossible to
practice Krishna consciousness at that time. Therefore Vedic culture is
not aimed
at material advancement; it is aimed at spiritual advancement. Those
who
follow are concerned with achieving permanent enjoyment, rather than
immediate,
temporary enjoyment. That is the difference. The training to purify our
existence by the practice of yoga should begin from the age of
five
years.
Spiritual science should be learned alongside the
material sciences. That will make for a successful life. Advancement in
reading, writing and arithmetic without knowing what should be read or
written
is useless. Everyone knows how to read and write, especially in Europe
and
America, but no one knows what to read, they do not know
what to write. People simply read newspapers, magazines and comic
books, but
such literature cannot enlighten us about our eternal life in Krishna
consciousness. The newspaper, the magazine and the comic book are,
after all, just describing the happenings of the temporary world. We
want to know about the happenings of the eternal world and how to go
there. That should be our subject matter for reading and writing. It is
very nice that everyone is reading and writing, but now people should
read and write about Krishna. That will make everyone happy.
In order to facilitate this, the Krishna consciousness
movement is distributing books so that people can read about Krishna
and
how to go home, back to Krishna. That is the purpose of this movement.
Even if one cannot read or write, he can chant
Hare Krishna and eat krishna prasadam. It is such a nice,
sublime
movement--everyone can participate. There is a place for everyone. You
don't
have to give up anything. Keep whatever you have, chant Hare Krishna,
take krishna prasadam, and read Krishna's books.
That's all. No one is asking you to give up anything. Of course, if you
understand who Krishna is, then you will want to do something for
Krishna.
Whatever you do now, you can do that for Krishna. If you are a doctor,
you
can treat the Krishna devotees. If you are a businessman, you can do
business
and make money, then spend it for Krishna. If you are an artist, you
can
produce paintings and other art works for Krishna. If you are a
housewife,
you can teach your children about Krishna and cook krishna prasadam.
Whatever you are, wherever you are, you can serve Krishna and be
Krishna
conscious. It is easy.
But we have four principles which are very important,
and one who is serious about Krishna consciousness must give up eating
meat, fish and eggs, give up intoxicants (including tea, coffee and
cigarettes), give up illicit sex and give up gambling. These four
restrictions will
help you to become purified, and they will also save you money. You
will
be happy. We have all given up these things and we are feeling that it
is
very practical.
Meanwhile, chant Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna
Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. That's
all. See for yourself whether there is some benefit. If you like it,
then
continue. If you don't like it, give it up. But try it. Make an
experiment.
Set one month aside and say, "This month I will practice and see." Give
up these four things, chant Hare Krishna, read Krishna's books, and see
what happens. There is no risk involved. Nothing to lose but all to
gain.
Hare Krishna.
