Waves of Devotion

I want to explain through a visual example the concept of material bondage and how the process of bhakti frees one from it:

Before sharing that visual, it is necessary to first explain the goal of bhakti and the obstacle to attaining it.

The objective of bhakti is prīti or love, experiencing the energy of devotion that is shared between two people in a natural loving relationship, specifically, in this case, the soul’s relationship with God. In other words, just as any two people in a natural relationship have an inherent loving feeling towards each other, for example a mother and child or even a cow and its calf, similarly we have a spontaneous natural loving feeling towards God. The goal of the path of devotion is to awaken that feeling in us, which is the highest happiness and the goal of life.

The main obstacle to awakening such love is the false ego, the desire to be the enjoyer, accrue control for that purpose, and as a result to ultimately bask in the sense that, “I am superior to others.” Although this cloud of egoism is insignificant compared to the infinite power of God’s love, it can still cover us from an experience of our relationship with Krishna, just as a small umbrella can block one from the all-powerful rays of the sun.

The visual of our bondage is therefore the soul completely encircled by the cloud of ignorance preventing the all-powerful sun of Krishna’s love from touching our hearts.

Devoid of the warmth of God’s love that awakens our relationship with Him, which is our true purpose and existential happiness, we have remained dissatisfied in life since time immemorial until coming to what should have been an obvious point—that both the fulfillment of our selfish desires and the authority of our own opinions have been useless in achieving happiness, and we should therefore seek for something better. That acknowledgment of and search for an authority higher than our own faulty convictions is called humility, which creates a small opening in the cloud of the false ego that has engulfed our soul. God, seeing a clear pathway to our soul, answers our prayers by sending us sādhu-saṅga, a guide who can teach us how to further widen the path to our soul by removing the false ego, deepening our humility and helping us feel the rays of God’s love and our relationship with Him. Most importantly, by hearing from such souls about Sri Krishna we become attracted to Him and dedicated to fully serving Him, which is utter humility, the complete antithesis of the false ego and pure love itself.

We stand now in this world as unfortunate souls covered to one degree or another by the cloud of material consciousness and suffering from our disconnection from Krishna and therefore from our true selves as His devotee. We are now also fortunate souls, for we are humble seekers, those who have opened a clearing in those clouds of ignorance giving us the opportunity to experience God’s love. May we all continue to take shelter of the Vaiṣṇavas, mine the depths of our humility, and bask in the soothing light of Krishna’s love and our relationship with Him!

Kudos to Karma (Yoga)[1]

A Nor’easter slams your town and dumps a ton of snow, and your basement floods. You are knee-deep in ice water, draining it out. It dawns on you how deep a hole this will put in your pocket—thousands of hard-earned dollars. It sounds like hell. What would you be thinking at the time? I was impressed with my friend’s reaction.

“You know, initially I was disturbed, but then I thought of my studies of the Gītā and how to apply it: I have family, so it is my duty to fix the house, and my duty ultimately means what God wants me to do. So instead of being frustrated, I was grateful to do my duty and serve God.”

My friend is a philosophy professor and studied the Bhagavad-gītā with me over twenty years ago. It has remained the foundation of his life. I was impressed with his realization. Instead of the normal “kvetching” when things go wrong, he shifted his thoughts to the glory of connecting our “worldly” life to God’s will through dharma, which is, simply put, doing what God wants from us in any situation. Overcoming selfishness and seeing God’s will is the foundation of any spiritual path. As we continued to discuss, he opined how karma-yoga, the essence of the Gītā, was often too minimized in a devotee’s life. “After all,” he said, “Krishna asked Arjuna to fight.”

As we continued our discussion, my friend shared with me some of his ideas on karma-yoga, based on his study of the Gītā, and on how he applies those teachings personally to his own life as a family man working in the world. I found his realizations insightful, and especially relevant to most people who, like him, work and live in the world. I don’t have to tell my audience how difficult it is to re-orient one’s consciousness to the soul in today’s world, a world that often forces us to adopt the mode of being the controller just to survive. A summary of our discussion:

1. Basic Foundation of karma-yoga
   1. Karma-yoga is based on what the Gītā calls buddhi-yoga, which is the practice of conceptual re-adjustment, changing our thinking from material to spiritual.
   2. Two aspects of conceptual re-adjustment:
      1. To transform one’s motivation from selfishness to the desire for purification/liberation and especially to the service of God.
      2. A conscious effort to re-conceive of oneself as the pure soul, and not the body that is enmeshed in various material designations or identifications.Although one must act within material designation to perform dharma—“I am a mother, a father, a husband, a wife, a guru, a leader, and so on”—one still tries to remember in a deep way that one is playing a role, so to speak.)
2. The Components of karma-yoga
   1. One should try to live according to dharma, since dharma (doing your duties properly) is the basis for karma-yoga.
   2. While performing one’s dharma (work, family responsibilities, chores, etc.) one should try to be conscious that one’s dharma is service to God and do it conscientiously in that spirit.Ramanuja often remarks that the laws of religion are God’s commands. As such, performing one’s duty is obeying God’s law and can be done lovingly and gratefully.
   3. Serving others—whether family members, co-workers, or members of one’s community or society—can be infused by the consciousness that they are in fact parts of God, and one can (and should) respect and love them as such.
   4. One should try to constantly remember we are the self and as such are a) not constituted of prakṛti (matter), and b) completely dependent on God for everything we do, down to the smallest bodily movements.Ramanuja further notes that, as the world is ensouled by the paramātmā, the world is the body of God and should be seen in that way.)
3. Daily Mindfulness of the Above
   1. Some kind of early morning prayer, study, and contemplation time to provide focus and alignment for the day.
   2. Centering prayer at various parts of the day, including reading select verses from scripture and reciting key prayers and/or mantras to help one be mindful along the lines mentioned in the last section.This is hard to do unless one designates certain times to take a break from work to do this for ten or fifteen minutes, at least once a day.
4. Other supportive practices
   1. Regular retreats to concentrate, focus, and absorb one in devotion.
   2. Following a liturgical calendar, in this case, the Vaishnava calendar, in a serious way.[2] This means looking at the year in a spiritually and reformative way rather than seeing one’s week and month in terms of family and social obligations. By following such a calendar dutifully, one’s faith is renewed and the year and consciousness is geared toward devotional transformation. For us, it means observing Ekadasi, the appearance and disappearance of saints, holy days like Jhulana-yātrā,[3] and special months like Kartik and Sravana (and so on).

On the path of bhakti we have a rich spiritual tradition to transform our consciousness, including deep practices of devotion and a commitment to a spiritual mission that is our primary spiritual focus. People often ask how to juxtapose that spiritual tradition practically within their modern day-to-day life in the home and workplace. Srila Prabhupada was very concerned about that and often recommended a lifestyle based on developing spiritual communities more conducive to spiritual life. Nonetheless, by family circumstance and present economic situations, most people and adherents to the bhakti tradition still remain in modern-day work and family situations, which are not inherently born to support spirituality. They ask what to do to help spiritualize their situations. I thus am offering kudos to karma (yoga).

[1] Original published on April 2, 2018.

[2] A liturgical calendar is a calendar of the communal or public worship of a spiritual tradition based on its beliefs and customs.

[3] Jhulana-yātrā commemorates the pastime of Radha and Krishna swinging in the summer months. In the temples of Radha and Krishna a beautiful swing is decorated, and the deities of Radha and Krishna are placed in it in the evening. For five days the devotees are invited to visit the temple and swing the deities. It is a good example of a liturgical activity listed in a Vaishnava calendar that helps one look at one’s year in a spiritual way.

Is Honesty the Best Policy?

Of course. Without integrity—matching one’s words and actions with one’s values—how can one make advancement on any spiritual path? And outright lying is a terrible sin:

“There is nothing more sinful than untruthfulness. Because of this, mother earth once said, ‘I can bear any heavy thing except a person who is a liar.’” (Bhag. 8.20.4)

So yes, honesty is the best policy, but not always. Commentators on the Yoga-sūtras make it clear that as all other yamas (regulations) are subservient to ahimsa, truth must never result in violence, which means not only avoiding the obvious, such as telling a killer where his victim is, but avoiding any kind of truth that harms any creature anytime and anywhere. It is sometimes a fine line gauging when truthfulness should be tempered with the pre-eminence of ahimsa. In my opinion, the challenges of balancing the two is best illustrated in the character of Krishna’s father, Vasudeva.

In the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, we are introduced to Vasudeva’s diplomacy in a very difficult situation. Kaṁsa, Vasudeva’s very powerful demonic brother-in-law, held his wife’s hair in his left hand while holding a sword over her throat with his right hand. Kaṁsa was ready to kill her after finding out by an ākāśa-vāṇī (an unembodied voice) that her eighth child would be his death. Kaṁsa was much more physically powerful than Vasudeva, so he had to resort to various forms of diplomacy to try to save his wife, beginning with sama, flattery. Although Śukadeva Gosvāmī, the speaker of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, had accurately described Kaṁsa—the man who was willing to kill a woman, who is his sister, on the day of her wedding—as the most sinful, envious person, who was the dirt of his dynasty, Vasudeva, externally smiling, addressed that same Kaṁsa as the shining light of his dynasty who great heroes praised. He didn’t believe a word of what he said. Obviously, honesty is not always the best policy, especially when trying to save your wife from death. Śrīla Prabhupāda explains the principle:

“Sometimes one must act duplicitously in a dangerous position, as Vasudeva did to save his wife. The material world is complicated, and to execute one’s duties, one cannot avoid adopting such diplomacy.” (Bhag. 10.1.53, Purport)

Vasudeva eventually saved his wife, at least for the moment, by promising to hand over his children as soon as they were born. Due to Vasudeva’s reputation and how strongly the paramount importance of truthfulness was impressed in their society-at-large by the nature of their culture, it wasn’t surprising that Kaṁsa believed that such a man of character as Vasudeva would never deviate from his words. In fact, Vasudeva indeed handed over his children. The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam describes his worry in not doing so and thus breaking his promise:

“Vasudeva was very much disturbed by fear of becoming a liar by breaking his promise. Thus with great pain he delivered his first born son […] into the hand of Kaṁsa […] What is painful for saintly persons who strictly adhere to the truth?” (Bhag. 10.0.57-58)

Keeping his word was not the only reason Vasudeva handed over his children to Kaṁsa.[1] In fact, when Sri Krishna, the eighth child Krishna was born, he didn’t hand Krishna over to Kaṁsa as promised, but instead snuck Krishna out of the prison where he and his wife had been incarcerated to bring Him to Vrindavan under the shelter of Yaśodā and Nanda. What is significant, however, is that even in such a situation where truthfulness did not serve ahimsa, the thought of breaking his word and promise stilled weighed on Vasudeva.

So, is honesty the best policy? What do we learn from the example of Vasudeva in this regard? Although honesty is not always the best policy, to lie in the name of a higher principle is never taken cheaply. Deep impressions of truthfulness are essential for the development of a spiritual life, and if they are not strongly impressed on one it is too easy to rationalize away the many inconvenient responsibilities one must execute to uplift one in spiritual life. So, in that sense, with very rare exceptions, it is very healthy in this world of dishonesty to strongly embrace honesty as the best policy!

[1] Vasudeva knew that his eighth child was Krishna so he was also interested as his devotional service to expediate the appearance of Krishna. He had no choice but to turn over his children.

The phrase struck me. I was talking with Bhūrijana Prabhu after the passing of Śrīla Bhakti-caru Swami. We began to reflect on the fact that practically all of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s disciples have just turned near seventy when this decade began, if not before, and that it was evident that as the decade proceeds, the number of our god-siblings that leave us will exponentially increase. We shared some pain at the thought. As our discussion ended his parting comment struck me: “It will be a decade of tears.”

Honestly, I never felt this deep sense of upcoming loss before. Maybe it comes with age, or maybe as I mature in spiritual life my heart is softening. I am not sure. What is certain, however, is that as one is advancing in Krishna consciousness, those who sincerely represent that should be valued more and more. It’s śāstra:

“Śrī Caitanya asked, ‘Of all kinds of distress, what is the most painful?’

Śrī Rāmānanda Rāya replied, ‘Apart from separation from the devotee, I know of no unbearable distress.’” (Cc. Madhya-līlā 8.248)

True friends and well-wishers should be missed when they pass from this world. They add so much to the development and comfort of one’s life. When they are dedicated Vaiṣṇavas they add even more. They nourish the soul. Their loss to the world and our lives is incalculable.

I remember over twenty years ago before The Bhakti Center was secured, we used to host programs in 26 Second Avenue. You can imagine how packed it was when Śrīla Radhanath Swami visited and gave class. I invited one young Jewish lady from Brooklyn to the program whom I had been guiding for the past year. She was a budding professional comedian who even appeared several times as a guest panelist on the very popular television improvisational comedy show Whose Line is it Anyway with Drew Carey.[1] I had introduced her a few months back to Mahārāja, so she was very anxious to see him again, but at the end of the class Mahārāja was mobbed in the front of the room. She was also by nature a very self-conscious person, so she hid towards the back in a little corner where the wall suddenly veered off to the right. When Mahārāja finished giving audience, however, and began walking towards the door, he noticed her to his right. He slowly walked towards her to greet her. She immediately broke down in tears but managed to sob, “I am so fallen, but I feel such relief that people like you are traveling around the globe helping others!” Later Mahārāja shared with me how much he appreciated her sentiment of humble appreciation for devotees. We should also.

We may not be attracted to every senior Vaiṣṇava we meet. Some have even failed to live up to the standards we expect and disappoint us, or it may just be that we just fail to see the inspired spiritual and dedicated side of an advanced Vaiṣṇava because they are not like-minded with us. This young lady, hardly a practitioner, however, got it right. There is something very special about sincere devotees who have given their whole life to God whether we are like-minded with them or not. It will certainly a sad day when any of them leave us.

Even more tragic is the loss of those people who are not just more dedicated than us, but those whom we deeply relate with and who have affection for us. If we have such people in our lives, whether as friends or mentors, we should consider ourselves very fortunate. When they leave a part of our life will be missing. I do have such people in my life. Sadly, their time with us is in a sense numbered, and as these next ten years go on, more and more of them will sadly leave us.

It is an unfortunate phenomenon that often we most appreciate the important people in our lives after they have left us. Let us all now think of the blessings we have and are receiving from those dedicated devotees who have given their lives to uplift others for decades and who have personally touched our hearts. Let this next decade therefore not just be a decade of tears but an epoch of increased appreciation of and service to those who have carried the mission of His Divine Grace into our lives.

“Then Śrī Caitanya asked, ‘Out of all auspicious and beneficial activities, which is the best for the living entity?’

Rāmānanda Rāya replied, ‘The only auspicious activity is association with the devotees of Krishna.’’ (Cc. Madhya-līlā 8.251)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whose_Line_Is_It_Anyway%3F_(American_TV_series)