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Good News Doesn't Sell Newspapers.
==================================
If a newspaper writes good stories about happy things, people
having comfortable lives, people enjoying themselves in
different ways, not many people will buy the newspaper. We
prefer to read about other people in distress, we want to hear
about other peoples' sufferings. So when we pick up the newspaper
we don't find many good things. We find stories about plane
crashes, stories about murders, stories about so many types of
suffering. When we read the newspapers or watch the television we
think, "I'm not so badly off after all, my life is alright. Look
at all those other people - they're suffering so much, and here I
am with only a few little problems. So my life is good." This
mentality is drummed into us. In Australia people are always
telling us, "Life is so good in Australia compared with other
countries in the world. We're very fortunate to be here. Out life
is very good."
So we like to hear about other countries, particularly we like to
hear about them if they are in a distressful condition, if there
is some poverty, if there is some hunger, if there is a famine, if
there is an earthquake. We love to hear about it. Then we like to
give some charity, some donations, we think, "Oh, let us help
these poor people who are suffering." We want to be in the
position of God. We want to think some other country is suffering
so now let me solve their problems. This is an interesting
subject. We think we can reduce the suffering in other countries
by giving them some money. This doesn't take the law of karma into
account. According to the law of karma we are all enjoying and
suffering according to our destiny. We are born into a particular
country, into a particular situation according to our past karma.
Karma means I have done things in the past and as result of these
activities "seeds" have been planted in my heart. If I have been
good there are good seeds in my heart and if I have been bad,
there are bad seeds or sinful seeds in my heart.
Seeds of a tree take a long time to grow, but if you take other
seeds, say grass and weed seeds, they grow quickly. In the same
way there are many seeds in our hearts and some of them grow
quickly, people talk about, "instant karma", when the reaction
comes very quickly. However karmic reactions are not always
instant. Often the reaction doesn't come for a long time, so we
continue performing sinful activities and our life may appear to
be very nice.
Sometimes a person who is very sinful, almost everything he does
is bad, still has plenty of money and a beautiful body. Everything
seems to be going well for him. But this is only a short-term
display because he is planting seeds in his heart, every sinful
activity he performs puts one more seed in his heart and in due
course of time all the seeds will grow, but it may not happen
immediately. We have to suffer the reactions of all our sinful
activities, there's no doubt about it, there is no question about
it.
So what are sinful activities? There are many, many sinful
activities, unlimited sinful activities. It is described in the
Srimad Bhagavatam that there are many different hellish planets.
This earth planet is one of the middle planets. Here we can see
both sides of the coin, we can see happiness and we can see
distress. In this way the earth is a good place for spiritual life
because sometimes we are happy and sometimes we are suffering so
we can see the contrast between the two. If somebody is in hell
he's always suffering, he's just struggling to live, he doesn't
have time to ponder the more subtle meaning of life.
We can even see it on this planet, there are hellish countries, if
somebody is living in a country where there is no food, he spends
his whole existence trying to get food and being sick. He doesn't
really have any time to think about anything except the food
problem. Similarly if somebody is in a very comfortable position,
a place where the weather is very good, the surroundings are very
nice, the women are very beautiful, everything is very
comfortable. Sometimes we can see places like this, say Byron Bay
[on the Gold Coast in Australia]. Byron Bay is a nice place,
everyone there is very sun-tanned and they have beautiful bodies
and mostly they are unemployed, they have nothing to do except
surfing and lying on the beach, it's that type of lifestyle. It is
very difficult in that lifestyle to understand the suffering
conditions of the world. They are in a very heavenly position.
Even on this planet we can see both people in great suffering and
those who are very comfortable can't easily understand spiritual
life. This is a very important point. It is fortunate to be able
to see both sides of the coin.
The idea is people enjoying nice comfortable lives are enjoying as
a result of their past good activities and those who are suffering
are suffering because of their past sinful activities. It's not
necessarily the case that the person who is enjoying is now pious,
he might now be completely sinful. He may have taken advantage of
his good birth and used it for sinful activities. It is also not
necessarily the case that a man suffering the results of his
sinful activities is a sinful man at the moment. It may be he is
very pious, very religious. So this is the intricate arrangement.
It's not that what's happening to me at the moment is a result of
my activities at the moment or yesterday or last week, even last
year or the year before. The enjoyment and suffering I am
experiencing now is the result of activities I have performed over
many, many lifetimes.
We've been in this material world since time immoral. It is
practically impossible for us to trace out when we entered the
material world. We are described as nitya-baddha, this means
"eternally conditioned". Practically speaking, we are here in the
material world eternally. We don't really get out of the cycle of
birth and death. We are transmigrating from one species of life to
another. Sometimes we have this human body, sometimes we have an
animals body, sometimes we have a trees body, sometimes we have a
demigod's body - a body situated in the heavenly planets,
sometimes we take our birth in the hellish planets, sometimes we
take birth in different universes. We even existed before the
creation. We are described as "anadi", adi means the beginning of
the creation but the living entity is anadi, that means we existed
before the creation. This is an inconceivable amount of time. It's
not just one or two or ten births. It's a huge number of births.
Even the time one creation spans is practically inconceivable to
us.
It's described we have existed in many creations so we have had
millions and millions and millions, so many births, it's
unbelievable. Practically speaking we are stuck here. We are
described as nitya baddha, eternally conditioned. It's only by the
mercy of a pure devotee that we can get free from this cycle of
birth and death. By our own strength it is not possible to get
out. It's like drowning in the ocean. Even if you are a very good
swimmer, if you are in the middle of the ocean, you may be able to
swim half a mile, one mile, two miles, even if you could swim ten
miles, if you are in the middle of the ocean it's thousands of
miles to the nearest island. So what is the use even if you can
swim twenty miles? It's useless. Our own strength in spiritual
activities is like that. We can't conceive of Krishna. We have to
get the mercy of somebody who is Krishna's representative, that
person can deliver Krishna to us. This is the process. This is the
way of escaping, this is the lifeboat Krishna sends to the
material world to give us the opportunity to come back home, back
to Godhead. We have to be prepared to take this lifeboat from
Krishna to make our life perfect and go back home, back to
Godhead.
The process for getting out of this unlimited struggle and
repetition of birth and death is:
tad viddhi pranipatena pariprasnena sevaya
upadeksyanti te jnanam jnaninas tattva-darsinah
This means we must approach a bona fide, pure devotee spiritual
master, service him and enquire from him submissively. Such a
great soul can give real knowledge because he has seen the truth.
This is the process. We have to find a liberated soul, we have to
find somebody who has seen Krishna, who has seen the spiritual
world. The spiritual master can also show us how we can see
Krishna, how we can also see the spiritual world. This is the
process of Krishna consciousness.
Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura has given a prayer: saksad-
dharitvena samasta-sastrair uktas tatha bhavyata eve sadbih, it
means the spiritual master is worshipped as Krishna, directly
Krishna and this is confirmed in all the scriptures. To understand
this we have to understand the nature of the spiritual master.
Krishna is called Bhagavan and the spiritual master is the servant
Bhagavan, Krishna is syam bhagavan, the original Bhagavan and the
spiritual master is the servant Bhagavan. He's the servant of
Krishna and because he is Krishna's servant he doesn't say
anything Krishna hasn't said. He is a transparent via-medium to
Krishna.
When the spiritual master speaks it can be understood Krishna is
speaking because the spiritual master doesn't have his own ideas.
We find so many mundane philosophers and mundane religious people
who all speak something different, they have their own ideas and
their own twist on the philosophy, but a real spiritual master is
not like that. A real spiritual master doesn't have his own ideas,
he simply presents Krishna's ideas. He presents the ideas coming
to him through the disciplic succession. This is the process
recommended in the Bhagavad-gita (4.1-2), Krishna tells Arjuna, "I
instructed this supreme science to the sun-god Vivasvan and he in
turn instructed it to Manu, the father of mankind, and he
instructed it to Iksvaku. In this way the science of Krishna
consciousness has been coming down through the ages, but now it
has become lost so now I will speak that same science again to
you."
The real spiritual master doesn't speak anything new, he doesn't
manufacture anything with his tiny brain. Our manufactured ideas
are imperfect. We can see it's a fact, you can test anything - any
mundane philosophy or science is not perfect. However the
knowledge in the Vedic scriptures and the knowledge coming from
the pure devotee is perfect because the pure devotee doesn't
manufacture anything or add anything to it. He is described as
being something like the postman. The postman takes the mail and
simply delivers it to you, he doesn't do anything else, he simply
delivers the mail. This is the business of the spiritual master,
he simply delivers the message of Krishna, he doesn't change it in
any way. He doesn't try to bring it into his service.
A real spiritual master is the servant of the servant of Krishna.
Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu said, "I don't want to become a great
devotee, I simply want to become the servant of the servant of the
gopis in Vrndavana." The gopis are Krishna's greatest servants so
Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu doesn't want to become Krishna's
servant directly, nor does he want to become directly the servant
of the gopis, he wants to be the servant of the servant of the
servant of the gopis. This is very instructive, we should become
the servant of the servant of the servant of Krishna, not that we
should have a desire to become a big preacher or something else.
If as a result of becoming the servant of the servant of Krishna
we have some realisation we naturally want to give people the
benefit of that realisation, we want to tell them about Krishna.
This is the purport of the verse I a speaking on. The verse says:
"If one is unhappy to see the distress of other living beings and
happy to see their happiness his religious principles are
appreciated as imperishable by exalted persons who are considered
pious and benevolent." The real purport of this verse can only be
understand when one becomes purified by engaging in Krishna
consciousness because when we become purified through serving
Krishna we can see things as they are. In our ordinary condition
under the modes of nature, generally we are influenced by the
modes of passion and ignorance and we can't see things as they
are. We accept something which is very obnoxious and creates many
painful suffering reactions as being a happy condition. We think
if someone has a nice women, a nice house and lots of money he is
happy. When this verse talks about the distress of other living
beings, it doesn't mean somebody who is poor or doesn't have a
nice girl friend, it means somebody who doesn't have any spiritual
knowledge.
The person who is situated in spiritual knowledge has no distress
for himself because he is always enjoying pleasure by serving
Krishna. But he feels very unhappy to see the suffering of the
materialistic people. He can see they are suffering and he wants
to help them, he wants to show them how they can become eternally
happy. I have some small personal experience of this, I go out
most day's and try to distribute books and I see peoples faces and
there is so much pain, so much suffering. These people are
suffering like anything, they are not happy and it is becoming
very distressful to myself as a devotee to think how to help them.
This is a proper feeling for a devotee but it is a very difficult
condition at the moment.
I was speaking to a young man last week whose girl friend had just
left him. He was so distressed, he had tried to commit suicide.
When I was talking to him he was completely drunk, he had been
drinking for days. He took it as such an important thing whereas a
devotee is not disturbed by such things. We have to understand, "I
am not this body, I am the spirit soul, I am the person inside
this body. This body is just a machine." Krishna says:
yantrarudhani mayaya, "This body is a machine made from the
material energy and I am seated on that machine." The relationship
between a man and a women is only on the basis of the machine. It
is concerned with satisfying the genitals, nothing else. It's very
difficult because this young man was thinking, "Let me kill myself
because my girl friend has left me." And this is not an isolated
occurrence, so many young men in Australia are killing themselves
for this reason, "My girl friend has left me." This means they
have no education, they have no knowledge of the real purpose of
life. They have no knowledge even of what life is, they are
thinking, "I am this body and if I satisfy this body, particularly
if I satisfy my genitals, I'll be happy."
We have to understand people are suffering in this world only
because of a lack of spiritual knowledge. They are suffering only
because they don't know Krishna. The solution to all the problems
is to give them knowledge about Krishna and the easiest way, the
best way is to give them the opportunity to hear the chanting of
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare/ Hare Rama
Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare and to give them prasadam, the
remnants of food offered to Krishna. If somebody tastes food that
has been offered to Krishna they become purified, if someone hears
the holy name of Krishna they become purified, if somebody reads
these books about Krishna they become purified, if somebody hears
the words coming from the lips of a pure devotee they become
purified.
Purification is a continuous process but if we understand a little
bit about Krishna the natural next step is to serve Krishna, to do
something to please Krishna. If you love someone it is not that
you think, "Oh this is very nice," and you just sit back and don't
do anything. No. When the love develops in your heart there are
activities, there is service. If one has actually developed a
little love for Krishna he will want to serve Krishna 24 hours a
day without stopping. He wants to organize his life in such a way
that not a single moment is wasted. He wants to arrange his life
so that every day, 24 hours a day, he is always thinking of
Krishna and serving Krishna. This can be very easily done in the
association of devotees so we need to form an association of
devotees to facilitate this service to Krishna. There are many
loving exchanged between devotees which help us to become Krishna
consciousness:
dadati pratigrhnati guhyam akhyati prcchati
bhunkte bhojayate caiva sad-vidham priti-laksanam
Srila Rupa Gosvami has described in the Sri Upadesamrta, his
introductory book to Krishna consciousness, the different kinds of
loving exchanges that nurture devotion to Krishna. These are the
giving of gifts, receiving gifts, giving prasada [food offered to
Krishna], accepting prasada, revealing ones mind to the other
devotee and inquiring confidentially. These exchanges of love
nurture the development of Krishna consciousness.
A devotee doesn't want to associate with materialistic persons, he
just wants to associate with devotees, he wants to hear about
Krishna, he wants to associate with people who will talk to him
about Krishna. This is the only desire of the devotee. Of course
he associates with everybody to preach. We go out and distribute
books and talk to people but we don't take their association, it
is not that we enter into their business. We see their suffering
and we want to bring them into our business, we want to bring them
to Krishna consciousness, to engage them in chanting Hare Krishna
so they won't suffer any more, so they will be happy. This is the
real mercy, this is the real humanitarian welfare work, it is the
best activity, it is all auspicious and beneficial for the whole
world so everyone should take up this activity of spreading the
chanting of Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare/
Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare very seriously.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.
Thank you. Hare Krishna!
Madhudvisa dasa
(madhudvisa@krishna.org) /sudarsana
All glories to His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada!
Sudarsana Home madhudvisa@krishna.org