The Old Woman in the Woods

The Old Woman in the Woods

There is that story that one old woman, she was suffering. And she had to collect woods from the forest and sell in the market. So one day, how do you say, she was praying to Krsna, or God, that “Kindly help me. I am in very poverty-stricken.” So one day, she was carrying that load of fuel. It fell down. . .

[Selected excerpt from a morning walk with AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada March 6, 1974, Mayapura]

Prabhupada: . . .But everyone thinking that “If I could become like this, I would have been happy.” So Krsna gives all chance. “All right, you become this.” This is transmigration. This is transmigration. [break] …yathandhair upa… We are thinking something like that, and Krsna is giving us chance, ‘All right, you take this chance; you become like this.” Ye yatha mam prapadyante. But it will not make you happy. Therefore ultimately says, sarva-dharman. ‘You give up all this rascaldom. What I speak, you can accept. That is your dharma.” Sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam saranam… [Bg. 18.66]. That will be beneficial for you, the most confidential instruction.

There is that story that one old woman, she was suffering. And she had to collect woods from the forest and sell in the market. So one day, how do you say, she was praying to Krsna, or God, that ‘Kindly help me. I am in very poverty-stricken.” So one day, she was carrying that load of fuel. It fell down. So nobody was there to help her. So she began to cry, ‘Who will help me?” So she began to pray to God ‘Kindly help me.” And God came: ‘What do you want?” ‘Who are you, Sir?” ‘I am God.” ‘Kindly help me to take this burden on my head.” Yes. ‘All right.” From God, she’s asking, ‘Please help me to get this burden on my head.” That’s all.

So everyone is going on, ‘Let family be very happy, my son be married. He may… Let him pass MA examination.” But it is the same thing, ‘Give me the burden on my head.” This is the prayer. Mudhah. Na mam prapadyante mudhah [Bg. 7.15]. The life was meant for understanding Krsna and worship Him, and she’s asking, ‘Give me the burden on my head.” Therefore mudha, rascal, fool. She’s asking something which will never make her happy, even by merging into the effulgence, Brahman effulgence. It will never make her happy. But she does not know. Therefore she’s mudha, rascal.

Siddha-svarupananda: That’s a very clear example.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Siddha-svarupananda: Very clear.
Prabhupada: Yes. Everyone is asking, ‘Please help me to get this burden on my head.” Everyone is asking. [break] Krsna mantra means asking nothing from Krsna, but only praying, ‘Please engage me in Your service.” This is Hare Krsna. Now let him engage, whatever service He likes. I don’t dictate that ‘Give me this service.” That is also sense gratification. As soon as I’ll say that ‘Engage me in this type of service,” that is also sense gratification. When one surrenders fully that ‘Engage me in Your service in whatever way You like,” that is pure devotion. You cannot dictate Krsna. Because He wants, sarva-dharman… ‘First of all surrender, then I will give you. I will allot what kind of service you can do.” Sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam saranam, aham tvam sarva… [Bg. 18.66].

But if I dictate, then Krsna will be…, ‘All right, you take this.” Then you again become unhappy. Don’t dictate Krsna. Be dictated. That is happiness. But everyone is dictating, ‘Please give me this. Give me this. Give me that. Give me that. Give me this.” Why should you dictate Krsna? As soon as I dictate, that is my sense gratification. That is not pure devotion. Anyabhilasita-sunyam. Anyabhilasita-sunyam [BRS 1.1.11]. Make zero all your desires. It doesn’t matter, this desire or that desire. Any kind of desire. Whatever you desire, that is material. Anyabhilasita-sunyam [Madhya 19.167]. That is pure devotee.
Devotee: That takes practice.
Prabhupada: Eh?
Devotee: That takes practice, to stop desiring for oneself.
Prabhupada: Yes. And therefore…
Devotee: You have to practice…
Prabhupada: …the practice is that you should simply desire what your spiritual master says. Don’t desire yourself. Yasya prasadad bhagavat-prasadah **. If you fulfill the desires of your spiritual master, then Krsna will be pleased.” Because he’s the representative, the immediate representative, boss, if you satisfy him, the master, supreme master, is also satisfied. If he gives report, ‘This clerk is doing nice,” that is sufficient. Yasya prasadad bhagavat-prasadah **. This is the injunction.
Jayapataka: So human life was no advantage. Only because you have come, now it can be advantage.
Prabhupada: Eh?
Jayapataka: Human life is no special advantage. Only if you come, the spiritual master comes, then it can be some advantage.
Prabhupada: Yes. Therefore Vedic injunction is gurum eva abhigacchet: ‘You must go to a bona fide spiritual master if you want to make your life perfect.” There is no question whether I shall go or not. ‘You must!” That is the beginning of human life. Otherwise animal life. He has no spiritual master. He’s not going to obey anyone. He’s working in his own whims. That is animal life. Real life here begins.
tad-vijnanartham sa gurum eva abhigacchet
samit-panih srotriyam brahma-nistham
[MU 1.2.12]

This is the Vedic injunction. You cannot do anything without abiding the orders of spiritual master. That is surrender. How nice water it is. [break] And there are many thousands, you’ll find. And we are thinking, ‘Oh, if I go away, who will feed my son? Who will feed my daughter?” He’ll never think that ‘If so many animals are fed by the Supreme,” eko yo bahunam vidadhati kaman, ‘He’s supplying all the necessity why not for me or for my other children?” It is maya that one thinks that ‘Without me…,” Just like Gandhi was thinking. Unless he was killed… He was always thinking, ‘Without me, India will be spoiled.” India will be spoiled. It was spoiled. Therefore you wanted sva-rajya… And after his death, it is also spoiled. So India’s karma will have to suffer, either Gandhi’s there or not there. Prakrteh kriya… Prakrteh: Everything is being done by the material nature. Prakrteh kriyamanani gunaih, by, dictated by different modes of nature. Ahankara-vimudhatma kartaham iti manyate: [Bg. 3.27] The rascal, being bewildered by, he’s thinking, ‘Without me, everything will be spoiled. I am the director. I am the director!” So I requested Gandhi, ‘Now you come out of this turmoil, politics. Just preach Bhagavad-gita.” No. He’ll be killed. That’s all. This is the way. Going on. Even a Gandhi commits mistake, what to speak of others. What is the effect of this sva-rajya. The effect of sva-rajya is that people are starving. That’s all. At least, British government would not allow like this. That’s a fact.

The Science of God

LORD MAHA VISHNU

Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego–all together these eight comprise My separated material energies. (Bhagavad-gita 7.4)

The Bhagavad-gita is not giving only spiritual knowledge. It is also giving us information about this material world and how it is working. This is science, material science as well as spritual science. So the Bhagavad-gita gives knowledge of everything, both material and spiritual.

Here, in this verse, Krishna describes His “separated material energies”. So this means He is describing the material energy. Krishna’s internal energy is His spritual energy and the material energy is called Krishna’s separated energy. Because actually, generally speaking, Krishna does not have anything directly to do with the material world. He has organized it in such a nice way that the material world is run by the various demigods who are put into their positions by Krishna and whose business it is to oversee the smooth running of the various departments of universal management.

We can understand from the Bhagavad-gita that the universe is going on under intelligent control. Although Krishna calls the material energy his external energy and although He is not directly in contact with it, He has his representatives, the demigods, in management positions in every department of the universe to ensure that things are running according to plan.

We know it for a fact that in the material world if something is left alone without proper management and organization there is a tendency to disorder. If you don’t clean your room for six months and just throw everything on the floor randomly then you are going to create a big mess. You are not going to create anything beautiful, orderly and organized like the material world. So it is insanity to suggest that this universe is created and is going on simply by random chance. You can not have anything organized and running very punctually and exactly without good management. The universe is working on very exact timings and the arrangements are very perfectly made. And everything keeps working also so that means the required adjustments and corrections are also being made by the intelligent demigods who are managing all the aspects of the functioning of the universe under the direction of Krishna.

So the big difference between Vedic science and Western science is in the Vedas we get the information that everything is going on under the direction of intelligent management. There is no chance. There is a good reason for everything that is happening in the universe and there is intelligence behind the scenes managing and directing everything.

The science of God analyzes the constitutional position of God and His diverse energies. Material nature is called prakrti, or the energy of the Lord in His different purusa incarnations (expansions) as described in the Satvata-tantra:

“For material creation, Lord Krishna’s plenary expansion assumes three Visnus. The first one, Maha-Visnu, creates the total material energy, known as mahat-tattva. The second, Garbhodakasayi Visnu, enters into all the universes to create diversities in each of them. The third, Ksirodakasayi Visnu, is diffused as the all-pervading Supersoul in all the universes and is known as Paramatma, who is present even within the atoms. Anyone who knows these three Visnus can be liberated from material entanglement.”

This is a very important point and key to understanding the operation of the material world. In the creation of the Supreme Lord we see the same thing happening on different scales. This was a theory put forward some years ago by Benoit Mandelbrot who discovered what he called the fractal geometry. Part of his discovery was ‘set similarity’. He discovered that in nature the exact same structures and systems are repeated on a larger and on a smaller scale. An example for this he would give was the branching structure in a tree. You will find that the main big trunk of the tree branches off, and similarly the smaller branches and even inside the leaves you see the veins branching off in the same way, and you see it happening in the roots of the tree. He noted it with the coastline also. No matter what scale you look at it still has the same sort of ‘roughness’.

Anyhow the main point is that in nature we see things are working in a similar way on different scales. It is a very important point to understand, for if we can understand this simple point that will open up our understanding of the universe immensely. We know from the Bhagavad-gita that our bodies are simply matter, they are machines made out of the material energy, and like the other machines we are familiar with, our bodies are completely lifeless and inanimate. As a machine needs to be worked by an operator similarly our material bodies need to be worked by us. And we are not these material bodies actually. We are the spirit souls who are operating or driving these material bodies.

The important point to grasp is that this principle is universal. Matter has no initiative of its own. Without the spirit soul our material bodies would just be lumps of flesh, bones, blood, stool and urine lying on the ground and rotting. Our material bodies only appear to be alive and only have the ability to move and act because they are being operated by us, the spirit soul.

This is the way the whole universe works. If we see matter moving or acting anywhere in the universe we can know for sure that it is not the matter moving by itself. There must be some living force that is moving the matter, or some living force who has created and who is working some machine that is moving the matter.

We can see it on a smaller scale. In our bodies there are many things going on that we are not actually aware of, and there are many other living entities within our body performing their particular tasks that are required to support and maintain the health of the body. Even right down to the level of cells we can find the symptoms of life and can find complex activities going on that can only be explained by intelligent direction. And when we look on a larger scale to any business or organization or country we see that things do not go on randomly simply by chance. No. Everywhere we find there is intelligent direction, there is management, there are rules and regulations and laws. And in this way things are going on nicely.

So here Krishna is giving us very important scientific information on how the universe is working. “For material creation, Lord Krishna’s plenary expansion assumes three Visnus.” So as we are the spirit soul present within and directing our bodies, also, on a larger scale, Krishna in the form of these three Visnus is the spirit soul of the entire universe. Visnu is the intelligent force that is ultimately the cause of all the activities going on in the universe. If these three Visnus were not present in the universe all we would have would be a lump of matter. And matter without spirit can not move, can not develop, can not do anything. So it is the combination of the dull matter with these three Visnus that makes the creation of the material world possible.

“The first one, Maha-Visnu, creates the total material energy, known as mahat-tattva. The second, Garbhodakasayi Visnu, enters into all the universes to create diversities in each of them. The third, Ksirodakasayi Visnu, is diffused as the all-pervading Supersoul in all the universes and is known as Paramatma, who is present even within the atoms.” These few words, if understood and accepted by modern science, will revolutionize our understanding of the universe. Maha-Visnu creates the mahat-tattva which is the reservoir of all material elements, then from His body unlimited universes are generated each time He breathes out and all those universes are again destroyed, or more correctly conserved, and enter back within His body, only to be manifested again when He again breathes out. The universes come out of His body in seed form and expand and then when He breathes in the universes contract again and reenter His body. And this one breath of Maha-Visnu is the total universal time which is an unimaginably long period of time from our point of view. So within each of these universes Garbhodakasayi Visnu enters and He creates diversities in each universe. It is from the naval of Garbhodakasayi Visnu that a lotus stem grows and on the top of that lotus stem Lord Brahma is born and Lord Brahma is the original engineer of the universe, so he sets about creating the universe as we see it. And then Lord Visnu is present within every living entities heart in the form of Ksirodakasayi Visnu.

So this is the actual scientific understanding of the universe. The universe is a machine, in exactly the same way as our bodies are machines. And as machines can not work without an operator, as our bodies can not work without the presence of ourselves as the spirit soul, similarly, the soul of the universe is Lord Visnu in these three forms and the only reason we see things happening in the universe is because they are being caused to happen by these three Visnus. Matter does not move without the touch of spirit. These are such earth-shattering scientific principles that somehow we have to educate the people and the scientists on.

This material world is a temporary manifestation of one of the energies of the Lord. All the activities of the material world are directed by these three Visnu expansions of Lord Krishna. These purusas are called incarnations. Generally one who does not know the science of God (Krishna) assumes that this material world is for the enjoyment of the living entities and that the living entities are the causes (purusas), controllers and enjoyers of the material energy. According to Bhagavad-gita this atheistic conclusion is false. In the verse under discussion it is stated that Krishna is the original cause of the material manifestation. Srimad-Bhagavatam also confirms this. The ingredients of the material manifestation are separated energies of the Lord. Even the brahmajyoti, which is the ultimate goal of the impersonalists, is a spiritual energy manifested in the spiritual sky. There are no spiritual diversities in brahmajyoti as there are in the Vaikunthalokas, and the impersonalist accepts this brahmajyoti as the ultimate eternal goal. The Paramatma manifestation is also a temporary all-pervasive aspect of the Ksirodakasayi Visnu. The Paramatma manifestation is not eternal in the spiritual world. Therefore the factual Absolute Truth is the Supreme Personality of Godhead Krishna. He is the complete energetic person, and He possesses different separated and internal energies.

In the material energy, the principal manifestations are eight, as above mentioned. Out of these, the first five manifestations, namely earth, water, fire, air and sky, are called the five gigantic creations or the gross creations, within which the five sense objects are included. They are the manifestations of physical sound, touch, form, taste and smell. Material science comprises these ten items and nothing more. But the other three items, namely mind, intelligence and false ego, are neglected by the materialists.

Philosophers who deal with mental activities are also not perfect in knowledge because they do not know the ultimate source, Krishna. The false ego–”I am,” and “It is mine,” which constitute the basic principle of material existence–includes ten sense organs for material activities. Intelligence refers to the total material creation, called the mahat-tattva. Therefore from the eight separated energies of the Lord are manifest the twenty-four elements of the material world, which are the subject matter of Sankhya atheistic philosophy; they are originally offshoots from Krishna’s energies and are separated from Him, but atheistic Sankhya philosophers with a poor fund of knowledge do not know Krishna as the cause of all causes. The subject matter for discussion in the Sankhya philosophy is only the manifestation of the external energy of Krishna, as it is described in the Bhagavad-gita.

SHRIKHAND Recipe

Janmashtami is celebrated with fun and fervor by Hindus all over India. The birth of Lord Krishna, one of the favorite deities of people following Hinduism, is marked by a number of colorful rituals. Cultural programs depicting the birth of Lord Krishna are organized by various committees. It is also a glorious occasion to relish on mouth watering delicacies. A variety of sweets are prepared, which are specialty of Janmashtami. Shrikhand is one such melt-in-the-mouth sweet. It is also known as sweet golden yogurt mainly because of its rich color. Go through the following lines to get an easy recipe of shrikhand (also known as sweet golden yogurt).

 Ingredients
> 1 (18 ounce) container Plain Yogurt
> 1/2 cup Granulated Sugar
> 1 tsp Rose Water (optional)
> 1/2 tsp Ground Cardamom
> Dash of Ground Nutmeg
> Few threads of Saffron
> 4 tsp finely chopped Green Pistachios

   Preparation Method
1. Mix all the ingredients of Shrikhand, except pistachios.
2. After mixing the ingredients, put them in a bowl and cover it with a lid. Refrigerate the mixture for at least       2 hours.
3. After waiting for two hours, take the bowl off the refrigerator. By this time, the mixture would have reached the consistency of a dessert. Now, you may stir and spoon the Shrikhand (Sweet Golden Yogurt) into dessert dishes.
4. Sprinkle with pistachios.
5. Serves four people.

Is Hinduism a Pagan Religion?

Lord : Brahma, Vishnu , Siva

Some American law-makers recently characterized Hinduism as pagan. This raises the question: is Hinduism a pagan religion?

The Abrahamic religious traditions, as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are collectively called, associate paganism with the worship of many gods, and their many idols. The former is condemned as polytheism and the latter as idolatry; and the two are viewed as inextricably intertwined forms of worship, which has been superseded in the aniconic monotheism and which these religions self-consciously uphold and propagate.

Hinduism at first blush appears to conform to paganism. It seems to worship many gods and seems to do so by worshipping different images. It thus comes across as polytheistic and idolatrous and therefore pagan. This perception fuels the missionary zeal of the Abrahamic religions to destroy such paganism.

There is only one problem with this scenario. It is based on a false presumption. It is true that there are many gods in Hinduism and that it abounds in image worship, but while these various gods are considered different gods in paganism as traditionally represented, in Hinduism they represent the various forms of the one and same God. Thus a plurality of gods does not denote polytheism in Hinduism but rather the plurality of the forms in which the same one God might appear. A new word such as polyformism may have to be coined, or an older word polymorphism may have to be invoked, to be set beside polytheism, to provide the corrective. The Hindu situation is characterized not by polytheism but what might be called at best “apparent polytheism,” because the reality underlying all the different gods is the reality of one God. Hence, ironically, the situation could also in a sense be described as one of “apparent monotheism,” in the sense that the one God appears in various forms.

Similarly, the various images of the various gods also reflect the same point. Any of the many forms, in which God might be seen as appearing, can be visually represented in Hinduism, as a way of focusing the mind on God. This should not be taken for some new-fangled apologetic exegetical sleight of hand performed by modern Hinduism. When the 17th century French traveler, Francois Bernier, was shocked by what he saw of Hinduism, this is how the pandits of Banaras explained the situation to him: “We have indeed in our temples a great variety of images. …To all these images we pay great honour; prostrating our bodies, and presenting to them, with much ceremony, flowers, rice, scented oil, saffron, and other similar articles. Yet we do not believe that these statues are themselves Brahma or Vishnu; but merely their images and representations. We show them deference only for the sake of the deity whom they represent, and when we pray it is not to the statue, but to that deity. Images are admitted in our temples because we conceive that prayers are offered up with more devotion when there is something before the eyes that fixes the mind, but in fact we acknowledge that God alone is absolute, that He only is the omnipotent Lord.’”


The explanation may not have convinced Bernier but Hindus apparently have no difficulty with it. Sometimes Abrahamic parents wonder whether this plurality does not end up leaving the Hindus confused, and particularly their children. For the Hindus, however, such plurality does not create any confusion of identity, no more than several pictures of us in our album, taken at different stages of our life and in different forms and dresses, causes us to become confused about our identity.

Thus no matter how paganesque Hinduism might appear, it is not pagan in the sense attributed to the word by Abrahamic religions. As a well-known scholar of Hinduism, who was also a missionary in India for a while, Klaus K. Klostermaier observes: “Many Hindu homes are lavishly decorated with color prints of a great many Hindu gods and goddesses, often joined by the gods and goddesses of other religions and the pictures of contemporary heroes. Thus side by side with Śiva and Viṣṇu and Devī one can see Jesus and Zoroaster, Gautama Buddha and Jīna Mahāvīra, Mahātmā Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, and many others. But if questioned about the many gods even the illiterate villager will answer: bhagvān ek hai – the Lord is One. He may not be able to figure out in theological terms how the many gods and the one God hang together and he may not be sure about the hierarchy obtaining among the many manifestations, but he does know that ultimately there is only One and that the many somehow merge into the One.”

This then is the great difference between Hinduism and the Abrahamic religions. Monotheism in Abrahamic religions represents the denial of gods in God, while the monotheism of Hinduism represents the affirmation of gods in God. Failure to recognize this tempts the followers of Abrahamic religions into branding Hinduism as pagan.



Source: Mr Arvind Sharma

Birks Professor of Comparative Religion, McGill University, huffingtonpost.com

A God of Love? A God of Goodness?

From the Bilbe, Jesus is the Son of God. So we know that Jesus is from the God and goodness. If God is a God of goodness, a God of love why does he let people suffer so much? Thanks guys. — Haonan

Many people, it seems, think there could be not be a God because this world is so messed up. I saw hundreds of postings on the internet after the bomb in the states that killed some children in a kindergarten. They were saying, “If there is God, how could He have done this?”

This reaction is a result of the relatively new Christian idea of an “all-loving God”. They say an “all-loving God” wouldn’t have Hell, He knows we are not perfect so He won’t punish us for our sins… But this is nonsense. It is not what Christians believed thirty or forty years ago either.

God is a loving God, but love means He cares about us so if we stray from the path of spiritual life a loving God will arrange to correct us, to get us back on the right path.

All the confusion stems from a misunderstanding of what this world is for. We don’t belong here. We have come here to try to be happy independently from God. We want to be the controller, we want to be god. To fulfill our independent desires God has created this world, but it’s created in such a way that we can enjoy here but all our enjoyment will end in frustration. This material world is actually created as a place of frustration. If it was all “peaches and cream” we would never contemplate leaving this place…

Krishna says in Bhagavad-gita (8.16):

          abrahma-bhuvanal lokah punar avartino ‘rjuna

          mam upetya tu kaunteya punar janma na vidyate

“From the highest planet in the material world down to the lowest, all are places of misery wherein repeated birth and death take place. But one who attains my abode, O son of Kunti, never takes birth again.”

So this is a place of misery! [And every time I say this people jump up and down... but what can I do? It is a miserable place!]

There is a little “pleasure” here and there is certainly beauty here but it is not permanent. That is the source of the misery and frustration. We, the spirit souls, are eternal living beings but currently we are covered by these material bodies. When we accept our material bodies as ourselves and work on the bodily platform we are working for temporary things. Even if we achieve these temporary things [and some temporary happiness] in time we will loose them again and become distressed.

So happiness and distress is coming and going like the waves of the ocean, but a self realized soul is not attached to happiness nor is he disturbed by distress. He knows both are temporary manifestations caused by his past activities [karma] in this life and previous lives and that he can’t do anything about it. His allotted happiness will come and so will his allotted distress.

Nobody works hard for distress, but distress still comes, so even if we don’t work for it our allotted happiness will also automatically come to us. We can’t change it by working very hard. It’s caused by our activities in the past, we can’t change our activities in the past…

Some people, due to their good karma, do enjoy “happy” lives here while others, due to their bad karma, suffer like anything. THIS IS NOT GOD’s PARTIALITY. It is the result of OUR actions in the past. God doesn’t kill children in a bomb. Those children did something in their previous lives so as a reaction they had to be killed in the bomb blast. It’s a result of their own activities…

A devotee takes distress as Krishna’s mercy and as an impetus to take spiritual life more seriously.

When Krishna was personally on this planet [5,000 years ago in India] due to the intrigues of the Kuruvas the Pandavas [Krishna's friends and devotees] were put into great difficulty. They were forced out of the kingdom which was rightfully theirs, they had to live in the forest for twelve years and they faced so many difficulties. There is a very beautiful section in the first canto of Srimad-Bhagavatam entitled “The Prayers of Queen Kunti”. Kunti was the mother of the Pandavas and she has given so many nice prayers:

“My dear Krishna, Your Lordship has protected us from a poisoned cake, from a great fire, from cannibals, from the vicious assembly, from sufferings during our exile in the forest, and from the battle where great generals fought. And now You have saved us from the weapon of Asvatthama.

“I wish that these calamities would happen again and again so that we could see You again and again, for seeing You means that we will no longer see repeated births and deaths.

“My Lord, Your Lordship can easily be approached, but only by those who are materially exhausted. One who is on the path of [material] progress, trying to improve himself with respectable parentage, great opulence, high education and bodily beauty, cannot approach You with sincere feeling.

“My obeisances are unto You, who are the property of the materially impoverished. You have nothing to do with the actions and reactions of the material modes of nature. You are self-satisfied, and therefore You are the most gentle and are master of the monists.

“My Lord, I consider Your Lordship to be eternal time, the supreme controller, without beginning and end, the all-pervasive one. In distributing Your mercy You are equal to everyone. The dissensions between living beings are due to social intercourse.”

(Srimad Bhagavatam 1.8.24-28)

So God is not responsible for our suffering, we caused it ourselves. In times of difficulty a devotee takes shelter of Krishna, he turns to Krishna, but in times of material prosperity and happiness there is a chance he may forget Krishna. So Queen Kunti is praying, “Let the calamities come again… for then there will be no chance we will forget You.”

''

Krishna says in Bhagavad-gita 2.14:

matra-sparsas tu kaunteya sitosna-sukha-duhkha-dah

agamapayino ‘nityas tams titiksasva bharata

“O son of Kunti [Arjuna], the non-permanent appearance of happiness and distress and their disappearance in due course, are like the appearance and disappearance of winter and summer seasons. They arise from sense perception, O scion of Bharata, and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.”

Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.

Nothing happens without the sanction of God

It is often said, Not a blade of grass moves without the sanction of the Supreme Lord, and that is a fact. Nothing happens without the sanction of God. There is an English saying, Man proposes and God disposes. This is correct because we can’t fulfill any of our desires without the sanction of Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

Sometimes, when we meet Christians and explain this to them, they find it difficult to believe. They question there are many sinful people whose desires are evil. There are child molesters, murders, rapists, all sorts of criminal people. So they ask, “Is God sanctioning the desires of all these sinful people? Is God enabling these people to perform these heinous acts?” The answer is yes, God is sanctioning these peoples desires and He is enabling them to do these sinful things because without the sanction of God they couldn’t perform the sinful activities.

One can become quite bewildered in understanding this, “How is it that God, who is all good is allowing these people to perform sinful activities?” The answer is God doesn’t want them to perform sinful activities but He has given us a little independence. He doesn’t interfere with our little independence. If we have a desire to perform sinful activities, although God doesn’t want us to, He also doesn’t want to interfere with our independence. So He lets us fulfil our sinful desires but He does it in such a way that ultimately we become frustrated and surrender to Him to regain our natural position as His servant.

We can’t get away with anything because as human beings we have some independence to act as we desire therefore we are also responsible for our actions. This responsibility means if we perform sinful activities we have to suffer the reaction in the future. These reactions could take the form of disease, legal implications, suffering from natural disasters or loss of our money, beauty or prestigious position. The ultimate suffering is at the time of death when we are sent to one of the many hellish planets for a long, long time. The lord of death, Yamaraja, comes for sinful people and forcibly drags them to hell where they have to endure unimaginable pain to atone for their sins. After suffering in this way for a long time they are allowed to take birth on this earth again to “have another go at it.”

The desires we have for pleasure in this world will never satisfy us. We can try anything in this world, but we will never be satisfied. If one is thoughtful, after many, many births of frustration, he will come to think, “This material world not so good because no matter what I do I am not happy.” Then he will think, “There must be something else, there must be an other place.” He can then come to the spiritual platform.