Skip to main content

THE PLEASURE RIDE OF LIFE

A few days back, I had to come from our Vasco center to our Panjim center. I took, three different vehicles to reach the destination. From the Vasco center, my friend dropped me to the Verna bus stop in a brand new, high end, air conditioned car. From there I took a crowded, government Kadamba bus to Panjim. The contrast of the previous ride in the comfortable car to this one was distance apart. At the Panjim bus stand, I was picked up by another colleague of mine in our old rundown car. Again, a huge contrast to the previous two vehicles. But, I thoroughly enjoyed all the three rides in the three different vehicles. Just in a short journey, three completely different situations.

Isn't life also something like this, where situations change completely and quickly! I reflected that our experience of life is not in the situation per se but in our interpretation of the situation. No situation, is entirely good or bad in and of itself - it is depends on our perception of the situation. As they say - our minds can make hell out of heaven or heaven out of hell. This is 200% true.

There is a super excellent verse of realisation spoken by a brahmana from Avanti after he was put in a humanly intolerable situation. This verse should be permanently etched in all our hearts. This verse appears in Srimad Bhagvatam 11.23.42 in which he tells us how our mind is the key to our experience of life -

nāyaḿ jano me sukha-duḥkha-hetur
na devatātmā graha-karma-kālāḥ
manaḥ paraḿ kāraṇam āmananti
saḿsāra-cakraḿ parivartayed yat

The brahmana said: "These people are not the cause of my happiness and distress. Neither are the demigods, my own body, the planets, my past work, or time. Rather, it is the mind alone that causes happiness and distress and perpetuates the rotation of material life."

There is another beautiful verse, in which Lord Shiva glorifies the equipoised nature of the devotee of Lord Krishna in seeing every situation of life. This verse appears in Srimad-Bhagvatam 6.17.28. Lord Shiva says -

nārāyaṇa-parāḥ sarve
na kutaścana bibhyati
svargāpavarga-narakeṣu
api tulyārtha-darśinaḥ

"Devotees solely engaged in the devotional service of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Nārāyaṇa, never fear any condition of life. For them the heavenly planets, liberation and the hellish planets are all the same, for such devotees are interested only in the service of the Lord."

For a devotee of Lord Krishna, any and every situation is a blissful one for in every situation he remembers the Holynames of Krishna. Krishna consciousness transforms an ordinary day into a festival, an ordinary excursion into an adventure, an ordinary ride into a pleasure ride and thus transforms this ordinary material world to the extraordinary spiritual world. That is the advantage of adding Krishna in the equation of our life. With Krishna by our side, fear and misery is left at the side and without Krishna by our side, fear and misery is right by our side - this is the verdict of even Lord Shiva.

You see, we don't have control of the circumstances just like I didn't have control of the vehicles I was riding in but, we do have full control of the consciousness we bring into a circumstance - that is fully in our hands. Lamenting and crying about our circumstances is not going to help us, working on raising our consciousness will definitely help us.

So, let us try to be happy and Krishna conscious in every situation and enjoy the different vehicles that are sent by God in our life and reach the Supreme destination of pure happiness and Krishna consciousness. In conclusion, let us remember that with the Lord of pleasure by our side, every ride of life becomes a pleasure ride which ultimately culminates in the Supreme destination of pleasure.

- Achyut Gopal Das

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WHEN MASTER BECOMES A SERVANT..

" If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go for a picnic. If you want happiness for a month, get married. If you want happiness for a lifetime, serve others. " - Chinese Proverb When and where have we seen a master take the role of a servant? Probably never or if at all, very rarely. Here, I would like to briefly touch upon a few touching stories from the life of Lord Krishna, who even though is The Supreme Master of everything and everyone, still happily chooses to play the role of a servant to His devotees.  THE RECEPTIONIST Much, much before the Mahabharata war, when Yudhishthira was performing the Rajasuya sacrifice to be crowned as the undisputed emperor of the world, all his friends and relatives were assigned different departments to take care of, depending on thier tastes and inclinations. Bhima was in-charge of the kitchen, Sanjaya was in-charge of the protocol and of taking care of Kings from various lands, Duryodhan was in...
Post a Comment
Read more

RACE AGAINST TIME

Time and tide wait for none. Time is one of the most powerful feature of this world. In fact, Lord Krishna introduces Himself as time in the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita. However powerful a personality one may be, at the end everyone has to bow down in front of time and surrender to it. History is the proof of the power of time. Big, big people reduced to dust by time. Time is so imperceptible in it's working that we don't even realize how days, weeks, months and years pass away - until it's too late . Our life can be compared to a video game with a timer on. Only, the one who wins the game before the time runs out is declared the winner. The only difference between the video game and and the game of life is that in the video game, you know how much time is left but in the game of life, you don't know how much time is left. If while playing a simple game we have to be fully focused and conscious not to waste time to win it, how much more, we hav...
Post a Comment
Read more

A DEVOTEE OF SUBSTANCE

By changing our externals our internals is not going to change. By wearing dhoti - kurta, our desires are not going to change. By wearing a Vaishnava tilak, our desires are not going to change. Yes, the external appearance of a devotee is an important aspect of Bhakti and it does have some effect on our consciousness but it is not the all in all of being a devotee. The real challenge is to bring changes from within. Donning the dress of a devotee externally is difficult but not that difficult - the real difficultly is in donning the attire of a devotee internally because who we are is not a product of our externals but our internals. God doesn't see our externals, He is more interested in our internals. The world may be impressed with the externals but God is impressed only by the internals. A devotee is not a person of form but a person of substance. Our internals change not by changing our externals but by working on changing our internals. - Achyut Gopal Das
Post a Comment
Read more