Exercpts from KKS Lecture in April 2006
.....This is Krishna. Krishna knows everything that has happened in the past, He knows everything that is happening in the present and He knows everything that will happen in the future and what do we know..?.......little….One of the big problems of this world is misunderstandings, there are so many misunderstandings, we always feel misunderstood or we always misunderstand people. Someone looks at you and sort of gives the evil eye and you think this person doesn’t like me but maybe he just has a toothache….can be or something like that you know…and you just look at the whole world like I hate you world and someone walks past and thinks this person hates me…so many misunderstandings…constant…..in fact a lot of our time is spent setting things straight, you know, reconciliation they call it “let’s have conciliation meetings and work it out and we sit down and discuss, I didn’t mean it like that” and hours and hours, years of our lives are just spent to overcome misunderstandings why? Just because we don’t, we don’t know what people think, we don’t know what they feel “How are you today?” “Yeah?” you know “you ok?” to constantly ask, we don’t know, no idea…how different is Krishna and how peaceful is Krishna, can you imagine all the insecurities, all these anxieties are not there. ..Sanskrit…Between two armies Krishna and Arjuna were there, Arjuna was lamenting but Krishna was smiling in the middle of a battlefield between two armies, to smile is somewhat unusual…in other words to be totally relaxed, very cool that was Krishna, totally transcendental, not seeing anything to cause anxiety in this world….
We read the Bhagavad Gita and we hear the verses…Sanskrit ..the soul never takes birth, the soul can not be killed and all these kind of verses, we hear them and say “Yes we agree, Yes,Yes I agree with this” and the next moment we are in total anxiety and we are still in anxiety about something in this world. Basically the BhagavadGita was telling us don’t worry about this world at all, there’s nothing to worry about ......
.....Krishna is not really considering this material world of much importance, what shall I say…I remember this one Sunday feast lecture, I gave in Switzerland and it was about ants and how ants, ants are always working, so I was interested in the psychology of the ant and what makes the ant work so hard. So if for a moment we make a parallel with our own life, we don’t mind working 24hrs if it is really worth it, if it’s really something important, therefore we may assume that whatever the ants are working for is important to them and means a lot to them, it’s worth working 24hrs for.
At night you wake up and see the ants in India, you can see this more closely, their nature is a little closer and you wake up and see the ants are still moving around, they are working hard middle of the night, in the day the ants are still working, you never find an ant sort of taking a break, lying on the beach catching a little sun, you know, little sporting or playing, nothing like that, no football, nothing, that’s right, they don’t seem to enjoy, they just work, so basically whatever they are doing must be very important…..to them, but to us….it is too insignificant to really spend much time with, OK, we put the ants in the spotlight. Now, when was the last time we thought about ants…ok , they get a little bit of disturbance, we think about them but otherwise we don’t think about ants, you don’t read in newspapers about ants, there’s not much on the internet about ants compared to people, ants are insignificant. So imagine the dreams of the ants, do you know how long they live, I mean something like ten days, and it’s all over, ten days and that’s it…you start off all your hopes, all your dreams in ten days…so short…
.even butterflies I read the other day, live for eleven days once it is a butterfly, maybe a little bit before, but very short lives, so many hopes, so many dreams, in such a short time and if you look at everything like that, how is it possible……so Krishna looks at us in the same way, Krishna also looks at our lives as so short, and to us it’s like….Krishna looks at our dreams just like the ants, the ants dream.
I know, I know sanyassis have this nature to pop bubbles, we are the guys when everyone has a balloon, we come with a bit of pin And “pop” “pop” “bang” “bang” “bang” that is our duty to kind of destroy illusions, illusions about the material world and to point towards Krishna, point towards the eternal. So at least we are not propagating that we give up the temporary because it is not possible anyway, you can move from one place to another, but you can’t give it up, the temporary world, we are in the temporary world, therefore we are not speaking about giving up the temporary, but we are speaking about making relationships with the eternal, that is really Krishna.
Krishna is eternal, the spirit soul, the living being are eternal and the relationship with Krishna is also eternal and that eternal relationship has now been covered. When Krishna says ..sanskrit... me know one knows, He talks about the living being in this material world. In one sense, in the material world no one knows Krishna, in the spiritual world everyone knows Krishna, of course no one knows Krishna in full, that is not possible, because Krishna is unlimited, we can not know Krishna in full but still Krishna reveals Himself to the devotee, and the devotee knows Krishna to be the Supreme Lord….So Krishna is behind everything....
....So let us try and throughout this coming week from time to time remember the divine perspective, let us for a moment look at this world as through the eyes of God. Let us realise that God is eternal and how does this world look from the point of view of eternity. Let us from time to time contemplate that and if we do that I think then we are seeing things through the eyes of the Bhagavad Gita and then gradually the Bhagavad Gita is not a book but it becomes a way of life….is it a book? ….banter…. It is not a book it is a way of life. You can try it on the street you can stop someone and say what is this?
Is it a book? What is it? Please tell me and when he says it’s a book you say “no it’s not. It’s a way of life.” .I don’t know maybe it works, ..who knows, sparkle some interest.....
....Ultimately the painter, it’s his energy and the painting. It’s not that the painter is the energy of the painting so the painter can create more paintings, the painting came out of him so therefore whatever we find in the painting is somewhere having it’s roots in the painter so the painter has a quality by which he can produce the painting so it’s really the quality of the painter that is more important than the painting, that’s the idea behind it but in one sense the painter is also being manifest in the painting, we encounter the painter in the painting, that is true but if we look at the painting without the painter it’s incomplete.....
