A blog about HH Jayadvaita Swami

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Hare Krishna.

Video- HH JAS Morning Class

Morning class by HH Jayadvaita Swami in Sridhama Mayapur, 06 January 2010:

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Super Ultra Fantastic Like You Never Had It Before!

Jayadvaita Swami

We have two kinds of needs, material and spiritual. I can't deny that I have basic material needs, like eating for example. 'Well I'm spiritually realised I don't eat anymore', um...No, you need eating, sleeping. Can't really do without it. Mating. Another basic human need. And defending, we need to defend ourselves from time to time. We need to have some security. The animals do these things: they sleep, they mate, they defend. Humans beings do these things, and they're necessary. But they are not everything.
"What's your goal in life?"
"Well, to eat, to sleep, to have sex, and, defend myself."
Oh great that's really fantastic!

Not Complete, Not Satisfying....Limited!

There's the material world and there's the physical disappointment.
You know we wanted, we didn't get it!
Or we wanted it, we got it and we lost it!
So there's that disappointment.
And there's, yeah, a deeper psychological or spiritual disappointment.
'I got it but I felt empty' or 'I have it all but I feel empty' right?'
The biggest richest, most educated whatever, they feel something's not complete!
Something's not satisfying!........... The physical, there's a limit on how much happiness can you get out of one little sense. It's limited!

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)

Let's Talk About You

Audience: If everyone tries to achieve spiritual happiness then they're not going to get married. The human race is going to go back down....

Jayadvaita Swami: If everyone tries for spiritual happiness, then nobody's going to get married and that's the end of the world....

Audience: And there's no children being made...

Jayadvaita Swami: Of course everybody's trying to move things in that direction, knock down the population so, you know, let's try it for fifty or hundred years! Try it the other way let's do this!

But I doubt that there's serious endanger of seeing that happen, that everyone goes stark raving spiritual and that's the end of marriage!
You know it's kind of like everyone's going to get rich: It's just not going to happen. That won't happen. But it is just as well, not everyone's going to be a PHD candidate. Not everyone's going to do so many things. Not everyone's going to be a philanthropist. But let's not talk about everyone, let's talk about, you. Let's talk about me, let's talk about us. You know what the whole world does we can leave till later. But you! Is it a sensible proposition for you to invest your energy in investigating or even pursuing spiritual happiness? That is really the question before us.

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)

The Temporary Thing

Jayadvaita Swami

Live for the moment or seize the day and then get what you can out of it now,

You can take that approach......But
if there's something higher while you're busy seizing the temporary thing, you're losing the better thing.
The person who gives up the eternal for the temporary, loses both! He loses the eternal because he gave it up, and he loses the temporary, because it's temporary! And the person who gives up the temporary for the eternal does not lose anything! Because the temporary he gave up he's going to lose anyway and the eternal's permanent!

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)

SB 4.1.57 - By the Glance of the Lord

During the month of kartika in Vrindavan Jayadvaita Swami gave a short but powerful class with complementing questions and answers. One of the questions was "Why is there still religion when we have modern science?". Maharaja answered quickly and forcefully and gave 4 reasons:

• Birth, disease, old age and death
• What is the purpose of life?
• Why we suffer in this material world?
• Who am i?

Download this class

Higher Purpose, Higher Taste

Jaydvaita Swami:
I'm not saying you know, somehow or other, if the chocolate tastes good put a rubber band around your tongue or something because you know you just did the wrong thing. No. There's a natural pleasure that comes from, well Bhagavad Gita analyses it by saying the contact with the senses with their objects: that I see something nice, my fingers touch something nice, you hear something nice, contact of the senses, with, an object, of the sense. That results in a certain amount of pleasure. Okay. We don't say deny it, pretend it's not there. But just accept what it is. It's really kinda small time. It's not the ultimate thing that a human being lives for when he's living for the truth,........It's not the be all and end all.
It's just, that's business as usual. Like here you're coming to university, everyday you're eating. Now is this why you have come? Okay, you get a certain amount of satisfaction when you eat maybe the foods good, you're happy about that, But you have a higher purpose here. ..... we're talking about there's a higher taste. When you get the higher thing, automatically you just come, you lose interest in the lower thing. It's not that someone has to drag you away kicking and screaming you just say 'I found something better!'

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)

"Do you Want To get Old?" No! "Diseased?" No! "Dead?" No!

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)

We're all connected. we all belong to....we're all parts of the Supreme. And now we're acting as if we're disconnected, and that disconnectedness is causing us untold difficulties.

What is that difficulty? No one wants to get old, we're all going get old. Some of us are already well into it, some of us are so far away, but everyone has to get old but no one wants to. Everyone has to get diseased and no one wants it. No one wants to die, and everyone's forced to. And birth also is something that we have to accept. Without argument. And that's also painful. These are all, unnatural for us, therefore we don't like them.

If you asked me 'Do I want to get old?'
“No I don't want to get old!”

'Diseased?'
“No!”

“Dead?'
“No”

Why not?

While you are young ....Go For It!

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)

There's an interesting history in one of the Puranas about a child named Prahlada. He was spiritually advanced from his childhood. He met a great sage and became an enlightened little boy.
He was trying to get his friends on board, saying: 'Come on! Let's do something! Let's chant Hare Krishna, let's hear something about spiritual advancement.'
The kids said: 'Come on! You know we’re five years old, let us play. And when later in old age you know, when we're grandparents we will do this stuff.'

He said: 'You better do it now!'

Highest Point Of Service

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)

I don't mean to say that everybody's just a shameless hedonist. You know that as soon as we pile out of this room we're all going to be going looking for the nearest club and doing whatever it is that, turns our senses on. I don't mean to say that. Some of us get our, our pleasure from doing some altruistic work. Some of us from doing some political work, some of us from doing some, all sorts of things……Generally: we don't work however unless we're paid. As much as I say I love my work, if you don't pay me I won't be there Monday morning.

The Material World Is Constitutionally Unrewarding

We're trying to enthuse material things with joy. You know we talk it up and say, this is the best!! You know... Party!!! or the best club! Or the best, whatever it is! And we talk it up and kind of psych ourselves into “This is really going to be something!'
But at the end it's really not, what it's talked up to be. Therefore we are disappointed. We're disappointed. The material world is constitutionally like that.
We're thinking it's just that we can configure it, 'I got the configuration wrong', you know, 'I got the girl with the blue eyes instead of the brown eyes.'
You know 'I'm not the kind of person who's meant to be with blue eyed girls' and you know just the 'whole thing is wrong, and you know if it were only Suzy instead of Jane, everything would be different!'
But it's not like that.
Configure it this way, configure it that way, configure it a third way, any way you configure it the material world is constitutionally unrewarding!

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)

Little Crumbs Of Happiness

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)

AUDIENCE: If within the material world you, it makes you happy to go a club and dance for a few hours, why is that wrong?

JAYADVAITA SWAMI: What's wrong? Well, here's the problem! That, first of all, the Bhagavad Gita says (Sanskrit), okay, what is this happiness. First thing is that the happiness is not really happiness. What do I mean now? I go to a club, I dance, first of all I'm out of how many pounds, it cost me something, second of all okay I have to go there and drink, that means I've clouded up my mind is that really something that is in my best interests? To cloud up my mind? And then I meet people and I engage with them in some sort of interactions, when their minds are cloudy and my minds are cloudy? My mind is cloudy? Where does that go?

AUDIENCE: Who says that drinking and dancing within a club go together?

Activities With Spiritual Purpose

It doesn't mean that all I do is sit and chant and meditate, and I don't eat, I don't talk to anyone, I don't work, I don't function, I enter into some sort of o-zone and I'm never seen again.
It's practical. I realise my relationship with the Supreme or with Krishna, and in that relationship I see everything else.
If I'm married I see, that marriage means that, there's two of us, for spiritual advancement. It's not just a mutual sense gratification society of two. But it has now a spiritual connection, and if there's children then there's more people to make spiritual progress. If there's something I'm doing in the world, suppose I was making some money the money can be used in Krishna's service. If I have a microphone I could use it........ Anything! So it doesn't mean dropping activities because activity is illusion. But it means infusing all of our activities with spiritual purpose!

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)

“Temporarily Mine” means it's not actually mine!

AUDIENCE: ... you bought it with your money, so it is your property isn't it?

JAYADVAITA SWAMI: Really? You know I buy a car with my money and then it's my car? Then someone else buys it from me then it's his car, then it goes to the next person then it's his car. So temporarily you can say it's mine, but “temporarily mine” means it's not actually mine. It only means it's in my hands for some time. Like I say “My money, I have £5 this is my mine,” But five minutes ago it was not mine and when I spend it again it's not mine. So my claim “This is my money,” is not a substantial claim. And even while it's in my hands it's not mine. It's not actually my property. In the Bhagavad Gita we hear from Krishna that: “It's My property!' Krishna says: “Whatever there is, is my energy.”
As the sunlight is the energy of the sun, everything is ultimately the energy of the Supreme.

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)

Three Features Of The Lord

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)

IMMENSE VARIETY
Prabhupada had very definite teachings to give that were also contrary to what was going around. What was generally going around is that when we talk about Supreme or an Absolute or an Ultimate Truth we mean something which is ultimately beyond form, beyond names, beyond qualities, beyond description, beyond thinking, beyond anything. Something essentially impersonal and homogeneous. That was the one, the great light, the unspeakable truth, that's the general discourse. And he challenged that. His essential challenge was that in the world around you, you have variety. Here we have black people, we have white people, we have tan people, we have tall people, we have short people, we have fat ones, and thin ones, and middle sized ones, we have very smart people, we have very stupid people, sorry to say but it's true we have, all sorts of varieties! We have yellow, we have green......, name a variety we have it. Now by what process does this immense variety precede from something which has no form, no qualities, by definition no variety whatsoever.............. If that 'It' has no variety, no differentiation, no anything there, where do you get variety here? Hm? If it's not in the warehouse how did it get to the shop!?

Human Being Acts Like Any Damn Thing

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)

AUDIENCE: I just wondered for example for a mosquito, if in their life, they was like injecting malaria into people, and like, causing loads of suffering to the whole conscious or something. How would that mosquito get further up the scale of consciousness, and eventually, go back to Godhead?

JAYADVAITA SWAMI: Okay that's a good question. For the lower creatures, they are always acting exactly as they are supposed to do. It's the business of the mosquito to suck your blood and give you malaria sometimes. That's what mosquito's do. You never see mosquito's, stealing oranges or something like that. The mosquito acts always exactly like a mosquito. The cow acts exactly like a cow. The birds exactly like a bird. And the human being like any damn thing!!! He acts like a dog, like a mosquito, blood sucking tax men!!!

Without self-discipline there is no spiritual progress

AUDIENCE: Can you say a little more about Prabhupada and the 60's? Can you say a little more? Was he an American or an Indian...?




JAYADAVAITA SWAMI: Yes I can say a little more about him thank you. No he was not American he was from India from West Bengal, to be precise from Calcutta, to be more precise. And his teachings were quite different from what was being popularly taught. At the time America, mid 1960's was full of gurus, full of swamis, full of, all sorts of spiritual things. There was um, right around that time was the hey-day of, chant, a secret mantra 15 minutes in the morning and then 15 minutes in the evening and then pay $25 and you meditate. There were all sorts of things. Spiritual and the general trend of it was a sort of what we might now call a new-age discourse, we talk about the oneness of all beings, we talk about finding yourself in the flow of greater reality you know we find this kind of vague, everything was kind of 'be one with everything else!' and, 'whatever you are doing it's the same as everything else' because really we think it's everything and everything is nothing so nothing is everything you know, it goes on (CROWD LAUGHS).

Experience the presence of Krishna

AUDIENCE: So if I wanted to become Hare Krishna, what would I have to do? What kind of, you said do not do intoxicating myself and what else did I have to do?

JAYADVAITA SWAMI: Positively, we recommend this chanting. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. It's a transcendental vibration, we don't charge for it, it's not a secret. But if, when you chant, you'll experience purification in part. Not that cash in and in five minutes my heart is just been through the laundry, but you go on chanting and you'll experience how your heart becomes, free from anxieties, free from so much many misconceptions, joyful, because you are coming in touch with Krishna.

Even My Body Is On Loan

AUDIENCE: What does it mean to you to be a monk and to renounce everything material?

JAYADVAITA SWAMI: What does it mean to be a monk and to renounce everything material? What does it mean to renounce it? You probably saw that I sat down and put this thing which must cost at least 50 or 80 pounds over here, and it looks very material. It's made of material stuff, it costs material money, so how am I renounced everything material? Our understanding is that first of all nothing actually belongs to us. This is not my property. The elements of which it's fashioned were here before I came. When I leave the scene they'll still be here. For some time I say this is mine, this is my recorder, this is my house, this is my money, this is my family, this is my this, this is my that, my country. But it's here before I come, it's here after I go, so in what sense is it mine? It's not mine actually, there's a higher proprietor to whom it belongs, and I'm borrowing this stuff.
Even my body is on loan. The stuff of which the body is made is not actually my property. I can't command it actually, and be thoroughly in charge of it. It's on loan. Just as your apartment is on loan. So renunciation means not that I give something up because it's not mine to begin with. But it means that I recognise the actual proprietor, and I use it for that Supreme Proprietor of everything.

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)