The Value of Human Life

Giriraj Swami: Hare Krishna.

Indradyumna Swami: That was the ABCs, now we are going to hear the XYZ’s. [laughter]

Giriraj Swami: That was ABCDEFG, all the way to WXYZ. This book, the Bhagavad-gītā, is the. . . Literally, Bhagavat refers to God, in Sanskrit Bhagavān, and Gītā means song. So, this book, the Bhagavad-gītā, could be rendered in English as the song of God. The word Bhagavān, which means God. Bhaga means opulence, and van means one who possesses. Everyone has some opulence, some asset, and the Vedic sage Parasara Muni has analyzed six opulences. One is beauty. If someone is beautiful, we are attracted. I think of one young man who came to the temple in Juhu just a few months after our spiritual master Srila Prabhupada left. He was a medical doctor, and he moved into the ashram and I was surprised one day to see on the wall of his room a poster of a lady named Hema Malini, who began as a dancer, and she became a movie actress. So beauty, people are attracted by beauty. Then wealth; people are attracted by wealth, that needs no discussion. Fame, if someone is very famous, we want to meet that person, we want to have our picture taken with him, we want to get his or her autograph. And strength, or power, or influence; if someone is very powerful or influential, we are attracted, we want to know the person, we want to get close to the person. And renunciation, if someone has a lot but gives it up, that is also very attractive.

Srila Prabhupada had one disciple named Shyamasundara dasa. He was a very, very intelligent and dynamic person, and he used to meet very big people and introduce them to Krishna consciousness. He is the main devotee responsible for meeting The Beatles and engaging them in Krishna consciousness. And the people he met were very opulent, they were beautiful, they were wealthy, they were influential, they were famous, they were knowledgeable. That is another opulence, knowledge. But the one opulence they didn’t have was renunciation, and they were attracted to the devotees because they could see the devotees had something that they didn’t have, which was renunciation, or detachment. But no sane person would give up something for nothing, you give up something for something greater. So, because the devotees have something greater than material wealth or beauty or fame, they can be detached from it. There is a story of one great devotee named Sanatana Gosvami who lived in a holy place in India called Vrindavan, and he had a parasmani or a touchstone, which could turn things into gold. Now, of course, we have no experience of such a stone, and we might think that this story is allegorical, but there are such entities. But even if you do take it as allegorical, there is an important lesson to be learned.

So, one man, he was searching for the most valuable thing. And in his mind, the most valuable thing was this touchstone that could turn base metal into gold. And someone directed him to Sanatana Gosvami. So, he approached the devotee, “I want the most valuable thing. I heard you have a touchstone. Can I have it?” He said, “Oh, yes.” “Where is it?” “It is out in the back somewhere where the trash is kept.” So, the man very greedily went and searched through the refuse and found the touchstone, and he began to touch things and they turned to gold. He thought, Oh, I am going to have unlimited quantities of gold, I am going to be the richest man in the world, I am going to have everything I ever wanted. But then, a doubt passed through his mind and he thought, If Sanatana Gosvami is keeping this touchstone with the trash, he must not consider it very valuable, he must have something much more valuable, which he hasn’t told me about. So, I want to know what he has.

So, he went back to him and he said, “You are keeping this out in the back with the refuse, that means you don’t consider it very valuable, you have something more valuable. I want the most valuable thing.” Sanatana Gosvami said, “Oh, you want the most valuable thing. All right, I can give that to you, but first, you have to throw the touchstone in the river.” So then, the man was in a dilemma because he liked the touchstone, he was very happy with the touchstone, but he thought he could get something better but he wasn’t sure what the better thing was going to be. And he knew that gold was valuable, so he hesitated. But he thought carefully, and then he decided, “Yes, I will do it.” So, he went to the river and threw the touchstone in the river and came back. He said, “Now, I want the most valuable thing. Really, the most valuable thing.” And Sanatana Gosvami said, “All right, I will give it to you.

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.

That is the most valuable treasure. Now, we might think, How could that be the most valuable treasure? Gold is so valuable; gold is universally accepted. In these days of market fluctuations, people don’t know what is going to be worth what the next day. But gold, gold will always have value. And Hare Krishna? They are just words; they are just syllables. But actually, it is true because nāma cintāmaṇiḥ kṛṣṇaś caitanya-rasa-vigrahaḥ, the holy name of Krishna is Krishna Himself. He is the reservoir of all pleasure, we want pleasure. As Maharaja was suggesting, we are like in a desert, and the pleasure we experience here is like a drop or a small bowl, but that is not enough to satisfy the soul. If you want to really do something in the desert, you need rivers of water, you need oceans of water, you can’t do anything with a drop or two, or a cup or two. So, Krishna is the reservoir of pleasure, He is like an ocean of pleasure. So, if you go to Him, all of your thirst for pleasure will be satisfied. Materially, we may thirst for something, we may hunger for something, but when we get it, our thirst slackens, our hunger subsides. You might like ice cream, but after eating ice cream and ice cream and ice cream, eventually, you get full, “I can’t eat anymore.” Even if they have your favorite ice cream, you can’t have any more. It is called the law of satiation. In the material world, whatever we want, when we reach a certain point, we don’t want it anymore because we are satiated. And all of the demands of the body are like that.

So yes, after taking up the disciplines of bhakti-yoga, I would never go to movies or restaurants or any such thing. But one year, they introduced movies on airplanes, and I was looking at it, I don’t know, it seemed sort of interesting. So I thought, all right, it seems sort of innocent. No violence, no other things. And the movie was called ‘Brewster’s Millions.’ I forget the name of the star, he was an African American, and he came from a very poor family and he was just a very humble person. He wanted to become a major league baseball player but he wasn’t very good, he was in the minor, minor, minor leagues. And just not very successful, but sort of a nice person. So one day, he got a letter from the lawyers that he had some great uncle, some remote relative who had no children, and that relative had left him ten billion dollars. But before he could get his inheritance, he had to perform a feat, he had to achieve something.

So, the lawyers showed a little video of his great uncle, and his great uncle said in the video, that when he was little, he used to like to smoke cigars, and his parents did not approve but he would sneak out and he would smoke cigars. So one day, his parents locked him in a closet that was lined from top to bottom with boxes of cigars, and they said, “You can come out of the closet only after you have smoked every cigar in the closet.” So, he was smoking and smoking and smoking, and he got so disgusted of smoking cigars that he never wanted to look at a cigar again. So, his grand uncle, great uncle, told him, “I do not want you to be happy spending money. So, for you to get the inheritance, you have to spend thirty million dollars in one month.” This is like the equivalent of smoking a closet full of cigars. So, at first, he was happy, he went shopping, he got nice clothes, he got nice shoes, he got a good wrist watch, but it hardly added up to anything, it was like nothing. So then, he rented a penthouse in an expensive hotel in Manhattan, it was nothing. How could he spend a million dollars a day? It was too much.

So, someone suggested he run for office, that is a good way to spend money. So, he ran for Mayor of New York, and he was so simple and so good-hearted and so candid that he started leading in the polls. All these experienced, cunning politicians were being left behind, and he thought, Oh my God, what if I am elected to Mayor? I won’t know what to do. So, he dropped that. His dream was to become a major league baseball player. So, he thought, I will rent Yankee Stadium, and I will pay the New York Yankees to play against my minor league team, and I will get to experience what it is really like to be in the big leagues. So, he was just desperately trying to spend his money and he couldn’t figure out how. Anyway, it was a comedy, sort of drama comedy. And down to the last minute, midnight, he had to spend the last amount. But the idea is that whatever gives us pleasure. . . [laughter] I think there is a practical demonstration going on there. Whatever gives us pleasure in the beginning, it doesn’t last.

So, that is true of anything, anything material. But Krishna is the reservoir of pleasure. Rasa, raso vai saḥ, he is the reservoir of pleasure. And Krishna is such that when you go to drink rasa from that reservoir, not only do you feel completely ecstatic and blissful, but instead of feeling satiated, like, “I have had enough,” your taste increases, you never get enough. And as your taste increases, the supply increases. As much as your thirst for that rasa, that transcendental nectar increases, Krishna goes on supplying. So it is a never-ending increase in bliss. And His Holiness Indradyumna Swami began with the Vedanta aphorism, athāto brahma jijñāsā , “Now you have come to the human form of life, you should inquire into the absolute truth.” And there is another aphorism that says that Brahman or God is unlimited, but always increasing. So, that is the pleasure of Krishna consciousness, it is unlimited and it is always increasing. And our desire for pleasure increases and the supply increases. So, there is never any satiation, it is just unending bliss. It is completely different from anything of the material world. And therefore, getting Krishna is far more valuable than anything of this world that we could even imagine.

Now, someone may say, “Well, this is a nice theory but is it really practical?” Well here, in a way I hesitate, because it is about my own life’s history, but because it illustrates this point, although it is a little awkward, but still, I will tell the story. When I first met the devotees and began the serious practice of bhakti-yoga, my father, well, the whole family, my father was shocked. This was not what he had in mind for his son. He came to the temple. Of course, I can see that this might cause some concern to some of you, if you are cherished son or daughter, but it is very rare that someone will take to the renounced order of life. Most people marry, even devotees, they marry. So, you shouldn’t fear that if your family members start to take interest in Krishna consciousness, you might lose them. Of course, we don’t give up our relationships with our family members anyway, but it just makes the relationship more spiritual.

So, my father said, “If you leave this and come back home, I will give you a million dollars,” which was a lot of money back in 1969. But I didn’t do it because I genuinely felt that I had something much more valuable. Then, two years later, after I was serving in India, my father came again, and he made the same offer, but this time he did it in front of my spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada. He said, “I want to put a million dollars in a trust for my son.” And Srila Prabhupada said, “Yes, you can do it.” “But I want him to come back to America and sign the documents.” Prabhupada said, “Yes, you can send the documents here, he will sign.” [laughter] Anyway, it is a long story. But, I think, when devotees experience the pleasure of Krishna consciousness, they all feel the same way. Material things do not attract them anymore because they have something more beautiful, something more alive. Krishna is living, this spirit is living. These things, even gold, diamonds, it is all dead matter. And that is why, the Bhagavad-gītā says that for a learned person, pebbles and sand and jewels are all the same, it is all just dead matter, from the spiritual point of view. Of course, we can use precious metals and gems to serve the Lord, to decorate the Lord, but otherwise, it is just dead matter. And because the soul is eternal, the pleasure is eternal.

Of course, we discussed the law of satiation, but even if you feel, “Okay, well, still, I want to enjoy the body, the extensions of the body,” but you can’t stay in the body forever, you will be forced to leave. And when you leave, you leave your husband, your wife, your children, your home, your money, your car, your iPad, you leave everything. So, God, the Supreme Being, the Supreme Person, the Supreme father, He is very compassionate towards His children, towards us. He knows that we are in an awkward situation in the material world, we are like fish out of water. We come from the spiritual world and we can be happy in the spiritual atmosphere, can’t be happy in the material atmosphere. So, He knows we are struggling and suffering, and He wants us to be happy, He wants us to come back home, come back to Him.

That is reflected even in the material world. It happens, sometimes the children forget the parents, but parents don’t forget the children. So, Krishna comes and sometimes, He comes personally, sometimes He sends His son, His representative, His messenger, His prophet, to tell people about their real identities, their real home, and their real happiness in relationship with God. And we have here the deity of Lord Jagannatha, it is another subject but he is mentioned in some scriptures as the deity for the present age of Kali-yuga. He manifests himself to bring us back to him, bring us to our real life of happiness. And our spiritual master Srila Prabhupada, his picture is on the wall there. He came to America at the age of seventy years, and he brought this knowledge of the Bhagavad-gītā, of Krishna, which is just a name for God, the one Supreme God worshiped in every bona fide tradition, so that we could become happy.

Before Srila Prabhupada came to America, he was struggling, he was a mendicant, he had no money. So he convinced one lady who had a steamship company to give him free passage on a cargo carrier, but then, there were so many complications with the Indian government he had to get some permission to leave and so many different forms in the bureaucracy. So, for some days, he was staying in Bombay, waiting for all the permits to be cleared. And he was seventy years old, almost seventy years old. And the managing director of the steamship company, her secretary said to Prabhupada, “Swamiji, you are so old, why do you want to go to America at this age?” He said, “Oh, I know. You are like all the Swamis, you want to go and enjoy.” He was joking. And Srila Prabhupada said, “What have I got to enjoy at this age? My life is finished. But there is a generation of young people there who are confused and frustrated in life, and I want to do something for them. I want to make them happy, give them the process by which they can become happy.” And he did, he came, he left India just before turning seventy, he celebrated his seventieth birthday at sea, he suffered two heart attacks on the way.

And at first, there was very little response when he came to New York city. And every month or two, he would go to the Scindia Steam Navigation Company offices to see when the next freighter was going back to India, but he didn’t leave. And gradually, some sincere young men and women came forward and took interest. And from that humble beginning, now his mission has spread all over the world. And it is not out of religious sentiment or fanaticism, but it is out of a genuine experience of spiritual happiness. I wasn’t born Hindu or Vaishnava, Maharaja wasn’t born Hindu or Vaishnava, we came from different traditions. No reason to change one label to another, converting. But this is a scientific process that anyone can adopt, we don’t say that if you are Christian, you should become Hindu, or if you are Muslim, you should become Christian, no. You remain what you are, but you add this. And you will be a better Hindu, a better Christian, a better Muslim, you just add this. Because it will bring you in touch with God and with your own spiritual nature. And every religion ultimately teaches that we should love God. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy might; and love thy neighbor as thyself.” These are the fundamental principles.

But without a process, it remains a theoretical idea. Yes, we should love God from every pulpit, across the country and around the world, preachers are saying, “You should love God,” but how? Yes, I love my wife, I love my husband, I love my daughter, I love my son, I love my. . . on and on and on. But if you love someone, you want to spend time with them, you want to do something for them. And if we actually look at our activities, how much time do we spend with God? How much do we do for Him? But by this process of chanting  

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare / Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare, we are associating with God, and we are awakening our love for Him. And we just want to be with Him all the time, we want to chant all the time, and we want to serve Him. And devotees are not selfish. Krishna or God Himself says in the Bhagavad-gītā that the best service you can do for Him is to bring others back to Him, bring His other children back to Him. If you are a parent and one of your children runs away, what could mean more to you than to have someone bring that child back? Nothing could mean more to you than that. So, devotees, they want to be with God, they want to chant His name, they want to speak about Him, hear about Him, worship Him, and they want to serve Him, they want to please Him. And nothing pleases Him more than bringing His lost children back to Him. And that is what devotees endeavor to do, that is what Srila Prabhupada dedicated his life to doing, and that is what his followers dedicate their lives to doing. And it is very easy.

Again, you don’t have to do it by becoming a renunciate and traveling all over the world, you can do it even at home. Just like our hosts this evening, Gauranga Prema and Janaki as we know them. It is Vishakha’s first birthday, but it is an occasion to come together, chant God’s name, speak about God, and associate with God’s servants. It is not difficult, we do it anyway. We have birthday parties; we have social functions. So, it is the same thing, you don’t have to change anything, but you just add Krishna, just add Krishna. You can still have birthday parties, just add Krishna. Everything is the same, it is not like dry renunciation, like some schools of thought, impersonal schools; can’t do this, can’t do that. Yes, there is some basic principles like, we don’t kill animals and eat their flesh because that is out of respect for God, that is out of respect for the souls in those bodies of animals. So, there is some very basic moral principles, but other than that, we can do everything. Yes, we meet, we talk, we sing, we dance, we eat, we travel, we even have cultural performances.

Indradyumna Swami, one of his great contributions to the movement is he has a summer festival tour. Well, he does them all year round, but the summer one is in Poland. He has one in the winter in Australia, which is their summer, our winter. And it is a whole cultural presentation. They have dramas related to God consciousness, they have musical performances related to Krishna, they have dances related to Krishna, they have booths you can dress up in sarees and dhotis, and so many things. You could spend from morning to night at that festival, it is so interesting and so enjoyable. And he does the program along the Baltic Sea, it is like a tourist area. And people, a year in advance, they find out where the festival is going to be, and then they book their holiday stay near the festival site so they can attend the festival. And it is something the whole family can do; children, youths, middle age, old age, there is something for everyone. And many of the things are good for everyone, everyone can chant; a small child, an old man, and everyone in between. So, it really makes family life more blissful, it makes our relationships more harmonious.

Because on the material platform, there is always dissatisfaction, it is the nature of the world, it is the nature of the body, we can never be satisfied. But instead of looking at our partner as someone to gratify our senses, which can never be gratified, maybe temporarily, something, but not for long, we work together to deepen our relationship with God, and that really brings us pleasure and satisfaction. And then, there is no dissatisfaction in the relationship of husband and wife because we are not looking to our partner to give us something they can’t give us. What we really want, that love that we really want, we can get from God, from Krishna. And so, we don’t try to get something from our partner that they can’t give us, because if we do, we just end up being frustrated and disappointed and angry. But this way, “Oh, I am the best husband because I am helping my wife realize her inner nature as a servant of God and realize her deepest desires for happiness. My wife is my best friend because she is doing that for me. And my mother and father, they are the best parents because they are helping me come closer to God. And that will give me real happiness, and it will be a relationship that will never end. It won’t end even when the body ends. But the soul will leave the body and go to God and enjoy with Him eternally.

So, this is the greatest treasure, it is truly the greatest treasure. And the Lord Himself comes to give it, His messengers come on His behalf to give it, Srila Prabhupada came to give it. And all we have to do is take it. It is being given freely, all we have to do is take it and experience this great happiness and satisfaction. So, we should all chant, we will do it once now. You can repeat after me.

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.

And I should mention that it is not that one must chant only Hare Krishna. If one is following another tradition, one can chant the name of Jesus, or the name of Allah. But you should chant the name of God, as it is revealed in your scripture, and ultimately, you will get the same benefit.

Hare Krishna.