Essence of All Religion

Giriraj Swami: What brings you all here today?

Teacher: We did the religions of the world; we are on a vast journey. We are going to cover the main religions of the world, and we start out every year with Hinduism. And the kids like Hinduism because they are not used to it in this culture. And so, everything is brand new to them, and that is what I like about the faith, because these kids in this region, in this area, in this culture, have never seen anything like that before. So it is a fresh new idea, it is a fresh new concept. We will go from Hinduism, probably into Jainism and Buddhism next, and to Sikhism, and just all the major faiths of the world. We will do Christianity in another class, and so, Judaism and Islam as well. So, we are on a vast journey, and you are our first step, sir.

Giriraj Swami: Okay. And what would you say is the value of their learning about the different religions of the world?

Teacher: What I hope that we can garner from all this is, I hope that the kids are more well-rounded. I know many of them are going to be going into different professions and they will get to work with different religions of the world, and I know how dark ignorance is, and how we can make so many mistakes out of our ignorance. And maybe in that way, no matter what they are, if they are a Christian, if they are a Muslim, if they are a Jew, or if they are Hindu, I hope that once they get through this class, that they will be a stronger Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jew, whatever, more well-balanced, more, if I dare say, Krishna conscious, God conscious. [laughter]

Giriraj Swami: All right, very good. Well, the first thing I would like to say is from a certain point of view, Krishna consciousness is not a religion, although it resembles one. And I should explain what I mean. A religion or faith, in the material sense, is a designation. Do you know what the word designation means? Like a term or a title that can change. I may be a Christian, but I could convert and become a Buddhist. But my actual identity is not as a Christian or as a Buddhist, because my actual identity is eternal. Eternal means it has no beginning and no end, and my actual identity is as a spiritual soul, or a spiritual particle, which is part and parcel of the Supreme Soul. And that identity does not change.

The soul, or ātmā, or jīvātmā in Sanskrit, is a spiritual particle that animates the body. The body is just a machine; the body has no capacity to function without the presence of the soul. It is just like a car; a car can function when there is a driver, but without a driver, the car is just a machine that can’t really function. So, the same applies to the body. Now, in ignorance, people falsely identify with the body. And if you ask an ordinary person, “Who are you?” They will say, “I am mister so and so,” or “Miss so and so,” “I am American, I am Indian, I am Russian, I am Hindu, I am Christian, I am Muslim, I am a man, I am a woman,” all designations relate to the body. But their actual identity is none of these, their actual identity is spiritual soul, part and parcel of the Supreme Soul. And because the body is a machine external to our actual identity, we cannot be happy through taking care of the body, giving comforts to the body, giving pleasure to the body. And that is why so many people in the world are so frustrated, because they try to find happiness in relation to the body, but the body is an external covering of the soul, it is not really them. And our teacher, Srila Prabhupada, gave the example that if you take a fish out of water and put it in a beautiful golden bowl and fill the bowl with precious jewels and gems, the fish will not be happy because the fish is a creature of the water. So, in the same way, we are of the spirit, of the spiritual world, and we can only be happy in the spiritual atmosphere.

Another example is if you have a bird in a cage, you have a beautiful golden cage and you scent it with perfumes and decorate it with flowers and put beautiful cloth on it, but you never feed the bird, will the bird be happy? No, the bird will die. So again, the body is like a cage. So, we may scent it, put perfume on it and dress it up very nicely, but if we don’t feed the person within the body, if we don’t feed the soul within the body, the person is not going to be happy. And that is why there is so much frustration in the world, because people are not properly educated to understand that they are not the body but the soul within the body. And thinking they are the body, they do so much for the body, but they still remain dissatisfied. It is like a mathematical calculation. If you are performing some mathematical calculations and you make a mistake in the first step, then even if you perform all the other calculations perfectly, you may end up getting further and further away from the absolute solution because you made a mistake in the first step. So, if we make a mistake in the first step as to our identities, and we falsely identify with the body, even if we do everything there after perfectly for the sake of the body, we may get further and further away from real happiness because we made a mistake in the first step.

So, what we are practicing here more technically could be called bhakti-yoga. Now, the Sanskrit word yoga literally means to link or connect. The English word yoke, like to yoke oxen, that comes from that word yoga. So, yoga means to connect with God, it is the process by which the individual soul connects, or reconnects, to the Supreme Soul, or yoga could mean the state of being connected. And bhakti means devotion and service and love for God. So, bhakti-yoga means the process of reuniting with God, or connecting with God, through loving service. And there are nine basic processes in bhakti-yoga, but the first two and most important are hearing—śravaṇam, and chanting—kīrtanam. Hearing is what you are doing right now. This process is so easy and so subtle that it basically involves chanting or speaking and hearing or reading and then remembering, which comes naturally. When you read about something, you remember it. When you speak about something, you remember it. And how it works, it is very subtle because what we are hearing about is God, or in Sanskrit we use the name Krishna.

Now, Krishna literally means all attractive. And therefore, Krishna is considered the best name for God, because in one sense, you could say God has no name, but He has qualities, He has activities. And so, any term that describes the quality of His or an activity of His can be taken as a name. Again, I say ‘His,’ that is another point, because in the ultimate conception in Krishna consciousness, the supreme realization of God includes both feminine aspect and a male aspect, as you have seen, Radha and Krishna, or Hare and Krishna. But for the sake of ease and speech, I may say ‘His’ or ‘Him’ or ‘He,’ but we are not talking about a male or female of the material world like us who have different glands and hormones, we are not talking about anything like that. But still, because we come from Him, so all of the qualities that we have as spiritual beings exist in Him but in a much greater quantity, in perfection. Now, I lived for many years in India, and from India, I would regularly travel to Pakistan where I met many Muslims, and to Sri Lanka, where I met many Buddhists. And of course, being from America originally, I have experience with people of the Christian tradition and Jewish tradition. And there is actually a lot of common principles, and to me, these principles indicate that there are certain eternal truths that have been revealed to different sages and prophets and holy people in different traditions over the centuries or millennia.

So, when I was in Pakistan, I came across a book called The 99 Names of Allah. And in the Muslim tradition, it is considered to be the goal of a person’s life to chant the name of Allah, or hear the name of Allah at the time of death. And we find the same thing in many traditions; Christian tradition, Jewish tradition, and in Krishna consciousness also, that is the final test, you could say, final test is whether we can remember God or Krishna, chant the name of Krishna at the time of death. So, this idea of chanting God’s name is common in many traditions, I think every tradition. And it is central in the practices of bhakti-yoga, and especially the chanting of mantra. Now, mantra also is a Sanskrit word; man means mind, and tra means that which delivers. The mantra can deliver us from the anxieties of the mind.

So, we chanted a little before we began. And the Hare Krishna maha-mantra consists of three words, or three names. Hare means the energy of God, or the female feature of God, and Krishna means all attractive. All the names of God, even the, say, The 99 Names of Allah, say, one name is Habib, which means friend. So, all the different names refer to different attributes of God, but whatever the attribute is, it is attractive. And therefore, this particular word Krishna is most appropriate because it means all attractive, it includes every quality of God; His greatness, His kindness, His mercy, His benevolence, His power, His glory, it is all included in the name of Krishna. So, we chant Hare Krishna. And Rama means the reservoir of pleasure, we all want pleasure, and as spiritual beings, we can only really experience pleasure on the spiritual platform and the spiritual atmosphere. And so, when we come to Krishna or Krishna consciousness, that fish that is been out of water is in water, he feels happy, he feels satisfied. That bird in the cage that has been starving for food finally gets food, becomes happy and settles. So, that is the basic idea.

And as Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gītā, “Whatever you think of at the time of death will determine your next life.” So, if you think of Him, if you think of God at the time of death, then you go to God, but if you think of something else, which is most likely, unless you practice thinking of God, practice makes perfect, then you will have to take a birth again according to your activities, your karma, and according to your thoughts at the time of death. And there are eight million four hundred thousand species of life according to Vedic literature, and you can take birth in any one of them. There is no guarantee that you will take birth as a human being, or that you will go to God at the end of your life. It really depends on your activities during your life and your consciousness at the time of death. So, it is very important that we prepare. I imagine that in your school you have exams and in order to graduate you have to pass your exams. Now, someone might have the idea, “Well, let me just play around day and night, fool around, and all I have to do is take the exam and pass, and no problem.” But if you don’t attend the classes, if you don’t do the assigned reading, if you don’t do the homework, if you don’t pass the tests during the year, you are not going to pass the final exam, and you are not going to graduate to the next level. So, you have to prepare, it is common sense.

So, in the same way, if we don’t prepare for the time of death, if we don’t practice chanting and hearing and remembering God, we won’t be able to remember Him at the time of death because, we will think of things that we are used to thinking of. And generally, we think of things that we are attached to, like a greedy person is always thinking of money, or a lusty man is always thinking of beautiful women, a gluttonous person is always thinking of good food. So, whatever we are most attached to and whatever preoccupies our thoughts the most during our life is probably going to be what we think of at the time of death. And therefore, it is important that we practice chanting and hearing and remembering God, so we can remember Him at the time of death. And because this is a scientific process, a technical process, you need a teacher. And the same applies in regular life, you need both books and teachers. If you decide, “I am going to become a brain surgeon” and you go to the library and check out some books on brain surgery, can you become a brain surgeon just by reading books? No, you have to enroll in an institution, and you have to be taught by a teacher who knows the subject, and you have to learn from the teacher. So, the same applies in God consciousness. We have the book, we have the Bhagavad-gītā and so many books on the subject of bhakti-yoga and Krishna consciousness, but you also need a teacher, or teachers. And, in the Vedic tradition, the teacher is called guru.

So, sometimes there is some mystique around the word guru and there is some confusion about it, definitely misconceptions about it. But in simple terms, a guru is one who knows the Vedic principles, has realized the conclusions of the Vedic scriptures, who lives according to the Vedic principles, and who teaches his students the same principles and engages them in following the same principles. Another word that can be used as a synonym for guru is acharya. And acharya, again, literally means one who teaches by example. In some modern educational institutions, they don’t look into the teacher’s personal life, they just want to see if he knows the subject and can teach it. But personally, if he is a drunkard, it is not a problem as long as he knows what is in the book and can teach it and can get you to pass the exam, that is good enough. If he is a womanizer, well, that is his personal life, that doesn’t concern us. But that is not how we regard a guru or acharya in the Vedic tradition, because in the Vedic tradition, we are not teaching some abstract, intellectual, theoretical subject, we are teaching a scientific way of life that will enable us to revive our relationship with God, and that includes when we get up, when we go to sleep, what we eat, what we don’t eat, what we do, what we don’t do. And so, we want a teacher who not only knows the principles, but follows them. So, that is a guru or acharya. If I am smoking a cigarette and I tell you, “Don’t smoke, it is bad for your health,” well, what effect is it going to have on you if I myself am smoking?

There is a story about Mahatma Gandhi, a famous fighter for India’s independence. Once, a lady brought her child to him and said, “My son eats too many sweets, and the doctor has said it is very bad for his health in his present condition, but he won’t stop eating sweets. So, please tell him not to eat sweets.” So, Gandhiji said, “All right, come back in two weeks.” So, the lady came back with her son in two weeks, and Gandhi Ji told the boy, “Don’t eat sweets, they are bad for you.” So, the mother asked, “I asked you to tell him that two weeks ago, why didn’t you just tell him then? Well, why did you ask us to come back?” And he replied, “Well, then I was eating sweets myself, so how could I ask him to stop eating sweets when I myself was eating sweets? So, in these two weeks, I stopped eating sweets, and so, now I could tell him.” So, that is the principle. If something is not only spoken with the lips but is actually practiced in one’s own life, it has more effect, it is more appropriate in every way. So, in the Vedic tradition, the teacher, the guru, the acharya, he practices what he preaches, and he helps his students not only to understand theoretically, but also to apply the knowledge practically, so that they can actually feel some improvement in the quality of their life. And all of the practitioners here, many have been practicing for many years, they have been chanting for many years, they feel that they have gotten some benefit. Otherwise, no one will keep chanting day after day, year after year, unless they feel something. So, it is something you can feel. And that is the idea, to do good for others. There is an image of a Hindu, of a yogi, who is absorbed in his own bliss, he doesn’t really care about other people, he doesn’t really care about the world. But in our mind, we care very much about other people, we care about the world. And therefore, we want people to have this knowledge, so they can improve their lives. And when their lives improve individually, the quality of life on the planet will also improve.

Teacher: Isn’t that the whole concept of bhakti-yoga? Is the love, the devotion. If one does love, here you are not going to be a yogi sitting in the mountain just [Unintelligible 00:33:16] in order to show that. I like what you said about a teacher, a guru, he has to have three things. They have to have the knowledge, they have to practice the knowledge, and what was your other one?

Giriraj Swami: You have to teach it.

Teacher: They have to teach it; they have to believe it. It is that one that is in the middle, that seems to be our struggle. It is because Jesus said. . . His disciples said, “Who do we know to follow?” He said, “You will know them by their fruits, you will know them by their actions.” And I think that is a common thread, and not only in bhakti-yoga, but Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism as well. Buddhism is a very good example of people who really know their stuff, but they don’t practice it. And I am at fault there too myself; I am eating sweets a lot too. [laughter] I am sorry.

Giriraj Swami: Yes. But that is a very important point. I don’t know much in detail, but I heard about Billy Graham, maybe the most famous and successful of the evangelists, that he studied what caused the downfall of other preachers. He found two things; women, the opposite sex, and money. And so, he resolved that he would never be alone with a woman in the course of his preaching, he would always have someone with him, and he would never personally handle the money, the money would all go into a charitable fund and be administered by others. And because he had that resolute determination, he was able to remain exemplary. And therefore, he was able to help others so much, whereas you could recite a whole litany of all the charismatic preachers who have fallen victim to. . .

Teacher: [Unintelligible 00:35:53]

Giriraj Swami: Yes. Well, I think we can see if you have any questions that you would like to ask and take a break.

Teacher: Any questions? Don’t be shy [laughter] Anything?

Student: Can you explain dharma please.

Giriraj Swami: Dharma? That is an excellent question, that is an excellent question. Dharma is one of the most important words or concepts. Dharma is often translated as religion, or duty. But again, if we analyze the root of the word, it goes deeper than that. The root is ‘dhar’ which means that which sustains, or that which cannot be separated from a thing. So, if we take some common examples, sugar is sweet. So, from that point of view, you could say the dharma of sugar is to be sweet, it is its intrinsic nature, inherent characteristic. Chili is hot. You can’t have sugar that is hot and not sweet, you can’t have chili that is sweet and not hot. So, from that point of view, you can say that the dharma of chili is to be hot. So now, the crucial question is what is the dharma of the living being? What is the characteristic of the living being that cannot be separated from him or her under any circumstance? And if you analyze as Vedic authorities have analyzed, it is service. The living being is always rendering service.

Now, how do we see that? Well, in ordinary affairs, we can see the man goes to work, he is serving his boss. He comes home, his wife. . . I am not dealing in stereotypes; it is just to illustrate. He comes home, the wife cooks for him, she is serving him. But there are people who say, “I don’t want to serve anybody. Why should I have to be a servant? I don’t want to serve anybody.” But the person ends up serving his or her senses. My tongue says, “I want a cigarette,” “Okay, okay, okay, you want a cigarette? Okay, let’s get a cigarette and light up, okay, okay.” He is serving his tongue. My ears say, “I want to hear some nice music,” “Okay, okay, what? You want to go to concert? You want to get a CD? What do you want?” He is serving his ears. Or the stomach says, “I am hungry, I want some food,” “Okay, okay, what do you want? What do you want?” So, if you don’t serve anyone else, you serve your senses. But you cannot avoid service, at every moment you are serving. People run for office, they are very eager to be elected to office, but they have to serve the voters. If the voters aren’t pleased with their service, they will throw them out, they will elect someone else. So, even if you are the president, you are a servant, even if you are the king, you are a servant. Everyone is servant all the time.

So now, given that we are servants, the question is, where do we place our service so that we can be happy being servants? And that is God or Krishna, and that is eternal. I mentioned the word eternal means no beginning and no end. And in Sanskrit, that is sanātana. So, there is a term, sanātana-dharma, and that is synonymous, ultimately as Krishna consciousness or as bhakti-yoga. Sanātana-dharma means our eternal, constitutional position, which is to serve God. Okay. Right now, I am an American and I am running for office. I say, “I will serve the people of America better.” They have their American flags; every political rally has the American flag. So, depending on the office, “I will serve America better, I will serve Texas better, I will serve this district better, I will serve this county better, I will serve this city better, I will serve this department better.” They have to serve, but that is not eternal service because, okay, this life I am an American, I am waving the American flag, but who knows, in my next life I might be a Muslim. This life I am saying, “I will protect America from Muslim extremists,” but in his next life he may be a Muslim and he may be waving the flag of Islam and saying, “I will bring down that corrupt, materialistic, hedonistic society.”

So, all this service is temporary. So, we serve our nation, we serve our community, we serve our family, but it is all temporary, it only continues as long as we are in this body and identify with the body and the designations of the body.

Teacher: So, I am sorry, in other words, there is an old Bob Dylan song that says, “You have got to serve somebody. It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you are going to have to serve.” We have a choice; we have a choice to serve. You as a teacher have to tell people that the only place that you can serve and can quickly be happy is God.

Giriraj Swami: Yes, that is right, that is right.

Teacher: And that is the only thing that is going to help to align us with the eternal. God is eternal. Why would you serve me when I am going to die, and probably pretty soon? I am getting up there in age. I am going to die soon. Why would you want to do that? Why would you serve me when you can serve Krishna?

Giriraj Swami: Yes, perfect, perfect. And believe it or not, some of our devotees met Bob Dylan in Toronto. I don’t know if it was a world’s fair, it was some event, they met him in Toronto, and they told him this philosophy, and then he incorporated it in that song.

Teacher: Yes, I love the song.

Giriraj Swami: Yes.

Teacher: But it is the same aspect with Arjuna. Arjuna is giving up, he is going to die, he rather do this, this is a false sense of knowledge, he does not know. And Krishna basically tells him, “Get up, get up and fight, that is what you are supposed to do.”

Giriraj Swami: That is right.

Teacher: And you are supposed to teach, you are supposed to teach me, you are supposed to teach me, I am supposed to teach these wonderful kids, you know what, she is supposed to be a good mother, she is supposed to be a really good teacher, he is supposed to be a great executive. You asked me that first question, “What do you want these kids to know?” I want them to serve, I want them to serve in whatever capacity that God has given them to serve Him, that is my underlining thing. I could probably get in trouble with the State of Texas right now for saying that, but that is really what I want. [laughter]

Giriraj Swami: Well, that is very nice. Yes, within Vedic civilization, there is a system called varnashrama-dharma. And varnashrama-dharma is not exactly the same as sanātana-dharma, but varnashrama-dharma means your occupational duties according to religious principles, according to your station in life. So, if you are an unmarried student or brahmachari, you have your dharma or duties as a student. If you are a married person, a husband or a wife or a mother or a father, you have your duties as husband, wife, mother, or father, and so on. If you are a teacher, you have your duties as a teacher. If you are an administrator, you have your duties as an administrator. So, in the Vedic system, one has one’s dharma in one’s respective position in society. But the ultimate dharma, and this is the ultimate teaching of the Bhagavad-gītā, after so much discussion of dharma with Arjuna, at the end, the final instruction of Krishna is, sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja, “give up all these other temporary dharmas and just surrender to Me.” That is your ultimate dharma, or duty, or religious principle, or that is your eternal nature.

Teacher: Everything has to boil down to something and for Arjuna it boiled down to Krishna, [laughter] and hopefully, in my life, I am so sorry, I am a coach, I am used to yelling at people. It is true that everything is boiled down, I think that is the whole point of the Bhagavad-gītā, everything was boiling down, and it was getting Arjuna to finally get to that point, “I have got to fight, I have got to follow God’s will, I have got to do this, I have got to do this.” And that attitude, Arjuna had to have an attitude, he lost his attitude. And I would love to have for everybody here that had that same attitude, I would love for you to have that attitude to serve Krishna with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul, I would love to see that, and I would love to see their attitudes like that. That is what makes us what we need to do, and that might have been the best question asked for a long, long time that I said, “What is dharma?”

Giriraj Swami: Yes.

Teacher: It means so many things. It means so many things, but it means one thing. Does that make sense?

Giriraj Swami: Yes, it does.

Teacher: Yes, it means so many things, but yet, it means one thing.

Giriraj Swami: And what you quoted is one of my favorite passages in the Bible because it really sums up Krishna consciousness, “Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy soul and all thy heart and all thy might,” and it is basically, when thou lays down, when thou rises up, it is like day and night. That is your life, to remember God and follow His instructions and teach them to your children. It could be your biological children, your students in school, any dependent or subordinate, or even friend. So, that passage, I love that passage, it really sums up Krishna consciousness.

Teacher: We want to thank you very much for speaking with us today.

Giriraj Swami: My pleasure.

Teacher: I am afraid we are under time constraints here; we have got to get the class back by a certain amount of time, but we have thoroughly enjoyed what you have said to us today. It really concretes everything that we have been doing.

Giriraj Swami: Well, thank you, thank you.

Teacher: Thank you so much. God bless you all.