Purpose of Life

Host: So, welcome, Maharaja. Hare Krishna. Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. Thank you so much for being here. Giriraj Swami is a spiritual master, he has written many books, he has been practicing bhakti-yoga for how long? More than forty years, fifty years.

Giriraj Swami: Fifty years.

Host: Fifty years. And we are very honored that he is with us now. The question for you is: These are very tough times for everybody, times for reflection, and we would like you to talk about the purpose of life.

Giriraj Swami: To understand what is the purpose of life, we have to know who we are, what is our identity. Everyone is interested in his or her self-interest, and that is natural. But to know what our real self-interest is, we have to know who our self is. So, the Bhagavad-gītā is the basic text book of spiritual knowledge spoken by Sri Krishna Himself, whom we accept as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. And the Bhagavad-gītā is the basic text book of yoga, and yoga literally means to link or connect with God. So, the Bhagavad-gītā explains that we, the living entity, are distinct from the body, but we are actually a spiritual particle, part and parcel of God, within the body. When the soul leaves the body, we say the body is dead. And once the soul has left the body, no matter what we do to fix the body, we cannot bring it back to life because the soul has gone.

So, that soul, which means “us,” is part and parcel of the Supreme Soul, or God. The purpose of life is to reconnect with God, to revive our eternal relationship with God. And as Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gītā, the only way by which we can understand Him and realize Him is through bhakti-yoga. The Bhagavad-gītā describes different kinds of yoga, but the Gītā says that the highest form of yoga is bhakti-yoga. Bhakti-yoga means “the method of connecting with God through love and devotion for God, through loving service to God.”

There are different practices included in bhakti-yoga, but the most important is to chant the divine names of the Supreme. There are different names of the Supreme mentioned in different scriptures and different countries and different scriptures, and one can chant any of those names of God. But if you are not chanting any specific name, then we recommend chanting the Hare Krishna maha-mantra. Mantra; man means “mind,” and tra means “that which delivers.” And mahā means “great.” So, the Hare Krishna maha-mantra is the great chant for deliverance. It consists of three names; Hare, Krishna, and Rama, arranged scientifically as sixteen; Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.

So, we thank you for joining us today, and one thing that we hope you will take away from this talk is that you are not the body but you are soul, and the soul is part and parcel of the Supreme Soul, or God. The purpose of life is to revive your eternal relationship with the Supreme, and the best way to do that is to chant the divine names of the Supreme. ¡Muchas gracias! Hare Krishna.

Host: Thanks to you! Hare Krishna.