Krishna Realm

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Sri Krsna here elaborates nature of demoniac (asuri) people: They are Self-complacent and always impudent, deluded by wealth and false prestige, they sometimes perform Sacrifices (sacrificial rites) in namesake without following any rules or regulations of Vedic Scriptures.

Thinking themselves all in all, not caring for any authority or scripture, the demoniac people, sometimes perform so-called religious or sacrificial rites. And since they do not believe in authority, they are very impudent. This is due to illusion caused by accumulating some wealth and false prestige. Sometimes such demons take up the role of preacher, mislead the people, and become known as religious reformers or as incarnations of God. They make a show of performing sacrifices, or they worship the demigods, or manufacture their own God. Common men advertise them as God and worship them, and by the foolish they are considered advanced in the principles of religion, or in the principles of spiritual knowledge. They take the dress of the renounced order of life and engage in all nonsense in that dress.

Actually there are so many restrictions for one who has renounced this world. The demons, however, do not care for such restrictions. They think that whatever path one can create is one's own path; there is no such thing as a standard path one has to follow. The word avidhi-purvakam, meaning disregard for the rules and regulations, is especially stressed here. These things are always due to ignorance and illusion.

1 year ago | [YT] | 7

Krishna Realm

The mindset of those who derive pride from their power is observed. Here Sri Krsna describes the mindset of people who derive pride from other things such as wealth and family. An excess of wealth, especially for those who did not come from wealthy families, is the most common source of pride. Such people boast about their latest expensive garment, their net worth, their membership in elite clubs and so on. They are only interested in consumption and enjoyment.

Others derive pride from their ancestry and their lineage. For some, this pride comes from the fact that their ancestors were kings or landowners. For some, this pride comes from the fact that everyone in their family has always been a politician or a jeweller. Some others even boast about the number of sacrifices they have conducted and amount of charity they have donated. Instead of charity and sacrifice leading to purification of one’s mind, such grandiose spectacles have gaining publicity and favours as their goal.

If we were to summarize the attitude in these three shlokas, it is this – no one is equal to me. I am superior to everyone else. So the net result is the strengthening, the hardening of the I notion, the ego, the aham. Each step taken towards the ego is one step taken away from self realization. There is no scope for detachment or renunciation. Attachment grows by leaps and bounds in such people. The root cause of all this is ignorance of one’s true nature.

1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 4

Krishna Realm

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If someone harbours an endless list of desires, it is impossible for all of them to be fulfilled. So then, any person who becomes an obstacle to the fulfillment of a desire automatically becomes an enemy. For instance, if another business becomes a competitor to our business, we begin to treat them as enemies instead of improving our products. That leads to all kinds of unethical and illegal ways of getting rid of our competitors, all the way upto physical harm.

Now, many people rise to political power by knocking off their competitors. They begin to think they are above the law. And since they do not believe in god, they think that they themselves are gods, and that only they can control the fate of people. They can take the law into their own hands, because they believe they are the lawmakers. Pleasure and enjoyment is their only goal. Such is the thinking of gangsters, military dictators and criminals. In the Rāmāyana, Ravāna began to think like this, leading to his downfall.

Other materialistic people may not necessarily become dictators, but try to project their power and arrogance wherever possible. They say things like they can pick up the phone and call the president of the country. They have accomplished everything there is to accomplish. There is no one mightier than them. They mistake this sense of power for happiness, because they have not experienced what real happiness is. Even a simple act of name dropping indicates a deeper obsession with materialism and power.

1 year ago | [YT] | 3

Krishna Realm

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Sri Krsna wants us to examine our own outlook and find out the level of materialism in it. So in this shloka and the following two shlokas, he uses the first person to drive this point home. Here, he wants us to inquire into what we think is our ultimate goal, our destination, our objective in life. Most of us will come to a similar conclusion that it is accumulation of wealth so that we can take care of our material desires as well as those of our family.

The demoniac person thinks: "So much wealth do I have today, and I will gain more according to my schemes. So much is mine now, and it will increase in the future, more and more.

But this line of thinking has a flaw in it. Desires are bahushākha, they multiply infinitely, as we have seen in earlier chapters. Each desire contains the seed of several other desires. If any of those desires is unfulfilled, we invite stress, tension and anxiety into our lives. Now it does not mean that we should not harbour any desires. It just means that we need to apply some system, some framework to ensure that desires are managed and do not get out of hand.

The four stage āshrama system (brahmachāri, grihastha, vānaprastha and sanyāsi) prescribes the duties of an individual based on their stage in life. When duties are given importance, desires automatically manage themselves. For instance, if one is a householder, then one focuses on what is the essential set of desires for fulfilling one’s duties, rather than deriving joy out of adding more and more desires. And even if some desires are unfulfilled, they do not agitate the mind because the goal is the duty, not the desire.

1 year ago | [YT] | 3

Krishna Realm

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Every selfish desire carries a seed of anxiety within it, as we have seen. Sri Krsna says that such desires harm us in another manner. We develop attachment towards the desire, we are bound. It is as if a pāsha, a lasso, a rope is tied around us on one end, and the desire on the other. Just like a cowboy puts a lasso around a horse and makes it obey his instructions, each desire makes us into a slave, makes us dance to its tune.

If this is our plight, what to talk of highly materialistic individuals.They have not one but hundreds of such ropes to bind them. If one desire is fulfilled, they have several others waiting in line. If a desire does not get fulfilled, it generates anger and agitation, causing them to inflict harm and pain upon themselves and upon others. They fall into a vicious cycle of desire, anger and greed which, given that they subscribe only to a materialistic viewpoint, is almost impossible to get out of.

So if one is continually plagued by hundreds of desires, and has a narrow outlook towards the world, what is his solution? It is money, it is accumulation of wealth, artha sanchaayan. But, in order to fulfill the infinite desires that are pulling him in several directions, there arises a need to generate wealth beyond what is legally and ethically possible. Therefore, he resorts to making money using any means necessary, legal or illegal.

1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 3

Krishna Realm

Hare Kṛṣṇa 🦚🙏🏻

Thought of the Day 💭🦚

"A Vaisnava is always very kind at heart to all living entities."

- Srila Prabhupada 🦚🙏🏻

1 year ago | [YT] | 5

Krishna Realm

हरे कृष्णा I 🦚🙏🏻

आज का सुविचार🙏🏻🦚

"यदि कोई किसी व्यक्ति को एक बार भी 'कृष्ण' शब्द कहते हुए सुनता है, तो उस व्यक्ति को सामान्य समूह में से सर्वश्रेष्ठ व्यक्ति के रूप में स्वीकार किया जाना चाहिए।"

         -  श्रील भक्तिवेदांत प्रभुपाद 🦚🙏🏻

Hare Kṛṣṇa 🦚🙏🏻

Thought of the Day 💭🦚

"If one hears a person say even once the word Kṛṣṇa,' that person should be accepted as the best man out of the common group."

         -  Srila Prabhupada 🦚🙏🏻

2 years ago | [YT] | 7

Krishna Realm

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