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Are You More Then Green, Righteous, & Dead?
by Jayadvaita Swami
Twenty years ago, no one gave a damn. You could gum up a river with factory sludge, chop down rain forests wholesale, spray fluorocarbons into the air like a kid sprinkling confetti, and no one would say boo.
No longer. Grade-school kids want to grow up to be ecologists. New York tycoons sort their trash to recycle. Rock singers play concerts to save prairies and wetlands. Political candidates tell us they’re worried about the fate of the three-toed baboon.
Caring about the environment helps you feel good about yourself. At the supermarket you choose paper instead of plastic. You write your thank-you notes on cards made from ground-up newsprint and cotton waste. You chip in a few dollars for Greenpeace. Hey, you care about the earth. You’re a righteous human being.
Yet too often our concern for the earth lacks a metaphysical grounding. Intuitively, living in harmony with the earth feels right. If the earth is the house we’re going to live in, why litter the rooms with beer cans or pee all over the carpet?
But in an ultimate sense, so what? If life is just a series of chemical reactions, what does it matter if the chemicals go messy? Species come and species go. Why get all mushy and teary-eyed if a few berserk bipeds wipe out some hundred thousand kinds of their neighbors? The earth may be our mother, but sooner or later she’s going to blow to atomic dusting powder anyway. And from a cosmic point of view that’s just a few mega-moments down the line. So why all the fuss?
You can say it’s for our children, it’s for future generations. But they’re also just a flash in eternity. Why bother for them?
Guardians of the green remind us urgently that dirtying and devouring the earth is short-sighted. But to be far-sighted we have to look beyond what seems clean, pleasant, and harmonious on a physical spot of earth on a brief ride through the universe. We have to ask ourselves not only how well we’re treating the earth but why we’re on it and where we are ultimately going.
Otherwise, though ecologically aware, we’re metaphysically dead.
Lecture on DESIRE
1) See this video:
2) Hear the lecture (simplified transcript follows):
December 12, 2007
Krishna Lounge Lecture
It is stated in the Bhagavad-gita that when a person contemplates objects of sensual attraction then attachment develops. For example, if you contemplate an iPod you start wanting it. Our daily life constitutes of three cycles: contemplating, feeling, and wanting. You first think of something, like pizza, then you start feeling it and your mouth starts watering and it seems real. The third stage is that you start wanting it. When you have allowed yourself to come to this third stage, it is hard to forget about the object of desire. The commercial industry is based on this principle of contemplating. It all starts with contemplation, and when you think about something you get really close to start feeling it. For example, you see billboards so you start thinking about your objects of desire. The media affects us. Our lives consist of these three phases of the cycle. The cycle keeps repeating. Sometimes these cycles are short term and sometimes they are long term. Short term would be having the desire to go to a concert and long term would be having the desire for a good education to get a good job.
There is nothing wrong with this cycle because our minds are hard wired to go through these cycles. The essential thing though is to replace the material object of our contemplation for the spiritual. (!!!)
In the Bhagavad-gita it is said that if the object of our contemplation is material things then the desire is bound to end in frustration. Material things like food, sleeping and sex all have a beginning and an end. It is like nectar in the beginning but as we become more indulgent it turns into frustration in the end. The verse of the Bhagavad-gita says that the person first contemplates the object of sense pleasure and then great attachment follows. Then there is great desire to attain it and then we try to attain it. We may get it and try to fulfill our desire, but because our intrinsic nature, the soul which is our true identity, is spiritual then there in no material thing that can fulfill the self. Only spiritual substance can fulfill the self. Trying to fulfill our material desires is like trying to fill a huge hole. Only spiritual substance can fill up that hole. Because material things can not fill up this empty hole there is frustration, and then when we are frustrated we get angry. What follows next is bewilderment of memory, and when memory is lost intelligence goes out the window. When intelligence is lost you are irrational. It doesn’t matter if you need it or if it is of your benefit, you just want it. When intelligence is lost people get thrown into the material pool. Someone in a material pool is someone caught in material existence and they become a materialist. If the object of our contemplation is sensual and material then we become a materialist.
In order to break out of this cycle of sense gratification and materialism, we need to meditate. According to the Bhagavad-gita, we’ve had so many lifetimes and lifetime after lifetime we have been going through these cycles of perpetuating material existence. If we engage our minds in meditation and focus our minds on spiritual objects, we become capable of breaking out of material bondage so we can become free of it. Otherwise we are bound to be humble obedient servants of our desires.
The government, billboards, oil companies, big corporations, and mainstream society have a strong influence on our desires and play a pertinent role in forming our desires. They regard us as consumer units. Desires are being planted in our hearts by these individuals whose hearts are also filled with desires. This is simply a vicious cycle of nothing but illusion. Therefore meditation helps get out of the illusion. Meditation helps people focus on spiritual substance, which is the only way to break free from material slavery.
When desire becomes strong, it’s like a donkey. In the Mediterranean there are donkey races and a lot of times right before the donkey is about to win, it doesn’t want to move. Our mind is obstinate like a donkey and just doesn’t want to move. For some of us who have been born in the recent history we don’t even know of a time when big corporations didn’t exist. We don’t know of a time when the economies of countries were based on agrarian values. In other words you eat what you grow. You have a few animals, you love and tend to your cow and she gives you milk. You have some grain and you have some veggies and you have more than you need. Now we are born in the modern culture where the economy is based on buying and selling. We don’t know anything besides this and we take this for granted and think it is normal. But is not normal to grow a lot of produce and then sell it. It is not normal to have a whole factory and a chain of stores because as soon as you commercialize something things start to loose quality. As you increase quantity you loose quality, that is the law of karma. Karma is law of action and reaction. As soon as people commercialize something, desires escalate. Even if you start with a noble desire, such as wanting to help, the desire will still get out of control.
People are restless due to strong desires, so meditation is necessary. Gathering at the Krishna lounge and chanting the Hare Krishna mantra is very beneficial and a form of meditation because spiritual sound vibration frees the mind of material slavery. It is necessary for our minds to be filled with spiritual objects of contemplation. That way we are not filled with material desires. If we are not spiritually inspired, we will be materially inspired. Mediation makes your heart filled with spiritual desires, and you become a spiritual person because desires are followed by action.
3) Hear the last kirtan that THU
