Welcome – Karma Free Food

Material Miseries are Like COVID-Virus

A Proposition from Bhagavad Gita

A couple of years ago, I was driving home with my family in Dallas TX (USA) on I-35 freeway, there was an accident ahead of us, the car was turned upside down, still smoking from a fire that had been put out. Like any other accident, we felt sad for the victims who had been hurt, but we moved on.

The next day I learned that the driver of the car was in his late twenties and was the coach of my daughter’s local swim team. He had died in the accident. I was shocked- I knew him well. Recently married, he had a young child and was on his way to become a fireman. He was compassionate to kids and cared about the community. He was hit from the back by another speeding car. It was an accident that was no fault of his. I wondered, why such a tragedy should happen to such a kind person.

As we all witnessed many tsunamis or hurricanes like Harvey, Irma, and Maria causing devastation, many people in that situation were asking the same question, “Why me, God? I am so good, I go to church, temple or mosque every Sunday, I do not trouble others. I do not deserve this. Why

me?”

Similarly, we heard of the stampede at a local train station in Mumbai where 25+ people died. Or the Las Vegas shooting where more than 50 people died. Or the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 carrying 227 passages, all disappeared from the face of this planet in 2014.

Now in 2020 we hear Corona Virus declared as pandemic by WHO. This is not the first time that we face a pandemic in modern history. In the last 100 years, we saw more than this:

Big Question!

In our lives, we all have been in similar situations and asked this question, “Why me?”

Why am I suffering when I am good to others, giving to charity, doing community work, going to church or temple etc.?

If there is God, why does God allow this to happen?

Why did I get the inferior result even though I worked harder than my colleague?

Why did someone die early? They were a good person.

Why are we being subjected to a pandemic?

Nature of the Material World

Since time immemorial, human beings have been working hard to understand the mystery of why bad things happen as well as the phenomenon of death. While modern science and technology has allowed us to make unimaginable progress, sadly we have not made advancements in getting answers to these critical questions.

The fact is that after spending many Octillion Dollars we have made ZERO progress in the known 5000 years of history. Corporations and modern science seem to have taken a different

approach. “Let us not answer this but let us keep selling the dream of happiness by changing the products every few months (bombarding consumers with advertisements and billboards) -It will

really make you happy or you will stay young”. The implied underlying message appears to be that you can put off old age and death if you keep using that cream or buy that new gadget. Unfortunately, it has not worked in the last 5000 years. We are still going through bad situations, diseases, old age, and death in spite of all the material progress.

According to Gita, Material world has following key characteristics. One goes through 4 miseries 1. Old Age 2. Disease 3. Death 4. Birth in Material Body again

In a now-classic commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005, Steve Jobs dispensed this advice about life and death:

“……No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get

there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, ….”

So, where do we go to get our answer?

Many scholars have said that the Vedic scriptures have provided all the explanations from time immemorial, but in our quest to discover and due to our false ego of wanting to ‘do-it-yourself’, we have wasted many thousands of years with ZERO progress, being unwilling to take shelter of the wise.

According to the spiritual wisdom from Vedic scriptures, we have 3 tier presence:

Material body – made of 5 elements – Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Either

Subtle Body – made of 3 elements – Mind (मन not brain), Intelligence, False Ego

Soul – Spiritual me (Ever exists)

At the time of death, material body is merged with 5 elements and subtle body and soul goes to the next body for spiritual elevation until our false ego changes to real ego

Our material body is subject to 4 miseries – Birth in material body, Old Age, Disease, Death and Birth again. It is a matter very short time as we move towards old age, disease and death. It is same for any other organism, including mosquitos, dogs, fish, plants, bacterium, or even other humans.

Spiritual scholars consider Bhagavad Gita as the summary of all Vedic scriptures. According to Bhagavad Gita, the answer to the question of “Why do bad things happen to good people?”, is “They don’t”. Let us take a quick look at it and see if it makes sense.

Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and credited with being the “father of the atomic bomb” .

In August 1945, the weapons were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oppenheimer later remarked that it brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Gita (Verse 4.5) “Krishna explains: Many, many births both you and I have passed. I can remember all of them, but you cannot”.

Law of Kama

Out of 8.4 million species described in Vedic literature, human species is one subject to Karma. In each human life, we perform some karma (actions) and we get reactions for each karma. From science we know that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Good karma gives us positive rewards at some point of time in life and bad karma gets us negative results at some point in life.

Bhagavad-Gita explains that there is a great chain of cause and effect, of actions and reactions, and that the intricacies of action and reaction are difficult to comprehend. As we are born, we are pre-assigned some of our past reactions along with the new body. These pre-assigned karmic reactions are called “Prarabdha” or “our luck”. All previous pending reactions are called “Sanchit Karma”. Since we go through the cycle of life and death, we continue to accumulate the reactions based on good and bad

karma and continue to increase the bank balance of these reactions.

It is only because of past karma that someone is born in the family of a beggar and someone takes birth in the family of a billionaire. Until these bank balance of reactions (Sanchit Karma) are all exhausted, we have to keep on taking a series of perishable bodies, one after another, to go through the good and bad reactions. Unfortunately, in this process we keep adding more reactions to our bank balance.

His Divine Grace, AC Bhaktivendata Swami Prabhupada, the founding Acharya of ISKCON, explains this using the following analogy (taken from the lecture given by his disciple HH Giriraj Swami)– “Imagine a person going in to see a movie that is already in progress. In the movie, a man is sitting peacefully at his desk, and then someone comes in and shoots him. The person watching the movie might think, ‘Oh, how horrible! Why did that happen?’ But having come in mid-way, the person was not there to witness what had already happened, how the man in the office had actually arranged for the murder of so many other people. So, based on superficial appearances, one

might say, ‘Oh, he was just an ordinary fellow. Why did he have to suffer so?’ But there were things that the man did that led to him being shot that we are unaware of. And that is pretty much how the law of karma works.

In fact, it has been stated that by looking at your present body, you can understand what your past activities were, and that by looking at your present activities, you can understand

what your next body will be–because the body itself is a result of past activities or karma. And built into the body is a certain degree of happiness and distress.”

Karma is taking ownership of our actions. Natures’ justice system works not just in one life but goes until all reactions are over. Practically it is never ending, like a hamster wheel, because we have chosen to stay in it.

(Material Nature is an extended inferior energy of Krishna as descried in Gita Chapter 7)

TEXT 4: Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego – all together these eight constitute My separated material energies.

TEXT 5: Besides these, O mighty-armed Arjuna, there is another, superior energy of Mine, which comprises the living entities who are exploiting the resources of this material, inferior nature.

TEXT 6: All created beings have their source in these two natures. Of all that is material and all that is spiritual in this world, know for certain that I am both the origin and the dissolution.

https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/7/

The next question is, “Is it possible to avoid these reactions and not create more reactions in future?” In other words, “How do I come out of this cycle of reactions which seems to be never ending?”

He explains from Bhagavad Gita that “beyond both of these categories of good karma (pious activities) and bad karma/vikarma (sinful activities), there is another category altogether: akarma (non-reactionary activities) or transcendental activities that are beyond good and bad reactions.”

Krishna explains in the Gita that until your actions are for you only, you will have reactions but once you dedicate your actions to me, I will take all your reactions past

present and future and make it all ZERO (Gita 3.31).

According to Vedic scriptures, Krishna, the supreme personality of godhead, is ultimately beyond the laws, and laws operate under his authority. So, based on our free will and desire, he can free someone from bondage and cycle of birth and death.

Few key Bhagavad Gita verses to understand this answer are:

Bg 7.14 — This divine energy of Mine, consisting of the three modes of material nature, is difficult to overcome. But those who have surrendered unto Me can easily cross beyond it.

Bg 9.27 — “Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer or give away, and whatever austerities you perform – do that, O son of Kuntī, as an offering to Me.”

Bg 9.28 — “In this way you will be freed from bondage to work and its auspicious and inauspicious results. With your mind fixed on Me in this principle of renunciation, you will be liberated and come to Me.”

Bg 18.58 — If you become conscious of Me, you will pass over all the obstacles of conditioned life by My grace. If, however, you do not work in such consciousness but act through false ego, not hearing Me, you will be lost.

Bg 18.66 — Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reactions. Do not fear. https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/

Making Yoga a Daily Activity

According to Bhagavad Gita, Yoga process is the Exit Strategy from the cycle of Bad and Good karma. So, my proposition is that since the whole word is in lock down and by your good fortune, you are in a position to spare this time to elevate your consciousness, let us give 1 to 2 hours a day to gain insights from the Bhagavad Gita. What is there to lose? I invite you to please join for the free “Bhagavad Gita As It Is” weekly classes at your nearest ISKCON temple or via audio podcast / YouTube. So far, we have been feeding our body, let us take time to feed the soul. This will help build the ABCD framework for Exit Strategy (Bhakti Yoga).

A – Association of bhakti yoga practitioners

B – Books, 15 min a day of Bhagavad Gita reading

C – Chanting (Mantra meditation) for spiritual cleansing / Feeding the soul

D – Diet, eat what is good for spiritual upliftment