Anesthesia is meant to help heal sickness, not hide it
Suppose a surgeon is operating on a patient. Naturally, the surgeon needs to give anesthesia so that the patient’s pain while being operated is minimized. [...]
Life’s miseries are meant to be analyzed and addressed, not anesthetized
Suppose a distressed person on finding their pain decreased by anesthesia before surgery regularly starts anesthetizing themselves. This would deaden them in their capacity to [...]
Comfortable misery is still misery
We living in our AC homes and offices may pity people of the past who had to work outdoors, sweating profusely under the burning hot [...]
See temptation as an attack, not as a defeat
Suppose soldiers guarding the national border against a hostile neighbor find bullets whizzing past them. Naturally, they will see the bullets as signs of attack [...]
Doing what we don’t feel like doing is not necessarily being superficial
Some people say, “Why should I practice bhakti when I don’t feel like doing it? I don’t want to be superficial. I won’t do it [...]
In the war of egos, the winner is the bigger loser
When people disagree on an issue, the disagreement sometimes degenerates into a war of egos, where the issues are pushed into the background. People obsess [...]
The Gita complements verbal exposition with visual demonstration
The Bhagavad-gita expounds on the inconceivable relationship of God, Krishna, with this world through two paradoxical verses (09.04-05). These verses state that all of existence [...]
Purity reverses our mental gravity
Gravity refers to the force by which objects fall to the earth. Our mental gravity can refer to the force by which our thoughts naturally [...]
The instrumental self is not the self – it is the instrument to the self
One of the most intriguing Bhagavad-gita verses states: Elevate the self with the self, don’t degrade the self with the self; the self is the [...]
People need to feel understood before they become ready to understand
Suppose a patient goes to a doctor and, without hearing the patient, the doctor starts giving a prescription. The patient will be taken aback, “I [...]
Cultivate a tender heart, but cover it with a thick skin
The process of bhakti is meant to purify and soften our heart, to make it receptive to relish the subtle and sweet love of Krishna. [...]
Life is meant to get back to Krishna, not to get back at others
Suppose a snake bites us. Suppose further that we become enraged at the snake and start chasing it to kick it to death. Even if [...]
Aversion is as much a temptation as is attachment
On the spiritual path, we understand that attachments are temptations. When we are too attached to someone, we are always thinking about that person and [...]
Determination means to decouple emotion from action
Some of us may feel, “I don’t have determination – I just can’t stick to my resolutions.” We almost treat determination like a mystical gift, [...]
Don’t let victory in the battle against temptation come at the cost of defeat in the war for devotion
While growing spiritually, we know that we need to resist certain anti-devotional temptations. But we may get so consumed by the effort to give up [...]
Stop the snowball before it snowballs you
When a snowball is on top of a hill and is about to start rolling down, it can be checked and cracked with just a [...]
Resign from illusion – don’t re-sign into illusion
We all have our illusory attachments because of which we succumb to self-defeating indulgences. When we realize the consequences of those indulgences, how they cause [...]
When we get out of ourselves, we find ourselves
Many people are eager to be themselves, to find and express their authentic self. This search for authenticity is good. But if not channelled properly, [...]
Our greatest power is not the power we have over others, but the power we have over ourselves
Many people hunger for power. Such power-hungry people usually define power in terms of externals, in terms of how much they can control others and [...]
Spiritualism is the shadow of spirituality
Spiritualism is the study of spirits, wherein spirits refer to disembodied beings such as ghosts. Spirituality, on the other hand, is the exploration of the [...]
Dedicate your external to the eternal internal, not the ephemeral internal
When authors write books, they often dedicate their book to some person – that person may not be much mentioned in the book itself, but [...]