The culture may give a license to lust, but nature doesn’t
Lust is ubiquitous in today’s society with billboards depicting prurient images and movies enacting explicit scenes. Displays that would have appalled people even a few [...]
Hear to become aware of the savior who is ever here
How can we realize our spiritual nature? The Bhagavad-gita in its thirteenth chapter overviews the nature of the soul’s entanglement in matter and the way [...]
Lust de-spiritualizes the subject and dehumanizes the object
When the culture depicts lust as the expressway to enjoyment, how can we understand the Bhagavad-gita’s declaration (03.37) that lust is the enemy of the [...]
Fame is the pathway to not satisfaction but dissatisfaction
Fame is life’s driving purpose for many: “I would do anything to be the cynosure of all eyes, as are sportstars.” Little do they realize [...]
Leave temptation – and don’t leave a forwarding address
When troublesome stalkers harass people repeatedly, they may decide to flee. For this strategy to succeed, they need to leave without leaving a forwarding address; [...]
Don’t hide the devotion in the heart; hide the heart in the devotion
As we live in largely materialistic society, we may sometimes hide our devotion to avoid any unnecessary conflicts with others who don’t share our values. [...]
Euphemisms of deception are expressways to degradation
Euphemisms often help express distressing truths sensitively. But sometimes they are abused as tools of deception, as verbal sleights-of-hand to make evil sound good. Consider, [...]
Krishna is not just a point for meditation – he is the person for supplication
Yogis, specifically dhyana-yogis, start meditation by focusing on some point, such as the tip of the nose or the space between the eyebrows. As such [...]
AIM for Krishna to attain the ultimate absorption
When people do something they like, say, watching a sports match, they often get so absorbed that they don’t even notice discomforts such as sitting [...]
An intruder inside us is an intruder still
Suppose we find someone in our home. Will we assume that just because that intruder is now inside our home, he is our well-wisher? Suppose [...]
The real me is beyond jeans and genes
Being influenced by our superficial culture we often evaluate others based on externals. We may similarly evaluate ourselves too, imagining, say, that we are lovable [...]
Decrease the perception of effort and increase the anticipation of reward by intellectual conviction
When we practice spiritual life, our mind holds us back by making us feel that the effort is too much and the reward too little. [...]
Those who let the culture fill their brain with junk beliefs, fill their belly with junk food
Junk food is fast emerging as a serious health hazard. It is a major cause of obesity, which is rapidly becoming a leading global cause [...]
Reason is confounded not by faith, but by faithlessness
Does faith in God confound reason, as atheists argue? Not at all. Far from confounding reason, faith is the foundation of reason. The very idea [...]
Don’t pander; ponder
Some people ask, “Isn’t it our nature to be pleasure-seeking? Why then does the Bhagavad-gita ask us to give up pleasure?” The Gita doesn’t ask [...]
Progress from questioning to understanding by patient hearing
While hearing philosophy, whenever we get questions, we often expect immediate and immediately intelligible answers. However, to understand the answers, we frequently need conceptual background – [...]
Faith requires not the rejection of logic, but its subordination
Some people ask, “Faith in God requires believing illogical things such as his lifting a mountain. How can we reject logic like this?” Faith in [...]
Recover the soul; don’t re-cover it
We may get the question: “If I am a soul different from my body, then why can’t I realize myself as such?” Because of our [...]
Don’t let propensity for immensity obscure the primacy of intimacy
Many people conceive God’s greatness in terms of size and imagine him to be a giant being pervading the whole universe. Gita wisdom accommodates such [...]
Krishna is not a jealous God; he is a zealous God
The Western monotheistic traditions frequently depict God to be jealous; he forbids the worship of any other gods and even approves the destruction of their [...]
What characterizes civilization is not the presence of comforts, but the purification of consciousness
Many people consider as civilized societies that have comforts such as cars, cellphones and computers. Societies without these are deemed primitive, backward and uncivilized. Such [...]