Why bother whether the glass is half-empty or half-full when you can drink from either?
Based on our past ways of thinking and living, we all have developed an attitude that is optimistic or pessimistic or an unpredictable combination of [...]
Bhakti is pragmatic, not dogmatic
The essence of bhakti is the outflow of the human heart’s love towards the divine and the inflow of the divine’s love into the human [...]
The more we comprehend Krishna’s transcendence, the more we cherish his munificence
Suppose a country’s president visits a jail for inspiring prisoners to reform and be released. But suppose the prisoners ignorantly mistake the president to be [...]
Be faithful, but be watchful too
People ask, “Why should we believe in invisible things such as the soul and reject realities seen with our eyes?” Actually, we don’t need to [...]
Evaluating action without understanding position causes delusion
Suppose a tribal ignorant of surgery comes to a hospital and sees a surgeon cutting the patient’s body. Alarmed, he cries out, “Killer, killer, killer.” [...]
Seek a guru to show the way, not to sanction your way
Some people seek a guru as a social ornament. If they live in a pious society, then having a guru enhances their image. They like [...]
Fire-sacrifice is literal, metaphorical and transformational
The Gita talks repeatedly about yajna, sacrifices wherein oblations are offered to the sacred fire. We may wonder, “Does it recommend this activity literally or [...]
Seek not success in karma – seek success beyond karma
Success in karma refers to the attainment of worldly fruits such as prosperity, position, power, prestige and pleasure. Seeking such success, we often try to [...]
Get out of the drought of doubt
Doubt is a dangerous obstacle on the devotional path. In a heart scorched by doubt, the nectar of devotion gets evaporated and eliminated. Indeed, doubt [...]
The reincarnation of avatar in English is a revealing distortion
The Sanskrit word avatar has become mainstream in English due to both a Hollywood blockbuster and computer role-playing games. In contemporary usage, avatar refers to [...]
Krishna’s avatara is not actually an incarnation
The English word “incarnation” is derived primarily from Abrahamic theology – it describes Jesus who, Christianity holds, is God descended in flesh as a human [...]
Our incarnation is an incarceration — Krishna’s isn’t
At the start of its fourth chapter, the Bhagavad-gita features a striking question-answer round. When Krishna mentions (04.04) that he had shared the Gita’s wisdom [...]
The unborn takes birth to save us from rebirth
God is the source of everything. This foundational definition of God implies that he is the source of time too, for everything includes time. This [...]
Genealogy shapes mentality, but doesn’t determine it
The caste system widespread in India operates on the notion that people’s caste is determined solely by their birth. However, birth didn’t define the original [...]
The divine descent is meant to inspire the human ascent
Among the oft-quoted verses of the Bhagavad-gita are those describing God’s periodic descent (04.07-08): Whenever adharma predominates, he descends and re-establishes dharma, cosmic order. Still, [...]
The spiritual lies beyond both the logical and the psychological
The logical worldview accepts only those things that make sense to the intelligence’s logical faculty. So, it may, for example, dismiss the notion of God [...]
Our belonging is more important than our belongings
We often want to own more and more things. While those things may sometimes be functional necessities, we desire them not so much for what [...]
Rejection of all faith as blind faith is blind faith
Skeptics often deride all faith as blind faith – they hold that only by skepticism can one avoid being misled by false belief systems. Yes, [...]
Don’t be like soldiers fighting a past war
In wars, a strategy successful in one war may not be necessarily successful in a later war. For example, World War I saw the use [...]
The revelation of the revelation comes from the living tradition
Revelation is not just a one-time event that happened long ago. No doubt, at extraordinary moments in human history, God interacts directly with humans, without [...]
In scriptural dissemination, the problem is not in transmission but in reception
When we are watching TV and suddenly the image and sound goes off, we may presume that the problem is in transmission. But if we [...]