Is our sight causing us to lose sight?
When we see a blind person struggling to find the way with a stick, we often feel compassion for that person’s condition. We consider our [...]
Are we trying to live someone else’s life?
All of us are irreducibly individual. We all have our own distinctive looks, tastes and talents, which combine in a way that makes us unique. [...]
Long to belong where we eternally belong
Few things define us as much as our longings. They occupy our thoughts, shape our words and determine our actions. Sadly however, most of our [...]
Enlightenment that is universal, beneficial and non-imitable
What is enlightenment? It essentially means understanding where to direct our heart's longing for love and directing it accordingly. The Bhagavad-gita (15.18) states that the enlightened offer [...]
Why pursue pleasure in a prison of protoplasm?
Our material body is a prison of protoplasm for us souls. Just asprison life inevitably involves sufferings like grueling work and unpleasant living conditions, the [...]
Lust is our longest and worst life-partner – divorce it
Lust is our longest life-partner – from the first hints of adolescence to the last gasps of old age, even to the death-bed; from the [...]
The eye to see the I
We see not with our eyes but with our knowledge. Where our eyes see a line graph curved sharply downwards, our knowledge of economics helps [...]
How material enjoyment falsifies materialism
Most people are infatuated with material pleasures. Due to such infatuation, they consider matter to be the primary, if not the only, reality. Thus, they [...]
Peel the cosmic onion to discover spiritual diversity in unity
Just as we need to peel off multiple covering layers to reach the essence of an onion, we need to peel of multiple covering layers [...]
We are aliens on earth
The possibility of aliens coming to the earth fascinates the contemporary imagination: "Can we encounter life-forms from other parts of the cosmos?" Science fiction regularly [...]
Tried, tired – and retired
All of us want to do something new. Andour craving for newness seems ready to be fulfilled byall the new gadgets, new dresses and other [...]
Guard against the last-ditch attack of the false ego
The notion that we are ourselves God is the false ego’s ultimate weapon. The false ego is the subtlest of all the subtle material elements. [...]
Go Within, Beyond the External – and the Internal
Many self-help books tell us that we can become peaceful by going within. But is the within actually peaceful? In our own experience, we often [...]
Block out the Blackout
Many of us often make resolutions for living according to principles of moral and spiritual integrity, but during times of temptation, our impulses ambush us. [...]
Be a part; be not apart
Some people equate becoming spiritual with becoming unambitious. However, bhakti spirituality centers on ambitiousness, albeit of a kind different from the individualistic ambitiousness glamorized by [...]
Matter points to matters that matter more than matter
Most of us usually remain preoccupied with our material needs and desires, and consequently with the material world where we hope to fulfill them. When [...]
Krishna is ever-waiting, ever-willing and ever-working
The Bhagavad-gita (15.15) states that Krishna personally resides in the hearts of all of us so as to guide us to our ultimate good. From [...]
“Seeing is believing” drags humans to the animal level
The Bhagavad-gita (15.10) reproaches as deluded (vimudha) those materialists who are blind to the soul due to their overdependence on their undependable senses. “Seeing is [...]
Krishna is not just out there; he is also in here
When life hands out difficulties to us, we may feel forlorn and deserted due to the thought that Krishna is far away, somewhere out there [...]
“Seeing is believing” reflects trust in the untrustworthy
The Bhagavad-gita (15.10) warns us against unwittingly subscribing to the childish idea of “seeing is believing.” This idea, known in philosophical parlance as naïve realism, [...]