Traditionally, nature has been considered a mother who provides for life’s necessities. But some people characterize it negatively as a stepmother or even a witch because it periodically gives rise to devastating natural calamities.

The problem with such negative characterization is the unexamined assumption that this world is our home, and that nature should help us live comfortably here.

Gita wisdom explains that we are eternal souls meant to live a life of eternal love with Krishna in the spiritual world. Presently, because of our attachment to temporary material things, we are caught in the clutches of matter and have to suffer an existential incompatibility: seeking eternal happiness in the ephemeral.

The more we learn to love the eternal, the more we see matter as not a source of shelter or pleasure, but as a means to connect with the divine.

Just as bodily pain is a pointer to something being wrong in the body and a prod to seek a cure by going to a doctor, so too is the misery of material existence meant to be a pointer to our existential incompatibility and a prod to seek the supreme doctor Krishna. With his guidance, we learn how to attain compatibility by raising our consciousness from the material level to the spiritual level.

The Bhagavad-gita (07.14) states that material nature is insurmountable, but also assures that we can transcend her influence by surrendering to Krishna. Surrendered absorption in Krishna frees us from our obsession with matter, thereby taking us gradually beyond the destructible material arena. The more we learn to love the eternal, the more we see matter as not a source of shelter or pleasure, but as a means to connect with the divine. We learn to see worldly upheavals as spurs to intensify our seeking shelter in the spiritual. And being thus spiritually sheltered, we can deal with worldly upheavals more maturely so that we make the best of a bad bargain.

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