Our disposition at death determines our destination after death
Our thoughts shape our actions and our actions shape our destinations. While this has become something of a cliché nowadays, Gita wisdom reveals a profound [...]
What is a source of trouble for the possessor can’t be the source of pleasure for the beholder
Lust makes temporarily good-looking bodies seem sources of immense pleasure. We know from our own experience with our body that it can be, indeed it [...]
We are not to be the doers, but we are to do
The Bhagavad-gita’s teachings on doership are paradoxical. Initially, it (03.27) deems as deluded those who think themselves to be doers. Yet it (18.63) concludes by [...]
Enter the war, but don’t let the war enter you
“How can one act without being bound?” This is Arjuna’s essential question at the start of the Bhagavad-gita. And the whole Gita addresses it at [...]
To be wistful is to be wasteful
We know that it is undesirable to be wasteful – whether it is in terms of water by leaving the tap on, or electricity by [...]
Freedom resides not in the right to experience whatever we like, but in the liking for the right experience
“Won’t spiritual discipline take away my freedom by forbidding the things I like?” This apprehension often checks prospective seekers on their spiritual quest. The apprehension [...]
Material bondage is a restriction not in location, but in conception
The word ‘bondage’ often evokes an image of someone bound to a particular location, say, a hostage tied to a chair. Our bondage in material [...]
The freedom offered by ignorance of freedom is the tightest bondage
Whenever people are enslaved, they sooner or later try to break free. They get motivation for their freedom struggle by seeing the privileges enjoyed by [...]
Will we have to lose everything before we lose our blindness?
Attachment makes us blind – blind to everything other than the object of our attachment. The Bhagavad-gita (01.01) indicates this blinding power of attachment through [...]
Invest emotion to relish transformation
We live where our heart lives. When our heart lives in material things, we live in the material world. When our heart lives in Krishna, [...]
Is the body a playground for passion or a temple for devotion?
Our culture with its romantic movies and erotic pictures depicts the body as a playground for passion, especially sexual passion. But are such popular depictions [...]
Better to be exhausted than rusted
With every passing moment time moves forward inexorably and irreversibly. The passage of time causes non-living things to rust. Living beings also age as time [...]
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 [...]
Anahankara = an + aham + car (I am not my car)
“You are your car,” claims a billboard displaying a person driving a flashy car. The ad indicates how one’s car determines one’s image in [...]
The obnoxious is obnoxious because it is noxious
A prevailing intellectual fad sees all value-judgments as subjective: “If you think something is obnoxious, it is obnoxious for you – but not necessarily for [...]