(The following article was posted in the “Meditations” column of the Hindustan Times, one of India’s largest english language daily newspapers, on 30 April 2003.) THE BOOK most often cited as the oldest and wisest, Bhagavad Gita, seems to promote anger. The text appears to consist mainly of Shri Krishna attempting to arouse Arjuna to fight. Yet the Gita is cited as an ultimate treatise of right over wrong. Although anger is generally prohibited in Vedic thought and action, the Gita is a notable exception. How can its hero and protagonist decide to kill his own relatives? We generally agree to violence in cases of defence and when we need protection. We approve of police and other peace-keeping armed forces. Life and property are considered sacred things for which we can give up our own lives when necessary. But what about fighting for kingdom and glory? The Kurukshetra war was fought for two main reasons: to establish right over wrong (4.8) and to validate unconditional surrender to God (18.73). These messages unravel the mystery of bloodshed within a religious tradition. We might recall that Jesus acted violently when he saw a temple courtyard filled with money-lending stalls. His righteous anger is part of a tradition that dominates today’s religious landscape. In its second chapter, the Gita repudiates anger (2.63), citing it as a key factor that keeps us trapped in the material world. And at first, the saintly Arjuna refuses to fight (2.9). But, in criticising Arjuna’s ‘petty weakness of heart,’ Shri Krishna explains that He has already put the Kuru warriors to death and that Arjuna will be only an instrument (11.33). When God Himself appears in His original form, whatever He prescribes will be good for all. He knows the future. Duryodhana and company represented evil and tyranny. The Gita tells us that the ultimate good is surrendering to the desires of God, even when those instructions seem wrong to us or ‘un-doable’. Modern warfare is hardly godly, and certainly doesn’t implement good over evil. To compute current affairs with no basic understanding of karma and transmigration is myopic. All leaders have been appointed to act by the Supreme Lord, and their duty is to consult the Gita, which is not for the lily-livered. But it’s the final peace treaty. The writer is emeritus member of the ISKCON Governing Body Commission.

I’d heard that disciples who ANTICIPATE a guru’s instructions and who act on them, even before they’re given, are first class. The following is as near as I’ve got to Srila Prabhupada saying anything like this: “A son who acts by anticipating what his father wants him to do is first class, one who acts upon receiving his father’s order is second class, and one who executes his father’s order irreverently is third class. But a son who refuses his father’s order is like his father’s stool.” (Srimad Bhagavatam 9.18.44, translation)

“Overpopulation is a myth.” (Srimad Bhagavatam 9.20.21/purport)

Here is a more technical way of explaining how Krishna is greater than Lords Siva and Brahma. From Srimad Bhagavatam, 1.3.28/purport: “And His personal expansions such as svayam-prakasa, tad-ekatma up to the categories of the avataras who are all visnu-tattva, possess up to ninety-three percent of these transcendental attributes. Lord Siva, who is neither avatara nor avesa nor in between them, possesses almost eighty-four percent of the attributes. But the jivas, or the individual living beings in different statuses of life, possess up to the limit of seventy-eight percent of the attributes.” From an Oct 21, 1972 lecture on NOD in Vrindavana: “The Krsna consciousness message is Krsna tu bhagavan svayam. There is no other Bhagavan. Bhagavan means full of six opulences. So Krsna is completely, cent percent full of all opulences. Even Narayana, He is ninety-six percent. And Lord Siva is eighty-four percent. And Brahma is seventy eight percent. These are calculated by the Gosvamis. So Krsna is cent percent Bhagavan.”

Only the madmen and the paramahamsas, says Vidura in the Srimad Bhagavatam: “Both the lowest of fools and he who is transcendental to all intelligence enjoy happiness, whereas persons between them suffer the material pangs.” (3.7.17)

In the Vraj region, the night time loudspeakers (sometimes like lullabies) and the ubiquitous graffiti are tolerable, and even inspiring.

Because Hanumanji is portrayed on the banner of Arjuna, it is understood that Arjuna meditated on him during the battle, even though Lord Krishna Himself is his chariot driver and tactical advisor in the battle of Kuruksetra. This underscores the importance of sadhu in the three-way check and balances system known as ‘guru, sastra and sadhu. Lord Krishna in this case is the guru and Hanuman or Vajrangaji represents the sadhus. In the introduction to the Srimad Bhagavatam, Srila Prabhupada writes in the Introduction to the Srimad Bhagavatam: “Arjuna was also a Vaisnava devotee of Lord Krsna, and he fought valiantly for the satisfaction of the Lord. Similarly, Vajrangaji, or Hanuman, was also a devotee of Lord Rama, and he gave lessons to the non-devotee party of Ravana.” In London on 17 July 1973 he said this during a lecture on the Bhagavad-gita 1.20, “Just like nowadays also, every nation has different types of flags, so Arjuna also had his flag….Dhvajah means the flag. The flag was on the top of his chariot. And it was marked with Hanuman, Vajrangaji….Hanuman, who fought for Lord Ramacandra…. He is fighting for Krsna. So he is also following the footsteps of Vajrangaji.”

When Srila Prabhupada was having difficulties with Paul Murray (David, in Satsvarupa Das Goswami’s ‘Srila Prabhupada Lilamrita’) at the Bowery loft, he came to me for help. I didn’t fully understand what the problem was, so Srila Prabhupada said: “We have a saying. Guru-mara-vidya. You sit opposite a guru, learn from him everything, then you kill him, move his dead body aside, and sit in his place, then you become the guru.”

One of the arts the Lord mastered as a child was to find and administer medicines to the sick. The passage in Srila Prabhupada’s Krsna book reads: “They learned to study herbs and plants to discover how they would act as medicine for different ailments.”

(The following article was posted in the “Meditations” column of the Hindustan Times, one of India’s largest English language daily newspapers, on 4 June 2003.) `HOW ARE you?’ ‘Fine, thanks’. (Translation: ‘Nothing horrible has happened to me today’, or ‘I feel dreadful but who wants to know’?) Soren Kirkegaard said that people lead lives of ‘quiet desperation’. This existential thinking indicates that happiness is only skin deep, and fun is but a passing frisson — a glimmer, a shiver, an instant high, and that our real situation is one of ongoing anguish. As soon as a tooth is fixed, a computer glitch repaired, a disease cured, we feel ecstatic. But surely there is a pleasure that is more than the absence of pain. I? eyes are the index of the mind or windows to the soul, then we can see from each person’s face, the state of his or her consciousness. Look around. What do you see? Against today’s marketeering push for instant everything from transportation to breakfast cereal, the Gita proposes a different kind of happiness (5.24), more to do with contentedness and satisfaction, instead of the excitement generated by drugs, sex, dancing, racing, gaming, sports and romance. All these have a beginning and an end. Transcendental happiness, subtler but deeper and permanent, doesn’t depend on external stimuli. Ancient wisdom holds that such happiness is an inner part of us. Some neuro-scientists call it ‘the God spot’ in the human brain – yet to artificially activate it leads only to temporary intoxication. This ‘inner happiness’ is regarded by some as a hallucination or self-absorbed escapism (Gita 2.69). On the other hand, aspiring transcendentalists think that rationalism or the mechanistic-reductionist vision is an exclusively earthbound creation. In spite of the many scientific and technological advances that have enlarged our range of creature comforts, upward consumer mobility adds unlimited desires and supplies endless choice, where formerly there was only a basic hierarchy of needs and a few simple choices. ‘Progress’ is often regarded as iffy. Dying is something we have to experience although its exact nature is generally unknown. But in that brief sleep, our future is determined. Living is a preparation for death. In his song, The Art of Dying, ex-Beatle, George Harrison implies rightly that one’s daily meditation for the future need not seal us from reality, or make us musty and morbid. It’s intelligent preparation for blue skies beyond.