So, God is a person. What
kind of person is He? How can I describe? I will only be able to
describe a small drop of His nature and qualities. Just as the sky
extends unlimitedly but a sparrow can only fly to a certain height,
similarly, God (Krsna) is unlimited and my powers of description are
very small. Still, by His grace, I'll do whatever I can. However,
it won't be possible to talk about Him without talking about us too,
since we're part of Him.
There are many
analogies to help our intelligence grasp the situation – the
comparative position of Krsna and of ourselves. He's compared to the
sun of which we individual living beings are the particles of radiant
energy; to a tree of which we're the leaves and branches; or to the
ocean of which we're the droplets. He's the source / root / basis of all
that be; everything depends on Him for life and vitality; indeed,
we're part and parcel of Him. We can never thrive while ignoring our
eternal connection with Him and trying to live without Him any more
than a leaf can when detached from its parent tree, or than a spark
can continue to glow when separated from the fire from whence it
came. And just as a drop of seawater can be analyzed to have the
same composition as the entire body of seawater, so we can learn
about Krsna by studying ourselves. There is no difference in
quality, but only in quantity: He is the greatest and we jiva
souls are the tiniest.
Thus, as we're sac-cid-ananda by
nature (i.e., our
spirit selves are inherently possessed of eternality, knowledge and
bliss), so is He; He just has unlimitedly more knowledge
and bliss than we have. Any qualities we find in ourselves
can be found in Him, to a limitless degree. As I alluded to in a
previous post, the personal form of the Lord is technically known as
bhagavan. This word means “He who is endowed with all
opulences.” Specifically, these opulences are of six kinds:
beauty, knowledge, strength, fame, wealth, and renunciation. Each of
us has some amount of each of these qualities; when we meet a person
who has a lot of any of them – a super-gorgeous person, an
astoundingly wise person, etc. – normally we feel at least some
attraction to them; and Krsna is endowed with the totality of
each of these qualities. For example, everyone everywhere
talks about God at least sometimes, whether they believe in Him or
not, so He is the one person who is all-famous. He has all the power
(He kindly lends some to us so that we can fulfill our desires, but
if He doesn't sanction our desires, then we'll find ourselves unable
to do anything, because the power doesn't really belong to us, it
belongs to Him). Since everything belongs to Him, He has all the
wealth as well. He's the only one who truly knows everything; and
not only does He have the most beautiful transcendental personal form
you'll ever see, but also, all the beauty you see anywhere, in any
object, is also attributable to Him by being His energy and a spark
of His splendor. Et cetera.
Also, He's capable of every emotion we
find in ourselves; and when He shows a particular emotion, it's
overwhelmingly intense compared with our own exhibition of it. In
His incarnation as Lord Ramacandra, for example, at one point He felt
angry at the demigod in charge of the ocean, and when He glanced on
the ocean with fiery eyes, the sea began to boil from the heat of His
anger. Though we might feel furious, our anger could never boil the
ocean! Therefore He's known as Asamaurdhva, which means that no one
can ever be equal to or greater than Him in any category.
Sometimes people, in limited
conditional awareness, judge anger to be unconditionally a negative,
damaging force (which is usually true, in this world) and declare
that God must be above such emotions. However, why would He
experience some emotions and not others? Emotions are complex, often
experienced as a multi-layered mix, and may be positive or negative
in their effect depending on the particular situation. In this world
of duality, some of them may indeed be considered “good” and some
“bad”, but the spiritual realm is the absolute plane where all
such material distinctions are irrelevant. The mode of goodness may
be better than the modes of passion and ignorance, but since all of
them have the potential to keep us tied to this world of birth and
death, they are compared to gold shackles vs. iron ones. Which one
would you rather be constrained with? Yeah, gold may be more
beautiful, but wouldn't you rather just get out?! So ultimately
there's not so much difference between anger and any other emotion,
and any attempt to make an arbitrary distinction with regard to what
God can experience reveals the influence of maya (illusion).
Thus, if He's free of
anger (free of material anger such as we conditioned souls experience
in this world – which as a matter of fact He is!), He's also
free of every other emotion we know. (He has the name Nirguna
because He's not affected by
material qualities). If we didn't believe that the
conditioned emotions we experience here have spiritual counterparts,
we'd get the idea that God is entirely free of feeling, which doesn't
make Him sound at all lovable or personal. No. He – and the rest
of us when we're purified from material influence – experience the
full range of emotions, but they're purely spiritual rather than
contaminated and mundane.
The reason the anger of God / Krsna (as
well as of those who are unified with Him in feeling and purpose due
to pure devotion) is transcendental to the embarrassing illusory
conditioning most of us suffer under in this world is because it's
true and righteous, taking in the whole situation and responding to
it with appropriate feeling. Just as each cell in a body does its
part individually and the result is a harmonious and healthy whole
body, each of us has a job we're meant to do for the good of all
(including ourselves). When we rebel and act independently,
fulfilling selfish desires for sense gratification without
considering the benefit or detriment of our actions to all Creation,
we're acting like screwed-up cells, attacking the very body we belong
to. Since Krsna sees the whole picture and knows perfectly well what
needs to be done for everyone's happiness, when He loses His temper, His anger just destroys harmful elements, straightens
everything out, and improves the situation for all. It is healthy,
like a surgeon's knife. Because of who and what He is, it's
impossible for Krsna to get angry at the wrong things. He can't
possibly desire ill for us, who are part and parcel of Him, any more
than we can be happy by serving anyone or anything other than Him.
We're like the hand, and He's like the stomach. The duty of the hand
is to put food in the stomach so that the stomach in turn can
distribute that fuel all over the entire body, benefiting the whole
organism, including the hand. If the hand rebels against this duty,
artificially thinking itself separate from the stomach, and enviously
says “Why shall I serve the stomach? Let me digest this food on my
own,” can it ever be successful or happy by that endeavor? No, it
will suffer along with the rest of the body. Similarly, we happen to
be eternally and constitutionally in the position of offering service
while Krsna is in the position of receiving it, but this transaction
benefits us just as much because we're part of Him.
So, as nobody (as long as we're well)
has to tell us to eat when we're hungry, similarly nobody has to tell
pure souls to serve God. Just as young teenage boys and girls are
automatically attracted to each other, so our attraction to serving
the Lord is 100% natural. According to our scriptures, His primary
name is Krsna: “the all-attractive one.” As small masses are
attracted by the gravitational pull of large masses, so the Lord, Sum
Total of All, is like a magnet to us. He's the all-attractive core
of existence, in whom our existence is based and to whom our
attention irresistibly returns. He is possessed of every quality you
can imagine to the maximum degree, so whatever it is you like, you'll
find a bottomless ocean of it in Him. And your very
self being a part of His and unalterably designed to serve Him, your
desire to fulfill this purpose of your existence can never be
banished from you. If you so choose, that desire can be covered,
disguised and misdirected toward other goals – temporary material
objects in which smaller amounts of pleasure can be found, which do
not permanently or ultimately satisfy you, like attractive bodies,
minds, thoughts, or possessions, food, drink, or fun activities –
but as you try one thing after the next you will always be
unconsciously looking for Him – our Eternal Love, the Reservoir of
All Pleasure.
As we jiva souls
feel this way about Sri Krsna (whether we know it or not), so too do
all His other separated constituent parts, such as His various
personified energies, opulences, and powers. They all serve Him
voluntarily, since they're naturally filled with love for Him, and
they know His service to be their natural position and the thing that
will bring happiness to themselves and all the rest of Existence.
To be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment