How to live a balanced life?

After explain­ing the futil­ity of false renun­ci­a­tion, Srila Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur says, “Alter­na­tively, if they place the Lord in the cen­tre of their life while car­ing for body and house, while eat­ing and sleep­ing, they then grad­u­ally increase their devo­tion to the Lord through their devo­tional prac­tice. Finally and def­i­nitely, prema (pure love) will be achieved.” (p 60)

One of my mot­tos is: “Real­ize your full poten­tial, live life abun­dantly and love extrav­a­gantly.” What is our full poten­tial? We are chil­dren of God. We are loved. We are cre­ated good, in God’s image. God & God­dess have given us all that we need to live a happy, healthy and enlight­ened life. Most of all we have the poten­tial to actu­al­ize our selves spiritually—developing an eter­nal spir­i­tual body through our pure love of Radha Krishna or what­ever form of God we may be attracted to. This is the high­est goal of life.

Too much empha­sis is placed on renun­ci­a­tion by many teach­ers of devo­tional yoga and other yogas. When we place Radha Krishna at the cen­ter of our life, every­thing becomes spir­i­tual seen in light of their ser­vice. Every­thing can be used in their ser­vice. Every­thing is sim­ply a man­i­fes­ta­tion of their energy. They cre­ated us and this world we live in with all its won­ders. Why would they not want us to enjoy it in their service?

Speak­ing as a West­erner to pri­mar­ily West­ern­ers, what do we need to care for body and house? I would say we need a basic mid­dle class stan­dard of liv­ing. We should have ade­quate food, cloth­ing, shel­ter, trans­porta­tion, med­ical care and other neces­si­ties. Then we may need a lit­tle extra for enter­tain­ment and vaca­tion. Some money to save for emer­gen­cies and old age is also desir­able. Some money to give in char­ity should be there too.

Most of us also desire the plea­sures, com­pan­ion­ship and sup­port of mar­ried life. This often leads to hav­ing chil­dren. Sup­port­ing a fam­ily in this man­ner usu­ally requires one or two good pay­ing jobs with ben­e­fits. All of this should not be seen as obsta­cles to devo­tional prac­tice but rather as part of our devo­tional practice.

Of course, we do not want to fall into the trap of mate­ri­al­is­tic con­sumerism, self­ish­ness and greed. Rather, a life of vol­un­tary sim­plic­ity and mod­er­a­tion is desir­able. This is actu­ally more enjoy­able too. We should have the neces­si­ties, but not over endeavor for mate­r­ial gain. Learn to be happy with what you have, pro­vided you have the neces­si­ties. Sim­ply ded­i­cate every­thing to Radha & Krishna.

Radha & Krishna’s abode is described as being won­der­fully opu­lent and abun­dant in sup­ply­ing all the good things of life. Per­sons there live free of anx­i­ety due to the hard strug­gle for exis­tence in the mate­r­ial world. Yet even in this world, we can live that way if we learn to trust in the Divine Couple’s good­ness and benev­o­lence towards their devotees.

Of course, we still need to work, but when we see that they have pro­vided us with every­thing, we can open our­selves up to the divine energy and not have to strug­gle so much. We can learn to work with detach­ment know­ing that we are only here tem­porar­ily and that we are des­tined for much higher things. When we come from abun­dance rather than scarcity we tend to attract abun­dance to our lives.

And when we love extrav­a­gantly, we tend to attract extrav­a­gant love. Radha & Krishna are the epit­ome of extrav­a­gant love. If we are to be their devo­tees, we have to become like them. We can become chan­nels of their love and spread it to all we meet. This is what the world need most—extravagant love. I and oth­ers have said, “Love is the answer.” When we learn to love one another, all the world’s prob­lems will be solved. God & God­dess are love. Their pres­ence is invoked when­ever we love. As the love spreads, the whole world becomes spir­i­tu­al­ized. As we focus our life on pure love of the Divine Cou­ple, that love grows and will carry us to them.

“To Raghu­nath Das, Chai­tanya said, ‘Be patient and return home. Don’t be a crazy fel­low. By and by, you will be able to cross the ocean of mate­r­ial exis­tence. You should not make your­self a show-bottle devo­tee and become a false renun­ci­ate. For the time being, enjoy the mate­r­ial world in a befit­ting way but do not become attached to it. Within your heart, you should keep your­self very faith­ful, but exter­nally you may behave like an ordi­nary per­son. Thus, Krishna will soon be very pleased and deliver you from the clutches of illu­sion.’ Chaitanya-caritamrita, Mad­hya 126.237–239” (pp 60–61)

I con­sider this to be one of the most impor­tant scrip­tural pas­sages for guid­ing our devo­tional life. Our spir­i­tual prac­tices are pri­mar­ily an inter­nal process we per­form with our spir­i­tual body. It is a process of adopt­ing the mood, form, love and ser­vice of the res­i­dents of Vrind­a­ban. This must be done in all circumstances.

How­ever, our exter­nal cir­cum­stances may vary greatly accord­ing to our nature, occu­pa­tion, place of res­i­dence, social stand­ing, etc. We can act accord­ing to the stan­dards of soci­ety. We don’t have to be in people’s faces with our beliefs. We don’t have to be dif­fer­ent. Oth­ers may not even know we are a devo­tee, but hope­fully they sense that we seem to be kinder, more lov­ing, more com­pas­sion­ate, more giv­ing than oth­ers. Thus, we are able to enjoy a nor­mal life in soci­ety and cul­ti­vate pure love at the same time. This is a healthy, holis­tic approach to life.

“All that is nec­es­sary is the inter­nal steadi­ness of the devo­tee in order to achieve suc­cess. A mere exter­nal show of steadi­ness is only a false dis­play for oth­ers to see. How­ever, if there is a real inter­nal devo­tion and steadi­ness, very quickly the bondage of the mate­r­ial world will dis­ap­pear. Pure knowl­edge and pure detach­ment will cer­tainly increase as that gen­uine devo­tion increases.” (p 61)

This is an inter­nal process. One need not adopt all the exter­nal signs and prac­tices of Indian devo­tees. The goal is not to become an Indian, but to become an asso­ciate of Radha & Krishna. There­fore, the cul­tural exter­nals may be given up as long as one main­tains the inter­nal prac­tices. There­fore, spon­ta­neous devo­tional ser­vice may be prac­ticed by any­one, any­where. Grad­u­ally, one will see one’s life trans­formed into the spir­i­tual world.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 12th, 2006 at 10:21 and is filed under Steve's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.