(H H Kadamba Kanana Swami, 9th February 2012, Leicester, England) Lecture: SB 1.2.19
I gave the example of pride – when suddenly someone loses everything and is humble:
‘Alright Krishna wants me to develop humility.’
Or someone may experience anger and how it is getting out of hand. I myself had an experience as a kid, which stayed with me for my whole life. There was a boy at school who said:
‘What do you think of this joke.’
And he pokes his a finger in my eye! Well I got angry beyond myself. I got so angry that I kind of twisted his arms and smacked him against the wall. I was really in a destruction mode, and he broke his arm! He started to scream really loud. I ran and all the kids ran after me, but I out ran them all. I ran very fast, and shook them off. Later, when I returned back to school in the afternoon, and the head teacher was there and I was the criminal. I thought it was not fair because the guy had poked me in the eye, but he broke his arm!
What a drama, first at school and then at home my father was saying:
‘The insurance policy is going up!’
To make it worse in the same week, I kicked the football through the main glass window! One month later, there was some road works and the pumps, pipes and planks were there. I was there showing my brother a flying bicycle trick, when this old lady decided to come out on the walkway of our house and she also broke her arm! So it was a total disaster. It’s like in a span of two – three months it was a big disaster, which stayed with me for the whole life. I controlled anger after that. Watch out with anger! I also didn’t do any more flying bicycle rides….I never did one again.
So we do learn certain things in life, which help us to control the qualities that arise from the modes of material nature, and that is sufficient. So rather then looking at:
‘What is the cause? Why do I have this anger? Maybe in my last life I already had this anger problem. If I go back to the last life then I will solve it!’
Well, okay, probably in the last life you had an anger problem, and you did not solved it. So are you going to solve it now or what? Or are you going to wait until the next life again? It’s time to solve it now! Do not wait until it gets out of hand, just solve it now! So anger is meant to be controlled So in this way, we learn through circumstances, but Prabhupada points out:
‘Better learn through hearing!’
That is the first part of the approach – to learn from hearing. One who is less intelligent has to learn through experience- one who has no brain at all, that even after experiencing it, one still doesn’t learn………………so we are suppose to learn from hearing and through experience, and most of us learn from the combination of these two.
I must admit that in my life also in many cases learning by the circumstances and the scriptures give the purport. Often times the scriptures gave the purport to the lesson I learnt from the circumstances! But a very wise person can immediately just learn from the scriptures. Krishna may still give us confirmation after that! So we understand that, yes you have to be humble, and Krishna will give us real life situations where we are forced to be humble. To reconfirm yes, you really have to be humble, since Krishna will test us!
1 Comment
PAMHO
AGTSP
What a nice lecture this must have been. At the moment I also have many problems during a short period of time. What is Krishna trying to teach me. But somehow or other the problems make me remember Krishna more often than many times before, so this is my lesson? I don’t know. Thank you for sharing this part of the lecture. It means very much to me.
Haribol!