Karma and Rebirth in Hinduism | Swami Medhananda

[SPEAKER_03]: Good morning everybody and welcome.
[SPEAKER_03]: beautiful day.
[SPEAKER_03]: We welcome today, Swami Meera Dhananda, author, philosopher and monk of the Ramakrishna Order, who is currently serving as the senior research fellow in philosophy at the Vedantic Society of Southern California in Hollywood.
[SPEAKER_03]: He is also the Hindu chaplain at University of California Los Angeles and the University of Southern
[SPEAKER_03]: We are most pleased to welcome you here again today, Swamiji.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's lovely to see you.
[SPEAKER_03]: From 2010 to 2021, the Swamiji was associate professor and head of the program in philosophy at the Ramakrishna Mission, Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute at the Bellar Mart West Bengal.
[SPEAKER_03]: He is a frequent lecturer at the Hollywood and Santa Barbara, the down to temples, as well as the Tribuko Roman Krishna Monastery, and the San Diego of the down to center.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as also given guest lectures at Harvard, UCLA, Mahama Kut Buddhist University, Loyola
[SPEAKER_03]: Boston College University of Vienna, Ohio State University, Oxford University, University of Munster, Xavier's College Kolkata, and Princeton University.
[SPEAKER_03]: He is section editor of the International Journal of Hindu Studies, overseeing submissions in Hindu and cross-cultural philosophy of religion.
[SPEAKER_03]: He is a prolific writer and has published innumerable articles and received greater claim for his books on Vajanta philosophy.
[SPEAKER_03]: These include infinite paths to infinite reality, Sri Ramakrishna, and cross-cultural philosophy of religion, Oxford University Press.
[SPEAKER_03]: The Bloom's Berry Research Handbook of the Danta Bloom's Berry Publishing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Swami Vivekananda's Vedantic Cosmopolitanism, Oxford University Press.
[SPEAKER_03]: His most recent publication, karma and rebirth in Hinduism, elements in global philosophy of religion is the subject of his talk today.
[SPEAKER_03]: this is his book and for our internet audience as well it's available on Amazon and we do have some copies of the back of the chapel that Swamiji will be happy to sign.
[SPEAKER_03]: So Swamiji,
[SPEAKER_00]: Oum Asatum Asat Ghamaya Tamasuma Jyutir Ghamaya Mrettyurma Amretam Ghamaya Um Shanti Shanti Oum Vasamsi Jidnan Yatavihaya
[SPEAKER_00]: Navanigrannatinaruparani Tata-shari-ranivihayaji-nani Anyani-sanyati-navani-dhi Bhagavad-gita chapter 2 verse 22 As a person cast off worn out clothes and puts on a new set of clothes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Likewise, at the time of death, the soul casts off its worn out body and puts on a new one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning, everyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always a pleasure to be here in an honor.
[SPEAKER_00]: First I offer my humble pronounce to review at Subraqmanji Maharaj.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously he's not here, he's in India.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I miss him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time I publish a new book, he invites me to give a book lunch talks.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the third book lunch I come giving.
[SPEAKER_00]: Way back when I was a Bromachati, 2018, I came wearing white, gave my first public talk on infinite passing in reality, and a few years ago it was the book on Swami Vivekananda.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this time it's on Carmen Rebirth and Hinduism.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I always appreciate more support, and we all miss him here, of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my thank you to Diane for the very generous introduction, and thank you so much to Dr. Raman for the beautiful margin as well as wonderful, beautiful way to set the tune, set the mood.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, just more generally, I don't know, some of you might know that I'm a Bostonian.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm still a Boston, I still have those Boston Somskados.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've been in Hollywood for a little over three years now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I missed the fall colors, the crisp air, our awesome was right next to a highway, in the 101 highway.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I sleep with earplugs, it's, don't even ask.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this morning I went for a nice jog around Central Park and I was looking at the fall colors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I really love it here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yes, I'll be speaking about this book, if any of you are familiar with my other books, this is conspicuously small by comparison, it's a tiny little book, there's a reason for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of a book series published by Cambridge, called Cambridge Elements in Global Philosophy of Religion, and they gave me a very strict word limit.
[SPEAKER_00]: 30,000, and for any writers out there, you'll know that's not very many pages, so my Vivekan of the book was like 160,000 or something, so this is nothing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're very strict, I couldn't go one word over 30,000, so that's the reason for the length, and my apologies also in advance for the production side of things, I had no say over the cover design, which is
[SPEAKER_00]: which is slightly steep for such a small book.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a discount here, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's a discount here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I see this benefit of being here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And fortunately, this is very good news.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got special funding for this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's going to go open access fairly soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can buy a not buy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can get.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can download a free digital copy of this book, PDF, or ePubber both, I think, very soon, hopefully.
[SPEAKER_00]: So some disclaimers there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I hope the content's good, apart from all the other issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I'll be talking about today.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a lot of fun writing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Part of the reason I took up the assignment was because there are a couple of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is, I've believed in karma and rebirth for a long time, but before writing this book, I had these lingering questions, doubts about the doctrines.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was looking for clarity.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to dive more deeply into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then this thing came up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was asked to write it and I said, this is perfect, this is a great opportunity for my own spiritual practice, for my own understanding of these doctrines, and I want to share with you some of the things I learned today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously in one hour, I'm not going to be able to cover everything that I discussed in the book, so please do get a copy if you're interested in more details.
[SPEAKER_00]: So whenever anybody writes a book, one of the main questions is, who's the audience?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who's the target audience?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so let me begin by explaining that first.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, this book, I call this book an argumentative introduction to karma and rebirth in Hinduism.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do I mean by that?
[SPEAKER_00]: On the one hand, it's an introductory overview of these very important doctrines in Hinduism, karma and rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's argumentative.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the reasons I took up the assignment is because they encouraged me to take a strong argumentative stance, so it shouldn't just be like a Wikipedia article or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would hate writing that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I develop an argument here.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the argument that it's reasonable to accept these doctrines of karma and rebirth?
[SPEAKER_00]: After weighing the arguments foreign against these doctrines, I argue that it's reasonable.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I'm not sure that there's a book along these lines previously published that does what this book is doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I might be wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: But,
[SPEAKER_00]: So what is a target audience?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, three main groups, I would say, of people might be interested in the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope they're interested.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first is people who are skeptical of Karman Rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I want to convince them that these doctrines are not just doctrines to be taken on blind faith, because the bug of the Eta talks about it or whatever, but that they're good reasons for accepting these doctrines.
[SPEAKER_00]: Second, people who already accept the doctrines, you might think I'm preaching the choir here, many of you probably already believe in government rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even so, I think this book has value.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because for instance, I myself believe in government rebirth for a long time, but I bet that a few of the questions I'll be talking about today, you probably thought of, but you may not know immediately what the answers are, or you might have been had in mind multiple answers, you know, like which one is right and so on and so forth.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, for people who already believe in Karman Rebirth, this book I think will help you in the exercise of what Christian theologians call faith seeking understanding, which means I already believe in these doctrines, but I want to have a deeper understanding to strengthen my own conviction, to enrich my own spiritual practice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the third group that this book appeals to should appeal to is academics and so scholars and students because it is an academic book published by Cambridge University Press.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I do give an overview of the main academic debates and controversies about these doctrines.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a references section which is takes about one fifth of the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so let's plunge in this talk could be called something like everything you ever want to know about Garmin rebirth But we're afraid to ask But as much as it squeeze into one hour
[SPEAKER_00]: So, let me give you a brief overview of the five chapters that comprise the book and then we'll go into some particular topics.
[SPEAKER_00]: So chapter one is called karma and rebirth in the Upanishads and Bhagavad-gita.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I start the book by talking about some of the earliest scriptural sources for these doctrines.
[SPEAKER_00]: The two oldest Upanishads with talk about karma and rebirth are Brijad Aranya Upanishad and the Chandoghi Upanishad, and then of course the Bhagavad Gita I started this talk with the beautiful verse from the Bhagavad Gita 2.22.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I talk about the scriptures, I don't have the time to talk about those scriptures in this talk, but look at chapter 1 if you're interested.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chapter 2, nuances of karma and rebirth in classical and modern Hindu traditions.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is really one of the most important chapters in the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think the mistake that many people make when they talk about karma and rebirth and Hinduism is to have a monolithic understanding of these doctrines.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do I mean by that?
[SPEAKER_00]: People tend to make sweeping generalizations about the Hindu doctrine of karma, the Hindu doctrine of rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: There isn't one single Hindu doctrine of karma and rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hinduism is a vast religion with many traditions within it, and each one of them will have subtly different takes on these doctrines.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're commonalities across all Hindu traditions, but they're also important differences.
[SPEAKER_00]: And chapter two highlights some of the both the commonalities and the differences across these different Hindu traditions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I bet you'll be surprised to hear that there are these kinds of some of these differences about these doctrines.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the second thing this chapter 2 does is, notice I say nuances of Garmand Rebirth in classical and modern Hindu traditions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why this distinction between classical and modern?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well Hinduism is a very old religion, one of the oldest, and it's evolved over time.
[SPEAKER_00]: in response to historical context, the people living there and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, classical Hinduism is Hinduism in the early period before colonial rule, before the Muslims came, before the British came and occupied India.
[SPEAKER_00]: And their concerns were a little bit different.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they didn't really feel the need necessarily to defend the doctrines of karma and rebirth as much as modern Hindu is feel the need to, especially with the advent of British colonial rule.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm thinking of modern Hindu figures like Swami Vekananda, Sri Arovindo, Sarva Pali Rada Krishna, and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now they're faced with Christian missionaries, a bunch of them,
[SPEAKER_00]: to try to convert the heathen Hindus to Christianity and these Christian missionaries are One of their mate what they think is one of the weak points of Hinduism are these doctrines of carbon rebirth
[SPEAKER_00]: And they make fun of the Hindus for believing in these doctrines.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're saying, come on, join our fold.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't believe in such stupid nonsense, this caravan river.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so modern Hindu thinkers, modern Hindu figures, had to defend the doctrines of caravan rivers in a really vigorous way against people who are very strongly opposed to these doctrines.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they come up with,
[SPEAKER_00]: very creative and new arguments in defense of these doctrines and that's what I start to talk about in chapter three, arguments in support of Garman Rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: I talk about some of the classical arguments within Hinduism, for Garman Rebirth, but I also talk about some more modern arguments that are very current even today and I hope to give you a taste of those in the talk today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chapter 4, arguments against Garma and Rebirth, I look at some of the best arguments against these doctrines, but I also point out that Hindus have a whole array of responses to these objections, which are quite reasonable.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, Chapter 5, a brief chapter, as I said, because I was limited to 30,000 words, the relevance of Garma and Rebirth to debates in contemporary philosophy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll try to touch on that a bit briefly, but
[SPEAKER_00]: Please do look at the book for details.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, for the purposes of this talk, because I've limited time, I wanted to focus on four main things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna give you a kind of a bird's eye view of what I like to cover.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, I wanna raise six important questions about these doctrines of Garamond Rebirth, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And give you some of the answers we find within Hinduism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Second, I want to discuss one or two.
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually in chapter three, I discuss six arguments in support of government rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way I can cover all six today.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll give you hopefully a taste of one or two of those arguments.
[SPEAKER_00]: And third, I want to talk about some of the main arguments against government rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I talk about quite a few in the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll probably talk about one or two here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, last but not least, the most important thing, actually, because we're all sitting here because we're
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if we accept these doctrines, how are they relevant to us in our day-to-day spiritual practice?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very, very important question I want to cover that at the end of the talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, let's plunge in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Six important questions about Karma Rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: I bet you've thought of some of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all know that the doctrine of karma basically means that we reap what we sow, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing controversial about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: As Shuram Krishna used to say, if you eat a chili, won't your tongue burn?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's we reap what we sow.
[SPEAKER_00]: But first important question, how exactly do we reap what we sow?
[SPEAKER_00]: How exactly, according to the doctrine of karma, do we reap what we sow?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and just think about it just quickly for yourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: How would you answer that question?
[SPEAKER_00]: What I would suggest, what I've found in the course of my research, is that within Hindu traditions, you find two very different answers to that question, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I call one of the explanations of metaphysical explanation, and the second one, a psychological explanation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let me explain both quickly.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the metaphysical explanation of how we repo it with so?
[SPEAKER_00]: I do a good action.
[SPEAKER_00]: That generates what's called bunya, garlic merit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a metaphysical quantity.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't you can't observe it with your senses, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because of that garlic merit, I end up Experiencing favorable circumstances either later in this life or in a future lifetime in a future birth Okay, by contrast if I do something bad it generates what's called garlic demerit Papa
[SPEAKER_00]: As a result of that papa, I will experience unfavorable circumstances later in this life or in a future life.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a nutshell as a metaphysical explanation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of you are probably familiar with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a very different explanation of how we reap what we sow as well, which you'll also find in Hindu texts.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called the psychological explanation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or I call it psychological explanation.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll find it in Swami Vickan on this Rajiyoga, for instance.
[SPEAKER_00]: He accepts both the metaphysical and the psychological explanations.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, look, I perform a good action that creates some scaras, latent mental impressions in my mind, in the unconscious.
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens as a result?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, those good some scaras will make me more prone to engaging in the same kind of behavior in the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then ultimately, if I have a bunch of good some scottas, it creates good habits.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Swam vacant on the, he defined character in a really wonderful way.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said character is nothing but a bundle of habits.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if we generate enough good habits, we'll develop a good character.
[SPEAKER_00]: And from a good character, naturally flows good actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's this beautiful kind of virtuous circle.
[SPEAKER_00]: But exactly the opposite is also true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do something bad that creates bad some scottas.
[SPEAKER_00]: Selfish some scottas in the mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: That makes me more prone to engaging in bad behaviors in the future, that creates bad habits, that creates a bad character, and most of us are not 100% good or bad, we're a mixture of both, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But in spiritual life, what's the idea?
[SPEAKER_00]: We try to make our characters as good and as ethical as possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do that by
[SPEAKER_00]: countering our bad habits with good habits.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a psychological explanation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, within Hinduism, what you'll find is that these metaphysical and psychological explanations of how we reap what we sow are not incompatible.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're complementary and you can accept both as I think Swami Vivekananda does Sri Ram Krishna does and many other Hindu figures But there are some traditions within Hinduism which don't accept both as far as I can tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll give you an example You might be surprised to hear this, but Patanjali's yoga sutra some of you have read that From what I can tell it accepts the psychological explanation and it uses terms like dharma and adharmha which are the equivalent of punya and papha, but it seems to explain
[SPEAKER_00]: Spunyan Papa, Garmic Merit and Garmic D-Marit, in terms of some scottas.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you look at the relevant sutras, I talk about that in the book as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which means it's basically, but tangily is collapsing the metaphysical explanation into the psychological explanation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, there's diversity within Hinduism about these two different ways of understanding how we reap what we sow.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the first big question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I bet many of you have these two ideas were kind of jumbled up in your mind or you're confused between the two of them, but I want to clearly separate these two things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you can decide which one you like or you can accept both.
[SPEAKER_00]: Second big question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I've just explained,
[SPEAKER_00]: that if we perform good actions, we're born into favorable circumstances, which is good, but how the heck do we get out of this cycle of rebirth?
[SPEAKER_00]: Haven't talked about that yet, because the goal according to Hinduism is not being born into favorable circumstances, but liberation from all self-ringing and from rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we get there?
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything depends on our motives for the good actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to inspect our motives, even when we engage in a good action.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there any selfishness in it?
[SPEAKER_00]: If there is,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll get garlic merit for it, but I'll be trapped in the cycle of rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I do the same good action unselfishly, I'll purify my mind and make progress toward the ultimate goal of liberation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's take a simple example.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say I'm a high school student and I work at a soup kitchen on the weekends.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's my motive?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, one mode of could be I want to add a nice line to my CV, so I can get into the dream college, like what Columbia or something, since we're in New York.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can add a nice juicy paragraph to my college essay about serving the poor, that's a selfish motive.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that means I'll generate that action will generate garlic merit, but I'm still stuck in the cycle of rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if my motive is completely selfless, if I do it just to serve, those who aren't in need.
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens?
[SPEAKER_00]: I purify my mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm also grateful to self-repairings you for this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sent him a part of my small section of this book for feedback, and he pointed out to me very helpfully that within Advata Vedanta and some other traditions of Hinduism, when you perform good actions with an unselfish motive,
[SPEAKER_00]: not only do you purify your mind, but as a secondary result, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a language, a vantarapanam, used in Vedanta Sada.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a secondary result, you also generate good karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you get the karma, merit, and you purify the mind both at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you get two for the price of one, which is not bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: So always try to, even when you're engaging in good actions, it's always important to inspect your motives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Try to remove any kind of selfishness from the motives.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you'll make spiritual progress.
[SPEAKER_00]: Third big question, huge one, which I bet many of you have thought about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, okay, I believe in karma, I believe in rebirth, but who exactly reincarnates?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the nature of this reincarnating entity?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really important question.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not very easy to find the answer within the Hindu texts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do do a lot of digging and research and then I found to my surprise that different traditions within Hinduism give different answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sankya, for instance, one of the oldest schools of Indian philosophy, you know what their answer is?
[SPEAKER_00]: The subtle body, the subtle body, what is the subtle body?
[SPEAKER_00]: A very simple explanation that is just the mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a subtle form of matter, but an Indian spiritual philosophy, the mind itself is a subtle form of matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: The mind is a repository of some scholars, latent mental impressions.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the thing that reincarnates from birth to birth.
[SPEAKER_00]: According to Sankya,
[SPEAKER_00]: But I point out in the book that, and I'm not the first to point this out, many scholars have talked about this, there's a problem with the sunken view that the reincarnating entity is just the subtle body.
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is, according to Sankya itself, there's a metaphysical dualism.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure some of you can just talk about Sankya sometimes here.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's Boudhusha on the one hand, which are conscious, you can call them souls or atmons, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Pure consciousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on the other hand, we have Brokerty.
[SPEAKER_00]: nature, which is strictly in-sension, and so everything, the chairs, the tables, but also the mind falls on the side of the property of in-sension nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the problem here is from a philosophical standpoint, how can something that's basically in-sension reincarnate?
[SPEAKER_00]: What sense does it make?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's as sensible to say that the subtle body reincarnates as it makes sense to say that this electron reincarnates equally in-sension.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there needs to be some consciousness somewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: for the reincarnating entity makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so that's the sunken response.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the other hand, you get a tradition like Nyaya, the logical school of Indian philosophy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The answer is almost exactly the opposite.
[SPEAKER_00]: They say, and they don't even believe in a subtle body.
[SPEAKER_00]: What they say is, it's the Atman that reincarnates from births to births.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Atman.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what they mean by the Atman is the individual soul, OK?
[SPEAKER_00]: But Vedanta, we're sitting in the Vedanta society.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the Vedanta cancels the most important for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the Vedanta cancels?
[SPEAKER_00]: The Vedanta cancels combines the two explanations of Niyaya and Sankha.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reincarnating entity, according to all Vedantic traditions, is the Jivatma, the individual soul, in association with the Sattal body.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a packaged deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chapter 15 verse 8 from the Bhagavad-gita explains it very, very clearly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sharedem Yadavapnoti and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll just give you the translation.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time of death, the Jivatma leaves the physical body,
[SPEAKER_00]: Taking along with it the subtle body and then Bhagavan Krishna uses a beautiful metaphor to explain it just as the wind steals away the perfume from a vase
[SPEAKER_00]: So now, many of you have watched many of several things in the lecture, so I can anticipate an objection here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've gotten this already, but say, wait a minute, we were never born, so how can we be reborn?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no such thing as individual souls in karma and birth and rebirth and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very important to keep in mind that according to Classical Adwaita Vedanta, there are two fundamentally different standpoints.
[SPEAKER_00]: The standpoint of ignorance and the standpoint of knowledge, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Stand point of ignorance is the empirical standpoint, the Vyavahadika standpoint.
[SPEAKER_00]: From that standpoint, all of this is real.
[SPEAKER_00]: the names and forms, a personal God, individual souls, karma, rebirth, all of that, you have to accept it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So long as you have not realized non-dual, pure consciousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you have realized Brahman, when you've attained this non-dual knowledge, then your standpoint shifts to the absolute standpoint, the bottom, I think, a standpoint.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's only from that standpoint that we can say that
[SPEAKER_00]: I was non-dual pure consciousness all along, and there's no such thing as individual souls, no karma, no rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we're sitting here today because we're all stuck in this empirical standpoint.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're talking from that level.
[SPEAKER_00]: So from that standpoint, every Vedantic tradition, including classical otherwise Vedanta, accepts the individual soul and the subtle body as the reincarnating entity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fourth big question, what exactly is the overarching purpose of the law of karma?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the point of it all?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why did God create it?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's one very mainstream answer which is called a retributive understanding of karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the reward and punishment model of karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to give you, to vividly demonstrate that, I'm going to quote a scene from the Big Bang Theory.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll show that many of you have probably seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Indian actor, Kuna Lair, he used to attend some of my classes in Hollywood when I first came here in his wife, Neha.
[SPEAKER_00]: So his character on the show is Rajas Kutrapali.
[SPEAKER_00]: And his friend Leonard, the physicist, has a crush on Penny.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he's too afraid to tell her that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she's dating somebody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And out of jealousy, Leonard, tries to sabotage Penny's date with that dude.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Leonard says, I deliberately tried to sabotage Stuart State with Penny.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rajesh, of course you feel terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: You completely screwed up your karma, dude.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Sheldon says, you don't really believe in that superstition, do you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Rajesh.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not superstition.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's practically Newtonian.
[SPEAKER_00]: For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
[SPEAKER_00]: Leonard pretends to be a friend, and acts like a two-faced, and then there's an expletive, which I'm not going to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, he is reborn as a banana slug.
[SPEAKER_00]: it's actually a very elegant system you know what goes around comes around okay so this is very common this is a common understanding of karma that it's really about at the end of the day I do something good I'm rewarded for it I do something bad I'm punished for it and if I do something really bad I might be reborn as a banana slug
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, but there's a very different answer to this question of the overarching purpose of karma, which you find among some modern Hindu thinkers, and I'm proud to belong to a tradition which I believe upholds this alternative conception.
[SPEAKER_00]: I call it the evolutionary conception of karma, evolutionary karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: I talk about a more detail in chapter two of the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what's the idea here?
[SPEAKER_00]: According to these modern Hindu thinkers, the overarching, the fundamental purpose of karma is to foster our moral and spiritual evolution, our moral and spiritual growth.
[SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't mean we don't reap what we sow, we do reap what we sow, but what's the purpose of reaping what we sow?
[SPEAKER_00]: To learn and to grow.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll be vacant on the use to say, the secret of life is not enjoyment, but education through experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: We should learn, we should try to learn in the midst of all of our experiences good, bad, neutral, and otherwise.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the overarching purpose of karma, our moral and spiritual growth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fifth big question, this is such a big can of worms that I'm just kind of very quickly open it slightly and then shut it back again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is Garma compatible with free will?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I talk about it in more detail here in the book, chapter two.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, there's a whole range of answers to this question within Hinduism.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I only talk about it's just the tip of the iceberg in the book, but I'll just mention a few of you's, for instance.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are some Hindu figures who believe in limited free will, and they say that karma is compatible with limited free will.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sarvapali Ratha Krishna and one of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Prabhupada, the founder of Iskhan is another one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yogananda Paramahamsa, another one, the founder of the Self-realization Fellowship.
[SPEAKER_00]: They believe that karma is compatible with limited free will, not unfettered free will, but limited free will.
[SPEAKER_00]: But interestingly, if some of you studied Swami Vickananda's views on free will, you'll probably know that I've been quite a bit of research on this.
[SPEAKER_00]: His view is different.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he upholds a thorough-going Garmic Determinism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolute Garmic Determinism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Garmic Determinism absolutely everything we do say and think.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything at the body-mind level is completely determined by the law of karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you look doubtful or skeptical about this or frightened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've written an article on this topic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It should be coming out in a few months.
[SPEAKER_00]: Professor Audingham Trucker worth to give a wonderful talk here a few weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you send to me?
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a book coming out in his honor.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called a Fest Shrift, which means it's a book honoring the lifetimes work of a great scholar.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he's richly deserved this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called Thinking Without Borders, Essays, an honor of Audenham, Chakra Worte.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they asked me to contribute a chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Professor Jokobotty was, as far as I'm aware, the first to write academic articles on Sri Ramakrishna's and Swami Vikram that's views on free will.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very important work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what I did in my chapter is critically engaged in them's writings.
[SPEAKER_00]: On this topic, I've already published a separate article on Sri Ramakrishna's views on free will.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few years ago, you can find that online.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this chapter is just focuses on Swami Vivekananda's views on free will, and the title is something like, from carmic determinism to divine freedom.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let me briefly explain his view.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says that, in line with his master, sure, Ramquishna, that, at the end of the day, we have no free will at the level of the body mind complex, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So long as we identify with ego,
[SPEAKER_00]: But, they distinguish three stand points.
[SPEAKER_00]: The stand point of the Agiani, the ignorant person, the Jeevan Mukta, the one who attains liberation while still in the physical body and the Vigyani, okay, and I'll explain these quickly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So first of all, what does the stand point of the Agiani, the ignorant person?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the person who has not yet realized God, we're all here because we're struggling spiritual aspirants, but we haven't yet realized God, we haven't realized Brahman.
[SPEAKER_00]: What Sharanper says is, so long as we have not attained liberation, so long as we have not realized God, God has wisely implanted in us the illusion of free will.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as to prevent us from doing more stupid things, we already do enough stupid things, but it would be much worse if we knew that we had no free will.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though there's no free will we can't help but feel that we're free and therefore morally responsible for actions so long as we have not realized God Okay, but then the obvious question is well what happens when we realize God?
[SPEAKER_00]: Then sure I'm just says we become a Jeevan Mukta in the Gospel of Sri Ram Krishna He defines the Jeevan Mukta as the one who knows who realizes that God alone is the doer
[SPEAKER_00]: No free will.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Jeevan Mukta knows that God alone is the doer, but there's an even greater standpoint than this.
[SPEAKER_00]: The standpoint of Vigyana.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, I'm going to talk about Vigyana.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot, I've talked about a lot here.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is Vigyana?
[SPEAKER_00]: The Vigyani realizes that there's nothing but God, nothing but divine consciousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that means that all of us sitting here today are different playful manifestations of divine consciousness, of divine mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: So to the extent that we can identify our consciousness with divine consciousness, we automatically inherit the free will of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: because God alone is free.
[SPEAKER_00]: God alone is a doer.
[SPEAKER_00]: So to the extent that we can identify with God, divine consciousness, then we also become free as divine consciousness, but never as egos.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so now I'm shutting the can of worms again.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you want, you can follow up in the Q&A.
[SPEAKER_00]: Six big questions, which I already kind of touched on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it possible to regress from a human birth to a non-human animal birth or to like a birth as a plant or something like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: And interestingly, within Hinduism, there's a whole range of answers to this question.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I talk about it in chapter two in a brief section, but to just to point out the divergences within Hinduism in a really interesting way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I'd just focus on our tradition, the Rama Krishna Vivekananda tradition.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even within our tradition, there are discrepancies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Swami Vivekananda was once asked this question point blank.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as answer was yes, if you behave like an animal, you might be reborn as an animal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Simple.
[SPEAKER_00]: Swami, I begin on the G, another direct discipleship of Ramakrishna, wrote several books on Karman Rebirth, and his answer is a resounding, no, you can't, once you obtain a human birth, you can't regress to a non-human birth, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just want to, and then there are many other answers, Sarva Pali, Radha Krishna, and Shri out of it, and they'll seem to hold the view of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's theoretically possible to regress from a human birth to a non-human animal birth, but exceedingly rare, okay, but in principle it's possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you see that's kind of in the middle of the spectrum somewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're kind of closer to the no answer, but not quite a full no.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, now, I want to give you a taste of some of the main arguments in support of karma and rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what I discussed in chapter three of the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, one of them, which is, we can say it's trending now, there's a professor at the University of Virginia named Jim Tucker.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's done a lot of research on this really interesting stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's got a book called Before Children's Memories of Past Lives, which I recommend.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a, it's a compilation of two books.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's looked at into a number of really fascinating cases in the U.S. of young American children who report having memories of past lives, and those reports are verified.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's become a growing body of evidence in support of karma and rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so let me just give you one example.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you might be familiar with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a kid named, now he's an adult at this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think his name is James Lineinger.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would have these recurring nightmares where he would say things like, plain on fire, made a, made a, stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they just kept coming back and back and then these parents asked him when he was awake.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you talking about?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, oh, I was pilot in my last birth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my name was Sonso, and my aircraft carrier was called Natoma, NATOMA.
[SPEAKER_00]: He gave all these very, very precise details.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a friend named Sonso.
[SPEAKER_00]: My plane was shot down by the Japanese.
[SPEAKER_00]: Son, this is pre-google days.
[SPEAKER_00]: or maybe very early Google days, but his father went to the library, I guess, and looked up World War II history textbooks, and he found Loan behold that there's somebody with the exact name that their child gave.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was a USS Natoma Bay aircraft carrier.
[SPEAKER_00]: His plane was shot down by the Japanese during World War II, and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the facts matched what the kid said.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is just one of many, many examples.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll find many examples in India.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, this is a very, very strong, I think, source of evidence which is worth looking into which a lot of people are interested in now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to mention one other argument in favor of Carmen Reber.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are many more, as I said, in the book, I talked about six.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is called the argument from latent mental impressions, some scholars, the argument from some scholars.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll find this argument in Patanjali's yoga sutra 3.18 and Swami Vikananda in his book Rajayoga builds on this argument and Swami Vikananda says, each experience that we have comes in the form of a wave in the chitta in the mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this subsides and becomes finer and finer but is never lost.
[SPEAKER_00]: It remains there in my new form.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you can bring this wave up again, it becomes memory.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if the yogi can make a sinema, S-A-M-Y-A-M-A, it means basically intensely concentrating on something.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the yogi can make a sinema on these past impressions in the mind, he will begin to remember all his past lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's saying, this is a yogic technique that anybody can practice.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't necessarily have to run out and try this right now, and I'll explain why in a second.
[SPEAKER_00]: But theoretically, yes, any of us can gain knowledge of our past lives by concentrating intensely according to certain yoga constructions on these some scottas stored up in our unconscious because those some scottas are from all the acts that we've committed in past lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: So by concentrating on those some scottas, we'll end up getting regaining our memory of those past lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: should we try to do this?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they're good reasons why we shouldn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and I'll explain that in a second.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I'll mention one more argument, then I'll move on to arguments against.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is called the multiple shots argument.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, assuming that God exists,
[SPEAKER_00]: which paradigm is more fair and more sensible.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is, this life is the be all end all.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We get one chance and if we mess it up we go to a eternal hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of these Orthodox Abrahamic religions believe it in eternal hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we get it right then we go to heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now how fair does that sound?
[SPEAKER_00]: So from the standpoint of Karman Rebirth, the idea is that, look, we make some progress in this lifetime, and we take up where we left off when we get reborn.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that spiritual life is a journey of many, many embodiments, many, many lifetimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is mentioned in Bhagavad-gita in chapter 6.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anika Janmasam-siddhastat-to-yadhi-paranga-thim, which means, having a teen perfection in the course of many, many lifetimes, one finally attains the highest goal of liberation, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Spiritual life is not easy, as we all know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like walking on the edge of a razor's plate.
[SPEAKER_00]: So is it more fair for God to give us one chance?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, how many people will become saints in one lifetime, almost nobody.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what happens to the rest of us?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So the beauty of Garman Rebirth, especially if you accept an evolutionary understanding of Garma, an evolutionary doctrine of Garma and Rebirth, go hand in hand with what's called universal liberation.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is something that Sri Ram Krishna and Swami Vikram are explicitly taught.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, I'm pleased to say everybody will get fed, but some people at six in the morning others at noon, others in set six in the evening, other people at midnight, but nobody will be left out.
[SPEAKER_00]: What he's saying is everybody will be liberated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people, a few people, a few souls in this lifetime, many more in future births.
[SPEAKER_00]: For some people that might take a million more lifetimes, for other people that might take five more lifetimes, for some people in this life, but nobody will be left out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that arguably is a more fair way of understanding spiritual life, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so now some arguments against Garma and Rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of these arguments is called the lack of memory objection, very intuitive objection.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if we've lived in the past, if we've had past lives, why don't we have memories of those past lives?
[SPEAKER_00]: very intuitive objection.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are some Hindu responses?
[SPEAKER_00]: Some Hindu explanations as to why most of us at least don't have memories of our past lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are three lines of response here, main ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, how many of you remember anything from when you were three weeks old?
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably nobody.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be funny if somebody did.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, that's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that mean that we didn't exist?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, so just because we don't have memories of something doesn't mean that we didn't exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amnesia, people who suffer from amnesia often don't remember all sorts of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't mean that they didn't exist, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so that's the first kind of response.
[SPEAKER_00]: Secondly, thank God we don't have memories of our past lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: System evaded the toward the end of Swamiji's life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Swamiji becomes life.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was walking with them and she asked him, why is it that we don't have knowledge of our past lives?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he quoted Jesus, sufficient unto the day is the evil they're of.
[SPEAKER_00]: God has wisely withheld from us memories of our past lives, so that we can move forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can make a first start.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we were saddled with the emotional and psychological baggage of everything we've done in past lives, it would be hard to imagine how we can move forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've done enough stupid things in this life.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let alone combine that with what we did in past life.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK, and then the third line response.
[SPEAKER_00]: Swami Vivekananda says this explicitly and then there are other Hindu figures who also say this, even though most of us don't have memories of our past lives now, eventually, when we get close to liberation in our last birth, we will regain our memories of our past lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, another objection, very common.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard this so many times for many, many years.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called the population explosion objection.
[SPEAKER_00]: The human population has exploded.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been increasing for many, many centuries now, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: In the 1960s, the human population was much less than it is now, and it's going to go on increasing for the foreseeable future.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where the heck are all these souls coming from?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the objection.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they can the response is too full.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is, remember, according to the Hindu doctrine of Karman Rebirth, souls can inhabit not only human bodies, but also the bodies of non-human animals, cats, dogs, bats, bananas lugs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And plants, which, I mean, there's a whole topic of environmental consciousness, which it has very important implications for ecological consciousness, I talk about that in chapter five of the book as well, because plants have souls, which means they have moral standing, which means we need to treat them as moral beings in a certain sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I wanted to quote from something Swami Vivekananda said about the second line of response, which is quite interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Swami Vivekananda says,
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a significant fact that, as the human population is increasing, the animal population is decreasing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The animal souls are all becoming men, so he must have done some extensive field research to figure out, count all the insects and the, okay, but theoretically that makes sense, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, please do read both chapters three and four for all the main arguments in support of government re-birth and then some of the main arguments against government re-birth, weigh the arguments, the pros and cons of both for yourselves and then decide.
[SPEAKER_00]: But overall what I argue in the book,
[SPEAKER_00]: is that if you look at the arguments for and against, it's still reasonable to accept the doctrines of Garmin Rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the six arguments I gave in chapter three for Garmin Rebirth are mutually supportive.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a cumulative case.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to put that much weight on any one of the six arguments, but they form a strong case when you put them all together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I said in chapter 5 of the book, I talk about some of the contemporary implications of these doctrines for contemporary philosophical debates, like the heart problem of consciousness, and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just going to give you a little taste of that by mentioning one contemporary implication.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what's called the problem of evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is one of these huge topics.
[SPEAKER_00]: If God is loving and He's omnipotent,
[SPEAKER_00]: Why in the world is there so much suffering in this world?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why does God permit it?
[SPEAKER_00]: He could prevent it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what omnipotence means.
[SPEAKER_00]: He could have prevented the Nazi Holocaust.
[SPEAKER_00]: He could have prevented the Peugeot Massacre a few months ago when 25 or so hindutors were gunned down by terrorists.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why didn't he?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is called the problem of evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: And theologians and philosophers and different religious traditions have been debating this issue for millennia.
[SPEAKER_00]: Arthur Herman wrote an entire book on this topic called the problem of evil and Indian thought back in the 70s, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first part of the book looks at some of the main answers from the side of Christianity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he points out that none of these answers are fully satisfying.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not rationally satisfying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the second part of the book is devoted to the Indian approach to answering this question.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says, you'll find something interesting when you look at the Indian side of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem of evil doesn't even seem to be that big an issue for most Indian thinkers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't spill much ink on this problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: And Arthur Hermann's answer, which I think is pretty plausible, is that because they have these doctrines of karma and rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because whenever you see suffering, karma gives an explanation, which is that there's something that that soul did in a past life or earlier in this life to deserve that suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the same time, it's important to keep in mind that, that person doesn't actually, let's say that the person after suffering dies, the person doesn't die actually, the soul lives on, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just the empirical personality that dies in the body that dies.
[SPEAKER_00]: But actually, the soul lives on, and then continues its spiritual journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: I talk about this in detail in my book Infinite Pads to Infinite Reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you might have read it, chapter 7 and 8.
[SPEAKER_00]: Discuss in detail, Shri Ramakrishna's response to the problem of evil, but in a nutshell,
[SPEAKER_00]: Very briefly, he says that he accepts this evolutionary doctrine of karma, so through our experiences, both good and evil, we grow, we evolve, morally and spiritually, we become slowly better and better people in the course of many lifetimes, and then finally, another important part of his doctrine has a set already, his universal liberation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that has important philosophical implications.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are other traditions which believe in an internal hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's very hard to reconcile, believe in an eternal hell, with a loving and omnipotent God.
[SPEAKER_00]: If God really loves us and is omnipotent, why would He punish us for a finite sins?
[SPEAKER_00]: No matter how bad our sins are, what we did, there's still finite, and we did them out of ignorance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So why would He condemn us to an eternal hell?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a serious problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: To the point where some liberal Christians, like John Hick,
[SPEAKER_00]: They say that the doctrine of eternal hell is simply not compatible with God's love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so He rejects the doctrine of eternal hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: And He says that anything in Christian should reject the doctrine of eternal hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: But so at least most Hindu traditions don't believe in an eternal hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: At least one Hindu tradition does seem to, if any of you, can you guess which one?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's Madhva's Dwight of Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_00]: Madhva Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_00]: He distinguishes three kinds of soul, three categories of soul.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mukti yogya are the souls that are destined for liberation, and then the second category are knitta samsadhis, souls who are doomed to transmigrate endlessly.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're stuck in this cycle of rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the lowest category is tamo yogya.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thomas means darkness, and so it's a hauntingly beautiful metaphor here, but these are souls who are destined for the darkness of eternal hell, something like that, and no matter how hard they try, they're predestined for eternal hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, thankfully, most Hindus don't believe this doctrine and our tradition certainly doesn't, we don't believe in eternal hell, there are temporary hells.
[SPEAKER_00]: and there are temporary heavens.
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea behind having temporary hells and heavens is to exhaust good and bad karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if I do a lot of good things, I go to a temporary heaven for some time, exhaust my good karma and then come back.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the Gita, Qxina, Pune, Mata, lo, kumbhi, shanti.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have some pungya, some karmic merit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I go to this temporary heaven, enjoy myself, and then come down.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I have to be reborn again.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then, once I attain liberation, there are what are called eternal heavens, as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, Vaishnava has believed in goh-loka, which is an eternal heaven, which you can reside with Krishna in lovingly worship him and serve him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gramma Krishna-Loka, somebody asked, holy mother one day, mother, I don't really like this idea of Nirvana, the Adva, the Pure Conscious and all this stuff, it doesn't really appeal to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love Shuram Krishna, she says, don't worry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ramakrishna has created Ramakrishna-Loka for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a turtle.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not a temporary heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't mix up these eternal heavens with these temporary heavens.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's an eternal heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: As you're on because you used to say, you can choose either to eat sugar or to become sugar.
[SPEAKER_00]: And both are equally true and equally valuable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bop does want to eat sugar by dwelling in an eternal heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll do it once I become sugar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Merge their individuality and non-dual per consciousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's no higher and lower here, the both equally true and equally valid.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, last but not least, as I said, most important for all of us here sitting here today, we're all spiritual aspirants at the end of the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: So even if we accept the doctrines of government, I've seen this a lot, people who believe in government revert, they pay lip service to it, but it doesn't affect their day-to-day life in any way, as far as I can tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as far as they can tell, if it's a, I teach a class called Bhagavad-gita in the light of Sri Ram Krishna, some of you might be following it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I give homework, I have some tough homework assignments, and I give them study questions and reading, and they fill out their answers in these Google forms, and I look through their answers before the next class.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so one of the questions, when we got to chapter two, that beautiful verse about how the embodied soul cast off one physical body and takes up another one, like we cast off our clothes and put on a new set of clothes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I asked, how, if at all, do the doctrines of garment and rebirth affect your day-to-day spiritual life?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does it play any role in your spiritual life?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got this extraordinary range of answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have blessed to have very thoughtful and brilliant students, and I want to share with you some of those answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: But before I do, I want to mention, at least one student in my class, she says, yeah, I don't necessarily reject the doctrines of garment and rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm kind of agnostic, and they play no role.
[SPEAKER_00]: in my spiritual life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's fine too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I gave a lecture a couple of days ago in Boston called a tale of two Hinduisms, where I explained the four core spiritual principles of Hinduism.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't talk about karma rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't build karma and rebirth into the four fundamental doctrines of Hinduism.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I include karma and rebirth in what I call Hinduism plus.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is sort of additional doctrines, which you'll find in the hidden scriptures, which are helpful in spiritual life from any people, but which are not mandatory to believe in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do I do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you look at the gospel of Hiram Krishna, the author of the gospel himself, M, was highly educated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Influence by Western thinkers and he couldn't really stomach Garmun rebirth and he asked your Omg now kind of in a guilty way, you know, I don't really believe in this idea of past life some scottas.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that going to harm my spiritual life anyway?
[SPEAKER_00]: And your Omg is a said, no, don't worry about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he also said, but always keep an open mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never say, my view alone is right and everybody else is wrong and don't look down on other people who believe in Garmun rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's so quaint and
[SPEAKER_00]: No, and then what happened eventually M accepted the doctrines.
[SPEAKER_00]: He kept an open mind and he ended up believing in karma and rebirth, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not mandatory for everyone, but now I want to make a case as to why it's genuinely helpful for many spiritual aspirants, for many Hindus, to believe in the doctrines of karma and rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, first of all, what does the thing that people fear most in life?
[SPEAKER_00]: death, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I heard a few murmurs, death, terrifying to many people.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you really believe in Garamile and Rebirth, you won't be afraid of death anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's incredibly liberating to just to know that I'm going to cast off this body at some, everybody will cast off the physical body, just as I cast off my clothes at the end of a long day.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the big deal?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is there to mourn over?
[SPEAKER_00]: I throw my clothes in a hamper.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my jeans.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: Swami Vivekananda, when he left his body, there were no phones at the time, no internet, no texting, 1902.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's brother Disciple, Ramakrishna Namsi was sitting in Chennai in South India, and Swami Vivekananda was in Bilumat in Bengal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And right at the moment, he left his body, he communicated mystically with or psychically with Ramakrishna Namsi and he said, Shashi, my dear Shashi, he called him Shashi.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have spat out my body.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a beautiful sentiment that is.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're spitting out your body like you spit out, you know, saliva.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that applies to the death of your loved ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have all sorts of emotional attachments.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what she wrote on Krishna called Maya.
[SPEAKER_00]: Emotional attachments to me and mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in somebody dies, often that morning in grief has more to do with selfishness than anything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: I miss that person.
[SPEAKER_00]: I needed that person, you know, that he or she was very important in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's try to think about things from their standpoint.
[SPEAKER_00]: The soul continues, and you'll find, if you look at reports of near-death experiences,
[SPEAKER_00]: Often, the soul doesn't want to come back to the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're dying to stay, you know, to move on and stay in these other blissful realms.
[SPEAKER_00]: This world is not nearly as hunky d'ories we think it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, okay, that's another benefit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It helps us deal with confront our own mortality and the death of our loved ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another thing, if we really believed in karma and rebirth, we wouldn't be so strongly identified with the bodymind complex.
[SPEAKER_00]: would be thinking of ourselves as eternal souls, would be looking at other human beings and not just human beings, but all beings.
[SPEAKER_00]: As souls, using the body in the mind as its instruments, and just imagine what a transformation that would affect overnight.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we looked at ourselves and looked at other people as souls, instead of objectifying them, looking at them as bodies, most of the bad things that are done are because we look at other people and we look at ourselves as bodies and minds.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we chase after what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Pleasure is that gratify, either the physical body or the mind or both.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we start identifying with the soul, it completely changes our life and changes our values.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Another thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: so many of us are so deeply and almost pathologically attached to the little eye.
[SPEAKER_00]: This who we are in this life, we're obsessed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our name, our identity, our clothes, our this, our that, what I do, who I am, who my family is.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is all the little eye.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all the empirical personality.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just if you really believe in karma and rebirth You'll know this is just a temporary formation in one lifetime.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't be so attached to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Take a step back from yourself from this Swami Vikram.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are say, Mr. or Mrs. Soan.
[SPEAKER_00]: So The little eye.
[SPEAKER_00]: Learn to laugh at yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: So many of especially mental health issues come from taking yourself too seriously
[SPEAKER_00]: Learn to laugh at yourself and take a step back from yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: The doctrines of karma rebirth help us to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another thing, whenever we suffer,
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, whoa, why, and why is it that, you know, what did I do wrong?
[SPEAKER_00]: Except it, just accept that, there's a garlic reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now exactly what the reason is?
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord knows, Ghanak, Garmanogatihi, Krishna says, mysterious other workings of Garma, Garalone knows, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't mean you have to then figure out exactly what you did in the past birth.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not the point.
[SPEAKER_00]: The point is you did something.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all did something to deserve a current suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which means that we need to take responsibility for ourselves and move on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And ask ourselves, what is there to learn through this suffering?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is God trying to teach us?
[SPEAKER_00]: Swami Tapasanaji, one of our former Vice Presidents, a great Swami.
[SPEAKER_00]: He used to talk about Viparita Krippa.
[SPEAKER_00]: Viparita Krippa, which means God's grace in the form of what seems to be its opposite.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we're faced with tragedy, anguish, suffering, let's try to find something to learn.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is God trying to teach us through that suffering?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we grow through that suffering?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Swami Vikram calls education through experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the doctrine of God really helps us to change our attitude about our own suffering and the suffering of our loved ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen some people undergo these extraordinary spiritual transformations through suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll give you one example, and Hollywood, we have this monk for a month program.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can go for a few weeks and live like a monk and follow the same routine.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have that in Billuma too, by the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: and there was a guy who came a couple years ago his name is Chris and I was after breakfast I have dishwashing duty I make oatmeal for everybody and then afterwards I watched the dishes and so I'm watching the dishes he's helping me watch the dishes and he's an amputee he's got one leg and one leg is artificial
[SPEAKER_00]: had such a positive attitude.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really loved it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He always had smile on his face and he on his own.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was talking about what led to his losing his leg.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said he was driving a motorcycle at like 130 or 40 miles an hour and gotten a really grizzly accident.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doctors gave him a 3% chance to live.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he made it through after I don't know how many months of hospitalization, being bedridden, his wife left him in the mean to, I mean all sorts of stuff happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: and you know what he said after explaining the whole thing which just sounds really heroin he says I'm so grateful for this I feel so blessed that I've been through this experience because that's the thing that turned me to spiritual life that's what it took he had to hit rock bottom before you turn to spiritual life so there's always a silver lining no matter how terrible the circumstances are
[SPEAKER_00]: Victor Funkl wrote an entire book about his experience in the Nazi Holocaust in the concentration at camps and he talked about these incredible people who are so inspiring and the midst of that terrible those are terrible atrocities.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another, one final example, or maybe not the final, but I'll mention another example, which is many of you here are parents.
[SPEAKER_00]: How might believe in Garman Rebirth change the way we view parenting?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me read you a response from one of my brilliant students.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Garma and Rebirth have changed my views about raising children.
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea that I am nurturing a soul that has been here many times and is on its own specific journey helps me to view parenting with more of a stewardship and guidance lens and not a possessive mentality.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see no need to create a carbon copy, shape a child completely to my own ideals, or save them from eternal damnation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I understand that a soul may have chosen me to help them along in this part of their journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a subtle but powerful shift.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's a very insightful response, and it really can change the way we think about our own children.
[SPEAKER_00]: The soul of that child might have chosen me.
[SPEAKER_00]: to help me along in this part of its spiritual journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I often talk about the three Gunas and some of my talks, Satva, Rajas, and Thomas, and I contrast the Rajasic parenting style with the Southfic parenting style.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the Rajasic parenting style, I'm sure many of you, especially the Indians out there will know this Asians in general, or many Asians.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Asian parents, many of them have this tendency to kind of do this helicopter parenting thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad forced me to study computer science, separately, has an undergrad, and then I thankfully changed after one year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, because I changed my major to philosophy and English, I can write books on this kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so instead of being rodistic parents, hovering over your child, molding your child in your own image, I'm a scientist, so you should be a scientist.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what's prestigious, so you have to do with XY and Z.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, let the child grow in his or her own way.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's more sotific parenting.
[SPEAKER_00]: This idea of looking at parenting as stewardship or as guidance, and the doctrines of garment rebirth really help us to see that, that the child's soul is on
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a her own spiritual journey and that we're here to foster that that soul's spiritual development.
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, especially an evolutionary approach to karma should give us hope and confidence because every single one of us will make it in the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, imagine our spiritual journey is like a 26.2 mile marathon and some of us are at the starting line, other people at mile one, other people at mile five and in one lifetime I might go from mile five to five point six or something but what does that mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: It means that in my next birth I'll start at mile five point six and then I'll get to 6.3.
[SPEAKER_00]: and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we don't need to look at life as a competition.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't need to fight with other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't need to compete for resources because we're all going to make it out in the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you so much, Farmer G for such a great talk.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_08]: So one question that I want to ask and just for completeness sake because other religions that believe in the concept of Cartman revert, also have an answer, is about the first karma.
[SPEAKER_08]: We are dead at this all of these nerds.
[SPEAKER_08]: For example, in Buddhism, the Buddha said that he went back in all of his lifetimes and left lifetimes and left times and tried to find the first cause, but there wasn't any.
[SPEAKER_08]: So it's all a play of ignorance, essentially.
[SPEAKER_08]: So I'm curious what what have you found in Hinduism and what does it say?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a great question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, is there starting point to our karma?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the vast, what from what I've found, the vast majority of Hindu traditions say that karma is beginningless, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: That ignorance is unworthy, is beginningless.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that, it has an end, which means when we attain liberation, our ignorance ends, but it has no beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there's one tradition I found within Hinduism, and I challenge you to find another one, but this is the one I found at least.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the modern tradition of Iskhan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably, but if you look at his views on this issue, and I talk about it in the book in more detail, he seems to say that karma has a beginning, and you have to understand his metaphysical picture, which is that
[SPEAKER_00]: There is this go-loka and eternal heaven where souls are dwelling with Krishna.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for some reason, and now there's a reason why I say for some reason because it gets a little complicated philosophical as to why they would do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there are some souls who choose to come to this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: incarnate in a human body and experience, have earth experiences, but earthly experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's the starting point of karma for those souls.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't have karma when they're in Goloka, but they accrue karma at the moment that they take a human embodiment on earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the big philosophical question here is why in the world would anybody leave?
[SPEAKER_00]: the bliss of dwelling with Krishna and Gholoka for this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one scholar slash colleague slash friend of mine named Akshagupta.
[SPEAKER_00]: He recently got his PhD from Cambridge University and he wrote his PhD thesis on these kinds of topics.
[SPEAKER_00]: He comes up with an interesting answer which tries to get him out of this difficulty.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says it's out of curiosity, sheer curiosity.
[SPEAKER_00]: The soil is curious, and so the beauty of curiosity is that it doesn't seem to have a moral valence necessarily.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing wrong with being curious, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if it's something wrong, like there are sinful souls that choose to come the earth, that doesn't make sense because there are no sinful souls in Goloka.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all perfectly free, liberated, blissful.
[SPEAKER_00]: right so there's no room for sinning but maybe there's still room for curiosity anyway so that's that's that's one minority response within Hinduism to the question of whether there's a starting point to karma as far as I can tell probably about this view is there is a starting point to karma but I think that there are some philosophical difficulties there yeah next question okay so yeah whoever can moderate thanks
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thanks for the talks, Swami.
[SPEAKER_12]: Please tell me your name too, this is my name is Advith.
[SPEAKER_12]: Were you mentioned that the idea of like, God is loving, but then why is there suffering is answered in Hinduism because of Karma, right?
[SPEAKER_12]: That's part of the answer.
[SPEAKER_12]: Well, yeah, part of the answer.
[SPEAKER_12]: But from a practical perspective,
[SPEAKER_12]: I find it a bit neolistic to like, you know, if you see someone suffer from the street and you're just saying that's because of their karma, is that a little, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a great, that's a great question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I talk about it in the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just didn't have time to talk about it today.
[SPEAKER_00]: In chapter four of my book, arguments against government rebirth, one of the objections is the blame the victim objection.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few years ago in philosophy used in West, it's an academic, it's a prominent academic journal.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a debate between scholars about these doctrines of carbon and rebirth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a Christian philosopher named Whitley Kaufman.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he's at UMass something or other here in Boston or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's arguing against these doctrines and one of his main objections is this one, the doubt that you raised.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Alvin Sharma and Monima Chada, who's now at Oxford, and Nick Tracakis, they respond to with the Kaufman's objections, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what are some Hindu responses that kind of objection?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, think about it this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's imagine a scenario where there's somebody who's suffering from something, something really bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm in a position to help that person, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, what's the right way to think about this situation?
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, yes, anytime we suffer, there's something that that soul did in the past life or earlier in this life that warrants that suffering, but at the same time, the very fact that we're here in that position to observe that person suffering means that that person has a crewed enough good karma, such that there's somebody who's in a position to help that person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And from our standpoint, we're going to accrue a lot of bad karma if we just walk away and say, he had what was coming to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is not at all the right attitude.
[SPEAKER_00]: The doctrine of karma says that to make moral and spiritual progress, we should engage in good and compassionate actions, ideally with an unselfish motive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that the Dr. Nukarmat number one means that it's because see there's some people who suffer in such a way that there is nobody to help them and they just die in agony, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not the case in this situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm ever in a position to help the person, it means that that person has a crude good karma such that I'm there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to harm myself if I don't help that person and I will actually benefit myself morally and spiritually.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll purify my mind by helping that other person.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the answer in just.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a very good question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there are many questions up here too.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you so much for your talk.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Shalaka.
[SPEAKER_04]: So my question is, as you so, so you're which is basic principle, but what determines how we react to these conditions of our own making is that also determined by our pastor, ma, or that's free-built?
[SPEAKER_04]: But then it's also said there is no free-built.
[SPEAKER_04]: So how does it work?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so you did open that free-built kind of worms again.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but so the answer to that question varies from one hindered tradition to another.
[SPEAKER_00]: So out of the other question, for instance, has an essay on I think it's called Garmin Free Will, where he believes in, as I mentioned in the talk, limited free will.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he gets an example, he says, because of our Garma, let's say that I've, I've, I've,
[SPEAKER_00]: been very angry in a past life, which means I'm born with a hot temper, and he used this example because it kind of illustrated something pretty simply.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, look, so it means that I have a lot of anger some scottas in me, which means let's say that somebody does something that would ordinarily anger me, that some scottas gets triggered.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, even though that some scatters very powerful and that it strongly makes me prone to losing my temper, I still have some free will.
[SPEAKER_00]: A modicum of free will such that I can with great difficulty swim against the current and fight against that inborn that innate tendency of mine to lose my temper.
[SPEAKER_00]: We always have that bit of free will in us, even though it's difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: because of some scholars are powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're not, he's not, you know, pretending that those some scholars are not powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're very powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we still have enough free will to combat that tendency.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, what is Swami Vickan on this view on this?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a little bit different.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think what he's going to say is, using the same example, we have very powerful, I have very powerful some scholars to lose my temper.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also have a certain capacity to resist or not succumb to those 10-per-sum scottas.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that little bit of power I have is also determined by my karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are some good things I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are sometimes I exercise self-control, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Which gives me that.
[SPEAKER_00]: What region does me with the capacity right now to also control with some difficulty, my temper, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think Swami Dekan's view at the end of the day is absolute karma to terminism at the level of body mind, even our reactions are encompassed by karma to terminism.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not all Hindu's share of that view.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Priya.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not working, it seems like.
[SPEAKER_00]: tactical difficulties.
[SPEAKER_00]: There we go.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a couple of quick questions.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, one is on the same topic of cosmic determinism and free will as an illusion.
[SPEAKER_02]: Does that mean all the number of lifetimes or the life forms a G-work and take or even the point of liberation everything is predetermined and if that is the case then what is the
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, okay, so what is the role of grace if everything is determined by the law of karma?
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, this is discussed in the gospel of Sri Ram Krishna when people ask Sri Ram Krishna about the doctrine of karma and he says and they say is it possible for God to suspend the law of karma when he feels like it?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says of course because he who created the law can also violate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's where there's scope for grace actually because remember this is not a mechanical
[SPEAKER_00]: lifeless principle, this is governed by God.
[SPEAKER_00]: According to Vedanta, God is the karma paladata, the one who dispenses our karma fruits to everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which means that by engaging in ethical actions and spiritual practices, what happens is I burn God's grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not karma, that's beyond karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, holy Mother's shout of the Ava, you say,
[SPEAKER_00]: If, because of my karma, what's due to me is the wound, the size of a plow share.
[SPEAKER_00]: By God's grace, in through spiritual practices, that wound can be reduced to a pin prick.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which means we still reap all we sow.
[SPEAKER_00]: But by God's grace, the amount, the intensity of the suffering, Arkama Pala, can be significantly diminished.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK, one more question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we've got a question right in front of her as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: So my other question is, again, if we believe in karma and free will as an illusion, how do we counteract this sort of attitude of submission we can get into to life's offerings that this is like a punishment to my past actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, right, and But I can contract an engage in action to kind of change the course because remember remember what Swami You can understand the secret of life is not enjoyment but education through experience and the opposite also true the secret life is not suffering
[SPEAKER_00]: We're suffering for a reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do we suffer?
[SPEAKER_00]: When there's pain in the body, the body trying to tell us something.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's something wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to change something in the way we're dealing with our body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Same thing with the mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is suffering?
[SPEAKER_00]: Suffering either happens at the level of body or at the level of mind or both.
[SPEAKER_00]: Suffering is always a signal that we need to change something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which means so that's why it's very important to adopt this evolutionary approach to suffering because if we have an evolutionary approach We suffer because we reap what we sow true.
[SPEAKER_00]: We deserve the suffering that but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do something about it The whole point of suffering is to prompt us to ask these deep questions
[SPEAKER_00]: What is it that I'm doing in my life such that I ended up in this situation?
[SPEAKER_00]: And how do I prevent that from happening in the future?
[SPEAKER_00]: This reminds me of a teaching of Swami Brahman on the Giz.
[SPEAKER_00]: He distinguishes three kinds, three categories of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, the highest in the highest category are these highly spiritually evolved souls who learn from the suffering of others and they say, boy, that doesn't look good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me not do what they're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a middle category of people who undergo a certain worldly experience once twice maybe three times But they learn from it and they learn not to repeat that experience and then he says there's a lowest category of people They'll undergo worldly experiences suffer terribly for it and three days later.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're gonna do the same thing again It's three wrongish needs to use the example of a camel for that little bit of
[SPEAKER_00]: use water in a cactus.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's undergoing no limit of a tremendous amount of suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gums are bleeding going through the needles of the cactus.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it won't stop because it crazed that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, so there's three categories of soil.
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's try to evolve from the lowest category to this middle category and ultimately get to
[SPEAKER_00]: The highest category.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: So suffering always has something to teach us.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the main thing So I'm gonna another thing you should say suffering is a great eye opener That's the idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not suffering for suffering sake.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's suffering for the sake of opening our eyes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Max, it's this, you don't mean it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like with God's Hill, is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, oh, you're Max God's Hill.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank you for the classes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for how we thought for Lancers.
[SPEAKER_01]: So so many questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know I'm coming back because I'm eternally curious, but is there any tradition or in you can answer this?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the mic just went out, oh yeah, boy, mic issues, is there any thinking or tradition around collective karma?
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the discussion is around personal
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll repeat the question.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have, I know the question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a collective garmal, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that, yeah, things like culture, or people or groups of people who seem right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: to get more arcane about that if there's a massive depth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: One, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one
[SPEAKER_00]: So no group karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, some have argued that a strictly individualistic conception of karma makes it difficult if not impossible to explain mass tragedies of the kind that you're mentioning.
[SPEAKER_00]: World where two or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Proponents of individualistic karma could robot the subjection by arguing that each of the people adversely affected in a mass tragedy, individually deserve their suffering due to that person's own past actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: where literally everybody died except one person who just walked off completely unscathed, it's astonishing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nonetheless, some modern Hindu thinkers have found this line of reasoning implausible, contending that a better way to account for mass calamities is to pause at the notion of group or collective karma as you ask.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ananda Kumaraswami, for instance, argued that the Garmadaktron, and this is a quote from him, holds as much for groups and communities as for individuals, since no man lives to himself alone, but we may regard the whole creation as sharing a common karma to which every individual contributes for good or ill and quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: which serves as the metaphysical ground for a group karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: Karma that belongs not to a particular individual, but to a larger group of individuals.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, my answer to your question and short is it's complicated, because different in-the-thinkers have different views on this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some do-pause-it-group group, a group-sold-in-group karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the mainstream Hindu view though is they don't accept group karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think so, I'm a victim and I've ever accepted it, for instance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very good question.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got a question up there up here.
[SPEAKER_11]: is it working?
[SPEAKER_11]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you so much for a wonderful talk.
[SPEAKER_11]: My name is Akshaj and my question is regarding thank you for mentioning Punea and good karma.
[SPEAKER_11]: So my question is regarding the selfish good karma and the selfish less good karma.
[SPEAKER_11]: Sometimes, in my experience, it has happened that performing good karma, not even knowing that has happened and maybe someone would remind me, hey, you did that and I don't remember that.
[SPEAKER_11]: But sometimes, there is good karma with intention, like I am doing this for betterment of that person or for my own, just because it's a good thing to do, but I am aware of it while doing it.
[SPEAKER_11]: I can't help but feel guilty about that.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, I'm in a spiritual path and I should be doing good things.
[SPEAKER_11]: But that is still a bit selfish for myself.
[SPEAKER_11]: I'm doing this for other people, but also for myself.
[SPEAKER_11]: So how can we move?
[SPEAKER_11]: Practically, how can we move from the self-performing the selfish good karma to self-less good karma?
[SPEAKER_11]: One thing that I have seen in experience is to just observe myself while thinking about the selfishness, while performing this good karma.
[SPEAKER_11]: So again, you can you please expand on that and give some practical.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I think there are multiple things in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the first thing you're saying is interesting because you're saying that sometimes People tell you thanks for doing so and so good action and you don't even remember that you did it, but in fact I would say that's a good sign There's some people who are so good that they just spontaneously and naturally without thinking about it just do good things for other people
[SPEAKER_00]: And that means that they have such good some scottas and they're already so ethical and spiritual that they don't need to think about about it, but that's a very good thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean that you have to consciously say, I am doing a good action.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's one part of your question.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then the latter thing is practically speaking, the nuts and bolts are like, how do we move away from having selfish motives for good actions to having uns selfish motives?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, look at the example I gave you during the talk, which is that high school student working in a soup kitchen, I think if the kid reflects on his motives and says, well, wait a minute, even though I'm doing this good thing, my motive is primarily to get into a good college.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me try to change my motive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which doesn't mean that that kid won't write a paragraph of the essay on this thing, but it means the motive, the inner motive changes.
[SPEAKER_00]: and selfishness means anything that gratifies the body-mind complex or the ego.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the test.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you have no selfish motives, if you're doing this good action without trying to gratify either the physical body or the mind in any way, then that's by definition an unselfish motive.
[SPEAKER_00]: So doing good for good sake, for instance, is unselfish, but doing it because Shiva Ganesh Jiva Sabha, that's the famous teaching of Shiva Ram Krishna's, try to serve others in the spirit of worship by seeing the divine in everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's another example of very lofty.
[SPEAKER_00]: example of unselfish service, unselfish good actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, he wants to follow up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you?
[SPEAKER_11]: But doing good karma, to seek, or again, points towards liberation, or... Oh, I see, that's the question.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_11]: Is that selfish or that's...
[SPEAKER_11]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it's like...
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like sure how much it says.
[SPEAKER_00]: Desires for worldly things are going to be a source of bondage.
[SPEAKER_00]: But desire for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: will help you to gain liberation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's the same kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I do something without selfish motives, without any attempt to gratify the body-mind complex or the ego, what happens?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just purifying my mind, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And ideally, I mean, it's a subtle question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that as I said, the highest idea is not like somebody who says, I'm going to help this person or to purify my mind, because even that you can argue as a kind of like a higher form of selfishness or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they just do it spontaneously.
[SPEAKER_00]: right, but as a result, they do purify their minds, right, and then they make further and further spiritual progress.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not selfish because, see, that's why I'm distinguishing selfishness at the level of body-minded ego from what helps the deeper soul within.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we look at each other as souls, anytime you try to gratify the soul, you're by definition, definition, being unselfish.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the things that gratify your soul, the things that help other people, and to help other people realize themselves as souls.
[SPEAKER_11]: That's the idea.
[SPEAKER_11]: I think my question was stemming from a try to avoid building spiritual ego if you Yeah, so yeah, no, I think that's a very good concern.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a whole talk called self deception and spiritual life where we end up with these problems
[SPEAKER_06]: From a knowledge, I'm Krishan.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you for your talk.
[SPEAKER_06]: I was just curious about Bhagavad-gita, Chapter 12.
[SPEAKER_06]: Krishna kind of talks about karma fall at the Agha.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's kind of better than better than pretty much everything else.
[SPEAKER_06]: So if you even don't go why, but what are some of the practical ways one can do that in terms of making it as a spiritual practice?
[SPEAKER_06]: Because it does it align with what you say that kind of looking at the motive of your action is there any selfishness, then correct it, does it align with that or does it mean something else?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, in chapter 12, you get the Krishna talks about karma fall at the Aga, which means we're anunciation of the fruits of one's actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: So put in simple terms, Krishna is telling us to perform karma yoga.
[SPEAKER_00]: We should convert a karma into karma yoga, convert all our actions into karma yoga, and the easiest way to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: is not to be so outcome oriented.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, there's a very common expression in India.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do your best, leave the rest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do your best, leave the rest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Leave the rest to whom or what?
[SPEAKER_00]: To God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chapter 9 of the Gita.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yat karoshi yad as nasi yad juhoshi yad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yat tapasika on teya.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tatkuru shwa madalpanam, which means Krishna says, whatever you do, do it as an offering to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally whatever you do.
[SPEAKER_00]: good even bad you might think you actually only offer good things but remember the incident between Giddish Gosha and Shuram Krishna.
[SPEAKER_00]: Giddish Gosha was an alcoholic.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would sometimes come to Shramprysthan drunk out of his mind and one time weeping he was telling Shramprysthan you know I have this terrible habit how do I kick this habit and Shramprysthan is smiles and he says okay no problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next time you have this desire to drink offered to divine mother first.
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally everything and he started doing that and he stopped drinking because at some point he started feeling I don't want to offer this to mother So that happens so literally anything you do and it's a good test, you know if you if you make it a principle in your life You're dead at a life to offer everything to God It's it's it's a bit like you're like a furnace burning inside and you're gonna find that wait a minute Oh wait do I really want to offer this to God and then you start changing your behavior?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, thank you.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you, Mars.
[SPEAKER_06]: Another question I have is in Gospel, Thakhu talks about if you cry with Viakulata, intense it, longing, longing, longing, then God cannot wait.
[SPEAKER_06]: Did he put some people like me like Viakul that doesn't come normally?
[SPEAKER_06]: Did he know people, almost people?
[SPEAKER_06]: So did he mean it to do it as a performance?
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_06]: Also,
[SPEAKER_06]: or did he mean to just keep trying it until it becomes natural?
[SPEAKER_06]: Or does it come as a grace?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, great question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is the question about longing?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, I'm interested in often talks about developing cultivating longing, viakulata for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what he says is, you'll notice, it's a very high state, actually, to really feel that longing for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: How many of us really feel that?
[SPEAKER_00]: We have some curiosity, we believe in, we have a kind of middling faith in God, but we don't really have most of us don't have that longing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So how do we develop it?
[SPEAKER_00]: We develop it, he says, we don't feel the true spirit of renunciation and longing until we have passed through the end of enjoyment, Boganto Naholete Agashina.
[SPEAKER_00]: So part of it is education through experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is kind of the keynote of the talk today, you know, Swami Vikram, this idea of education through experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Slowly we start realizing, we're not going to see, so long as we care about things in the world, we're not going to care about God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So long as we long for the things of the world, we're not going to long for God, it's a kind of either or Jesus Christ used to say you can choose God or Maman but not both, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the real test.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't really have that intense longing for God so long as you also have desires for things in the world, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's something I also want to say but I can't remember if it comes back to me, I'll tell you.
[SPEAKER_07]: Namaskar Swami.
[SPEAKER_07]: My name is Spuish.
[SPEAKER_07]: I have two questions.
[SPEAKER_07]: One is on the nature of action itself, which is like the karma yoke.
[SPEAKER_07]: So Bhagavad Gita is a lot more focused on the karma yoke per se versus Patanjali is going to be more around meditation.
[SPEAKER_07]: And then there's a whole part about bhakti yoke.
[SPEAKER_07]: How do you see karma in like these different kind of yoke?
[SPEAKER_07]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_07]: And second I'll come to you after this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just remember the other part of my response Christian here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has to do with songs music because I think music is a very powerful spiritual practice either seeing devotional songs yourself or listening to devotional music because no matter how backward you are or how beginner you are as a spiritual aspirant
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people, if you listen to a spiritual song that moves you, it's going to bring tears to your eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you'll get a glimpse of that longing for God that the great saints have.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so music is a really powerful spiritual practice that helps us to cultivate longing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so that's the, okay, so now coming to your question.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how does karma or karma and rebirth fit into the different yogas?
[SPEAKER_00]: So the four main yogas taught in Vedanta are karma yoga, gyan yoga, bhakt yoga, and raji yoga.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that they are very different in the different yoga's.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the same doctrine of karma and rebirth, and it also depends on how broadly or how narrowly you define the four yoga's.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a way of defining the four yoga's in a very narrow way, in terms of particular philosophical schools.
[SPEAKER_00]: In that case, Ganyoga is just Shankara's
[SPEAKER_00]: But you'll find that in the complete works of Swami Vivekananda, he sometimes defines the path of knowledge in a much broader way, to just mean any spiritual practice that involves the use of the intellect reasoning in some way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ganyoga intellect and Rajayoga, the Faculty of Concentration and Meditation, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so how do Carmen River play a role?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, because all of the yogas, according to Swami Vivekananda, are meant to purify our minds.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the whole, I should mention something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I mentioned Rambachan in a previous talk here, I remember, but I'll mention him again.
[SPEAKER_00]: An infinite Rambachan is a scholar at Sinole of College, and he wrote a book called The Limits of Scripture a few decades ago, where he critiques Swami Vekan in the Vedantic views.
[SPEAKER_00]: from the standpoint of Shankara, interestingly, for those of you who love Shankara, you should read this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because he's criticizing Swami Vikraman's views from the standpoint of Shankara and saying that he makes mistakes when he deviates from Shankara.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so in one of these chapters he talks about Swami Vikraman's views on the Four Yogas.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you'll find Swami Vikraman in the numerous places saying that each of the Four Yogas are direct and independent paths to liberation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ram Bhaktan says, doesn't make any sense, and he says, Shankar as view is much more plausible and logical.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shankar as view is that only one of the four yoga's leads directly to liberation, namely Yanyoga, the path of knowledge.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because our problem is ignorance, and the path of knowledge alone delivers knowledge.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bhakti yoga is not going to give you knowledge of non-duo-brahmun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Karma yoga is not going to give you knowledge of non-duo-brahmun.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's criticizing Vivekananda from the Stan Punishankana.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is very interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: So read this for any of you who love Shankara and love Vivekananda, try to figure this out for yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I respond to Ram Bhaktan's objections in chapter 2 of my book on Swami Vivekananda.
[SPEAKER_00]: Swami Vivekananda is Vedantic cosmopolitanism.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I argue is...
[SPEAKER_00]: Swami Vikram that understands the purpose of these four yogas in a fundamentally different way from Shankara.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shankara says our problem is ignorance, and we have to acquire knowledge through practicing the path of knowledge.
[SPEAKER_00]: Swami Vikram says that knowledge of Brahman is already within us.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's innate within us already.
[SPEAKER_00]: We already have that knowledge.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're already know as a Brahman.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there are these layers of impurity covering over that innate knowledge.
[SPEAKER_00]: This you'll find this in chapter 3 of the Github, by the way, exactly this, that the Giana is already within us, and it's covered over by impurities.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the purpose of any of the four yogas, regardless of which yogas is, is to purify our minds, remove those layers of impurity covering over our innate knowledge, so that that innate knowledge will shine forth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that's the case with that different framework in mind, then it's not only the path of knowledge that can lead to liberation, but all of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just all those yogas will remove the impurities and uncover our innate knowledge.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_07]: Just a quick follow-up on that.
[SPEAKER_07]: The second question was more around the quality of government itself.
[SPEAKER_07]: Is there any which is seen bigger than others?
[SPEAKER_07]: My, so it takes, it's bound on it.
[SPEAKER_07]: If I work on myself, so that I have a lot more leverage, feed capital, power, whatever.
[SPEAKER_07]: So that I can have bigger impact on the world, or karma, versus doing it immediately.
[SPEAKER_07]: And it can kind of prodigy extend to like whatever.
[SPEAKER_07]: Capitalism, socialism, young is quite exciting these days with these things.
[SPEAKER_07]: But curious on how do you see the quality of karma itself where you're working on yourself, so that you can have a lot more.
[SPEAKER_07]: The way is to help the world versus immediately helping.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a great question, very practical, but at the same time, I would kind of challenge the pre-supposition at the base of the question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the question is, what do you think, what do I think about somebody who will put in a lot of time and effort and energy and money into kind of bringing themselves in the future in a position where they can do maximum good to other people?
[SPEAKER_00]: But sacrificing doing immediate good to people.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how I understand the question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I would question is the premise of the question, which is that it's an either or between these two things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So why don't you start by doing some small scale good now?
[SPEAKER_00]: While at the same time trying to talk to the VC firms and getting a lot of money so that you can finally get this big company and then you can really make a big impact.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you would also have to be careful with self-ta-so you should do both.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you should do good in the short term, in order to then get to a place where you can do even more good in the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the same time, I think that we should be careful about self-disception, because there are some people who are like, show them one more leak in the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, you know, I want to get more money so I can build all these hospitals in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Shuronga says, you know, be careful about ego there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's a danger of self-deception.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to spend my whole life working in Wall Street and trying to make as much money as possible with this vague future ideal of helping mankind in this big way, like Bill Gates or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's always room for self-deception with that kind of model.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the way to check that and to prevent that from happening is to do good now in the here and now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you, Swami.
[SPEAKER_09]: Name is double.
[SPEAKER_09]: I think this is more in line with the lady that asked about the group karma.
[SPEAKER_09]: What are your thoughts on go to bad karma being passed on to future generations?
[SPEAKER_09]: And sisters, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so look, I mean, so I didn't actually give my own personal view on this group karma thing, but my own view is I don't think we have group karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm following kind of the mainstream in the view here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do we have a collective obligation or responsibility?
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course we do, but we don't need to explain that collective responsibility and obligation in terms of karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just don't think that adds anything necessarily.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we're all human beings on this planet.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're all belong to one large family and so we have to care for others as much as we care for ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't need the doctrine of karma to bolster that necessarily.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that's my approach.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a question right next to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_10]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_10]: Thank you so much, Samiji.
[SPEAKER_10]: My name is Cherak.
[SPEAKER_10]: I feel the opportunity to good karma is itself a consequence of positive karma.
[SPEAKER_10]: However, there are some situations where, you know, we call it dermisunkert.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like we don't know more dilemmas.
[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, if I give an example a few years back we had case of Harambe the Gorilla, where there was a kid in the zoo who fell in the cage and they had to shoot the Gorilla.
[SPEAKER_10]: So, in situations like that, how do we determine what is good karma and what is bad karma?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, very good question, moral dilemmas, the problem of moral dilemmas.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we, in some situations, it's difficult to know what the right course of action is?
[SPEAKER_00]: In Hinduism, in general, what we find is that there aren't, they're not extremely rigid on certain matters.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll give you an example, a very powerful example from the Mahabharata, and I might get some of the details wrong, but you'll get the gist of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are some robbers chasing after some merchants, court innocent, and they want those robbers, if they catch those merchants, are going to capture them, take their money, and then kill them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just, so now, the merchants are running away from these robbers.
[SPEAKER_00]: The merchants run off in one direction, and they pass by a yogi, sitting on the road, engaging in meditation or some spiritual practices, and they shout at the yogi, they say, please, whatever you do, there are some people who are chasing after us, and if the catch us, they're going to kill us and rob us.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, please don't tell them where we're going.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the yogi doesn't say anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, then these robbers come after a few minutes, and they look at the yogi, and they know, ah, he's a yogi, so he's not going to lie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where does merchants go?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the yogi sort of points in a certain direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or it may be something a little bit different, where he doesn't necessarily point in the direction, but they kind of ask him more leading questions, and then they get a sense from his answers where those merchants are.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what happens as a result?
[SPEAKER_00]: The robbers catch the merchants, rob the merchants, and kill the merchants.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the question with respect to karma is,
[SPEAKER_00]: The yogi does he accrue good karma or bad karma, he accrues a lot of bad karma.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because he could have prevented that from happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are multiple situations, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There could be a scenario in which you're forced to lie in order to protect them.
[SPEAKER_00]: In some situations, you don't necessarily have to lie, but you don't have to, you don't have to tell the truth if you know it's going to harm other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a more modern example, which is introduced by Jean-Paul Sattre, as a critique of Kant, Emmanuel Kant's categorical imperative.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in his ethics, telling the truth is
[SPEAKER_00]: an absolute categorical imperative means you have to do it all the time under all circumstances without any exceptions as far as I can tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some scholarly debate about it, but in general the understanding of a manual context, you always have to tell the truth no matter what this circumstance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then SOT to give this really interesting example, you think the world were too, when Jews are fleeing from the Nazis.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, one kind family, a Jew knocks on their door and says they're chasing after me, help me, and they hide them in their attic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then a Nazi official comes and knocks on that family's door and says, are you harboring any Jews?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if they tell the truth, they're going to say yes, and then the Nazi is going to find the Jew in the attic and then kill him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So is that the right thing to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Fortunately, as I said, in that situation, I think the mainstream answer in Hinduism would be no, and that situation is better to lie.
[SPEAKER_00]: And actually if you, I'm teaching in separate class and Patanjali's yoga sutras, and we were just covering the Yamas and the Niyamas, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And among the Yamas, the very first of the five Yamas, which are the things that you should refrain from doing, is Ahimsa, refrain from injuring any creature.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then another one of the Yamas is Satya, observed truthfulness.
[SPEAKER_00]: But all the traditional commentators on the sutras say that,
[SPEAKER_00]: Aimsa, Surt, non-injury serves as a foundation for all the other Yamas, which means in a situation, in a case of a moral dilemma where it's a choice between telling the truth and harming other creatures, Aimsa prevails, the non-violence prevails.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a very kind of technical and precise way to explain why in those situations, we should always err on the side of not harming other creatures, even at the expense of truthfulness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Satya itself, observing truthfulness, is still has as its foundation non-violence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: on, on, not a harsh truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure that he said that exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's tricky in the
[SPEAKER_00]: which is verbal austerity, austerity of speech.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Krishna defines austerity of speech as anudvaya karam vakyam satthyam priyatam chith, which means your speech should be on the one hand anudvaya karam, which means it shouldn't disturb the other person, the person you're talking to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Satthyam, it should be truthful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Priyahitam, it should also be beneficial to the person you're speaking to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, that's obviously true, and shrunkish, and of course, will endorse that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holy Mother, that's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, again, though, coming back to these kind of dilemma situations, it's not always obvious how we can pull off all three at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're a parent, do you not have to scold your children once in a while, might that scolding, not disturb your child in some way, or hurt them, or even make them cry?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, is that not justified?
[SPEAKER_00]: Aren't you doing it for their benefit?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, isn't it sometimes necessary to speak?
[SPEAKER_00]: unpleasant truths for the benefit of the person, the interlocutor.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it gets tricky here, but as long as at the end of the day what you're doing is for the benefit of the person, and there is an ego and selfishness mixed into it, then I think you're on the right track.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the feeling I get.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other questions?
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I answered all your questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it about government re-birth?
[SPEAKER_00]: Good.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, everyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Should I?
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Should I end with a
[SPEAKER_00]: Om Shanti-Shanti-Shanti-Hari-Hi-Om Tatsat-Shri-Rama-Krishna-Rpana-Mastu.