Suppose you are the friend of a billionaire. One day you see your friend's estranged son wandering like a vagabond on the streets, drunk, disheveled, diseased, distressed and starving. Somebody comes and offers him food. He hungrily gulps down the food and continues his aimless wandering. Then someone else comes and offers him new clothes. He happily wears the clothes, but remains lost and forsaken. Then someone else gives him free medicines, which give temporary physical relief, but no permanent solace. Then you take him home in your car, and arrange for his bathing, food and treatment. When he has sobered down, you talk with him lovingly and explain to him his father's great affection and longing for him. Then you clarify and remove the misunderstanding that had strained h is relationship with his father. And when he is ready to return back to his father, you take him back to his father's mansion where he is given the best foods, the best clothes and the best medicines. Thus you have helped solve his problems permanently.
Srila Prabhupada, the founder-acharya of IKSCON, would tell a story to illustrate the principle of all-round welfare work. All of us are souls, beloved children of the God, Krishna, who is the supreme billionaire, being the Lord of the Goddess of Fortune. Therefore we are all like princes. But due to misuse of our free will, we have left the shelter of our all-loving father and are struggling for paltry pleasure in this material world, exactly like the lost son of that billionaire. The material welfare workers are like the people who offered food, clothing and medicine to the lost son, whereas the devotee is like the father's friend who took the son back to his father. The Bhagavad-gita philosophy shared by devotees is not an impractical, armchair recreation, but is a practical, vital clarification intended to remove the misconceptions that estrange us from Krishna. When we understand Krishna's love for us, we feel inspired to re-enter into a loving relationship with Him and thus eventually return back to Him to be eternally happy. By loving Krishna, we benefit not only in the next life, but also in this very life. Devotional harmony with Krishna - especially by chanting His holy names like the Hare Krishna mahamantra - blesses us with a sublime inner joy. When enriched by this inner joy, we can remain satisfied, whether we have little or lot, and can calmly endeavor to benefit ourselves and others - materially and spiritually. That's why sharing the principles and techniques to discover inner joy comprises the most complete social service.
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Out of His love for us, God manifests Himself as His holy name. The Padma Purana declares: abhinnatvam nama naminoh “There is no difference between the name of God and God Himself.” So the holy name is no ordinary sound; it is God Himself.
Here’s an example to illustrate how a thing can be much more valuable that what it appears to be. A mother tells her four year old child to tear and throw into the dustbin all paper that he finds fallen on the ground in their bedroom. The child gleefully gets down to work, tearing and throwing away the papers.
Suddenly the mother notices a five hundred rupee note that had fallen from her husband’s pocket as he rushed to office that morning. The child also notices that note and picks it up to tear it. The mother screams in alarm, “Stop.” Taken aback, the child asks, “Did you not tell me tear all paper lying on the ground?” The mother hastily takes the note from his hand, keeps it safely in her purse and then replies, “But this is not ordinary paper.” The child looks at the paper in surprise. It looks just like the papers that he has torn. Seeing his incredulity, the mother says, “With this paper, you can get five hundred chocolates for your birthday.” And when he actually gets the chocolates from the shop, then he realizes that the five hundred rupee note is no ordinary paper.
Similarly, those with undeveloped spiritual consciousness think that the holy name is just like any ordinary sound. But when they chant the holy names themselves and experience profound peace and immense joy, then they understand that the holy name is different from any ordinary sound. For no ordinary material sound can bring such joy, just as no ordinary paper can get five hundred chocolates.
God, out of His unlimited love for us, makes Himself easily available to us in a portable form that we can literally carry on our tongue-tip. Srila Prabhupada would say that when we chant the holy name, the Lord dances on our tongues.
Not only can chanting make a huge difference in our own lives, it can make a significant difference in the world too. There are a significant number of criminals and addicts and others habituated to self-destructive behavior who want to become better human beings, but don’t know how to change themselves. If they could be taught the process of chanting, they would be able to overcome their lower natures and become better human being and thus help make our world a much better place.
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Once, a drunk person walking on a roof came dangerously close to the edge. When a wise person warned him, “Stop. Don’t move forward,” he angrily retorted, “Who are you to stop me? I am free to go wherever I want.” Yes, free he was, as he soon found – free to suffer and free to lose his freedom to walk forever.
Restriction is not a depriver of freedom, but a provider of freedom. When a doctor restricts the diet of a patient, that restriction facilitates the patient’s quick freedom from disease and provides future freedom to eat properly. If the patient rejects the restrictions, he aggravates his disease. Either he loses his digestive ability permanently and has to perhaps live on soup lifelong, which is a pathetic loss of freedom in eating. Or he may lose his life itself, which is the ultimate loss of freedom.
The sacred Vedic scriptures – and indeed all the religious scriptures – in essence explain that our present material existence is a diseased state of existence. We are eternal spiritual beings, beloved children of God, but are currently restricted to temporal, physical existence due to spiritual amnesia. This original malaise subjects us to mental miseries like stress, anxiety, depression and jealousy as well as physical sufferings like old age, disease and death.
The Srimad Bhagavatam (1.17.38) declares illicit sex, gambling, meat-eating and intoxication as four primary anti-spiritual activities. Modern social sciences have discovered how these activities harms us physically, psychologically, economically, ecologically, educationally and socially, as analyzed by the scholar, Steven Rosen, in his compilation,” The Regulative Principles of Freedom, A Comprehensive Study.” These physical drives also increase our bodily identification and perpetuate our spiritual forgetfulness, thus making us bereft of our natural spiritual joyfulness.
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“Success nowadays means to drive in a loaned car on a toll-charged expressway using credit card fuel.” This poignant statement shows the deceptive nature of the definition of success that is imposed on us by society. Indeed, most people today are “prisoners of success.” How? Generally, a prisoner is one whose freedom is restricted by immovable physical bars. The modern definition of success restricts people in their freedom by inflexible mental conceptions.

For example, a person, to be considered a social success, has to have a posh row-house, a sleek car, a trendy cell-phone…. And for this, many people have to take a variety of loans, which indenture them to blood-sucking labor for years. Not only that, these loans create an agonizing mental burden due to the anxiety of repayment. This anxiety doesn’t allow them to peacefully enjoy the very comforts for which they accepted those anxieties.
Even those who don’t have to take loans to maintain a “successful” image in society are not spared by the ghost of anxiety. They are haunted by the anxiety to protect what they have from rivals, thieves and even relatives. Thus they too are prisoners of success.
If “success” does not make us happy, but instead makes us miserable, stress-filled, anxiety-ridden, then is that the kind of success we want in life? Unfortunately, most people run like programmed machines to try to achieve “success,” no matter how troublesome it is to achieve or maintain.
Srila Prabhupada reveals the spiritual secret for a successful lifestyle, “Life is never made comfortable by artificial needs, but by plain living and high thinking.” Plain living will appear unattractive and impractical as long as we don’t find the spiritually satisfying object for high thinking – God, Krishna. When our thoughts are high and enlightened, we understand that we are spiritual beings thirsting for the nectar of love of God. We can have real peace by harmonizing with the benevolent will of God, by learning from the sacred scriptures like the Bhagavad-gita to accept gracefully and gratefully whatever He provides. And we can have real happiness by awakening our dormant love for God by chanting His holy names.
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