eternity - Blog - ISKCON Desire Tree | IDT2024-03-29T15:25:16Zhttps://iskcondesiretree.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/eternityInfinity in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour by Satsvarupa Dasa Goswamihttps://iskcondesiretree.com/profiles/blogs/infinity-in-a-grain-of-sand-and-eternity-in-an-hour-by-satsvarupa2023-08-25T10:40:00.000Z2023-08-25T10:40:00.000ZISKCON Desire Treehttps://iskcondesiretree.com/members/iskcon_desire_tree<div><p><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}10642509471,RESIZE_584x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="10642509471?profile=RESIZE_584x" width="450" /></p>
<p>The poet’s vision is “to see infinity in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour.” In much the same way, a person who ponders Lord Krsna’s words in Bhagavad-gita can see the Transcendence even in the daily affairs of this material world.</p>
<p>Case in point: a recent article reported that each year, 20 million Americans suffer sports injuries. It seems a large percentage of these mishaps occur to people thirty-five and older who refuse to recognize that their bodies are aging. One prominent doctor quipped that these people are suffering from “an acute case of simplemindedness.”</p>
<p>Now, the good doctor may well claim that anyone who thinks his fifty-year-old body can cavort around the tennis court the way it did at twenty is simpleminded. But in the Gita Lord Krsna tells us that the so-called old manis still young inside and that anyone who can’t appreciate his inner psychology is simpleminded.</p>
<p>In other words, Krsna points to an enduring, ever-youthful self within the aging outer body. And He describes that while the outer body is changing from boyhood to youth to old age, the inner self stays the same. (Every day we see mothers recognize full-grown men as the same sons they once burped on their shoulders, even though the sons’ bodies have completely. changed.)</p>
<p>As Krsna goes on to explain, the inner self (the atma) will live for eternity but the body has to grow old and diseased and die, and until we become self-realized, we’ll go on getting more and more bodies that have to grow old and diseased and die. So why don’t our knowledgeable doctors tell us how we can deal with this most critical injury death? Could the answer be they don’t know how to treat it? Actually, both patients and doctors show an acute case of simplemindedness when they don’t see that the body has to grow old and decrepit and die. If they completely forget the inner self and fail to get the self in shape for death and the next life, then there’s no word for it but simplemindedness.</p>
<p>In our human life we’re supposed to be preparing ourselves. But not so much by exercising our bodies or giving them extra rest. Rather, we have to analyze our situation discover the difference between the body and the self, find out about Krsna’s cure for death. Though the rage today is simplemindedness, we have to gain the presence of mind to see ahead, to our death and beyond.</p>
<p>For most of us, the real disease is that we’re ignoring the self and the next life. Old age means a bit more than having to cut out baseball and tennis. It means we’re going to die. So before we get too far along in years, we have to start a spiritual fitness program. We have to exert ourselves strenuously for self-realization.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>This brings us to another “grain of sand.” In the past decade, death has become a fashionable topic. It’s no longer taboo, and in fact, people talk about it as if they were quite unafraid and thoroughly enlightened about its meaning. They read bestsellers like Life After Life, and they flock to courses on death and dying. But what does all this amount to? Has anyone come to understand what his death will actually be like? It doesn’t seem so. Death dilettantes may record volumes of scientific data about the physiological and mental experiences dying people go through, and they may try to help the patient die “easier,” but they can’t tell us what death really is.</p>
<p>Yet Bhagavad-gita tells us: death means the soul leaves the body. If that simple explanation isn’t enough, we can observe the fact in everyday life. At a funeral someone laments, “My husband is gone!” In other words and we all know it the self has left the body. The corpse may be lying in the coffin, but the actual living person has left.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, we soon forget this lesson, perhaps after seeing a psychologist who specializes in “grief therapy.” But our so-called experts can’t explain death away just by saying, “It happens to everybody,” or, “You still have your own life left to live.”</p>
<p>What, after all, has happened to the person who left his body? The Gitasays, “For the soul there is never birth or death, nor having been, does he ever cease to exist. He is original, unborn, eternal, and undying. He is not slain when the body is slain.” After he leaves one body he simply gets another.</p>
<p>What kind of body will we get? That will depend on our mental state when we leave this body. India’s Vedic literatures describe 8.4 million different species, from the lowest aquatics and plants up through insects and reptiles and birds and beasts to human beings. After death we may have to take a body in any one of these species. And if we do things that are great wrongs in the eyes of God say, needlessly killing other living beings or neglecting self-realization we’ll certainly not attain a higher body.</p>
<p>So we can’t just ignore the signs of old age and death we daily see around us. And we have to see beyond the facile, faddish investigations. If we want to see things as they really are, we have to look to Bhagavad-gitaand get transcendental vision.<br /> <br /> <strong>Source: </strong><a href="http://www.dandavats.com/?p=100341">http://www.dandavats.com/?p=100341</a></p></div>In Touch With Eternity by Vishakha Devi Dasihttps://iskcondesiretree.com/profiles/blogs/in-touch-with-eternity2023-05-26T09:30:00.000Z2023-05-26T09:30:00.000ZISKCON Desire Treehttps://iskcondesiretree.com/members/iskcon_desire_tree<div><p><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}2515047887,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="2515047887?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="450" /></p>
<p><strong>From Back to Godhead</strong></p>
<p>“From the viewpoint of eternity, a life span of five thousand years is the same as that of five years: both are a flash, both temporary.”</p>
<p>Two summers ago when the Reforestation Department of the Sequoia National Park in California gave away excess baby Sequoia trees, I got four and planted them on our nine-acre property in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Sequoias don’t produce useful things like fruits or flowers. They simply live—for thousands of years. And they grow—hundreds of feet high.</p>
<p>Sometimes I’d sit next to my favorite of the four – foot-high trees, quietly chanting the names of God -Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. And I’d think how this sapling’s parent or grandparent was present when Lord Krishna was on earth five thousand years ago, and when Lord Caitanya was here five hundred years ago.</p>
<p>Over the next few months, as the baby tree took root, spread its graceful limbs, and grew, my thoughts shifted to where I would be as the tree reached its full height and girth. A few decades from now, when my body would become decrepit and useless, this tree would still be in its childhood. And when I, the soul, would leave this body to enter a new one—who knows what type of body or where?—my memory of this nine-acre plot, my house, my family, and my Sequoias would all be left behind. Yet this tree would be right there, growing silently century after century. And century after century I’d be passing from one body to another, from one universe to another, in body after body. Both types of embodiment—the tree’s and my imagined future ones—seemed futile. (At least the giant Sequoia, though, would be providing shelter for birds and animals. Who knows what I’d be doing?)</p>
<p>What attracted me to this tree over the hundreds of others that decorate our property? Its extraordinary ability to survive. I realized that although I hear and use the word eternal often, its actual import is alien to me; otherwise, why would I be impressed with a life span of a mere five thousand years? From the viewpoint of eternity, a life span of five thousand years is the same as that of five years: both are a flash, both temporary. Either way, the body disintegrates and the soul moves on.</p>
<p>Longevity attracts me because I’m an eternal spiritual being, an imperishable soul. In my natural state I don’t transmigrate. So, since I’m not meant to be helplessly, traumatically dragged from one body to another, I crave permanence in this life. But I don’t really want the permanence of a giant Sequoia. Although by comparison to mine, the length of its life is awe-inspiring, to stand in one place, immobile and incommunicative, would be awful. I’m not meant for that.</p>
<p>I’m meant to serve Krishna, without interruption and without motivation. By such devotional service I’ll rejoin Him eternally in His eternal home in a blissful, eternal, spiritual body.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, my present service to God is both interrupted and motivated. So I don’t qualify to regain an eternal body. I’m stuck with temporary ones unavoidably accompanied by birth and death.</p>
<p>My attitude reminds me of that of my two-year-old, who blithely answers “no” to the most reasonable requests: “Sit down and eat your dinner.” “No.” “Let’s put your shoes on.” “No.” And so forth. “No” to her is an easy answer that saves her the trouble of stopping whatever she’s doing to do something else—even something better.</p>
<p>Similarly, when Krishna says, “Give up sense gratification and follow Me,” I respond with her mentality: “No.” “Always think of Me.” “No.” And so forth.</p>
<p>Now if I could get out of the two-year-old stage and enter the stage of cooperation and surrender to the Lord, I could, conceivably, avoid having to take more material bodies after this one is finished. And even if I’m not completely successful, whatever advancement I make will stay with me as I transmigrate from body to body. If in some future body I continue to advance, I’ll be adding to the progress I’ve already made. So even if finishing up this temporary-body business in this lifetime is a long shot, it’s one that’s supremely worthwhile.</p>
<p>Srila Prabhupada explains, “One should be captivated by this information. He should desire to transfer himself to that eternal world and extricate himself from this false reflection of reality. For one who is too much attached to this material world, it is very difficult to cut that attachment, but if he takes to Krishna consciousness there is a chance of gradually becoming detached. One has to associate himself with devotees, those who are in Krishna consciousness. One should search out a society dedicated to Krishna consciousness and learn how to discharge devotional service. In this way he can cut off his attachment to the material world.” (Bhagavad-gita 15.6, purport)</p>
<p>Since the Sequoias are on our property, we can protect them from being cut. And the attachments and rebellions that have grown up in my mind I can cut down, especially by learning from the examples of my godbrothers and godsisters. By their inspiration, one day I may be qualified for a body that outlives even innumerable giant Sequoias.</p>
<p><strong>Source:</strong> <a href="http://www.dandavats.com/?p=4065">http://www.dandavats.com/?p=4065</a></p></div>