Last week I finished my blog post with a question – How can we stop death? Because it seems, no matter how good we are, how pious, how charitable, how humble, or how much good karma we accumulate for the future – we still have to grow old, suffer, and die. Can we conquer death?
Srila Prabhupada once asked a magician the same question.
“In September 1976 a circus magician visited the Krishna-Balaram Mandir in Vrindavana and showed Prabhupada and the devotees his repertoire of tricks. Several times he asked Srila Prabhupada to help him with the tricks. Coins appeared from Prabhupada’s ears and Prabhupada laughed at the illusion, but some of the devotees felt uneasy that their spiritual master was being made the object of the mystification and tricks. Srila Prabhupada seemed to enjoy it, but after a while he deliberately changed the mood.
“What about the miseries of life?” Prabhupada asked the magician. “Can you make these disappear? Birth, death, disease, and old age?”
The magician replied submissively, “No, that I cannot.” At these words the magician sat down and Srila Prabhupada took the superior position.
“But I can make these things disappear,” said Srila Prabhupada. “That is the real magic.” ”
So what is this magic that Prabhupada is talking about that can make birth, death, old age, and disease go away? Can we also get that magic?
Yes, the magic is the process of bhakti-yoga, Krishna consciousness. It is based on the understanding that we living beings are different from our bodies. In simple terms, the practice of chanting the maha-mantra is the magic. This mantra is so powerful, so purifying, and so enlightening that in time, with proper practice, our complete personal spiritual nature is uncovered.
It’s already there, inside of us. We are just too busy with life to notice it. As Emerson says – “What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” That is the place beyond death.
I’ll end this week’s blog with this beautiful verse from the text, Mukunda-mala-stotra:
“O tongue, please constantly chant the mantra composed of Sri Krishna’s names. This is the only mantra for destroying all enemies, the mantra worshiped by every word of the Upanishads, the mantra that uproots samsara, the mantra that drives away all the darkness of ignorance, the mantra for attaining infinite opulence, the mantra for curing those bitten by the poisonous snake of worldly distress, and the mantra for making one’s birth in this world successful.”
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