00:00 [MUSIC]
00:02 How do I, say if I see a person lying on the street bleeding,
00:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]
00:09 My urge is to help.
00:10 [BLANK_AUDIO]
00:12 But what prevents me from saying, well, he's got his due, so I shouldn't help.
00:18 So the other context is someone who eats meat or
00:21 animal products their whole life and then they get a heart attack.
00:25 There's a part of me that says you got what you deserved.
00:28 And I guess how do I strike the balance between the person lying on the street and
00:35 the person who spent a whole life- >> [INAUDIBLE] is not about getting what
00:40 you deserve.
00:43 [INAUDIBLE] is about getting what you ask for.
00:47 You must very clearly get the difference.
00:51 [BLANK_AUDIO]
00:57 Action and result of action, they're linked in the sense,
01:07 you acted as per your will, wish, desire.
01:15 What does desire mean?
01:16 That which you want, that which you ask for.
01:21 And as a result, you got something.
01:25 You asked something and you got something.
01:28 It's not what you deserve.
01:30 It's what you asked for.
01:33 Because our actions come from the center of desire.
01:36 They do not come from the center of our potential.
01:41 If our actions come from the center of our potential, then we will get what we deserve.
01:47 We don't get what we deserve.
01:49 We get what we desire.
01:50 It's a notion of difference.
01:53 We don't get what we deserve.
01:55 We get what we desire.
01:58 But what we deserve is far higher than what we desire.
02:03 So helping someone or being compassionate is about actually enabling the person realize
02:11 his or her potential.
02:15 Otherwise that fellow will just keep getting what he desires and he does not know what
02:21 to desire.
02:26 The law of karma will hold its sway.
02:33 There are no exceptions.
02:40 Garbage in, garbage out.
02:44 You keep asking for rubbish, you keep getting rubbish.
02:46 That's law of karma.
02:51 You keep asking for, you keep desiring for rubbish and you keep suffering rubbish.
02:57 That's law of karma.
02:59 But the thing is, can't this person do better?
03:04 Can't I help him or educate him or enable him to see that he can ask for something better
03:12 in life?
03:15 That's compassion, that's grace.
03:17 Law of karma is pretty material, very material.
03:22 It's almost like Newton's law.
03:28 You punch the wall, the wall punches you back or the angle of incidence is equal to angle
03:35 of reflection, as material as that.
03:42 And then there is the living element, the conscious element.
03:50 There grace kicks in.
03:51 It's not material, it does not say, well, garbage in, garbage out.
03:58 It says, son wait.
04:00 Why do you need to put in garbage in the machine of karma?
04:13 What you get as output from this machine is actually no different from what you gave as
04:22 input.
04:23 So be very cautious of what you are doing and from where you are doing.
04:36 That's grace, that's compassion, that's consciousness at work.
04:42 Right?
04:44 So never say this is what he deserved.
04:47 No, this is not what he deserved.
04:49 This is what he unfortunately desired.
04:53 He should have desired differently.
05:01 Krishna says both things in the Gita, if we are referring to the law of karma.
05:07 On one hand he says, I'll come to you as you come to me.
05:17 Right?
05:19 So if you reduce the highest truth to the material, if you start taking the material
05:28 as truth, then I too will not provide you the heights of existence or consciousness.
05:45 Had you really wanted heights, you would not have put material on top.
05:56 The way you deal with me is the way I deal with you.
05:59 On the one hand he says this very clearly.
06:02 On the other hand he also says that you must ask only for me and that is Nishkama Karma.
06:19 Do not desire this or that.
06:24 Do not work for the sake of this or that.
06:28 Work only for my sake.
06:31 And when he says my sake, that essentially means for the sake of the highest, for the
06:36 sake of liberation.
06:40 But if you do not work for the sake of liberation, then Krishna won't interfere.
06:44 He'll simply say, fine, your wish.
06:47 You ask for something lowly, you get something lowly.
06:54 But I will suggest, I will recommend Parth that you do not ask for something lowly.
07:01 Finally it is your choice.
07:03 I can at most advise.
07:07 Rest is up to you.
07:14 Nobody deserves to suffer.
07:16 People desire to suffer in very unconscious ways.
07:24 If you talk of what we must have, what we deserve to have, what our potential is, then
07:37 you are talking of something unthinkably great.
07:51 Why would someone unconsciously desire to suffer in a very brutal way, say for example
07:59 car accidents, war, crimes.
08:02 I am sure I am unconsciously asking for suffering in a way I am not seeing, but why would someone
08:10 do that all?
08:11 You are talking of car accident victims?
08:15 No, you see, here you are bringing in the personality or the personal self as an isolated
08:29 unit.
08:33 The personal self is not really an isolated unit.
08:42 I might have done nothing criminal or sinister on my own, but I can catch the virus.
08:53 I did not invite the virus.
08:56 I did nothing in particular to, as you would say, deserve the virus, but it can come to
09:03 me.
09:04 It can come to me and now I am paying for the sins of mankind in general.
09:11 My isolated existence makes sense only to my ego.
09:21 Existentially I am not isolated.
09:24 It's not only your own crimes you pay for.
09:30 You pay for other sins as well and when you realize this, then compassion makes so much
09:38 sense, does it not?
09:41 Because there can be no individual liberation.
09:45 If the car driver is drunk, that car driver which is not me, I will suffer.
09:54 So I better participate in a campaign against drunken driving for my own sake.
10:03 But if I get hit by that driver, how am I differentiating between I desire that suffering
10:11 or is it the collective mankind desire that suffering?
10:14 When you say you desire to suffer, it is not only your conscious desire.
10:21 When we say we desire to suffer, it is not only my personal conscious desire.
10:29 At the unconscious level, we all are interlinked.
10:37 Therefore liberation is not only liberation from your conscious self.
10:46 Liberation therefore is a very very deep thing.
10:49 Liberation to be complete would require liberation of the entire humankind.
10:59 I like the Bodhasattva ideal.
11:03 It says I won't cross over till the last blade of grass is redeemed.
11:12 It's not even heroic.
11:16 It's mandatory.
11:17 You cannot cross over till the last blade of grass is redeemed.
11:22 Because you and the blade of grass are linked in a very very organic way.
11:30 You cannot be decoupled.
11:35 And when you realize that, then you are able to take upon yourself the suffering of others
11:42 in a conscious way.
11:43 Because unconsciously that is anyway happening.
11:46 Unconsciously drunken drivers are anyway coming and driving all over you.
11:55 Unconsciously we are anyway partaking in others follies, others misdeeds.
12:03 The air here is polluted.
12:05 Did you pollute it?
12:07 Then why must your lungs suffer?
12:10 But they will suffer and there is no appeal against it.
12:16 So you better participate in a pro-environment campaign or activism.
12:26 But why would someone desire the air to be bad?
12:30 Desire to be?
12:31 Desire the air to be polluted.
12:32 No, they don't desire the air to be polluted.
12:36 They want their homes to be celebrated and they don't see that their little happinesses
12:44 are resulting in a lot of suffering.
12:49 Nobody in the entire world would say that his objective is to pollute the environment.
12:56 Their objective is something else.
12:58 Their objective might be maximization of profit, maximization of pleasure, this, that, whatever.
13:03 I mean there are thousand kinds of, you know, and that results in this and they are not
13:09 looking at the complete picture because the ego does not want to look at the complete
13:13 picture.
13:14 The ego being incomplete in itself, relishes all kinds of incompletenesses.
13:20 Thank you.
