6 days Ago By Swami Sukhabodhananda
How do we increase our ‘state of being’? The Bhagavad Gita highlights three key aspects for this: Ananda Lahari (waves of joy), Prema Lahari (waves of love), and Soundarya Lahari (waves of beauty). We should approach this understanding with ananda, or joy. If we do not fully understand it, our happiness should not depend on achieving that understanding.
Instead, we should set our consciousness free. Our happiness should not be dependent on success or failure. This freedom leads to awakening: if your happiness is not tied to success or failure, you transcend them both.
This is awakening, or jnanam jagrata. Why should our happiness depend on success or failure? It will depend on them only when there is a flaw in our consciousness. Therefore, whatever we do should be accompanied by Ananda Lahari, which leads to a different ‘state of being’.
We can delve into the situations of life, state of mind, and state of being, which are three essential pointers in the Bhagavad Gita. How do we change our state of mind? If our state of mind needs to change, our samskaras must change. This means our patterns should transform.
A Hindu is traditionally required to go through sixteen samskaras over the course of life. Duryodhana followed a bad pattern. When he visited Indraprastha, he encountered the pride of the city—the palace of illusions.
As Duryodhana entered, he felt an air of mystery. An entourage of maidservants appeared through a wall and lined up before the guests. The courtyard was divided into two sections: one part had a surface that appeared to ripple like the surface of a lake, while the other seemed as solid as granite flooring.
Duryodhana stepped onto the seemingly solid part and found himself waist-deep in water, drenched. Draupadi, observing from the balcony, burst into laughter, though she later felt embarrassed, as she had not intended to insult her guest. However, Duryodhana felt deeply humiliated that Draupadi and her maids had witnessed his plight.
In revenge, he swore that Draupadi would one day pay for this embarrassment. This incident clearly depicts how Duryodhana made a mountain out of a molehill. It was the beginning of what led to the war at Kurukshetra, resulting in widespread bloodshed—all because of a single laugh from Draupadi! This happened because Duryodhana’s mind did not follow the right pattern.
There is another story in the Mahabharata: Jarasandha intensely disliked Lord Krishna, as Krishna had killed Kamsa, the husband of his two daughters, Asti and Prapti. As a result, Jarasandha repeatedly attacked Mathura. However, Lord Krishna’s adaptability led him to move to Dwarka to establish peace.
Jarasandha’s ego kept mounting, and he failed to learn from his defeats. He allied with Kalayavana, a powerful warrior who had performed tapas to gain strength. Kalayavana had received a boon from Lord Shiva that he would not die at the hands of a man or a woman, would not perish in heaven or on earth, and could not be killed by anyone born in this yuga, the Dvapara Yuga.
Knowing about Muchukunda, who was sleeping in a cave, Lord Krishna lured Kalayavana into the cave by pretending to flee. Kalayavana, mistaking Muchukunda for Krishna, attacked him. When Muchukunda opened his eyes, Kalayavana was burned to ashes.
The essence of this story shows how Lord Krishna, when faced with an extraordinary problem, adopted a creative solution to achieve the seemingly impossible..
