08.15 – The world is a hospital; be hospitable to the doctor
Patients admitted in a hospital know that the doctor’s counsel is essential for their recovery. If some patients were inhospitable to the doctor, we would be appalled by their irrationality: is this a mental hospital?
Yet, might we ourselves be acting like those patients?
Gita wisdom indicates that the disease of misdirected desires afflicts us. Though we are eternal and spiritual, we crave for the temporary and the material. Whenever we lose our desired objects, as we inevitably do in due course of time, we suffer. Terribly. Repeatedly.
To heal us, Krishna, the Supreme Doctor, provides the therapy of devotional service. This process efficiently and expeditiously reverts our desires back from the world to Krishna. The Bhagavad-gita (08.15) assures that those who learn to love Krishna become forever free from this miserable world.
Krishna offers his expert help freely and lovingly through his various manifestations like the scriptures and the holy names. But we are often inhospitable to him. We misperceive that his guidance will interfere with our enjoyment in this world. We give him as less time as possible – and even in that time, we give him as less thought as possible. Our inhospitality is evident in our half-heartedness and distractedness in devotional activities like mantra meditation. By being inhospitable to Krishna, we aggravate our misery and perpetuate our hospital sentence.
Gita wisdom gives us the intellectual impetus to become hospitable to Krishna. When we adopt his guidance, the practice of bhakti-yoga cures us quickly. It also makes our recovery a joyful journey, as the Gita (09.02) indicates. Using the things of this world in Krishna’s service grants us meaningful achievement and perennial fulfillment.
By regularly reinforcing our intelligence with Gita wisdom, we can become inhospitable towards our irrational inhospitability to Krishna and help him to help us.
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08.15 – After attaining Me, the great souls, who are yogis in devotion, never return to this temporary world, which is full of miseries, because they have attained the highest perfection.