iMonk | February 2006

Navadwip, West Bengal, India — Tuesday, February 28th

Excess baggage

We come to India to be with Srila Gurudeva in the holy dham here in Navadwip, and we think all our difficulties will vanish in this spiritual environment, but if we bring all our old baggage with us, we will be disappointed.

A change of scene will not solve our problems because our difficulties are caused not by the environment itself, but by the way we view the environment. We cannot escape our karma, our nature, simply by changing our environment: we have to change our consciousness.

We blame the environment for the circumstances in which we find ourselves but these circumstances are an intrinsic consequence of how we view the environment. As long as we desire to exploit this material environment (esa guna-mayi), Krishna forces us to see everything objectively (mama maya duratyaya).

But if we engage ourselves in Krishna's service by exclusively serving Srila Gurudeva (mam eva ye prapadyante), the curtain of maya is gradually lifted, and then removed altogether (mayam etam taranti te).

We cannot change the environment because the environment is not just a product of our own desires, but the sum total of the desires of all living entities. If we want to live in harmony with the environment we have to give up our old ways of seeing things and allow Srila Gurudeva to tweak our consciousness, to adjust our angle of vision until we begin to see that the environment is always friendly.

We come to the holy dham supposedly to purify our consciousness in Srila Gurudeva's association: how can we do that if we bring our emotional and intellectual baggage along with us? Our previous ways of thinking must not just be left behind, but thrown away altogether (jnane prayasam udapasya). If we do not lose our baggage on our flight to the dham, our trip here will be no more than a flight of fancy.

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