Dedicated to my spiritual master His Divine Grace Abhaya Charan Bhaktivedanta Swami 'Srila Prabhupada'
A rich lady once brought a beautiful bird as a pet. To keep the bird from flying away she also invested in a cage made of gold. Eventually she got so enamored with golden cage that she spent all her time in the upkeep of the cage – cleaning it, beautifying it and keeping it spic and span. In the process she totally forgot about the bird in the cage and it eventually died one-day out of starvation.
This is the story of most of the living entities in the material world. The ‘bird’ can be compared to the living entity called soul – our true identity and the ‘golden cage’ can be compared to the human body. There are a variety of ‘cages’ manufactured by material nature representing the material bodies of 84,00,000 species of life. Out of these many varieties it is the human body, that is of the highest quality – a golden cage. But the fact is that it is a cage after-all. The soul is trapped in this cage of material body due to its desires and ensuing actions followed by reactions.
Nevertheless, it is but in the human form of life that a living entity has the highest state of consciousness that makes him ask questions like ‘Who am I’ and ‘What is the purpose of my life’. No other species of life can think on these lines. And the very goal of human life is to realize the answers for such meaningful questions. The soul is eternal but due to karmic reactions is entrapped in a temporary body. So whether the ‘cage’ is golden or made of any other material the actual focus of interest should be the maintenance of the soul. To do this of course we need to take care of the ‘cage’ too but not to the point of forgetting the importance of the ‘bird’ which is the real identity.
Unfortunately today the materialistic world has engaged many in ‘cage-keeping’ exercises with the ‘bird’ virtually taking a back-stage if not forgotten in the oblivion. This has led to the spiritual death of a materially advancing civilization.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna’s first instruction to Arjuna (and to all mankind) is ‘You are not this body’. He also instructed that the soul is continuously changing the body and as in this life it changes body from childhood, youth and old age it eventually transmigrates into another body after death. He also says in the 16th verse of the second chapter
“nasato vidyate bhavo
nabhavo vidyate satah
ubhayor api drsto 'ntas
tv anayos tattva-darsibhih”
Those who are seers of the truth have concluded that of the nonexistent [the material body] there is no endurance and of the eternal [the soul] there is no change. This they have concluded by studying the nature of both.
The highest intelligence is action in Krishna consciousness and is called ‘Buddhi yoga’. Krishna consciousness is the ‘Science of Self realization’ that can help the ‘bird’ liberate itself from the ‘cage’.
Yours in service of Srila Prabhupada
Dr Jagadeesh TG
Prabhupada Dasa
RadhaKrishna Sevak
http://www.drjgdsh.wordpress.com/
http://www.doctor-soul-healer.blogspot.com/ :
http://www.folknet.in/ :
www.twitter.com/drjgdsh :
Facebook – Jagadeesh Gurumurthy:
Indya Rocks – Dr Jagadeesh’s Blog.
A rich lady once brought a beautiful bird as a pet. To keep the bird from flying away she also invested in a cage made of gold. Eventually she got so enamored with golden cage that she spent all her time in the upkeep of the cage – cleaning it, beautifying it and keeping it spic and span. In the process she totally forgot about the bird in the cage and it eventually died one-day out of starvation.
This is the story of most of the living entities in the material world. The ‘bird’ can be compared to the living entity called soul – our true identity and the ‘golden cage’ can be compared to the human body. There are a variety of ‘cages’ manufactured by material nature representing the material bodies of 84,00,000 species of life. Out of these many varieties it is the human body, that is of the highest quality – a golden cage. But the fact is that it is a cage after-all. The soul is trapped in this cage of material body due to its desires and ensuing actions followed by reactions.
Nevertheless, it is but in the human form of life that a living entity has the highest state of consciousness that makes him ask questions like ‘Who am I’ and ‘What is the purpose of my life’. No other species of life can think on these lines. And the very goal of human life is to realize the answers for such meaningful questions. The soul is eternal but due to karmic reactions is entrapped in a temporary body. So whether the ‘cage’ is golden or made of any other material the actual focus of interest should be the maintenance of the soul. To do this of course we need to take care of the ‘cage’ too but not to the point of forgetting the importance of the ‘bird’ which is the real identity.
Unfortunately today the materialistic world has engaged many in ‘cage-keeping’ exercises with the ‘bird’ virtually taking a back-stage if not forgotten in the oblivion. This has led to the spiritual death of a materially advancing civilization.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna’s first instruction to Arjuna (and to all mankind) is ‘You are not this body’. He also instructed that the soul is continuously changing the body and as in this life it changes body from childhood, youth and old age it eventually transmigrates into another body after death. He also says in the 16th verse of the second chapter
“nasato vidyate bhavo
nabhavo vidyate satah
ubhayor api drsto 'ntas
tv anayos tattva-darsibhih”
Those who are seers of the truth have concluded that of the nonexistent [the material body] there is no endurance and of the eternal [the soul] there is no change. This they have concluded by studying the nature of both.
The highest intelligence is action in Krishna consciousness and is called ‘Buddhi yoga’. Krishna consciousness is the ‘Science of Self realization’ that can help the ‘bird’ liberate itself from the ‘cage’.
Yours in service of Srila Prabhupada
Dr Jagadeesh TG
Prabhupada Dasa
RadhaKrishna Sevak
http://www.drjgdsh.wordpress.com/
http://www.doctor-soul-healer.blogspot.com/ :
http://www.folknet.in/ :
www.twitter.com/drjgdsh :
Facebook – Jagadeesh Gurumurthy:
Indya Rocks – Dr Jagadeesh’s Blog.
The Real Soul Doctor - Jagadguru Srila Prabhupada
