A Larger Slice of Life

Balarama asked Krishna a question when they had to leave Mathura and were going through all kinds of hardship: “Why are all these things happening to us, and that too with you around?” Krishna’s answer was, “Don’t you complain when life is happening to you in great measure.

It is because you look at certain situations as good and others as bad, or certain situations as desirable and others as undesirable, that you ask yourself why these things are happening to you rather than just seeing life as life.”

The moment you step into the spiritual stream, your inner situation is on fast-forward – you are in a hurry to get to your ultimate destination. You do not want it to take a hundred lifetimes so everything is on fast-forward. If you do not identify one thing as good and another thing as bad, you will see there is no such thing as good and bad. Life is happening in great intensity – that is all. Some people enjoy it, some suffer it.

I am talking about life as life is life as creation is. Right now, most people consider many things as life that actually have nothing to do with life in a deeper sense. People who do not have a car think people who have one are fortunate. It is definitely comfortable and convenient, but it is not a great fortune. If there were no cars at all, no one would desire to have one. The problem is in comparing yourself with others.

This has nothing to do with reality – it is a mental condition. All suffering comes from that insanity. A spiritual person does not look at events as good and bad – you are only concerned about how intensely life is happening to you.

Good and bad are social phenomena – they have nothing to do with life. If you maintain equanimity, you will see every event that happens in your life will bring you a step forward. If you don’t see this, if you get influenced by your social situations, then because of the pace at which life is happening, you may think something is going wrong with your life, which is not so.

If you want to be spiritual, fundamentally, it means you want to end yourself, the way you are right now. A positive way of putting it is, you are seeking liberation. You are seeking your ultimate nature; you are seeking God; you want to become unbounded.

When you want to be boundless, you want to cease to exist the way you are right now. Once you express this wish and the necessary energy is invested in you, things will happen to end you the way you are right now. This does not mean negative things will happen to you. It is just that life will move on fast-forward, at a tremendous pace.