Yesterday was pournami, so the quota for coming to the temple is finished for the month – for most of you. As a Hindu, the most important aspect of our lives is based on the Bhagavad Gita. We have just a few of you here tonight, yet when you become Christians the first thing you say is that you did not understand Hinduism, that Christianity is so much simpler. But if you make an effort to come to discourses and talks of this nature then you'll understand Hinduism.Hinduism is not based on all these Gods, on all the different scriptures: the Vedas, Ramayan or the Bhagavad Gita. Hinduism is just a way of life, but if we take one book and we master that book, then we can call ourselves Hindus because we can talk about a scripture. When you meet a Christian convert, the first thing he'll do is quote from the Bible, all these passages from the Bible, and you'll stand there and listen because you really don't know what to quote from the Bhagavad Gita because you didn't make it 'your' book.
So we have these eight days set aside to reflect on the Bhagavad Gita, and reflect positively on it. It is a DIY manual, the simplest book to understand if you read it to understand it. But if you try and read it like a novel you'll never understand it. The Bhagavad Gita has no stories. It only has answers, solutions to every problem in our lives. Our biggest problem is that we believe it is impossible for us to know God because we cannot feel God, and we cannot see God.
Before you even know God you should know yourself. That's called self-realisation. Even that you don't know. If you don't know who you are, how will it be possible for you to know who God is? From desire comes attachment, leading to delusion, leading to loss of memory and then you'll perish. I'm going to take the verse that Suren just mentioned. How is it that you'll perish if you have desire? The Bhagavad Gita clearly states, that one will perish or be lost. You'll have more stress because, from desire comes ego, the end result of desire. And with ego you'll lose all identity of your physical self. And that's the delusion.
Losing identity of your physical self, even the people who love you will stay away from you because they can see there's something happening to you. That is what will cause you to perish. Once you perish, in the sense that you lose all identity of yourself, you do things that ego allows you to do: buy a fast car with your accumulated wealth because you need to show everybody that you've lost identity. And you drive the fast car fast. You buy these cars that are really not meant for our roads – like a Ferrari. They are meant for German roads, not South African roads. In Germany it's legal to drive at 180 kilometres an hour. If you drive like that with ego, you'll meet with a serious accident and perish.
The key is not to have desire. One without desire is a wise man because from desire all this comes. That is what Krishna says. We should not have that desire. Krishna also says, “You should desire me, God”. And if you desire God, you won't have that because the desire for God won't give you attachment, because it's not physical. 99.9% of the time all attachment is physical, even in a relationship. You buy a car, it's an attachment. All that I'm saying is that attachment comes from material desire. But with spiritual desire it doesn't exist. If you take the route of spiritual desire, from spiritual desire comes non-attachment, leading to fearlessness, from which comes the great state of spirituality, because you have spiritual desire, and you can become somebody spiritually, just as you can become somebody materially.
A wise man is that one who does not have material desire. Now don't understand the Bhagavad Gita, Suren or myself wrongly. We are not saying that you shouldn't have wealth. Nowhere does Krishna say you should renounce all your wealth. He says, 'renounce and surrender' your desire. Only after renunciation of desire is surrender possible. You can't bow at the guru's feet and look at his gold toe-ring, and think to yourself, “maybe I should have one too”. That is a desire. But with God you cannot have an attachment. It's a non-attachment relationship. Because He's never going to let you go. Unlike a human relationship where you can detach, with God you can never detach. He'll never let you go but you can be away from him until you have problems - then you'll need him again. If all of you want to become wise people, kill your material desire.
Hare krishna!
