Sri Nityananda Trayodasi 2013

I haven't written in a long ass while. This "real" life in the "real" world has taken precedent over any online existence. My trials and tribulations, while not many, have been intense and energy draining (mentally, physically, emotionally, psychologically). But that's nothing new, is it? I'm sure everyone else can also relate with their own tales of woe. After all, that's what this material world is all about, isn't it? Suffering and misery? (Of course it's our consciousness that makes it heaven or hell, but that's a whole different topic that I didn't come here to discuss).

Tomorrow is the auspicious appearance day of Sri Nityananda Prabhu, that divine incarnation of Sri Balarama, who appeared with Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu back in the 1500s. The divinity and importance of these personalities is a matter of faith and debate, but that is also not the reason I'm here writing.

I'm here to express my meager realizations about Sri Nityananda Prabhu. "Realizations" from one as fallen as myself are something of a joke, yet I believe no matter what our position is in devotional service that we can all have some kind of personal experience and realization. While inherently personal, intimate and private, it's also important to share these things with others, for in sharing both the speaker and the listener become immersed in the ocean of transcendence.

I don't claim to be advanced...at all. I don't claim to follow all of the rules and regulations very strictly. I don't claim to have attained my siddha-deha or to be experiencing bhava. I am nothing. I have nothing, yet I have a deep faith in Sri Nityananda Prabhu that has come from some previous sukriti from some previous births. There has always just been an inexplicable attraction there ever since I came in contact with the devotional process.

The connection is fundamentally rooted in my connection with Sri Guru. Sri Guru is Sri Nityananda Prabhu. And Sri Guru is not just our diksa-guru. Sri Guru is not just one being in a physical body that appears before us as the diksa-guru. Sri Guru is the principle of Guru: guru-tattva. This Sri Guru pervades the entire fabric of existence, for He is non-different than Sri Balarama, Sri Nityanandarama.

This may all sound very esoteric, but it's very simple: Sri Guru is in everyone and everything. He is in every interaction with other living and non-living beings. Your family? Your friends? That stranger on the street? Externally they appear as these different beings that we identify with according to our bodily relationships, but deeper than that, in the essence, there is nothing but our self and Sri Guru. All of the other external appearances are illusions.

When we get mad at someone or feel hatred or anger towards someone, it's not that person who is to blame. It's Sri Guru trying to teach us something, trying to stir our souls to bring us to a deeper level of understanding and spiritual experience. But we so often fail. We so often can't hear Sri Guru because of our false egos and our full absorption in our physical bodies and minds. We don't relate with the world as an eternal spiritual being. We relate with the world as this false identity of being male, female, human, black, white, Chinese, poor, wealthy, happy, sad, etc.

It's said that a maha-bhagavat, a great devotee of Krishna, cannot preach when they are situated on the highest platform of realization. Why? Because they don't see anyone as fallen. They see themselves as fallen. They see everything that is happening as the direct movements and hand of Sri Krishna. Remember King Rishabadeva? People were spitting on him, throwing rocks at him, throwing shit at him, etc. yet he didn't protest. He didn't fight back. He saw everything in the context of Krishna and Krishna's energy.

This is a lofty platform indeed and one that cannot be imitated. But we're not out to imitate. We're out to try and understand, appreciate and move towards that ideal. It begins with realizing this presence of Sri Guru in everyone and everything. We have to stop blaming others for our problems. We have to stop externalizing our inner issues on the world around us. There is no one to blame for our misery other than our very self. This takes humility to admit and humility to actually live it.

I am no great devotee. Everyone knows my failings. I have no reason to try and deceive anyone about my devotional practices. I have fallen, gotten back up and fallen again and got back up again. This is our struggle against the material energy, against illusion. Sri Nityananda Prabhu is well aware of our dilemma in this kali-yuga. He is with us at every moment, yet we fail to see Him. For someone deeply absorbed in Krishna Consciousness they find it strange that one cannot see Krishna, when Krishna is everywhere and everything. How can we not see Krishna in a metal spoon? Because we're conditioned souls who only look at the externals.

Anyway, I'm starting to ramble in a stream of wonderful, blissful consciousness, meditating on Sri Nityananda Prabhu and His presence in our moment-to-moment existence. I wish I could leave my physical body right now, while I'm swimming in these reflections. That would be the perfection of my existence. Perfection is not having material success, wealth, beauty, fame. Perfection and true wealth are the lotus feet of Sri Nityananda Prabhu. And not in some kind of abstract, conceptual way, but in really realizing what that means to have His lotus feet in your heart. He is not some mythical figure. He is not a story in a book. He is eternal, living Divinity that is the basis of all existence, representing the sat (the potency of eternality) in sat-cit-ananda. His energy pervades all existence for both the material and spiritual realms. We cannot escape Him or avoid Him, yet somehow we foolish jivas still cannot see Him.

Sri Nityananda Prabhu is wonderfully manifest as the principle of Guru. For those of us who cannot see and appreciate Him in everyone and everything (just as the avadhuta brahman in the Srimad Bhagavatam did: http://srimadbhagavatam.com/11/8/summary/en1 ) then He comes in the manifest form of our diksa and siksa gurus. Those gurus are our means to interact with and serve Sri Nityananda Prabhu. I cannot claim to love Sri Nityananda Prabhu and then neglect or ignore my Spiritual Master. This also means ignoring his instructions, which I have failed miserably at following and maintaining. Therefore my attraction to Sri Nityananda Prabhu is meaningless if I cannot strictly follow the instructions of my Gurudeva.

I am so unfortunate and weak-hearted that the thought of chanting 16-rounds everyday seems impossible. The thought of giving up any form of sexual gratification seems impossible. The thought of rooting out all selfish desires and desires for sense gratification (like watching mundane movies or listening to mundane music) sounds impossible. I do not possess the strength to overcome my anarthas. None of us do, really. That strength must come from the mercy of Sri Guru, Sri Nityananda Prabhu. We have no power or ability of our own. We cannot make ourselves spiritually advanced by our own endeavors or devotional practices. We could stictly follow all of the rules and regulations, yet still have no spiritual realization or genuine experience of transcendence. Everything in kali-yuga is dependent upon the mercy of Sri-Sri Gauranga-Nityananda, and that mercy descends through the agency of our Guru. Dedication to the Spiritual Master must become our life and soul. It must become the reason we live and breathe and move through this world. Through that seva and dedication, the mercy of Sri Nityananda Prabhu flows into our hearts and we can begin to experience the higher stages of devotional service.

In conclusion, I make this heartfelt prayer to Sri Nityananda Prabhu:

My dear Nityananda Prabhu, you are the source of all material and spiritual worlds. You are the source and shelter of all living entities. The ignorant, conditioned souls cannot see or appreciate You and Your glories. They are absorbed in bodily identification and false ego and waste their time pursuing temporary sense gratification. My dear Lord, I am one of these foolish jivas. I have wasted so much time in the material worlds trying to find happiness and pleasure, yet all I have endured is suffering, anxiety and confusion. I wish you would allow me to stay under the shade of Your lotus feet. Please shower me with the benediction that I may never forget your Lotus feet under any circumstances, whether in happiness or distress or while awake or asleep. Forgetting You is the source and cause of all misery. Remembering You is salvation, liberation and pure ananda. I don't want anything else in this world except the boon of remembering You and Your wonderful pastimes. I pray that my mind may remain absorbed in thoughts of You even until the time of my death. Some people pray to become gopis and manjaris, but for me my dear Nityananda Prabhu, I only pray that you keep me close to Your lotus feet and Your divine associates. Besides You and Your mercy, I have no other recourse or shelter in this world. Please be merciful to me! Please Nitai! Please!

Diary of a Lazy Mo'Fo

The universe (aka - Shri Krishna) seems to be telling me that I'm a lazy piece of shit that's full of excuses. It started on Facebook last week when I saw a post by my dear god brother Advaita Acarya. It was a link to a video (which I didn't watch), but his comment was something like, "For those who see the importance of distributing Srila Prabhupada's books they'll find a way to do it. For those who don't they'll find a lot of excuses why they can't." Something like that. I replied with a half-joke, "If you ever need excuses, I have a long list (winky face)." I thought I was joking (and he knew I was joking), but was I really joking? Or was there some truth to what I had just said?

Then one night while laying down I was reading this article on Cracked.com:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/

It was like the events of that earlier day all started to make sense. Without going into too much detail, basically I was yelled at for work-related stuff. It was very shocking and emotional for me. I was even crying about it. I was already emotional because of being sick and dealing with the side effects of antibiotics. The getting yelled at was just the proverbial straw that broke my back. It was devastating.

So when I read that article on Cracked.com it was as if Paramatma was speaking to me, telling me the reason why I was getting reprimanded: I'm lazy and full of excuses.

Then today I got an email from my wife and it was a link to this:

http://zenpencils.com/comic/97-charles-bukowski-air-and-light-and-time-and-space/

BAM! There it was...again. And when I asked my wife why she sent it to me, she mentioned how she thought it was a cool comic and that it could also be related to sadhana.

So there it is. Shri Krishna and Shri Guru are clearly speaking to me. I need to stop being lazy, stop making excuses. Not only in terms of devotional service, but just in general, in life itself. Life is not about sitting idly by the side and just avoiding everything and waiting for death.

The really icing on the cake about the message Krishna is sending me was when I came across this video on YouTube by accident:



Spiritual activism. Yeah. Being active. Spiritual life is not about doing nothing. It's not about moving into a cave and not mingling with society, although at times that's exactly what I'd like to do. No. The real experience, the real lessons, the real opportunity to put ideals into practice is out here in the world.

My desire to negate everything (like the Buddhists) is quite impersonal. My relationships with everyone are reflections of how I relate with Shri Guru and Shri Krishna. Seeing duality between people I like and people I don't like is all illusion. Everything is Krishna and Krishna's energies. And I don't mean that in a "repeating what I heard" kind of way. I mean that in the way that THAT'S reality. To not see that is illusion.

Shri Guru speaks to us through everyone and everything, as long as we are receptive to it and not defensive, absorbed in false ego or full of pride. Through humility we can hear the message. We can't hold on to our initial negative reactions of anger, hurt, betrayal, disdain, denial, etc. We can't get caught up in the externals or only see the surface of things. We have to look beyond the appearance of the messenger and hear the message. We have to realize that every interaction with others is an interaction with Krishna.

So now that I can hear what Krishna is trying to tell me, the question becomes, "What am I going to do with this message?" Am I going to ignore it and keep doing whatever? Or am I going to try and make an improvement? Am I going to try and stop making excuses for everything and become proactive and enthused about serving everyone and everything?

My tendency to be lazy is deep-rooted. My tendency to make excuses is also deep-rooted. I can only pray to Shri Nityananda Prabhu that just as He has given me this message, that please also give me the strength to make a change.

What I Learned from the Bottle...Again

I say "again" in the title, because I've gone down this path before. When I first moved out of the temple in 2002 I went back to Michigan to live with my father. I lived in his basement and became a stereotypical artist-slacker. I had been living in the temple for the past seven years and became "fried out" as the devotees say. I had no taste for devotional service. I was having a devotional mid-life crisis and wanted to go out and explore the wonderful world of maya again. And I did it with a gusto. By the end of my experiments with sense gratification though (around 2004), I was left feeling empty, depressed and miserable. That's when my now wife, Kadamba mala, contacted me and pulled me out of the gutter and depression I was falling into. I was getting back on track, back on the devotional path.

So it's curious that I now find myself eight years later going back to the thing that I rejected. In the Srimad Bhagavatam there's that verse about "chewing the chewed". The example is that a man chews some sugar cane to get the sweetness out of it and then discards it. Then he again picks it up to try and chew more sweetness from it, but it's of course long gone. This is what I'm doing. I know there's no real enjoyment in drinking, yet here I am going back to it and trying to pretend its enjoyable.

As I woke up this morning with a migraine I realized it was a wake-up call. Why am I wasting my time in these sorts of activities? There are reasons why I ventured back into it, but to discuss it at length would betray the trust and privacy of others.

One thing I realized by openly talking about drinking is that I don't have very many friends in the devotional community. Not one devotee has contacted me to say, "Is everything okay?" Even those devotees that I served with for years and had many wonderful devotional experiences with. Why is this? Are they too busy "doing service"? What happened to all of the compassion, concern and empathy they had for me when my Guru Maharaja was physically around? Odd.

I'm not bringing this up as a criticism. I'm also guilty of not caring that much about others. Maybe that's the lesson here. Maybe that's the point Krishna and Sri Guru are trying to show me: I don't care about others, so why will they care about me?

Everyone is eager to criticize the sinful activity of my drinking, yet no one is eager to know or question why I started doing it again. Of course, like I said, I wouldn't even really be able to get into much detail about it, so maybe it's all a moot point. We should know though that most people don't act without purpose. There is purpose behind our actions and behind our words. The drinking for me was some kind of way to cope with something personal that's going on. It was also a means of trying to create commonalities in relationships.

Ultimately all of my reasons for drinking again were quite flawed. It's a pointless activity and one that apparently yields negative results for me with migraines. Kind of an obvious choice to stop such an activity, isn't it? I'm getting older and more fragile. I'm no longer a spry young teenager.

We're constantly making choices in our lives and we have to reap the results of our actions. Everyday the devotees are making choices to either be selfless and more Krishna Conscious or they're making choices to be selfish and more entangled in sense gratification. It's an eternal struggle so long as this material body and mind exist. If I continually and simply give up and give in to the sense gratification then what is the point of my existence? How than can I even call myself a devotee or a Vaishnava? It's all a farce.

I know why I dabbled with drinking again. I also know why I have to stop. I've never considered myself to be a pure devotee. I've always been keenly aware of my deficiencies and short-comings. Recently a devotee friend of mine told me that we're all just human. I have to wonder though, at some point we need to stop thinking that we're human. "I'm just a human, I'm just falible" can become a justification mantra. At what point do we fight it? At what point do we stop trying to enjoy our senses? At what point do we stop giving in to our lower natures? We're such poor, selfish creatures. At this point I can only pray to Sri Nityananda Prabhu to continue kicking me...and kicking me He is.

Selfishness and Selflessness

What is it that makes us perceive the world in the way that we do? How is it that some devotees can be so stalwart, faithful, enthusiastic and dedicated to Guru and Krishna and yet others struggle to find meaning and relevance within the process?

My whole devotional life has been a struggle. Some would suggest that means it doesn't work and to just give it up. Others would say it's just my karma. Some might say it's Guru and Krishna's mercy in that it's purifying me and making me more surrendered.

I feel like most of my blog musings come back to this central theme of questioning what this process is and why I'm doing it. One time my Guru Maharaja said to me, after I had asked him how I could become more selfless, "Do you realize you keep asking the same question over and over? Maybe you should take a look at that." I think his point was that he already gave me the answer, but I wasn't hearing it, I wasn't accepting it, because I didn't WANT to accept it. The point being that I wasn't really sincere or honest in my desire to become selfless.

Selflessness is the crux to all devotional advancement and realization. Without it the whole thing seems quite impossible, difficult, unreal, irrelevant and unattainable. The fact is that selfishness and selflessness cannot co-exist on the path of devotional service. As the old saying goes about wanting our cake and eating it to, we can't do whatever selfish, self-centered sense gratification that we want and expect to attain anything tangible within the process of bhakti-yoga, Krishna Consciousness.

We can't hold on to a selfish mentality and consciousness and be a genuine Vaishnava. It just doesn't work. If we think it can work then we are completely delusional. It's like thinking you can start a fire by simultaneously pouring water on it.

The fact is I don't WANT to be Krishna Conscious. I don't WANT to be selfless. I don't want to put Guru and Krishna before my own wants and desires. That's a fact. And I have to be ready to accept the consequences of my selfish desires and self-centered focus. One of those consequences happens to be a loss of faith, interest and enthusiasm in hearing and chanting about Krishna.

Selfishness leads to misery. There is no doubt about this. It's not a devotee thing. It's just a fact of life. I have seen it in others and I have experienced it myself first hand. Selfish people are miserable, angry and depressed. It's just a natural result of a selfish mentality. Conversely, a selfless person is full of joy, happiness and free from all anxiety.

Our whole problem of why we can't accept the simplicity of the path of devotional service, nor experience those higher states of realization and consciousness, is because of selfishness. We waste so much time focusing on our self: our problems, our wants, our sorrows, our desires, our comfort, our stress, our anxiety, our this, our that. It's no wonder there's little room for anything else. We can barely take the time to care about close loved ones, what to speak of Krishna (God).

This current life has been an ongoing struggle for me in terms of becoming selfless. My Guru Maharaja wrote to me once, "Yours in the struggle for unconditional love". There's no doubt it's a struggle. Very rare is the person who actually wants to be selfless and who actually experiences the joy from it. But how amazing it is when one actually becomes selfless, because then ALL of one's problems instantly disappear.

Those Vaishnavas that are very advanced and "fixed up" and enthusiastic and joyful on the path are those that are selfless. Just take a close look at their qualities and examine their lives. And those devotees that struggle and are miserable half the time and doubt everything are those that are completely selfish and self-centered.

To become genuinely selfless is a gift. I humbly bow down to those who have attained such a lofty goal. Like I said, most people you meet don't even want to be selfless (or they have a mix of selflessness and selfishness; sometimes doing things for and caring about others, but mostly looking out for their own happiness and pleasure), so it's quite amazing to actually meet someone who is not living for their own self at every moment of their existence.

I'd like to end this post with a lecture by Srila Gour Govinda Maharaja. It's worth watching even if you randomly skip to any part and listen for just 5-minutes:

The Material World is a Big Ball of Suck

I wanted to write a blog post, because I haven't written in so long. Every time I start writing though I end up deleting it. It feels too forced, too much like I'm trying to make some profound point. In reality, I have nothing to say, because I feel so lost and disappointed with a lot of things in my life right now. They're the kind of things that writing about and talking about don't really make any better. It's kind of like my circular arguments with the process of Krishna Consciousness and trying to become selfless. I end up talking things into an endless circle with no conclusions or resolution and in the end just end up feeling more distraught and hopeless than when I first began.

Nothing in this world seems to be simple. We make it so complicated with our selfish desires and material attachments. Why did I move out of the temple and make my life so complicated? I suppose I was trying to be honest with sex desire. I didn't want to be a false renunciate, wearing the saffron robes of a celibate monk and constantly meditating on sex and surfing the internet for porn. So it could be said I made my life complicated by pursuing a life of sex desire and sexual pleasure. Seems like a fair assessment. After all, the Srimad Bhagavatam proclaims that sex desire is the root cause of our bondage here in the material world (in material consciousness). If we run after it, in whatever form, we have to be prepared for all of the shit that comes along with it.

Sometimes I wish I lived in a secluded cave out in the woods with no connection to the outside world. No, I'm serious. That's just kind of my nature. I feel like a renunciate by nature. Unfortunately I couldn't renounce sex desire and well...here I am today.

At times our lives feel like a series of choices, but in reality these choices are nothing but illusions. We are simply playing out our karma, our destinies that have been written from our previous desires, thoughts and actions. Srila Prabhupada has said so many times in his lectures that we are destined to experience a certain amount of happiness and suffering. There's nothing we can do to change it. My life as it is now could not be any other way, because I was destined to experience everything that is happening right now. All of the pain and suffering I'm currently experiencing was destined to come to me. There was no way I could avoid it or side step it. All I can do now is deal with it in the most detached and Krishna Conscious way possible.

A materialist sees shitty things happening and just thinks shitty things are happening to them. And they just become morose and depressed. A spiritually minded person or devotee (or even an aspiring devotee) has the ability to see the shitty things as lessons and opportunities for spiritual realization and spiritual growth. "Why am I suffering in this way? What is Krishna or God trying to tell me through this experience? How can I use this experience to become spiritually stronger?"

Because I am in this material body and covered by a material mind, I am certain that more suffering is in my future. In fact, I will probably live out the rest of this life experiencing various degrees of suffering. It's just the nature of living in this temporary, material world. The sooner I embrace this fact, the sooner I can start focusing on the real purpose of this life and stop wasting my time trying to avoid suffering.

Parental Anxiety and Vatsalya-Rasa

This past weekend my (almost) 2-year old daugher, Gita, had fallen and scraped both of her knees. She’s a very girly-girl and doesn’t tolerate pain very well. She becomes very traumatized by any type of physical distress and will cry and whine about it for hours and sometimes days.

So I spent the weekend with her in this miserable state. I became so absorbed in taking care of her and worrying about her “boo-boos”. I was cleaning and dressing them three times a day (which she was not fond of!). I was trying to take her mind off of her distress. I was obsessing about every little detail, like did I put enough Neosporin or should I have not used gauze or should I have not wiped the excess cleanser off with my finger, because it might have germs on it, etc., etc. It was pretty bad. Even last night I was laying up in anxiety because I had used a gauze pad and was afraid we would wake up in the morning and find it had stuck to the wound (which had happened the previous morning and ripped her scab off!).

Then driving home to work this morning I couldn’t stop thinking about her and worrying about everything. Would she be okay? Would the band-aid fall off? What if she fell down again? What if it gets infected? I was a mess of nerves and anxiety!

Then I had this realization, “If I thought about Krishna as much as I am thinking about my daughter and worrying about her well-being I would be in total samadhi and completely Krishna Consciousness!” It got me thinking about the parental rasa or relationship with Krishna known as vatsalya-rasa. I could finally understand and appreciate how Mother Yasoda would feel towards her young child Krishna. The level of anxiety and worry creates an intense meditation. I can imagine when Krishna heads out into the forests of Vrindavan with His cowherd boyfriends and cows that Mother Yasoda spends the entire day worrying about Him and wondering if He is okay.

Somehow I have to transfer this anxiety and worry to Krishna. That would be the perfection of my existence. Everything in this world is transitory and temporary. There is no value in worrying about the temporary things in this world, whether it’s our children, our families, our possessions, etc. We all have our karma and our destinies fixed up and there is nothing I can do to change mine or anyone else. If my daughter is meant to fall down and scrape her knees then I can’t stop it. Of course this doesn't mean we become callous and not care about others. It just means we understand there are limits to what we can actually do.

I am under the illusion that I can somehow protect my daughter in all situations and all circumstances, but in reality it’s just not possible. This weekend I was thinking foolishly that I would protect her from all calamities by giving her my full attention and being mindful of all the possible things that could harm her. Then she was eating a snack of little cheese crackers and out of nowhere began choking on one of them! The look of terror on her face sent chills down my spine. I patted her back and did a finger sweep in her mouth and she coughed it out. She was crying and gagging. At that moment I realized I have no power to protect her. She, and I and you, are completely in God’s hands. We are in the hands of fate and destiny.

I can try my best to protect my daughter and my loved ones, but in the end what happens is not up to me. That’s such a frightening thought when you realize how very little control we actually have. The people that I love and that are close to me could be destined to suffer a terrible accident or die a horrible death and there’s nothing I can do to stop it from happening.

All we can do is give up our illusion of control, depend on God and try to see the positive blessings in everything that happens. It’s not always an easy thing to do, but the alternative of becoming constantly full of fear, anxiety and depression really isn’t a better option. That is unless the focus of our meditation is Krishna.

Yo Gabba Gabba Prema and Other Tales of Brainwashing

A few years ago, before my daughter was born, I had watched a few episodes of the children’s television show “Yo Gabba Gabba”. I was immediately attracted to its quirky, humorous and at times psychedelic imagery and storylines. It’s completely my creative aesthetic. I remember saying to my wife while she was still pregnant, “I want our daughter to grow up watching and loving this show!” Fast-forward to today and my almost 2-year old daughter is attached to and obsessed with everything Gabba. Mission accomplished!

In the process I have also developed an unhealthy level of attachment to it, to the point that I’m buying Yo Gabba Gabba trading cards, collectible figures and giant, plush pillows in the shape of the characters! I also sometimes find myself doing random eBay and Etsy searches for “Yo Gabba Gabba”. Throughout the day I may find myself singing or humming a song from the show. I also know in which episodes certain things happen, for example: in the “Differences” episode Toodee yells at Gooble and tells him to “go cry somewhere else”. I also at times feel like I know the psychology behind each character and how they would act in a given situation. It’s almost as if they’re real to me!

How did this happen? How did I, and my daughter, become so obsessed with it? I was reflecting on this from a Krishna Conscious perspective and I realized it’s all about conditioning and association. The more time we are exposed to and associate with something (or someone) we start to emulate, assimilate and become like that. It’s all about the repetition of exposure. This is how conditioning works. It’s just like smoking cigarettes. The first time someone inhales the smoke it’s an unpleasant experience. It burns and makes them cough, but there is some pleasure from the nicotine, so they continue to do it. They repeat the process so much until they are no longer adversely affected by the inhalation of smoke. The smoker becomes conditioned to it. Conversely, it’s also the same with exercise. At first we may be extremely out of shape and become short of breath walking up a flight of stairs. After continued exercising the heart and lungs become stronger; they become conditioned.

As conditioned souls we have been repeatedly exposed to the material energy from time immemorial. We have intimately associated with it for so long that the conception of anything beyond it seems imaginary and unreal. While wandering around in this material energy we have come up with so many avenues for sense gratification. We have devised countless ways to be distracted, enamored and conditioned by the material world. In the veil of these distractions Yo Gabba Gabba is just another thread.

Sometimes I joke with my wife that we should have been showing our daughter Krishna Conscious videos from her birth so that she would be obsessed with Krishna. Am I doing a disservice to my daughter by making her attached to such mundane things? I can imagine some strict, stalwart Vaishnavas would respond with an emphatic, “YES!” The not-so-stalwart devotees would say, “Lighten up, she’s just a kid!” Unfortunately being one of those lowly, not so strict “devotees” I lean towards the side of thinking, “It’s really not a big deal. She has her whole life to become Krishna Conscious. Besides, she’s too young to even really appreciate or understand it.”

I sometimes wonder what the benefit would be of dressing her up in Indian clothing, putting tilak on her forehead, tulasi beads around her neck and getting her to put her arms up and shout “Haribol!” if all she’s doing is blindly, innocently imitating. I guess it can make the parents feel a sense of pride, like “Hey, look at what an awesome devotee my kid is!” but does it really afford the child any real benefit? Sure, it’s the benefit of influence and devotional impressions, but even children born to strict Vaishnava parents can go on to become drinkers, smokers, drug-takers and sex addicts. Ultimately isn’t it my child’s karma that will determine their level of enthusiasm, interest and faith in Krishna Consciousness? As we all know, many of us grew up in non-devotional, materialistic, “demoniac” households and still came to the path of bhakti later in our lives. So I guess I don’t believe that exclusively exposing children to Krishna Conscious music, movies and themes leads to a pure devotee. There are so many karmic factors involved for every individual that we can’t always understand it on the surface.

However we spend our time here in this material world is how we become. In other words, if I spend all of my time absorbed in thoughts of comic books, I will become an expert in comic books. If I spend all of my time absorbed in thoughts of art education, I will become an expert in art education. We are all in the process of being “brainwashed”. We fill up our brains with the desires of our hearts. The question is, “What drives our desires here in this world?” Why am I obsessed with Yo Gabba Gabba, yet another parent or another person could care less about it? It then seems to become a question of karma and destiny. The “how” and “why” of what drives us is intimately connected to our karma. We are born into this world with certain parents, certain peers, and certain associations that shape, mold and influence us to become who we are at present. Even at the present moment we are taking in various influences from our environments that continue to color the lens of our perception and consciousness.

Is my attachment to all things Gabba a detriment on the path of devotional service? No doubt it is. I know it’s just nonsense maya. I know it distracts me from thinking about God and service to God. The problem is that I don’t take it as a serious problem, because my faith and devotion are so weak. There is honestly no way to “have our cake” and “eat it too”. There is no way to mix water with oil. There is no way to have a little maya in our life and to be Krishna Conscious at the same time.

At some point I will have to choose which life I want. I will have to decide between maya (sense gratification) and Krishna (selfless devotional service). I just hope I can make the right decision before I die. I also hope I don’t call out the name of Brobee at the time of death.