ONE OF OUR BTG staff members suggested that I comment here on the nuclear blasts detonated, amidst considerable publicity, by India and her arch-rival Pakistan. I'm not much inclined to do it.
For me it's boring. I'm getting tired of the material world. OK India and Pakistan are now better equipped to blow each other up, and maybe they will. That means death, and lots of it.
But what do you expect? That's the material world: everyone has to die.
Taking a materialistic point of view: Life is nothing but chemicals racing around. So even if the entire human race gets ended early, so what? It means nothing.
And taking a spiritual point of view: The real self, the soul, is eternal. It is never born and never dies. It can never be killed, even by the most powerful weapon. The body may be destroyed, but the spark of consciousness within it, never. That spiritual spark moves onward from one body to the next, cycling and recycling from one lifetime to another, untouched by death.
Well, almost untouched. As long as we identify with the material body, confounding the body with the self, we are shafted by the miseries that come upon the body, like birth, death, disease, old age. But as soon as we distance ourselves from the body, knowing that we are not the bodily machine but a spiritual spark of Krsna, the Personality of Godhead, we become free from all material burdens.
Why then should we waste our time getting worked up about the nukes of India and Pakistan? We've got better things to do. Human life is meant for spiritual realization. So better to get on with it, and on with it seriously.
By chanting Hare Krsna, keeping company with devotees of Krsna, living in a Krsna conscious atmosphere, serving Krsna, and reading books like Srimad-Bhagavatam that bring us in touch with Krsna, we can easily and joyfully progress.
But will people do that? A few. The rest prefer to live like cats and dogs, busy busy busy in eating, sleeping, fighting, and sex.
Hence the wild popularity of the new drug Viagra, every old man's dream, designed to give power to the impotent, renewed vitality to old male organs, new hope for super sex well into your decrepitude.
In Bhagavad-gita we find the word purusa-vyaghra (yes, pronounced nearly the same way) "O tiger among men!" Indeed. Take this pill, old man, and become a tiger, a chemically recharged tiger, senses roaring. Become a fool, stalking once again the jungle of material existence, pouncing upon illusory happiness, slavering over tired meat, sinking your fangs into stupidity. Indeed, show your stripes.
And forget about spiritual realization. Just live live live for nothing, till death nukes you. Again and again and again.
Jayadvaita Swami