On the way to the Kolkata airport from ISKCON’s temple complex in Mayapur, West Bengal, Braja sevaki Dasi and her husband, jahnudvipa Dasa, were in a near-fatal car accident. they were rushed to the hospital and placed in the intensive care unit. the first days after the accident, reports of their life-threatening condition spilled into devotees’ inboxes worldwide with urgent requests for prayers.
After the couple was stabilized, a devotee requested Braja sevaki to write about the experience from the perspective of a devotee undergoing great suffering how it affects our spiritual lives and how we can accept something so bad or unfortunate happening to us.
She replied that prior to the accident, she and her husband had both felt spiritually hindered by the weight of their faults and conditioning. they prayed a long time to Krishna to help them remove whatever was impeding their progress towards Him.
In a letter to devotees, she elaborated: “We can say with utmost sincerity, this situation was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to us. Krishna took, in one swoop, all the many, many things that we longed to lay down at His feet and have Him remove. We had prayed for the removal of these things, but waited for His mercy. Even in the taxi on the way to the airport, two hours before the accident, I had wondered how He would take these things from me, how His mercy would manifest. But it did. It came. In the strongest, most assured, most final way.”
In my work as a psychotherapist, people generally contact me in the midst of a crisis or a very difficult time in their life. Over the past twenty years of helping spiritual practitioners navigate through stormy times, I have developed a much deeper appreciation for how Krishna expertly uses material circumstances to help disentangle us from the material conception of life.
Recently a devotee needed help accepting the loss of her infant child to sudden infant death. I helped her through the grieving process, and I helped her embrace the situation as part of her spiritual journey. the key to her healing came from accepting the event as part of the Lord’s greater plan for her life. How we respond to the events in our life, both by our attitude and by our subsequent behavior, will create our future.
Srila Prabhupada, in an exchange with a young man who later became his disciple, illustrated how we are not simply passive recipients of predestined life events. the young man was advocating using LSD for self-realization. after a lengthy discussion, Srila Prabhupada defeated his ideas and told him, “Man is the architect of his own fortune. so make your fortune now. Whatever is done, is done. Now start a new chapter in your life, and next life go back home, back to godhead.”
As a psychotherapist with a spiritual orientation on life, I believe that our current circumstances resulted from our past actions and attitudes. I also believe that because Krishna is in control, ultimately everything that happens in our life is for our highest good. [see the sidebar “Karma or Krishnan”] In this way I have walked with devotees in their darkest times chronic pain, spous abuse or infidelity, the death of a loved one, the permanent loss of mobility after an accident, and a host of other situations that from a material point of view are terribly bad. together, with the help of the Lord, we have worked on finding the gems in the misfortunes the spiritual lessons ever present in Krishna’s divine interventions.
Our gaudiya Vaishnava literature is full of stories about material reverses, seemingly negative events intruding into the life of an aspiring devotee or a pure devotee executing the mission of the Lord. Reading the description of a devotee’s calamity might make us think that god is heartless and cruel, and we might decide to abandon the book. We might even decide to denounce the theistic path, refusing to place our faith in such a being. But if we did so, our premature judgment of the Lord’s character would cheat us out of witnessing how expertly the Lord uses material reverses and difficulties to bring about a glorious conclusion for the benefit of His faithful servants.
A Good Outcome to a Seemingly Bad Situation
Consider the example of Sri-nivasa acarya, who was still a boy when Caitanya Mahaprabhu left this world about five hundred years ago. Sri-nivasa was born to continue the distribution of love of god after Lord Caitanya’s departure. as a young man, he spent time in Vrindavan, where some of Lord Caitanya’s leading disciples had written books elaborating His teachings. Sri-nivasa and two other devotees (Narottama and Syamananda) were deputed to transport copies of the books from Vrindavan to Lord Caitanya’s followers in Bengal and Orissa.
Accepting the service, they took several guards to protect the ox-cart carrying trunks filled with the valuable books. the journey unfolded without mishap until they reached the province of Vishnupura, ruled by the sinful king Virhambira. His spies spotted the well-guarded cart and assumed that the trunks contained valuable gems. after waiting until the guards had fallen asleep, they ambushed the cart and stole the trunks.
When the king greedily broke into the trunks to inspect his booty, his impassioned enthusiasm quickly turned into disheartened disbelief as he beheld trunks filled with books. Disappointed, he ordered his men to put the books into his storage room.
While the king lamented the loss of his illusory fortune, Sri nivasa and the other devotees were devastated at the loss of the real treasure. unable to immediately comprehend the greater plan of the Lord, they plunged into temporary despair.
While the rest of his party traveled onward, Sri nivasa stayed in Vishnupura, hoping to receive some clue to the whereabouts of the confiscated books. He eventually found them, and he took the opportunity to instruct King Virhambira in the teachings of the Bhagavatam. When the king heard this scripture from the great liberated soul, his heart became purified, and he surrendered his life and kingdom to Sri nivasa. thus by an intricate arrangement of the Lord, the king became a Vaishnava, and with his wealth and resources helped Sri nivasa deliver Lord Caitanya’s teachings. What initially seemed calamitous became a most welcome and happy event.
Seeing Krishna’s Help
By following the process of devotional service, we align ourselves with the supreme mystic, Lord Krishna. the more we take steps toward trusting Krishna to be our maintainer and guardian, the more we will see how everything that happens in our life is designed to transform our consciousness from material to spiritual. Krishna expertly arranges events in devotees’ lives to help them give up their attachments to ephemeral matter and attach themselves to eternal spirit. He helps us correct our perceptual distortions and distinguish the eternal self from the temporary body.
The devotee who lost her infant was able to contemplate the possibility that her child had practiced Krishna consciousness in his previous life and needed to spend only a little more time in this life before going to Krishna. she also extracted many important lessons about her own spiritual life. Being in so much distress over the loss, she took more and more shelter of her spiritual practices and felt that Krishna intensified her desire to become more serious about making spiritual progress in this lifetime. the more intense her chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra became, the more she was convinced that Krishna was her only true shelter and source of happiness.
In an amazing panorama of events going on simultaneously, Krishna is purifying the hearts of all those who endeavor to reunite with Him. those of us pursuing our spiritual lives under Prabhupada’s guidance, in a society of likeminded Vaishnavas, should always strive to remind one another of Krishna’s unwavering eternal love for each of us. In this way we will know that for our unique circumstance, Krishna perfectly orchestrates whatever situation we find ourselves in. life can be compared to a big classroom, replete with lessons and exams. Our freedom in the human form of life lies in how we use our time. a syllabus alerts students to exam dates and projects, but it is up to them to use their free time to study. similarly, we have to use our free time to practice our spiritual life so that we will be prepared for the exams that come the final test being the time of death.
Strong spiritual practices, such as chanting japa and hearing from spiritually advanced devotees, will help us embrace each situation with the attitude that everything the Lord does is for my highest good. this will help us make rapid spiritual advancement. under Krishna’s care, there is no bad, only good.
Karma or Krishnan
Devotees See suffering as karma, or the automatic result of their past misdeeds, but they also see suffering as sent by Krishna for their benefit. Can both be truen
When speaking about the suffering of devotees, Srila Prabhupada often quoted a verse from the Srimad-Bhagavatam (10.14.8), spoken by Lord Brahma. Here is that verse, whose commentary by Srila Prabhupada’s disciple His Holiness Hridayananda Dasa goswami sheds light on the question “For devotees, is suffering karma or Krishnan”
tat te ’nukampam su-samiksamano
bhuñjana evatma-krtam vipakam
hrd-vag-vapurbhir vidadhan namas te
jiveta yo mukti-pade sa daya-bhak
“My dear Lord, one who earnestly waits for you to bestow your causeless mercy upon him, all the while patiently suffering the reactions of his past misdeeds and offering you respectful obeisances with his heart, words and body, is surely eligible for liberation, for it has become his rightful claim.”
PURPORT: Srila Sridhara Swami explains in his commentary that just as a legitimate son has to simply remain alive to gain an inheritance from his father, one who simply remains alive in Krishna consciousness, following the regulative principles of bhakti-yoga, automatically becomes eligible to receive the mercy of the Personality of godhead. In other words, he will be promoted to the kingdom of god.
The word su-samik samana indicates that a devotee earnestly awaits the mercy of the supreme Lord even while suffering the painful effects of previous sinful activities. Lord Krishna explains in the Bhagavad-gita that a devotee who fully surrenders unto Him is no longer liable to suffer the reactions of his previous karma. However, because in his mind a devotee may still maintain the remnants of his previous sinful mentality, the Lord removes the last vestiges of the enjoying spirit by giving His devotee punishments that may sometimes resemble sinful reactions. the purpose of the entire creation of god is to rectify the living entity’s tendency to enjoy without the Lord, and therefore the particular punishment given for a sinful activity is specifically designed to curtail the mentality that produced the activity. although a devotee has surrendered to the Lord’s devotional service, until he is completely perfect in Krishna consciousness he may maintain a slight inclination to enjoy the false happiness of this world. the Lord therefore creates a particular situation to eradicate this remaining enjoying spirit. this unhappiness suffered by a sincere devotee is not technically a karmic reaction; it is rather the Lord’s special mercy for inducing His devotee to completely let go of the material world and return home, back to godhead.
A sincere devotee earnestly desires to go back to the Lord’s abode. therefore he willingly accepts the Lord’s merciful punishment and continues offering respects and obeisances to the Lord with his heart, words and body. such a bona fide servant of the Lord, considering all hardship a small price to pay for gaining the personal association of the Lord, certainly becomes a legitimate son of god, as indicated here by the words daya-bhak. just as one cannot approach the sun without becoming fire, one cannot approach the supreme pure, Lord Krishna, without undergoing a rigid purificatory process, which may appear like suffering but which is in fact a curative treatment administered by the personal hand of the Lord.
Arcana Siddhi Devi Dasi was initiated by Srila Prabhupada in 1976. She lives with her husband and son in Sandy Ridge, North Carolina, USA, where she works as a family therapist.