Everyone is busy solving the problems of life — financial, relational, mental, etc. — but we seem to fail to identify that life in this material world itself is the real problem. All other problems exist because we are born into this world. The others are just concomitant problems of the real one — birth.
Life here is defined by a fundamental incompatibility — we want to live forever yet we are headed towards inevitable death. If we overlook solving this problem, we are doomed because all our investment into life will give us a zero return.
Is life just a meaningless race from the womb to the tomb? The thought, “I shall die one day” is hard to stomach although it is an incontrovertible fact. What is it that makes us repel even the thought of death although it is the surest thing to ever happen in this world?
Our innate quality is that we are actually deathless. But we compromise with death saying, “After all everyone must die. What can be done? That is the truth of life.” This happens because we misidentify ourselves with this body and when the body dies, we think we also die. But we, the soul, are eternal, immortal beings trapped now in temporary material bodies. This ability to clearly distinguish between the two natures is fundamental to solving our problems.
Such powerful, liberating knowledge is accessible to only those great souls who accept the shelter of the Supreme Lord under the guidance of a bonafide spiritual master. They easily cross this vast ocean of birth and death. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (10.14.58) confirms this — “For those who have accepted the boat of the lotus feet of the Lord, who is the shelter of the cosmic manifestation and is famous as Murāri, the enemy of the Mura demon, the ocean of the material world is like the water contained in a calf’s hoof-print. Their goal is paraṁ padam, Vaikuṇṭha, the place where there are no material miseries, not the place where there is danger at every step.”
As for others, the all-powerful death is another feature of Lord Kṛṣṇa and His fitting reply to their foolish atheistic plans. Lord Śiva’s prayer to Lord Kṛṣṇa in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (4.24.66) states, “My dear Lord, all living entities within this material world are mad after planning for things, and they are always busy with a desire to do this or that. This is due to uncontrollable greed. The greed for material enjoyment is always existing in the living entity, but Your Lordship is always alert, and in due course of time You strike him (as death), just as a snake seizes a mouse and very easily swallows him.”
To prevent such frustration and solve the problem that is life in the material world, we need to be firmly established in Kṛṣṇa consciousness which helps us easily solve both the problems of life and the problem that islife. [End]
