The Essence Of Bhagavatam-Part III

With out a knowledge of the goal of life and the means of attaining it. Without knowing our priorities we are groping in the dark. So we are doing everything but the expected results elude us. The paradox of our life is that all the time we are preparing ourselves to be happy, but are never happy. We think that something will make us happy, but when we get that, our mind is already reaching out for something else. Often, we pretend to be happy, hiding our disappointment after having got what we craved for.

Another Vedanta acharya says- “avichara krito bandhah vicharena nivartate" All our sufferings, sorrows, bondage, the sense of incompleteness even after getting what we wanted, are only because of lack of right knowledge. Only satsang can give us right knowledge and understanding, awareness of our goal, the means to achieve it and our priorities.

Secondly, satsang can teach us what true love is. The Bhagavatam shows us the nectarine sweetness of true love. A story in our Puranas tells of a little boy called Upamanyu. His mother, who was very poor, brought him up on wheat flour mixed in water, as she could not afford to give him milk. One day he happened to visit his rich uncle, who had many cows. There he got a taste of real milk and understood the difference. Satsang can show us how we have been deluded about the nature of real love.

Thirdly, it can tell us about building our life, what its foundation should be and what materials we should use.

Generally, our idea of satsang is very vague; we think there will be some bhajan, keertan or sangeet and we can listen, and sometimes not listen also. Nowadays one hears of spiritual seminars in five star hotels, talks about life management techniques, time management, resource management, stress management etc. while the expert who has organized it is already under stress, wondering if it will be a success or not!

What flows out directly from the heart of real Masters is something very different. We learn about it in satsang, which we call jnana yajna, meaning the 'sacrifice of knowledge'; the fire of knowledge is kindled here and in that fire we offer the oblation of our ignorance and wrong notions and all of them get burnt.

So it is called jnana yajna.

To be continued