Essence of Bhagavatam – I

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Whenever we undertake any activity, we must know the purpose behind it. Why should we study the Bhagavatam? All of us want to live a happy life, and for that we must have physical and mental health. In order to acquire more and more wealth, people spoil their health; to regain their health they have to spend all their wealth. When we give undue importance to one aspect alone, there will be lopsided development. A healthy body should be accompained by a healthy mind. These days we are very conscious of the quality of things. In every manufacturing company there is a separate department for quality control. Unfortunately, we neglect the quality of our mind and do nothing to improve it.

While we are climbing up the ladder of success, our mind is climbing down - anger, jealousy, frustration, depression and a host of such emotions corrupt the mind. Outwardly there is prosperity, but at the mental level there is only poverty and lack of the basic joy of life. We live under the same roof, but do not live together, we only put up with each other out of necessity. Communication has become very fast- at the touch of a button you can send mails across the globe, the only problem is that we don't have anything worthy to communicate.

Transport systems have improved, the world has become a global village,but man has gone away from man. Intellectually, we have become very smart and brilliant, but goodness has been sacrificed. After all kinds of achievements and success, the joy of fulfilment that one should experience is not there. Very late in life we come to realize that the important things in life are not material things. That does not mean they are useless, because as long as we have a material body, we need material things also. But there is something greater than them, something that is more important.

Swami Tejomayananda

Swami Tejomayananda, the Chairman and spiritual head of Chinmaya Mission worldwide, is one of the foremost disciples of Swami Chinmayananda. He is an outstanding teacher of Vedanta and an accomplished poet, author, and composer.

To be continued