Ep.07 ~ Four Fruits Of Life

“Hanuman not only gives liberation, frees us, but in the process of freeing us, He allows us to satisfy the desires that we need to have satisfied to move on.”– Krishna Das

Transcription:

Q:  In the practice that we’re doing, it’s said, “the Four Fruits of Life?”

KD: Yeah, I let that out, didn’t I? The other day, when I was talking about Sri Gurucharana Saroja Raja.

Q: What are the four fruits of life?

KD: Artha, Kama, Dharma and Moksha. Wealth, or those kind of things. Kama which means your desires get fulfilled. Dharma, the dharma. Teachings. And Moksha, liberation. Those are the four fruits of life. The four things that we, the four fruits of life, of a good life is to have those four things. And Hanuman not only gives liberation, they say, this is a, I wish I had written, somewhere I had this Sanskrit of this, but Hanuman not only gives liberation, frees us, but in the process of freeing us, He allows us to satisfy the desires that we need to have satisfied to move on. Hunger for, you have to eat, right? It’s also a desire, to eat. But it’s also a need, so He gives us food. He creates, it’s like Maharajji, when He would bless us, He blessed us in so many ways, He changed our lives. For instance, my life is very, a 99% possibility that if my life had gone a certain way, I would have been dead by 23 or 24.  That’s the way it was going. But because I came in contact with Maharajji, everything changed. I was able to avoid certain situations that would have ended my life and in fact, my life was transformed so that, for instance, I always wanted to be a rock and roll star, right? I wanted to be in a band, a musician. If I had stayed in the band involved with those people that I was, I would be dead now. So, here’s my life. It has a similar form, but it’s for a whole different reason. I’m in a band. Hallelujah.  I’m in a band. I’m singing. I’m a big star. In a very small world. Who cares? But it’s not all about me. The whole motivation for doing this is to find myself. Not to manipulate other people into having a minute of pleasure that’s going to end in two seconds. It’s a totally different thing. It may even look the same, except the words are kind of weird. So, it’s all His blessing. He just did that. Boom. Next. It all changed. That’s the way, that’s Hanuman. That’s what He does. It’s not a renunciate path. You don’t have to sit at home, tie yourself up, take cold showers forty times a day. Don’t look at tv. Don’t eat anything but celery. It’s not about that. It’s about living fully and getting into life. Really. It’s about overcoming all those fears that we have and really getting out there and living. I told this before but one time, I was sitting with Him in this apartment building, in this town in Mumbai. We had trailed Him to Mumbai and captured Him. So we were sitting for many hours, all day, every day. We’d sit. And He’d just lie on the bed. He’d sit up, then He’d lie this way, then He’d lie this way. Then He’d sit up. Then lie this way. And I would just sit, you know, looking at Him. That was my job. I just couldn’t take my eyes off Him, right? Then all of a sudden He sat up, really tense and He looked at me, He said, “Courage is a really big thing.”  What’s going to happen? And so there was one Indian devotee there who said, “Oh, but Baba, God takes care of His devotees.” “Courage is a really big thing.” And then He laid back down and went to sleep.

So, you know, you really need a lot of courage to push through the places where we’re very stuck. But we get the strength to do that from practice. That’s how it works, together, they work together. The more we practice letting go of our thoughts and coming back here, letting go, coming back, letting go, coming back, we’re loosening up the bondage that thoughts put us in. Because we believe everything we think. We wake up one day, we feel like shit, we believe it. You know?