Once, when I had a legal problem in managing, and it was something that kept me up at night, I consulted Godbrothers, and one of my Godbrothers, Ritadhvaja Swami, so kindly, two days later, sent me a verse. He said, "Vaiś, I think this might help." And he sent me a verse from Pṛthu Mahārāja, who definitely had a problem—Indra. He was trying to do his duty and perform this 100th horse sacrifice. And Indra kept stealing the sacrificial horse and pretending he was a sannyāsī. It was ludicrous and outrageous and very disappointing to Pṛthu Mahārāja, and he became angry. He wanted to kill Indra. The sages, those who were performing the yajña, said, "Don't. Don't do it. It'll contaminate the yajña. We'll do it for you." Then Brahmā intervened, and he came and said, "Wait, everybody, hold it. It's Indra. You can't kill him. And besides, why don't you just tolerate it? Because that's providential." And Pṛthu Mahārāja said, "Okay, we'll tolerate," and he made up with Indra, actually.

And Indra kind of apologized, like he usually does. And so there's a way, when I read that, I felt relief. Where else are you going to get relief, except from the Bhagavad-gītā or the Bhāgavatam? I actually felt relief, and it wasn't theoretical. It was visceral. I couldn't sleep, and then I could—that's proof that it's not theoretical. And I came to a point of realizing that I have to tolerate this and take it step by step. I think maybe that's when I invented for myself this mantra of "be methodical but dispassionate." I just keep saying it over and over again. That's what Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-gītā, and that's what problems are for. They're for following the instructions of Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavad-gītā. If you wondered why you get problems, It's like you go to a class and you sit down, and then the teacher hands out all the papers on the desk and says, "Put away everything. Get out a number two pencil." Have you ever heard that before? Yeah, and that's what Kṛṣṇa does for us, Vaikuṇṭha Nāyaka Prabhu. He says, "Okay, you sit down. Here's your problem for the day. Take out a number two pencil, put away all your other stuff. Let's see how you're going to do now."

So what you said was true, and it actually works when we follow Kṛṣṇa's instruction, for instance, Occam's razor—the simplest solution is the best, fewer assumptions, and it's direct. So Prabhupāda, in a lecture, says when you lose a loved one, it's inevitable that you'll feel overwhelmed, heaviness of heart, yes or yes. And so there's a way in which Prabhupāda says, "What are you going to do? You're going to bring them back? Your mind keeps thinking like, can't we revive them, or something like that? And what about the old days when they were here? And what should we do?" Prabhupāda says, "There's only one solution. You know what it is? Tolerate." And when I first heard that, I thought, "That's it? We'll try it and see what happens." And if you tolerate, there's a fruit at the end, because you become wise and you see, as one of my friends always says, observing the events of the world as absurd as many of them are, and he says, "the jagat is on the move," and whatever you think you have now, it's going to go sideways, guaranteed. You think you have something, you'll come out one day and it's at the top of the roof and it's dripping down, it's melted, or it's burnt, or it's sideways, whatever you think you have here. And that's a lesson. The whole material world is not our home, and fortunately, we have a place to repose our affection and our real possessions, as Kapila-deva says in one astounding verse, he said that the assets you get from your practice of devotional service are never lost, hose are yours to keep..

(excerpt from the talk)