Every new year, we wish each other, “Happy New Year”. We hope that the New Year will bring something new in our life, which will make us happy.
Most people think of new only in terms of externals – a new house, a new car, or maybe even a new spouse. Unfortunately the tantalizing, often irresistible, charm of new things is invariably short-lived. Think of all the new things we looked forward to – a new college, a new job, a new TV…. And now have all of them not become hackneyed? Similarly is it not likely that what we consider new and exciting today will become old and stale tomorrow?
The Vedic scriptures state that all sensual and mental pleasures ultimately boil down to four basic forms – food, sex, show of strength and sleep. All the subhuman beings – birds, beasts, insects - pursue nothing more than these pleasures. And aren’t most humans today essentially pursuing the same bodily pleasures, though with much more sophistication and complication? All material enjoyment, despite the glitz and glamour, is nothing but old wine in a new bottle. The Vedic scriptures depict this graphically – punah punas carvita carvananam, chewing the chewed. A child chews a chewing gum that he has himself squeezed and spit earlier - just because he doesn’t have anything better to do. Similarly, most people keep pursuing the same material pleasures that have disappointed them many times before - because they don’t know anything else.
The Vedic scriptures offer our life a truly new direction: athato brahma jijnasa. “Explore the spiritual dimension of life.” We are all souls, eternal spiritual beings, beloved children of the all-attractive Supreme Person. God is the supremely wealthy, beautiful, powerful, intelligent, famous and renounced person. He possesses in full all the qualities that attract us to different things and persons of this world. His personality comprises everything our heart hankers for – and more. And most importantly for us, we don’t have to struggle to attract His love. He loves us more than anyone else and is waiting in our own hearts for us to turn to Him and return His love. In loving God and opening our hearts to experience His causeless love for us, we experience the newness and fullness of life that has always allured and eluded us. And we can express and experience endless love by chanting the holy names of God, about which the famous Beatle, late George Harrison, remarked, “Chanting Hare Krishna makes me feel invincible.”
Therefore let us make our new year truly new and happy by entering the world of divine love by chanting the names of God.
Investigating Reality from the Higher Dimensional
Perspective of Vedic Wisdom |