10 Guidance of Lord Krishna
Lord Krishna, an avatar of Lord Vishnu; led a simple life and gave us a guidebook for happy living. His teachings are simple yet meaningful; they when incorporated in our daily life bring both happiness and success. So here are a few teaching for Lord Krishna that, if imbibed, would make your life easy and happy.
1. Believe in Karma
Krishna’s most popular teaching was the theory of karma. He said believe in yourself and do your Karma(action) and success will follow you automatically. When we think about the outcomes and expect from our actions, we divert some part of out attention there and thus lose concentration. This refrain us from putting our hundred percent efforts and in turn decreases the value of the outcomes. Like when we feed birds; we should not do it with the intension for earning ‘punya’ or (goodwill) but because to satisfy their hunger. This act will automatically bring us ‘punya’.
2. Don’t be a hypocrite
Lord Krishna always professed empathy and the action and devotion to supreme power. He said if you act for yourself and you think you are being good to others, you are being a hypocrite. Krishna said lying to your soul is being hypocrite and this is when a man starts covering his mistakes. Man should fear God and be truthful in his duties and all the more be truthful to him.
3. Believe in friendship
The friendship of lord Krishna and Sudama is an example given to us since we were children. Their friendship taught us to value our relationships and to have a selfless love for our friends. It teaches us to love our friends irrespective of their status, caste and creed; it teaches us to help them in their bad times and not to mention the help; it teaches us to watch the back of a friend.
4. “Whatever belongs to you today belonged to someone else earlier and would belong to someone else tomorrow.”
We tend to get attached to worldly goods like money, cars, clothes etc, but we forget they are not our lives; they are a ‘part’ of our lives. We fail to recognize that money is of no worth if it is not exchanged for something, a car will break down one day or the other and there will be a day when our clothes will stop fitting us or will be out of fashion. All these worldly things will end one day or the other so why should one invest one’s energy and waste one’s love behind them, one should think of the good in the longer run. I bought the bread and I spent my money on it then why should I give it to the birds, because if you don’t consume it, it will get spoiled and it fetches you satisfaction to feed the birds.
5. “Do not weep for the past; do not worry for the future, concentrate on your present life”.
Lord Krishna always said that this world is being governed by a supreme power, and this power is our father, ‘the Almighty’. Krishna asked all to believe in the goodness of the Almighty and believe that whatever happens happen for good. Krishna asked us to move with time and live in the present and act accordingly, there is no point crying over the past and being hopeful over the present as in both the cases we would lose our focus from present. Like don’t be sad because bird didn’t eat the crumbs yesterday, neither be hopeful that they will come tomorrow, jut put the bread in their place today and do your bit of work.
6. Uniformity of vision
Krishna always professed to be uniform in vision, which means be empathetic and just. Krishna professed that God is omnipresent; he is always watching over us and has made everyone equal on this earth. Krishna always asked people to be empathetic, which mean to be able to step into others shoes and view the situation from their end. Krishna asked them to be just for the almighty is always watching over them. This means next time you cross a red signal during night making sure that there is no cop, be aware that God is watching over you. Practically, avoiding this not only makes you a good human being, but also avoids a lot of accidents.
7. Listen to your conscience
Lord Krishna said that when his subjects meditate, they ask a lot of questions and he has to meditate to answer them back. His voice is the voice of conscience, the voice of heart, the voice which can be heard only when we are calm. Our mind is biased, it analyzes what is good and what is bad, and sometimes when we over think, it finds bad from good as well. But our conscience never lies to us, it is unbiased and sometimes very rude, it is for the same reason why most of us refrain from hearing its voice. Our mind might tell us not to waste a bread behind birds, who have not turned up since 3 days, but our heart might say it’s just a piece of bread let’s wait and see for a few more days if they don’t turn up, I will stop putting them.
8. Follow the path of righteousness.
There was a situation in Mahabharata where Arjuna was in dilemma and asks Krishna whether he was right to fight against his own brothers. To his question Krishna replied that he (Arjuna) is fighting against the evil, no matter they are his brothers, it is ‘right’ to destroy evil. Here the question arises how do we know whether we are on the path of ‘righteousness’; to this the lord answers ‘meditate and ask your soul I will answer you back as the voice of your conscience’. The voice of God can be heard as the voice of conscience and this can be done only when we spare some time and meditate with calm mind.
9. Be a believer
Lord Krishna always asked people to believe, to believe in themselves, to believe in their talents, to believe in the power of analysis and finally to believe in the supreme power. Lord Krishna always professed that one should be a believer as belief brings us confidence, it brings us motivation and also the courage to take risks. Say for example, you decided to feed the birds every morning, you have to believe in yourself that you will be able to wake up early. You also have to believe that the birds will come to the place where you have kept the crumbs and eat them. You might fail once or twice, but if you believe you will succeed.
10. Follow the path of ‘dharma’
Lord Krishna always believed that everyone should follow his ‘dhrama’. The word ‘dharma’ is the most misunderstood and over rated term in the world. There have been a lot of crusades just because of this word ‘dharma’. After a lot of research, I decided to go with this definition of dharma “dharma is a set of rules that are laid to make your life easy.” You can lay your own dharma, your own set of rules that make your life easy, like feeding the birds in the morning gives me happiness, and I am capable of giving some bread crumbs to a bird every day, feeding the birds can become my ‘dharma’.
