The Axe of Non-Attachment | Cutting Through Illusion || Swami Sarvapriyananda

You're born again, and that old joke, you know, where Hindu meets an evangelical and the evangelical says, "I'm a born again Christian," and the Hindu says, "I'm a born again and again and again and again Hindu." [laughs] But that is not good news.

That is not good news because that kind of immortality leads from death to death.

It's a life full of, uh, limited existence.

You are born, as Krishna says in the Gita, "Jātasya hi dhruvo mṛtyuḥ." Certain is death for those who are born, and we'll say we knew that.

Everybody's going to die.

Who doesn't know that? You don't need Krishna to tell us.

Ah, but what comes next, you need Krishna to tell us.

The next line is, "Dhruvaṁ janma mṛutasya ca" those who are-- for those who are dead, certain is rebirth.

So we continue in this existence in a series of, uh, these limited existences, birth and death.

This was sort of axiomatic to Indian thought.

All kinds of religions, philosophies in India, except the materialists, the Charvakas, all other schools of thought within Hinduism, outside Hinduism, they all, uh, believed in multiple births, that we have existed earlier and we're going to keep on existing, and this is not good because, well, it can get better.

It can get better.

It can also get worse, and in- indeed, that's what has happened to us since time immemorial.

It's gotten better.

It's gotten worse.

And then we-- spirituality comes with this promise that there is an end to this cycle, and there is some higher, eternal, much better existence possible.

This is broadly speaking.

Each of the schools has its different take on it.

In the Bhagavad Gita, this is, uh, um, this cycle is, uh, depicted as this tree, upside down tree, a great tree which is upside down.

Its roots are above.

Above in the sense not physically above in the stratosphere, uh, Artemis moon mission and on.

Not in that sense above, but, uh, above in the sense of, uh, uh, it is-- it's rooted in the ultimate reality in Brahman.

But it's manifested here in our lives, and it is propelled by karma because of cause and effect.

Causality is the fuel which propels this, this life, which con- which sustains this tree.

We, we are forced from birth to death and death to birth becau- because of our karma, our past karmaAnd freedom from this, uh, limited existence is the goal of all these, uh, schools of Indian thought, um, Hinduism and all the o- including other, uh, you know, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, et cetera.