You can focus on Jesus or Buddha or Krishna, Ramakrishna, Lao Tsu, Yukteswar, Yogananda, Vivekananda, any of the great spiritual teachers who have lived, or on a living teacher, and draw light from them.
The road for Arjuna is unexpected. Sri Krishna says you have to face that which you fear the most that which you're most attached to and eliminate it. In this case he has to fight a battle, and the battle is his attachments.
We live in a world of careers. Work, as Sri Krishna points out in the Bhagavad Gita, is a necessary path for everyone attaining enlightenment. It is something that we all do. Some people work very hard at not working.
This is what Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita - Karma Yoga. If you can't avoid action, you might as well act.
In the Bhagavad-Gita Krishna says: Arjuna you cannot avoid action. Everyone is stuck in the world of action. The world of action is forever.
Enlightenment is represented by Sri Krishna, who is said to be an avatar.
Sri Krishna says whatever role we have in life, we have to play it to the hilt. We have to take it all the way. We have to assume responsibility for our role. To run away from it causes misery.
Krishna suprises Arjuna. He says go fight, go kill. Do this because it's only play money. You can't kill your friends any more than they can kill you.
The directions for meditation that Sri Krishna gives are very exacting. He tells Arjuna exactly how to get past all the things that cause suffering and transient pleasure to something that is perpetual ecstasy. His directions are that exact.
Krishna says, fight. He says, go out in the battlefield and kill those people whom it's your job to kill.
Sri Krishna is said to be an avatar, which is a human way of trying to define very big. That is to say that Sri Krishna is not from the local area network, but he has come from a world that is different because his mind is different.
Krishna says meditate and you'll see the various ephemeral worlds, the various ephemeral beings, all of them going through the same thing; some are rich, some are poor, some are more knowledgeable, some are less knowledgeable - in countless myriad universes, forever.
Arjuna is a warrior of great renown, says he won't fight. He tells Krishna: I can't fight because I love these people. It's immoral. It's unjust. There's no winning.
Sri Krishna refers, of course, to this world as a joyless, transient world. Obviously, he's never been to Disneyland.
What Sri Krishna is saying, is that it's a terrible mistake to believe that this life we lead is real. Obviously it's real, but it doesn't last very long in its realness. It's very ephemeral and to mistaken the forms of life, the shapes that life takes, for reality, is not wise.
Sri Krishna's message is the message of anyone who comes from far away. His message is the same as Buddha, Lao Tsu, Bodhidharma, Milarepa, Padmasambhava.
Krishna says, fight. He says, go out on the battlefield and kill those people whom it's your job to kill; and whether they were your friends or not, you have to look at the big picture. In the big picture, you can't go kill anybody, you can't be killed.
Krishna once said to Arjuna: Consider the past and future with an equal mind, and pass the peanut M&M's.
The gopis seek Krishna, another part of themselves that create ecstasy. The man seeks the woman, the woman seeks the man. The Tantric Buddhist seeks annihilation of the ego.
I think to be in a monastery or an ashram is not always the answer because we don't fight, we kick back. We don't listen to Sri Krishna.
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