Letters
Why the Insecurity?
Hare Krsna. I have a good family and a job that allows me to keep my family happy. So why am I always feeling insecure?
Sanjay Mallick
Via the Internet
Our reply: The feeling of insecurity indicates that you have some spiritual intelligence. In reality, no family or job or any amount of money can offer true security. Materially these things may offer security, but they can go at any moment. Death can take you or someone from your family. Disease is always looming, ready to prevent you from being happy and draining all your money on doctors and medical care. The job market is always changing, and at any moment what is a good job today may be no job tomorrow. So really there is no security in the material world. The real security is in connection with the spiritual world. Lord Krsna is in charge of everything. Taking shelter of Him offers the only real security.
We should perform our duties, of course, and try our best to take care of our dependents and earn an honest living, but in the end the only unbreakable source of happiness and peace is our relationship with God. His protection is above everything else. If you can put this one–the relationship with Krsna–before all the zeroes of family, job, money, and so on, then you can have 1,000,000,000, and you can feel secure knowing that Lord Krsna is really the one who can offer protection in any circumstance.
Unwanted Thoughts While Chanting
I chant the maha-mantra at the interval of one day. My issue is that while chanting, a lot of unwanted thoughts keep coming into my mind. I am unable to handle it. What can I do?
Chandan Kumar
Via the Internet
Our reply: Despite the influence of the mind and material nature, try not to be discouraged in your practice of Krsna consciousness. Continue sincerely hearing and chanting the holy name, become absorbed in the philosophy of Bhagavad-gita and the pastimes of Lord Krsna as presented in the Srimad-Bhagavatam, and associate with Krsna's devotees. These things are the key to progress in spiritual life.
Krsna consciousness is a gradual process, and we must have firm confidence that by this simple process all unwanted habits will gradually be cleansed from the heart. In the Srimad-Bhagavatam (11.20.27–28), Lord Krsna tells His dear devotee Uddhava: "Having awakened faith in the narrations of My glories, being disgusted with all material activities, knowing that all sense gratification leads to misery, but still being unable to renounce all sense enjoyment, My devotee should remain happy and worship Me with great faith and conviction. Even though he is sometimes engaged in sense enjoyment, My devotee knows that all sense gratification leads to a miserable result, and he sincerely repents such activities."
As we continue chanting and hearing about Krsna, we reach the stage called anartha-nirvtti, when all bad habits naturally disappear. So don't become discouraged.