Radhanath Swami on Awakening Love for God

When our consciousness becomes spiritually inspired by God’s name, and gets spiritually connected to the all-attractive Lord of our hearts, then naturally, whatever we do will be motivated with love and devotion. Devotion is the gradual development of the eternal spiritual virtue which gives meaning and fulfillment to our lives. Real fulfillment is in the awakening of our eternal inner love for God. And to give that fulfillment to our loved ones and to the needy people in the world is the greatest service. But we can only give what we have. Thus, if we believe, if we have faith, if we have scientific philosophical conviction or just simple faith, either one, then yes, we will orchestrate our lives in such a way that we actually fulfill our various responsibilities on the path of perfection. And for that purpose, we must have a strong commitment to chanting God’s names and living a life based on religious principles.

Radhanath Swami on Hunger of the Heart

Charity is to help needy people. People need food, they need clothing, they need hospitalization and they need emotional encouragement. But they also need spiritual enlivenment, spiritual education. People’s hearts are starving, and the starvation of the heart causes much more problems than the starvation of the belly. Starvation of the belly can be satisfied with food but it is very difficult to satisfy the hunger of the heart. It creates massive problems and disturbances within the world where we live. Unless we solve the hunger of the heart, people will be selfish, crooked and duplicitous. A saintly person weeps and cries in sorrow to see the poor man loitering in the street without food to eat, but weeps and cries perhaps even more to see the big executives in their offices who are spiritually starving in their hearts. Giving transcendental knowledge and spreading the congregational chanting of the holy names of God is actually the highest quality and more inclusive form of welfare. It satisfies the hunger of the heart. If you change the hearts of the people, if you make greedy, selfish people into compassionate instruments of God’s love, then everyone will be happy and internally satisfied. People will transcend their egoistic materialistic lives and will harmonize their concerns with the goal of spiritual enlightenment.

Radhanath Swami on Deeper Love

In marriage, you may unify on the principle of romance or beauty, but the bodies change. Don’t have faith that you’ll remain attracted to the beauty of a woman or a man. And the minds change also, because two egos will have so many differences. That’s why according to religious principles, you take a vow, so you have to stay together no matter what because you have made a vow. You have a responsibility to each other, you have a responsibility to God, you have a responsibility to your children, and through that sacrifice of somehow or other tolerating each other and forgiving each other, you actually learn to really love each other much deeper than the love of the glances and the touches and the words.

Radhanath Swami on Creating Unity

There is an inner disunity within all of our hearts. The mind is the battlefield. The dualities of life are always competing with one another. From the spiritual platform, while working in this world to do good, we must simultaneously actually realize the art of love, the art of yoga, to be united body, mind, and soul, and soul with God. And then whether we are business people or students or industrialists or architects or teachers or farmers or politicians, or soldiers, whatever we may be, we express that inner knowledge, that inner love, that inner compassion in everything we do. Is there anything that is greater needed in the world than that mentality within human beings? Technology is good provided it’s in the right hands. If it’s in the wrong hands, knowledge and technology could be the most destructive force on earth, and if it’s in the right hands, it can do so much good for so many people. So just creating people who can earn, just creating people who can invent, that’s not going to help the world in itself unless people become holistic, unless people become united with their own inner spiritual nature and act with dynamic compassion in this world on that basis.

Radhanath Swami on Watering the Root

There are people who think differently, there are people with different natures, with different inclinations. There is unlimited diversity and variety in this world. We cannot force oneness. We cannot artificially try to make everything one, but we can understand and realize within ourselves through inner purification how there is a oneness underlying all the variety and cultivate and develop that. The scripture explains when you put water in the root of the tree every part of the tree grows—the leaves, the branches, the twigs, the flowers. And what is the root of all the trees? To cultivate our own inner awareness of the Supreme and understand what God wants of us and to actively and dynamically live in this world, work in this world with that basic foundational experience in our heart, that is watering the root.

Radhanath Swami on Spiritual Relationships

We are all spiritual. We’re all part of God. We’re all brothers and sisters. If your sister has a disease, do you hate your sister or you hate the disease? If the disease is there, you hate the disease but you feel compassion, which is a symptom of love for your sister. So yes, there are people acting in very crazy, violent, and unethical ways, but deep within their heart is the atma, the soul, which is pure, which is part of God, which is our brother and sister. In a person who understands the self, there can be ego, there can be no hatred toward anyone. There can only be love, and for those who are unfortunate, there is compassion. That is knowledge of the truth. We are all part of God, and when we develop our own inner awareness of our own relationship with the Supreme, then naturally we see every living entity in connection to that relationship. That is the inner unity extending to create unity within the world.

Radhanath Swami on Needing Each Other

On the battlefield, every soldier is completely dependent on all of his comrades. When there’s thousands of people shooting guns and bombs at you, singlehandedly, what can you do? Your life, your survival is dependent on all the others around you. Yes? It’s not that you look at your other comrades who are fighting along with you and think, “I don’t like the color of your skin” or “I don’t like the things you eat” or “I don’t like the way your eyebrow goes up and down” or “I don’t like the way you smell” or “I don’t like what your wife said to me 2 years ago.” No! You understand that “I need you and you need me or we perish,” that’s what war is about. In the front lines, everyone is dependent on everyone else.  This world is a place where war is always going on—the battle of good and evil, the battle of sin and piety, of religiosity and irreligiosity, of love and sectarian hatred. We need each other.