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00:00So, Namaste Acharya, I am Nirmani Agarwal and I am in my final year of law at Uttijangal
00:10University. And my question to you Acharya is that what solution does the Gita have for
00:19contemporary socio-political issues like global warming? And could Shri Krishna anticipate
00:28back then that the planet will be facing such a crisis now?
00:33You see, the crisis that you are talking of is man-made. You call it anthropogenic global
00:43warming, right? It's not just global warming or climate change. It is AGW, anthropogenic.
00:49We did it. We did it. So, it's not of much use to talk of the problem without talking
00:58of the problem creator. We created that problem. The human mind created that problem and the
01:06human mind created that problem because the human mind is infested by, is vulnerable to certain
01:21the human mind. So, in very malicious tendencies, right by birth, we have almost a design flaw. Right?
01:38The child is born, enveloped in ignorance. And that ignorance displays itself in everything that we do throughout
01:53our lives. As the flow of history would have it, today we have more material power than we have ever had in the course of time.
02:08Now, that's a deadly combination. One, we have tendencies pertaining to accumulation, consumption, ignorance,
02:20violence, fear. These are deep-seated tendencies sitting within everyone. On the other hand, we have a lot of
02:29destructive power in our hands. And these two things have combined to give us this gruesome spectre of biodiversity loss,
02:42ecological catastrophe, the total vandalization of Prakriti that we see around us,
02:56extinction of species, and obviously climate change that you are referring to. That cannot be solved by just talking
03:09of the problem. You will have to go into the mind of the human being unless the mind of man is addressed,
03:22understood and purified. These problems will continue to exist. You can probably, to console yourself,
03:35take care of one form of problems. But the underlying reason will continue to exist. Therefore, the same
03:46mother problem will manifest itself in some other way. And then you will say, oh, now we have a fresh challenge in front of us.
03:55Let's occupy ourselves in addressing this challenge. And that's a great time pass. You know. One after the other,
04:02problems will keep appearing and we will continue to feel great about ourselves by fighting those problems.
04:11And we will continue to distribute Nobel Prizes and pat our own backs by saying that such things came to trouble us
04:23and we were able to successfully negotiate them even if partially. And we do not understand that no problem is ever solved
04:32till its root is taken care of. It's like having cancer in your body and giving it some kind of superficial or incomplete treatment
04:44and allowing the root of the cancer to exist. And there will be metastasis. The cancer will show up in some other way,
04:56at some other place, at some other time. Because you are not addressing the root. The root is called Aham Vritti.
05:05The entire scripture of Bhagavad Gita. The entire domain of Vedanta is devoted to nothing but this one thing.
05:22How to placate that primordial tendency, that ancient animal within man. Outwardly, we are cultured and civilized. Inwardly, we carry what I just referred to as an ancient animal.
05:49That ancient animal has started working on laptops and wearing modern clothes and speaking contemporary jargon.
06:00But it wants just the same things as animals in the jungle do. But in a far more powerful and destructive way.
06:10So all religious scriptures, and I am especially referring to Vedanta here and Gita is one of the three canonical texts in the Prasthantrai of Vedanta.
06:23They have no other business to take care of. This is the one thing that they want to take care of. The root problem.
06:35The mother troublemaker. Unfortunately, a lot of our energy and attention goes towards clipping the leaves, the twigs, the branches of the problem tree.
06:57And that helps us remain blissfully ignorant about ourselves. That helps us continue our worldly business as it does. That helps us evade the real problem.
07:15Because if you address the real problem, you have to admit that there are a thousand times more problems than you ever acknowledged.
07:26You acknowledge one problem as a problem and the other 99 things in your life you take as normal.
07:36Whereas the fact is that all thousand decisions or actions or things in your life are coming from the same problem and diseased center.
07:46Therefore, really, actually, everything needs to change. Because the very center, the very origin, the root itself is flawed.
07:57We do not want to address the root. And that is the extent of our delusion. That is what is referred to as Maya.
08:10You suffer but you want to continue suffering. Not only that, to remain in your suffering state, you just take care of teeny-weeny little peripheral symptoms of suffering.
08:26That is what man is designed to do.
08:36Scriptures like the Bhagavad Gita want to disrupt that design. They want to do something that is actually against our Praktatik constitution.
08:48As we are born, we are really not predisposed towards the truth or liberation or freedom.
08:58We are designed to remain in bondages and continue suffering in our problems.
09:03Gita is like a circuit breaker. The Gita is an intruder. So are the Upanishads. So are the Vedan Sutras.
09:13If they are not there, we will happily continue to move about in our circuit of suffering without ever even realizing how badly we are trapped.
09:25So once you address the mind of man, not only climate change, but so many other problems. In fact, all other problems are taken care of.
09:37And please, it might sound a little incredible, but do understand that all the problematic situations we face, inner or outer, are actually one.
09:53You cannot look at one problem as distinct from the other because the problem creator is one.
10:03So you cannot address climate change in isolation.
10:08You cannot have great international conferences that want to look only at climate change and hope those conferences to bear results.
10:23Has anything really happened in the last 40 or 50 years?
10:27Now you know why things have not happened because you are not addressing the root.
10:33Unless there is wisdom education in family and in the curricula of schools, colleges, universities.
10:45Unless the very wisdom quotient of the population in general is uplifted, we will just continue to hop from one problem to the other.
11:02Let's go.
11:14Let's go.