Question
How can we overcome all our material problems and unhappiness and attain the perfection of life?
Answer
The best way to overcome all sorts of unhappiness is to remember who we really are: pure souls, part of Krishna/God/Spirit. We have innumerable fellow pure souls with whom we are eternally related in unbreakable bonds of love and devotion.
As Krishna explains in the Gita, our consciousness is now ‘covered’ by ‘un-knowledge.’ We can dissipate that covering through knowledge.
The Maha-mantra, ‘great mantra’, is:
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare/
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.
Hare is an address to HarA, the feminine counterpart of Krishna. By chanting ‘hare,’ we appeal to the supreme feminine power to spiritually uplift us and engage us in the Lord’s eternal service. The word hare is from the root hR, which means ‘to take.’ Thus the supreme feminine power, also known as Radha, will take away all our troubles and take us to Krishna.
Krishna comes from two Sanskrit verbal roots:
1. Krsh = ‘to attract’; 2. nand = ‘to give or feel bliss’ [the word a-nanda is from this root]. Thus ‘Krishna’ means that God is the source of infinite bliss because He is infinitely attractive/beautiful. You are beautiful because you are an eternal part of the infinite beauty of Krishna.
Rama comes from the Sanskrit root ‘ram‘ which means ‘to enjoy’. Rama means ‘the source of pleasure.’ There is a Sanskrit text which states:
ramante yogino anante satyanande cid-atmani
iti rama-padenasau param brahmabhidhiyate
“The yogis enjoy in the infinite bliss of truth, in the conscious Soul. Therefore the Absolute Truth is described by the word Rama.”
So the Maha-mantra is ‘one stop shopping’ to achieve a perfect life. If you make this mantra your constant companion, you will never be alone. A final point: the Vedic wisdom teaches that the Absolute Truth is identical to His/Her name. So when you chant the Maha-mantra, you are not merely referring to something, but rather you are directly in contact, in touch, with the Truth. In Sanskrit, the word for ‘contact’ is ‘yoga.’ So by chanting, singing, remembering, meditating on this mantra, you are directly in a state of yoga, directly in touch with the infinitely beautiful source of all happiness. By that contact, you will revive and enjoy your own eternal, divine nature. It is only because that nature is now covered that we experience, artificially, sadness, loneliness, etc.
