Seeing Current Events Through the Eyes of the Scripture
The Vedic Observer was a column of Back to Godhead's that used to focus on current events. It appeared on the last page of the magazine for decades, but was dropped for some reason. Śāstra-cakṣusā means to see the world around us through the light of the Vedas. This blog is directed toward bringing about a revolution in the impious lives of this world's misdirected civilization.
In the current age of Kali Yuga "the age of quarrel and hypocrisy," our morals and values are adrift like an unanchored boat, and no one knows where it's going to drift. If we can't see exactly where we're going, and how to guide the boat, we might end up crashing into the rocks.
Everyone from politicians, scientists, social engineers, to philanthropists, has advise on how to guide society, but ordinary human beings have four defects:
- We have imperfect senses
- We have a tendency to fall into illusion
- We make mistakes
- We have a cheating propensity
A person with these defects cannot guide society. That's why we have to take guidance from the liberated souls like Srila Vyasadeva, who compiled the Vedas. Vyasa is above the four defects, because he is the literary incarnation of Godhead. Only God can write scripture. His senses are perfect - he can see past, present, and future, He is above the three modes of nature, so He is not affected by the Lord's illusory energy, and cannot make mistakes, and His judgement is infallible. He does not cheat.
When we see things through the eyes of the scriptures, we can see what's really important. Most of what is discussed in the media these days is not really important, as Emerson pointed out in his essay The American Scholar,
"The world of any moment is the merest appearance. Some great decorum, some fetish of a government, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up by half mankind and cried down by the other half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds are that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought which the scholar has lost in listening to the controversy. Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom."
The purpose of this blog is not to rehash the latest controversial trend in the news cycle that everyone is talking about. Rather it is to draw lessons from current events that can enable us to see what is really important, and how to cross over the ocean of faults, which is this Kali Yuga. We've got a good ship in this human form that can get us across to the other side, where there is no more birth, death, old age, and disease, which are the real problems of life. The animals cannot contemplate these topics. We've got a good captain, the spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada, who has so kindly brought the favorable wind of the Vedic scriptures specifically the Bhagavad-gita As It Is, and the Srimad Bhagavatam from the east to the west, and by hearing from these scriptures, we can cross over this dangerous ocean and safely reach our eternal home on the shores of the spiritual world.
"By regularly hearing the Bhagavatam and rendering service unto the pure devotee, all that is troublesome to the heart is practically destroyed, and loving service unto the glorious Lord, who is praised with transcendental songs, is established as an irrevocable fact." - SB 1.2.18
