6. 60s, 70s, 80s | Diminishing Expectations

We have met the enemy and the enemy is us: arrogance, lack of humility, unwillingness to recognize your limitations, shortcomings, lack of qualification.

Dainya, ātma-nivedana, goptṛtve varaṇa. So sometimes Bhaktivinod lists first dainya. That you have to honestly admitthe hopelessness and helplessness of your situation of life, of human life. Not only can you not help others, you cannot help yourself.

As Joni Mitchell once said on the 60s retrospective, she said, “By the end of the 60s we realised we couldn’t save the world.” She is talking about idealists. She said, “By the end of the 70s we realised we couldn’t save ourselves. So in the 80s”, she said sarcastically, facetiously, “we just decided to make money.” Oscar Wilde said, “When I was younger, [laughs] I used to think money was everything. Now that I am older, I know it is everything.”

So, this type of cynicism. There is a fine line between a healthy skepticism about materialism and just being out and out cynical. Dainya ... Bhaktivinod is telling not becoming cynical, mean, nasty ... always finding fault with everyone and everything. That is not what he is talking about. He is talking about self-analysis. As Gurudev said, “My religion is finding fault with myself”, looking in yourself, and it is not a cop-out or a sign of a weak mind, a weak-willed individual. To do an honest assessment of yourself and say, “Yes, I am, in a sense, hopeless, helpless.”

Humanism tries to awaken a competitive ego assertion, where you can envision yourself as an absolute center and try to extend the circumference or the range of your exploitative capacity like Ozymandias or Iron Man. Selfishness—you don’t owe anything anyone, you are number one, you are the man, the whole thing ... And why?... Because I am worth it ... That, all of that— humanistic sloganeering. Whereas Guru Mahārāj would say, “Without the grace of Sri Guru we are lifeless clay.”jogyatā-vichāre, kichu nāhi pāiJogyatā means ‘qualification’. Jogyatā-vichāre—if you consider, if you analyse, what are my qualifications, kichu nāhi pāi—nothing, not even a little bit. See? That person would say, “Oh, don’t beat yourself up ... You have got to believe in you, learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all ...” Poor Whitney. Another humanistic empty, vapid humanistic slogan. No ... The person who realizes their ... does an honest assessment. Just like an athlete would of where your weak points are, where you need improvement, they get better. What does the athlete, who wants to improve, do? Play with people who are better than them. Not with whom they can defeat, they want to play with someone they can’t defeat. That makes you better.

Ajita means ‘undefeatable’, ‘unconquerable’. So the person who makes a realistic assessment of themselves, say, like iron, they can be interested in the philosopher’s stone, the cintamani, the sparsamani that converts iron into gold. Silver may not feel the necessity for gold so much. “I am silver, I am ok, happy being silver.” But who has a more real ... not an unrealistic, they have low self-esteem, they are just beating themselves up, that is not what we are talking about. A realistic assessment.