The Elusive Butterfly of Happiness

In this material world everyone is chasing the elusive butterfly of happiness, but they are never able to permanently capture it. They may feel for some time that they have captured it, but then it gets away and they are running after it once again.

This is not at all surprising because the nature of this material world is that it is a place of misery. Whatever happiness we experience here is described as maya-sukhaya, illusory happiness. Nobody finds lasting happiness here, not even the inhabitants of Brahmaloka, the topmost planet in this material world, which is thousands of times more opulent than the nicest places on planet earth. This is described as follows in the Bhagavad-gita:

a-brahma-bhuvanal lokah
punar avartino 'rjuna
mam upetya tu kaunteya
punar janma na vidyate

"From the highest planet in the material world down to the lowest, all are places of misery wherein repeated birth and death take place. But one who attains to My abode, O son of Kunti, never takes birth again."
---Bhagavad-gita 8.16

If one takes to the process of Krishna consciousness, by regularly chanting the holy names of God, happiness will become his permanent asset.

Sankarshan Das Adhikari

Answers According to the Vedic Version:

Question: Why Doesn't Krishna Force Everyone to be a Devotee?

Please let me know, that as Krishna is the supreme power completely beyond Maya (the material energy), and everyone chants His holy names and glories, why can't He make all the jivas, the living beings, to be His devotees?

Why did He make the jivas?

How did He create the jivas? Before the jivas were created where were they and what was their consciousness?

Eagerly waiting for reply.

Subvesh Raichand

Answer: Love is Voluntary...

You are wondering that if Krishna is all-powerful why He cannot force all living beings to be His devotees. The answer is that devotion is not something that can be forced. Love is something that one voluntarily offers to someone else.

The jivas, the living beings, exist for the sole purpose of expanding the Lord's happiness by their having loving relationships with the Lord. The Lord wants to enjoy the happiness of having a sweet loving relationship with each and every living being throughout the entirety of existence. Therefore He comes to this material world again and again and send His representatives here again and again just to try to attract us to serving and loving Him. This is His great kindness upon us.

The jivas, are eternal emanations of the Supreme Person. There was never a time when He did not emanate them, nor will there ever be a time when He will not emanate them. Simply by His sweet will they are eternally emanated from His transcendental body, just as the rays of the sun emanate from the sun.

Sankarshan Das Adhikari

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