the right prescription

Verse 2.24: This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, present everywhere, unchangeable, immovable and eternally the same.

I'd like to find someone who actually welcomes change in their life. The material world, due to being temporary, is full of change, but very few embrace it. Here, we find out why. The soul itself is unchangeable. Cue lightbulb popping over head....it all makes sense now!

If we delve a little deeper as to why most of us resist change, there are many reasons such as fear of the unknown, lack of control, and perhaps most commonly, the fear that something will be taken away.

Just ask any professional athlete. What are the top two things that they fear the most? My guess would be injury and age. Both result in changes in the body which they have no control over and can affect their performance.

Every single one of us fears change to some degree. We cannot forecast the outcome most of the time and hence we are left with a huge question mark. In the world we live in, where control is the name of the game, this goes against everything we are inculcated with. Yet, change is inevitable. So how does one deal with it?

The bhakti texts prompt one to examine how and where this change affects us the most. We view change through the lens of the senses and the body. So really, it's a matter of changing the lens by which we view the world.

Recently, I had to get my eyes examined. Anyone who goes to the eye doctor will tell you how you're plopped into a chair and subjected to a battery of tests. One of those tests is viewing a series of lines with letters that become smaller and smaller as you read down the page. If you do require a new prescription, oftentimes the doctor will ask you to read a line and then switch a lens and ask you whether "Lens A" or "Lens B" was better.

Krsna is acting as our eye doctor here. He is educating us on how we can view, not only the world, but change as well. We can view it from the perspective of the body and the senses or we can view it through the perspective of the soul. The soul is unchanging but our experiences are every changing. So what does that mean? It means that we (the soul) are undergoing an experience. Instead of getting caught up in that experience we can chose to rise above it or wallow in it.

For those who would like to rise above it, Krsna will give us the magic formula. Just like the eye doctor figures out the prescription for your glasses/contacts so that you can see better, similarly Krsna will give us the proper glasses that are outfitted with the lenses of bhakti. Right now, we are simply sitting in the chair being educated about our condition and given options as to which lens we want to view the world. It's our choice, which one's we want to choose.