Five Things That Every Person Does

By krishnasmercy on August 25, 2025 • ( 0 )

“O son of Kunti, all that you do, all that you eat, all that you offer and give away, as well as all austerities that you may perform, should be done as an offering unto Me.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 9.27)

Download as podcast episode (right click and save)

यत् करोषि यद् अश्नासि
यज् जुहोषि ददासि यत्
यत् तपस्यसि कौन्तेय
तत् कुरुष्व मद्-अर्पणम्

yat karoṣi yad aśnāsi
yaj juhoṣi dadāsi yat
yat tapasyasi kaunteya
tat kuruṣva mad-arpaṇam

1. Eat

“You ever tried making dal? Sorry, I think they refer to it as ‘lentils’ in your part of the world. I have eaten it my entire life. Never a big fan. I never really knew what it was, either. Anyway, I decided to make it myself the other day. I washed and soaked the lentils. Then I used a pressure cooker. I must say, they taste amazing. I would rather eat healthy than the alternative of ordering out from restaurants. For us vegetarians, there is only so much pizza you can eat before things turn sour. And trust me, I can really put down pizza; more than your average person.”

2. Offer

“Yeah, they pass around the collection plate at the end of the proceedings. You almost feel this pressure to fit in with others. You better put something. You don’t want to be considered a miser. It is not like one of those fifty-fifty raffles. It is not like we will see any of that money coming back. I don’t know; I go along with it. Why not? It is a part of our faith. It is a tradition that goes back generations.”

3. Give away

“No, these are not going in the trash. I understand there are bags that look like they are for trash, but these actually have clothes. Gathered and accumulated over many years. Lots of birthday and anniversary gifts. The truth is, we don’t wear most of them. It was almost like going shopping when filtering out the items from the closet. I had forgotten about most of these shirts and pants. But we are giving away the excess to charity. We are sending them to the donation place. It feels nice to give back every once in a while.”

4. Austerity

“Nope, no grains today. I am trying to eat healthy. I went a little overboard during the holidays. I saw some pictures of myself and they were anything but flattering. I need to lose weight. I need to fit into my clothes again. I want to look younger; my face says I am losing the battle. I have to put some controls on my eating. I need to sleep at appropriate times, as well.”

5. Work

“Yup, it is back to the grind starting tomorrow. The company is winning awards left and right. The owner decided the best thing to do is to make everyone miserable by forcing them to return to the office, on a fulltime basis. Now those people I talk to across the globe, they will have to struggle to hear me. This is because of the noise generated in the office. No one is happy about this decision, but what can we do? We need to work. We need money to pay for things. We have to support ourselves and our families.”

…

The recommendation from the Vaishnava acharya is to turn the life experience into yajna. The typical setting associated with this term is a formal religious sacrifice. Friends and family gather around a fire. It is a pit of sorts, with various items carefully arranged throughout the perimeter. There is an expert priest, who properly pronounces Sanskrit mantras, who then directs the person responsible for the sacrifice on what to do. Start a fire, say some words, and periodically drop items into that fire as a kind of offering.

The truth is that yajna is synonymous with the Supreme Lord. His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada intentionally chooses to translate the Sanskrit word Bhagavan as “Supreme Personality of Godhead.” This is a more descriptive term applying to the one the rest of the world likely refers to as “God” or “the Almighty.” Yajna is for pleasing God. Yajna is another name for Vishnu, which identifies God as a distinct individual, a person just like you and me.

The acharya of the Vaishnava tradition recommends turning the entire life experience into yajna. The supporting documents are sacred texts such as Bhagavad-gita and Shrimad Bhagavatam. There is a recommendation directly sourced in Bhagavan. in fact. Shri Krishna lists the particular types of offerings to the disciple named Arjuna.

Everything that we do. Everything that we eat. Everything that we sacrifice in the formal sense. The different kinds of austerity that we implement. Those items we give up in charity, in a kind of release of attachment. The entire collection should be considered an offering unto Krishna.

From the above review, we see that the transformation is not much of a stretch. If someone advises us to turn life into yajna, we might think that means retreating to a remote cave and sitting in the lotus position on the cold, hard ground. We focus on transcendence, and our only activity is chanting the holy names: Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. We maintain a distance from the population at large. We try every which way to relinquish attachment. It is difficult to be attached to something when the external connection is severed.

This might be a way to implement the yajna as a way of life model, but it doesn’t have to be. We already work. We already eat. We already do so many things. Those activities simply have to be transformed in nature. Eating can be tied to yajna by offering everything first to the Supreme Lord. Our charity is for fulfilling the purpose of enlightening others as to the science of self-realization, which aligns with their true nature, as individual spirit soul, above and beyond this temporary world. Our austerities are only for increasing our attachment to Krishna. He is an easy person to like. That is because He is the reservoir of pleasure. He is always wishing well, no matter how much we have forgotten Him.