Starting Point of Loving Relationships

 

There is this sutra or distilled down little phrase in Krsna consciousness that loving relationships are suspended by common service together. Like this nice chandelier is suspended from a chain in the ceiling, but the chain in the ceiling is connected to this little rivet up there, and the rivet is connected to the beam. So loving relationships are suspended by common service together. The essence or the starting point of that common service is that we come together and hear and chant. We assist one another. Just like in a marriage, we assist one another to awaken and restore Krsna consciousness. That’s the Krsna conscious marriage anyway. And in any other kind of loving relationship -- friend to friend, or parent to child, or whatever it is -- that’s the essence from a Krsna conscious perspective. When that happens, not just material miseries cease to exist, but material existence ceases to exist.

Adapted from a lecture by His Holiness Romapada Swami on SB 11.3.3, entitled “Remembrance of Krsna Through Our  Loving Relationships with His Devotees” given in December 2011 at Chicago.