“The
\nsupreme occupation for all humanity is loving service to the Supreme.
\nSuch love must be unconditional and unmotivated to complying satisfy
\nthe self.”<\/div>\n
Is that not what every living being is looking for, longing
\nfor, and searching for in every aspect of their life? <\/p>\n
We are looking
\nfor pleasure. There is pleasure to the senses, and there is pleasure to
\nthe mind. But beyond these, there is only one thing that can give pleasure to the
\nheart, and the heart is the sitting place of the self, the soul. What is that thing? It is love– to love and to be loved. <\/p>\n
But what is the meaning of love? It is not that affection in
\nwhich we try to enjoy for ourselves; in Sanskrit that is called k\u00e4ma<\/i>, or lust. That is a
\nmaterial principle, and it can never be satisfied because as long as we
\nare trying to enjoy ourselves, that burning desire for enjoyment simply grows. It is
\nlike fire: the more you feed it, the hungrier it grows. And what is
\ntrue love, or prema<\/i>? It is the complete giving of the heart for the pleasure
\nof the object of our love. <\/p>\n
Even in this world, the most satisfying, loving relationships<\/span>
\nare not the romantic affairs that we see in the movies; those do
\nnot last. The real pleasure of the soul — the real pleasure of the
\nheart, let us say — comes through sacrifice and dedication. In this world,
\nreal love is not selfish, real love is selfless. It is the willingness to make
\nsacrifices for the beloved, and that love actually satisfies the heart
\nbecause there is some reality to it. Why? Because that is the nature, in
\nits perfect state, of the soul’s love for the absolute truth, the
\nsupreme soul or Krishna, the origin of love. Krishna is all-attractive, the
\nsource of all beauty, all knowledge, all strength, all wealth; therefore, he is the ultimate object of all the people’s love.<\/p>\nSo, to surrender to the Supreme is the expression of true love and is
\nactually the source of the greatest shelter and the greatest happiness.<\/p>\n
(His Holiness
Radhanath Swami<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In honor of Valentine’s Day, a meditation on love: So, this is the idea people have, that surrender means to lose. Surrender is something that is very, very undesirable, by force. But in Sanskrit, the word sharanagati [surrender] is something very different. Sharanagati is the most positive expression of our gratitude and our love. It…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":207,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-krishna","category-quote-unquote"],"yoast_head":"\n
Loving Surrender - Om Sweet Om<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Loving Surrender - Om Sweet Om\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In honor of Valentine’s Day, a meditation on love: So, this is the idea people have, that surrender means to lose. Surrender is something that is very, very undesirable, by force. But in Sanskrit, the word sharanagati [surrender] is something very different. Sharanagati is the most positive expression of our gratitude and our love. 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It…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2010\/02\/loving-surrender.html","og_site_name":"Om Sweet Om","article_published_time":"2010-02-14T20:50:28+00:00","author":"Vineet Chander","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2010\/02\/loving-surrender.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2010\/02\/loving-surrender.html","name":"Loving Surrender - Om Sweet Om","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-02-14T20:50:28+00:00","dateModified":"2010-02-14T20:50:28+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/#\/schema\/person\/cf2056f344b6fa435169a0edd9e93d8b"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2010\/02\/loving-surrender.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2010\/02\/loving-surrender.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2010\/02\/loving-surrender.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Loving Surrender"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/","name":"Om Sweet Om","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Sheetal Shah","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/#\/schema\/person\/cf2056f344b6fa435169a0edd9e93d8b","name":"Vineet Chander","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/221\/221efe0b0631084cd4843bb843427584x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/221\/221efe0b0631084cd4843bb843427584x96.jpg","caption":"Vineet Chander"},"description":"Vineet Chander is a legal and communications consultant, writer, and teacher, specializing in the Hindu diaspora community. He is a Hindu Chaplain and the Coordinator for Hindu Life at Princeton University, and serves as the North American Director of Communications for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), a worldwide organization representing the Vaishnava Hindu tradition. In previous incarnations, Vineet has been a New York City prosecutor, a cable TV show host, and a hospital chaplain. In his free time, he enjoys relaxing with his wife and his new baby, attending classes at The Bhakti Center, and teaching himself photography. As a second-generation, Indian-American, Vaishnava-Hindu, Vineet ponders new ways of further hyphenating his identity.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/author\/vchander"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}