Confusion is a Blessing, If We Respond Accordingly

Question: Swamiji, I guess we are all made for a purpose. But if we are at a confused state of life, how would we really know what our purpose in life is?

Radhanath Swami: Confusion is a blessing. Because when we are confused, it shakes us from our complacency, and we start asking the questions that you are asking today.

This is the basis of the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna was in total illusion. Then he became extremely confused. He thought his illusion was truth. The Bhagvad Gita begins where Arjuna is telling Krishna why he will not fight and he cannot fight. He had such good logic, such good scientific philosophical and social reasons. But ultimately all of his reasoning couldn’t really save him from distress because the nature of the world is that things happen that we just don’t want to happen, but they happen anyway. It’s the nature of this place.

Then Arjuna was confused and in his confusion he turned to God. kārpaṇya-doṣopahata-svabhāvaḥ pṛcchāmi tvāḿ dharma-sammūḍha-cetāḥ. “Now I am bewildered, I am confused, I don’t know what is to be done and what is not to be done. Please instruct me.” Confusion can shake us from our complacent comfort zone and that’s often times what we need to grow. And in that confusion we seek answers. And when we seek it in satsang — in the association of saintly people, in spiritual literatures, in the names of God — then we can find the real faith, the real conviction, the real realization that forever frees us from this confusion. So confusion is a blessing, if we respond accordingly.