The word desert can refer to both a place and an action. As a place, it refers to a region without water. As an action, it refers to people’s abandoning their role or responsibility in a relationship.

These two meanings of desert can apply in the spiritual context to our heart and to our relationship with Krishna. Our innermost need is love – we long to love and be loved. Various worldly relationships can at best fulfill this need partially and temporarily. To fulfill it completely and eternally, we need to love Krishna, the all-attractive Absolute Truth, whose parts we are eternally.

Unfortunately, worldly pleasures often allure us away from Krishna. When we seek intellectual rationalizations for our desertion of the divine, we end up embracing atheistic ideologies. The Bhagavad-gita (16.08) outlines the ramifications of atheism: once we deem the spiritual unreal, our life’s primary purpose becomes the pursuit of physical sensations.

Such sensations can titillate us and we may find manifold means to titillate ourselves. However, all such titillations remain superficial to our need for love. We may come in physical contact with many people and we may call such contact love. But actually we are simply using others and are being used by others to relieve our itch for sensations. The overload of sensations increasingly deadens us to deeper emotions. And our heart becomes a desert, wherein the mirage of sensation never leads to the water of satisfaction.

For those seeking to reverse the heart’s desertification, bhakti-yoga comprises an easy, effective and time-honored process. Krishna is an ocean of love. When we invoke his presence in our heart by practicing bhakti-yoga diligently, the ultimate miracle occurs: Our heart transforms into an oasis, wherein blossoms the tree of pure devotion and bestows the fruit of ecstatic love for our eternal Lord.

To know more about this verse, please click on the image
Explanation of article:

Podcast:


Download by “right-click and save”