Can We Change Destiny?

It’s a really good example. He doesn’t refer to Bhagavad Gita, but he is saying a Bhagavad Gita principle which is this principle of destiny. Here I am, in a Nazi concentration camp and I am a Jewish man. And every day, the guards would come by purposefully, and rattle the chain on the outside of that little corrugated tin box that they was their home. And signaling that now is the time for some of you to be taken to the gas chamber and some people, the lock would open, they could hear the chain move and they would scream and they would drag them off to the gas chamber and then gas them. What a horrible… and every day they’re there at a certain time. So, he was… he couldn’t change that circumstance. The war ended and the circumstance was over, but he couldn’t personally change the circumstance, he was in the concentration camp. Horrible. In his book, he says, “Man needs not to change the circumstances of misfortune and the life at any cost; rather, the freedom… one freedom that can never be taken from one is the freedom to choose how you are going to respond to that circumstance.” So, circumstance may be destined. It’s going to rain. Or it’s forecast that it’s going to rain. So you can’t change that circumstance. The weather isn’t going to change because you want it to. So… but you can choose how you want to respond. Wear a jacket, bring an umbrella, don’t care. You can choose. So that’s not destined. And that free will choice that you’re making moment to moment, that’s creating your future. 13 chapter Bhagavad Gita, sad-asad-yoni-janmasu. We are creating our own good fortune, ill-fortune by our free will choices. And then when it comes, we can respond, however, we choose.