The Super Bowl is the High Holy Day of consumer culture, where all aspects of modern life combine into a perfect storm of sense gratification. How can I rationalize watching it? Here is a try.
If we accept the evidence of scripture, then we know that Krishna is everywhere, ergo He must have also been at the Super Bowl. If He was there, what lesson did he give us to learn?
The Patriots made it to the Super Bowl after having a perfect regular season. Only once in the 40 plus years of the Super Bowl, has a team made it to the Super Bowl with zero losses and then won it to make a perfect season.
The Patriots were a great team and blew most of there opponents away. They had a few close games but seemed to have a higher power taking their back. The fourth down timeout call with Baltimore, the Pittsburgh game where their All Pro safety couldn’t play because of injuries and his backup got torched for two long touchdown plays, the AFC championship, the last game to get into the Super Bowl, where both San Diego’s quarterback and leading receiver played injured, and their All Pro running back, who was the leading rusher in the entire NFL for 2007 had to sit out the whole game because of injury.
Not only were they a great team, but they seemed to have fate on their side all season every time “luck” entered into it.
One fly in the ointment. Early in the season, they were caught videotaping the defensive signals of their opponents in a game. This is illegal and considered cheating. The results of the game were let stand, but the coach was fined 1 million dollars and the Patriots lost a draft choice in the 2008 draft.
Now, it seems to me, that the perfect season up to the Super Bowl was simply Krishna setting them up, as karma for their cheating, for the ultimate pain — losing not only the Super Bowl but the chance at a historical 19-0 season.
If you wanted to cause the team an enormous amount of pain for the cheating, what better way than to let them get so tantalizingly close. They had the lead with only 2 minutes left in the game, and then victory was snatched from their jaws by the Giants’ game winning miracle drive.
Anyone who has played in a meaningful game knows what the pain of defeat can be, and in this case it was amplified to a huge degree.
The cheating was nectar in the beginning that became poison in the end (See Bhagavad Gita 18:38). Karma is inexorable.
View From a New Vrindaban Ridge 
February 4, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Oh my god. I love this!
February 5, 2008 at 9:50 am
You could use a derivative of it for a Hing post.
For those unfamiliar with the Hing, it is a parody of a parody site, The Onion. Eric runs it occasionally on his blog.
Devotees don’t eat onions but use hing (asafoetida) as a substitute to get a similar flavor.
February 5, 2008 at 4:31 pm
I sort-of watched a Superbowl once, back in the 1990’s. Not my kind of entertainment, for sure. Anyway, what I meant to say was that I was a college student in Buffalo when the Bills lost four Superbowl games in a row. It’s weird to find everyone around so depressed over a stupid football game.
Interesting analysis of the ‘bad karma.’ I recall hearing about the cheating when it happened. It’s funny that your blog actually made me care a little about the game, more about who lost than who won. Also my dad likes the Giants, so I thought he was probably happy witht the result.
By the way, in case you might not remember me, I did a little work for you back in 1997, helping pack dirt into tires for the greenhouse on the south side of your house, and also a few days work in the ghee factory. I was out of commission for a while due to kidney gravel keeping me so exhausted that I was sleeping about 14 hours a day (which itself is very difficult mentally and emotionally). A few months later I had a 9 millimeter stone surgically pulverized. I wasn’t just lazy, despite what it may have looked like to the boss.
February 5, 2008 at 8:14 pm
ARe you from Wisconsin? If not, I am sorry to say I don’t remember you, though a picture would help a lot.
For what it’s worth, I don’t remember anyone pissing me off on the project so you couldn’t have been too bad. :-)
As for fatigue due to medical issues, I had plenty of experience of that while going through end stage liver disease.
February 6, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I’ve never been to Wisconsin. Here’s a pic:
http://www.blogger.com/profile/04594940630174570038
When I lived at NV, I was a relative newcomer and had hair down to my shoulders. We (my wife, baby daughter, and I) only lived there for 8 months because we got freaked out after hearing about some scary stuff there. When we arrived all we knew about the Hare Krishna movement was from Srila Prabhupada’s books, and it didn’t really prepare us for New Vrindavana like we had thought. We left in haste, at night, during a board meeting we were asked to attend, thinking we were fleeing a dangerous cult. I blooped for about three months before it occurred to me that I had really left the Dhama only due to my own spiritual ignorance. We wanted to move back about 5 years ago, but Kuladri told me there was no place to live and no service to do. So we’re at Gita-nagari instead.
February 6, 2008 at 1:11 pm
The picture looks familiar.
Glad you are finding Krishna in your life.