3.13.1
Sri Sukadeva Gosvami said: O King, after hearing all these most virtuous topics from the sage Maitreya, Vidura inquired further on the topics of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, which he adored to hear.
PURPORT
The word adrtah is significant because it indicates that Vidura had a natural inclination for hearing the transcendental message of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and he was never fully satisfied though continuing to hear those topics. He wanted to hear more and more so that he could be more and more blessed by the transcendental message.
3.13.2
Vidura said: O great sage, what did Svayambhuva, the dear son of Brahma, do after obtaining his very loving wife?
3.13.3
O best of the virtuous, the original king of kings [Manu] was a great devotee of the Personality of Godhead Hari, and thus it is worth hearing of his sublime character and activities. Please describe them. I am very eager to hear.
PURPORT
Srimad-Bhagavatam is full of the transcendental topics of the Personality of Godhead and His pure devotees. In the absolute world there is no difference in quality between the Supreme Lord and His pure devotee. Therefore, hearing the topics of the Lord and hearing of the character and activities of the pure devotee have the same result, namely, the development of devotional service.
H.H. Devamrita Swami:
Today, in this short time we gave for class, I will try to speak about virtue, responsibility, and also about the transformation between the Lord and His devotees.
We hear from Srila Prabhupada’s purport that in the absolute world there is no difference in quality between the Supreme Lord and His pure devotee. We can see that phenomena of the absolute world are so prominently displayed, apparently within this material world, during the pastimes of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and His associates. How the Lord and His devotees melted in regard to each other’s transcendental qualities. Particularly let us meditate on Lord Caitanya’s meetings with Haridas Thakur in Jagannatha Puri. How they approached one another and the reaction upon their meeting together. Naturally Haridas Thakur offers his full dandavats in the dust of Lord Caitanya and Lord Caitanya picks him up and they both embrace and cry unlimitedly in tears of ecstatic love. This is happening often during the interactions of Lord Caitanya with His associates – constant embracing and shedding tears of pure love. In this way they are displaying, even in the material world, the interactions between the pure Lord Who is always supremely pure and His pure devotees.
Krishnadas Kaviraja Gosvami presents an extraordinary inside into this situation of the embrace and the mutual shedding of tears of pure love. He explained that the Lord became transformed by the qualities of Haridas Thakur and Haridas Thakura became transformed by the qualities of the Lord. How is it that the Supreme Lord is so affected by His devotee?
We should be careful about impersonal understanding which is so prevalent, especially pop-impersonalism, in the western countries these days. In this “understanding” one thinks, “because I feel good that means Good feels good.” Or, “because I feel miserable, the God must also be miserable”. This is not the mutual transformation Kaviraja Gosvami is referring to.
In this mutual transformation everything takes place on the transcendental platform. The Lord becomes transformed by the pure qualities of Haridas Thakur. It is not that the Lord becomes transformed by the mundane qualities of the living entities under the influence of the modes of material nature. So there is a difference how Krishna becomes affected by His parts and parcels. As we know the Lord is aloof from the actions and reactions of the material energy but in Caitanya lila He shows how He cannot resist coming under the influence of His pure devotees, to the extent that He even becomes transformed by them.
Haridas Thakur tells Lord Caitanya, “don’t touch me, don’t touch me, I am the lowest among men, I am so sinful…” and Lord Caitanya replies, “I am touching you for My own purification because your transcendental qualities don’t exist in Me”.
In this mutual transformation we should remember that one is always the Prabhu, the Supreme Master, and the other is always the servitor. Not that it becomes quantitative mix up. Yet, although the Lord is who He is, He is eager to partake in the transcendental qualities of His devotee. In fact He is more eager, Srila Prabhupada explains in this section, the Lord is more eager to serve the devotee that the devotee is eager to serve Him.
Our ascent to reviving of proper qualities in relation to Krishna is driven by hearing about Krishna. Our understanding of virtue is far different from the mundane conception. First of all, it is the prime principle of Lord Caitanya’s sankirtan movement that virtue is broad about by hearing about Krishna, speaking about Krishna, Krishna katha is transformational. We are not dealing with religious belief – we shall be saved because we believe in certain way or because we have certain external religious characteristics, no, we are saved because of the transformational activities of hearing and chanting about Krishna which actually produce virtue and good qualities.
When Srila Prabhupada was on Jaladuta in the Boston harbor he frankly assessed the situation – a population drowning in passion and ignorance. How will this people ever become Krishna conscious? And then he expressed his deep realized experience of the transformational power of talks about Krishna, Krishna’s holly name, although the situation is impossible, because of the power of hearing about Krishna the situation can be salvaged and indeed even the most fallen living entities can achieve perfection, all because of the transformational potency of Sri Krishna sankirtan.
In this way we are not speaking of religious faith as it is ordinarily understood, we are speaking about a bhakti laboratory process of transcendental sound vibration entering the ear and the heart and producing virtue and divine qualities to the extent where, at the level of complete purity, the Lord becomes eager to be transformed by the qualities of His devotees.
It is becoming very difficult for people today to understand what virtue is. In fact, even from the material point of view, we very rarely hear about virtue and wisdom of political leaders running for office. They don’t promise to people, “I will be virtues, I have wisdom”. Everyone promises, “I will bring about more economical development for you, I will bring about more wealth in your pocket.” Politicians around the world remind themselves, quoting one famous American president…that’s what the people want, they want money. They want to see how their financial prosperity is increasing. These are the issues. Nobody goes around and says, “I have virtue, I have wisdom, I will train the population in virtue and wisdom.” People don’t want to hear that. Because their judgments of what is good and bad are so economically driven. Economic principles have become the virtues.
So therefore the question is, at the exchange between two persons, is that exchange mutually beneficial for both of them as each person perceives it. So much so that I may be selling you something that will not do you any good from one person’s point of view, but if you think it does good to you and you give me money and I am pleased with that money – that is mutually beneficial exchange. And there should be great hesitation of applying laws of restriction on such mutually beneficial exchange.
We were speaking about that at the Chowpatty temple a week ago. That to varying degrees this has become the main organizing principle in the society nowadays, how to have exchange where one person gives the product, the other person gives the money, and both of them are more or less satisfied by the exchange. This is the perfection of social organization to varying degrees. There may be some restrains in this country on selling certain kinds of things, restrains in another country or lack of them but to varying degrees this economical principle is the foundation of society today. So people don’t know anymore what virtue is outside of situations which can be financially calculated.
Here is a popular example that is given amongst so called thinking persons. Who is more virtuous, Mother Teresa, Bill Gates, or Norman Borlaug? Now, you might think, obviously, Mother Teresa is more virtuous. She was an ascetic, she was always living amongst the poor, clothed very simply with very sad eyes upon seeing the suffering of others. Whereas look Bill Gates, filthy rich. The richest man in the world. How can be any virtue there? And who is Norman Borlaug? Anyone here knows who Norman Borlaug is? He is accredited with saving one billion people’s lives. Because he is said to be the father of the agriculture revolution.
What about Bill Gates? He has used his fortune to establish charities to eliminate malaria, other scourges of the developing world. So you may say that he is certainly not a saintly person, you may say he is filthy rich, he is greedy, but look what he is doing for millions of people.
And then look at Mother Teresa. She prayed a lot. And she gave poor people very primitive medicine. In other words they died, but they died with lots of prayers around.
The social psychologist has pointed out that you are have been fooled by the aura of sanctity. But when you look the hard facts Norman Borlaug is the savior of the world. One billion people have been saved because of the policy of the chemical agriculture. Look at Bill Gates, countless persons were being saved by malaria, and look at Mother Teresa, just because she acted saintly and clothed herself as a true believer and prayed a lot, and spoke a lot of religious platitudes, how many person did she actually saved? Therefore we must have completely different understanding of what is virtue. In other words, the traditional religious understanding of virtue has no practical impact in this world against the philanthropic deeds of persons you would never call a saint. So you must re-think your understanding.
Furthermore, you tend to think of virtue as an individual characteristic that can be cultivated; you can individually develop these virtual qualities. You scripture says srinvatah sva kathah Krishna punya sravana kirtana, by hearing about Krishna real virtue, real piety develops in the heart. All right, that’s your individual thing, but let us look at the facts. We can see from the facts that generally, there are always exceptions, but generally morality is situational. People decide what to do and what not to do based on the situation. Research has shown this. I will give you an example.
It has been shown by social psychologists that if you are passing in the front of a store that is selling fresh made bread and the street is filled with the smell, you will be more prone to do a good deed than someone who is walking by the cloth store and there is no smell of fresh bread around.
Secondly, if you are find money, immediately after that you are more prone to help others than otherwise.
A third example – if you are reading a book and in the book you see words like virtue, goodness, charity, immediately after that you are more prone to help someone than someone who is reading a book and sees there words like horror, terror... Academics have spent lots of time and money researching these crucial situations.
Now, what happens when there is a global tragedy like war? Is it that terrible persons start doing terrible things? No, according to social research, good persons are put in terrible situations and therefore they do terrible things. There are exceptions but this is the general rule.
There is some lesson in all of this for the devotees of the Lord. Look at Brahma’s situation. He has just dealt with the four Kumaras. Each of these four boys represents something very needed for the human society. Tapas, yoga, vairagya, sankhya. Lord Brahma is considering the whole universe’s situation. As we heard from His Holiness Radhanatha Maharaja, he wants to create a social structure where people can achieve their goal of being in the material creation which is to revive their Krishna consciousness. He turns to the four Kumaras and gives them a justifiable request. Will you please procreate? So that we can build up a system in the world by which people can achieve the ultimate goal of life. The four Kumaras tell him “No, we are not interested to enter into all those activities”. This is showing, the Acaryas point out, that the four Kumaras want direct bhakti and don’t want to be involved so much with the varnasram system. But Lord Brahma is thinking of the well being of all the conditioned souls in the Universe. He knows that generally the living entities are influenced by their situation. So he has the responsibility to construct a situation in which people can gradually advance toward the ultimate goal of life because they are influenced by favorable circumstances for reviving their Krishna consciousness. He wants the four Kumaras to help him there but they refuse.
Now he has Svayabhuva and he is requesting Svayambhuva, you please procreate and also take responsibility for managing, for protecting the living entities and Svayabhuva Manu graciously accepts with great love, yes, I will do what you say.
It is not so easy to take responsibility like that and we are finding this to be so in our Krishna consciousness. Who will take responsibility of Srila Prabhupada’s movement as his disciples are leaving more and more and aging more and more? Is that everyone is jumping for massive responsibilities? Is it that everyone is eager, when these old-timers are moving out so that we can take their spot? It does not seem like we have many. But Lord Brahma also had the same problem. Because what is going to happen is that Svayabhuva Manu in fifth canto he is going to retire. And the only person he can turn to is Priyavrata. All other options in the hereditary line have been exhausted. Priyavrata is in seclusion receiving transcendental education from Narada Muni. Prayavrata has his mind set on remaining a brahmacari and having nothing to do with worldly rule and management. This presents a problem for Brahma and Svayambhuva Manu because who will manage the world so that the living entities can make gradual spiritual progress? And, secondly, how can Svayambhuva Manu fulfill dharma by retiring from his managerial duties?
The situation was so intense that Lord Brahma had to personally appear in order to lovingly break Priyavrata’s determination. This was going to be a difficult job, Bhagavatam explaines, because who is Priyavrata’s instructor? Narada Muni. Narada Muni has Priyavrata completely focused on brahmacarya, no management, no worldly responsibilities.
Brahma understands, this is going to be a difficult task, therefore he comes with many great sages…The first thing Brahma says to Priyavrata is “I have been in contact with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, don’t be jealous of His order…The living entities is bound by the laws of dharma.” At the end Priyavrata and Narada Muni were very happy to follow Brahma’s order.
In our ISKCON society we don’t see that the devotees are jumping to take up responsibilities. And in many places there are no devotees to take up responsibilities. So what to do? Srila Prabhupada explains that this Krishna consciousness movement should always be a great challenge. In that way the devotees will always be enthusiastic to follow the regulative principles, without that feeling of a challenge they will become lethargic under the grip of the material energy.
How is possible to feel that challenge that there is something wonderful I can do for Krishna and even if that service requires austerity and purification I will sign up for it? How to create that spirit so that the Krishna consciousness society can go on? It is not an easy thing to do as we see even Brahma himself he had a problem…Priyavrata did not want to have anything to do with management. Brahma gave him a hint – don’t use your intelligence to reject the order of the Lord but to follow it. The solution was yukta vairagya as enunciated so brilliantly by Rupa Goswami. Priavrata decided to rule with detachment in this way he combined the instructions of his Gurus – Narada and Brahma.
I remember a letter from Srila Prabhupada where he explains something that is sad and joyful at the same time. The letter was written to a leader who was disappointing Srila Prabhupada. And Srila Prabhupada writes there that “I am hearing such things about you which make my heart sad. I have given you such big opportunity to be a big leader on behalf of Lord Caitanya and I hear these things.” And we can say – these things happen, how we are disappointing Srila Prabhupada sometimes, not living up to his expectations. And then Srila Prabhupada concluded, “Nevermind, I know Lord Caitanya will send me the right persons to lead this movement, if not you - someone else.”
This is the conviction of someone who knows – Krishna’s plan will prevail – who will be those who take the extraordinary opportunity to take part of this plan.
If you look at the situation, let’s talk about the first world, we see that people become practically insane because they don’t find a meaning in life, they are so disturbed by stress and anxiety, and this is affecting our preaching. You see, in our line we have the command to reestablish the Daivi Varnasrama. Just like the four Kumaras wanted the pure bhakti but Svayambhuva Manu took it as his job to make favorable circumstances because indeed, most people are influenced by their circumstances. We see Srila Prabhupada taking the command from Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura and Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswami wanted that we make some attempt to make some type of structural arrangement so that even those who are not enough strong to be Krishna conscious on their own be influenced by favorable environment and thus they gradually revive their Krishna consciousness. We remember the last year of Srila Prabhupada presence among us a devotee asked him – “Why this talk about Varnasrama dharma, Lord Caitanya’s policy is to simply chant Hare Krishna, that’s what it’s all about?” And just to make a powerful point Srila Prabhupada said, “Lord Caitanya is from the spiritual world, we are different. We want to help people.” It does not mean, of course, that we should not chant Hare Krishna, it means that Prabhupada, in extraordinary compassion, wanted to help people to make gradual progress in Krishna consciousness.
Now this Varnasrama dharma has proven to be a great challenge for us. And sometimes the challenge has been so great we don’t even talk about it anymore. But what can be done, this is our parampara inheritance and we have to struggle with it. It is a fact that most people are influenced by their circumstances. Put a person in a good situation and it is highly probable that this person will do something good. Leave a good person in a terrible situation and the good person will do terrible things as it has been seen in so many atrocities and genocides.
We have a lot of work to do and we have a lot of responsibilities to be taken. Sometimes even Lord Brahma becomes perplexed, what to do? We will see that after Svayambhuva Manu agrees, father, whatever you ask I will do, where should I be located, where should all the people stay? The earth has fallen into the Garbodaka ocean and Brahma said yes, that is right, how this situation can be fixed? And while Lord Brahma is thinking in perplexity Lord Varaha emerges from his nostril.
We are also thinking in perplexity, how are we not going to forget about our parampara inheritance, that Srila Prabhupada wanted that favorable circumstances be constructed so that the people can become Krishna conscious. That’s why he pushed Varnasrama dharma. It seems so difficult, it seems even inconceivable, but what can we do, this is our line. Particularly in the first world we see massive social degradation, people becoming crazy because of stress, lusty affairs in such a young age, it seems that the 60 and 70 that was the Satya yuga. And Prabhupada came and got all the hippies form the Satya yuga who did not really do anything that was degraded until they were 18 and now all that degradation begins at the age of 11 and 12. This has affect in our preaching. In my humble opinion, I have seen this around the world, devotees are perplexed that young people they are nuts, everyone is so economically obsessed, what to do? Perhaps we need to take another look at Srila Prabhupada’s strategies, maybe there were not antiquated or outmoded or they were not dreamy at all, how indeed to create a situation where people can become good, and how to take out people from a terrible situations where they will do terrible things because the situation is terrible. That is a different way of looking at varnasram dharma and our parampara inheritance. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.
No comments:
Post a Comment