19821125-Srimad-Bhagavatam.4.2.14-15-How-To-Bankrupt-your-Spiritual-Life-Literal-Version

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The following is a lecture, given by His Holiness Jayapataka Swami on November 25th, 1982 in Sridhama Mayapura. The class begins with a reading from the Srimad-Bhagavatam, 4th Canto, Chapter 2, Verse 14 through 15.

Devotees: …tavasesu ghoresu

Jayapataka Swami: pretair bhuta-ganair vrtah

Devotees: pretair bhuta-ganair vrtah

Jayapataka Swami: ataty unmattavan nagno

Devotees: ataty unmattavan nagno

Jayapataka Swami: vyupta-keso hasan rudan

Devotees: vyupta-keso hasan rudan

Jayapataka Swami: cita-bhasma-krta-snanah

Devotees: cita-bhasma-krta-snanah

Jayapataka Swami: preta-sran-nrasthi-bhusasah

Devotees: preta-sran-nrasthi-bhusasah

Jayapataka Swami: sivapadeso hy asivo

Devotees: sivapadeso hy asivo

Jayapataka Swami: matto matta-jana-priyah

Devotees: matto matta-jana-priyah

Jayapataka Swami: patih pramatha-nathanam

Devotees: patih pramatha-nathanam

Jayapataka Swami: tamo-matratmakatmanam

Devotees: tamo-matratmakatmanam

Jayapataka Swami: pretavasesu ghoresu

Devotees: pretavasesu ghoresu

Jayapataka Swami: pretair bhuta-ganair vrtah

Devotees: pretair bhuta-ganair vrtah

Jayapataka Swami: ataty unmattavan nagno

Devotees: ataty unmattavan nagno

Jayapataka Swami: vyupta-keso hasan rudan

Devotees: vyupta-keso hasan rudan

Jayapataka Swami: cita-bhasma-krta-snanah

Devotees: cita-bhasma-krta-snanah

Jayapataka Swami: preta-sran-nrasthi-bhusasah

Devotees: preta-sraṅ-nrasthn-bhusasah

[Break]

Jayapataka Swami: “… He lives in filthy places like crematoriums, and his companions are the ghosts and demons. Naked like a madman, sometimes laughing and sometimes crying, he smears crematorium ashes all over his body. He does not bathe regularly, and he ornaments his body with a garland of skulls and bones. Therefore only in name is he Śiva, or auspicious; actually, he is the most mad and inauspicious creature. Thus he is very dear to crazy beings in the mode of ignorance…” or, “in the gross mode of ignorance, and he is their leader.”

Purport by Srila Prabhupada:

Those who do not regularly bathe are supposed to be in association with ghosts and crazy creatures. Lord Siva appeared to be like that, but his name, Siva, is actually fitting, for he is very kind to persons who are in the darkness of the mode of ignorance, such as unclean drunkards who do not regularly bathe. Lord Siva is so kind that he gives shelter to such creatures and gradually elevates them to spiritual consciousness. Although it is very difficult to raise such creatures to spiritual understanding, Lord Siva takes charge of them, and therefore, as stated in the Vedas, Lord Siva is all-auspicious. Thus by his association even such fallen souls can be elevated. Sometimes it is seen that great personalities meet with fallen souls, not for any personal interest but for the benefit of those souls. In the creation of the Lord there are different kinds of living creatures. Some of them are in the mode of goodness, some are in the mode of passion, and some are in the mode of ignorance. Lord Visnu takes charge of the persons who are advanced Krishna conscious Vaisnavas, and Lord Brahma takes charge of persons who are very much attached to material activities, but Lord Siva is so kind that he takes charge of persons who are in gross ignorance and whose behavior is lower than that of the animals. Therefore Lord Siva is especially called auspicious.”

Thus end the purport to Text 14 and 15 of the Srimad-Bhagavatam by His Divine Grace Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, in the matter of Daksa Curses Lord Siva.

So here, we are reading part of the curse given by Daksa to Lord Siva. Actually this is very painful for any advanced Vaisnava to hear, that such an all-auspicious soul as Lord Siva is being cursed by Daksa. Actually Lord Siva is a pure Vaisnava. He’s a partial expansion of Visnu, also and He should never be cursed by anyone, and doing so simply reduces one’s own life duration, stature, good fortune, everything.

Actually Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu, He advised us that the offense against the Vaisnava, or Vaisnava-aparadha is the most dangerous thing. Vaisnava-aparadha mata hati upade va chinde… yaya, or… sukhi yaya pata… upade va chinde, lota sukhi’ yaya pata

That, this offensing or giving an offense to a pure Vaisnava is a mad elephant offense. If one commits a mad elephant offense, then that mad elephant goes into the garden of one’s devotional life and pulls out the devotional creeper, right from the root.

When you pull a plant out by the root, it may stay green for a few days, but in no time at all, leaves will dry and fall off. So, sukhi yaya pata means that once this Vaisnava-aparadha has been created, even though for a short time, they may be existing apparently in some spiritual life, very soon all of their spiritual assets will be dried up, and they’ll be completely spiritually bankrupt, you see. So, one should avoid very particularly this offense against a Vaisnava, the pure devotee of the Lord.

So Lord Siva is accepted as a pure devotee of the Lord. Therefore, the advanced Vaisnavas will never support any offense against Lord Siva, or any other pure devotee of the Lord. This offense to the Vaisnavas has been described in the pastime of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu. Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu was forgiving everyone for their various offenses. He was giving everyone pure love for Krishna. Even, He gave Jagai, Madhai, pure love for Krishna. But, one day all the devotees requested Him that, “You should kindly have Your mercy upon Mother Yasoda. Give her pure love for Lord Krishna.” So, then Lord Caitanya said, “No. I cannot give Mother Yasoda the benediction of pure love for Krishna because she is not qualified.” “No! No! No! How can that be? Mother Yasoda’s not qualified?” They all became furious. They all became exci… Mother Yasoda was su…” I mean Saci. Mother Saci, excuse me. “Mother Saci is a reincarnation of Yaso… Mother Yasoda. She is so dedicated. She is so pure. She is always serving you. She is always uh, performing so much uh, pure devotional service. How can she not be qualified?” They wouldn’t leave Lord Caitanya alone until finally He said, “She’s not qualified because she has committed a grave offense at the lotus feet of a pure devotee.” “What?! How can she be an offender?” A big question came up that, “What is this offense that Mother Yasoda had committed?”

I’ll just explain a little bit in Bengali.

(Bengali)

So all the devotees were completely upset that, “How mother Saci was not getting pure love for Krishna.” This was inconceivable. Some were fasting. Some were crying. They requested Lord Caitanya to explain to them what was the aparadha, the great offense that she had committed. So, finally Lord Caitanya explained that one time, Visvarupa, His elder brother was sitting listening to the Bhagavatam class of Lord Advaita, and Mother Saci sent Lord Caitanya also to go and to get Visvarupa to come back to the house. Instead, when Lord Caitanya got there as a small boy, Nimai, He sat down and listened to the Bhagavatam class. Thus, He was late. So, Mother Saci became afraid that by the preaching of Advaita, Nimai would become a sannyasi, and so she made some bad comment that, “By this preaching, they may ruin my son, and make Him into a sannyasi or something.” And this, Lord Caitanya said was a great vaisnava-aparadha, and for that Mother Saci could not get love for God.

You see, to understand this, one has to know something about what is the holy name. Actually the holy name of Krishna is so powerful that it can destroy any amount of sinful reactions. Any amount, you see. Ajamila was a great sinner. He had been a brahmana in his youth. He had done Visnu-puja, but he gave up his family. He gave up his se… his position in society. Instead, he married a prostitute and he became a thief, and he was robbing and murdering people. He was a great sinner. He had ten children, however and his youngest child’s name was Narayana. So, he was always calling out on his son, “Narayana, Narayana, come here.” When he would eat, Narayana would eat with him. When he would drink, he would call Narayana to sit down and drink with him. In this way, unconsciously, by repeating the name, “Narayana. Narayana.” He was becoming purified.

Finally when he was dying, his son was playing nearby, small boy. And the three Yamadutas came. He saw three people with ugly faces and black bodies and muscles all over and teeth with ropes in their hand and they were coming to drag him away to Yamaraja, the lord of death. When he saw that, he became so afraid. He started to call on his son, “Narayana Narayana Narayana!”

When he called like that so loudly in complete anxiety, there was no aparadha, there was no offense to Narayana. Immediately, three, four Visnudutas came, messangers of Visnu, and they protected him from these Yamadutas. Why? Because he had chanted the name of Narayana without any offense, you see. So, this offense… there are ten offenses to the holy name. It says if one chants without offense, then one immediately gets freed from all the sinful reactions, but one should be very careful not to chant the holy name in order to enjoy sense gratification, in order to perform more sinful activities. If one chants to facilitate more sinful activities, then that chanting will be delayed. Chanting must act, but it will be delayed very far in the future.

So, this chanting takes immediate effect when there’s no offense or when there’s very little offense, but with offense, the action is delayed. So, offense means to offend a pure devotee, to disobey the guru, to offend the scriptures, to put material conceptions on the chanting, to be inattentive while chanting and especially to chant so that one can do more sinful activities. If one thinks that, “Well by chanting I get purified from sin, and then later I can do more sin.” all these type of mentalities are called aparadha or offense. So especially the offense to the pure devotee completely pulls out one’s devotional asset, so this what happend to Daksa; He committed a Vaisnava-aparadha. This is what happened to Saci-Mata that Lord Caitanya said… used her as an example, that she had committed an offense against a Vaisnava, therefore she could not get love of God. The demons who go to kill Krishna, they get moksa, the get liberation by merging into the Lord’s effulgence, or into His body, so this merging is considered to not be obviously very important because even the asuras are getting. From that we can understand that only when the pure devotees are getting prema, that this must be so much higher than the oridinary understanding of moksa.

Five types of moksa are there: sarupya, samipya or sanidhya, salokya and,

(aside)

What’s the other one?

Devotee: sarsti

Jayapataka Swami: sarsti. So, those four type are sometimes accepted by Vaisnava, but the pure Vaisnava goes beyond liberation and also gets pure love for Krishna. It is said that Krishna gives liberation very easily, but He gives pure Krishna prema or love with great difficulty, very rarely because when He gives love or Krishna prema, He becomes bound up. This is mentioned in many puranas, that Krishna easily gives mukti, or liberation but He very rarely gives bhakti or prema.

Just like if a person accepts someone as a child, or a disciple, then naturally one is always thinking about how to develop that person, how to protect that person, and that person has got some hold because of some relationship of love. It’s said Krishna gives love to any devotee, then actually He becomes bound in a certain way, by various loving sentiments. Of course, He’s always independent. We should never think that Krishna becomes completely under the control of His devotee, but sometimes He allows Himself to come under the control of His devotee on account of love, but He is never under the control of just a liberated soul, or muktatma, but only by the pure devotee.
So Mother Saci had committed… the mother of Lord Caitanya had committed a Vaisnava-aparadha,

[aside]

(inaudible) …turn it down a little.

Because she had committed a Vaisnava-aparadha, therefore she was not eligable to get pure love for Krishna. She could get liberation, but not pure love for Krishna, so therefore, all the devotees were lamenting. So, then there was a scheme made up, how Mother Saci could get forgiven for the offense she had committed against Advaita Gosai. So, all of the devotees, they went and they approached Advaita Gosai to try to convince Him to forgive mother Saci for her offense, and Mother Saci and Lord Caitanya also came along, and that was a most amazing meeting. It was wonderful what happened when the devotees asked Advaita Gosai to forgive Mother Saci for her offense.

I’ll just explain a little bit in Bengali:

Hare Krishna.

(Bengali)

So when Advaita Gosai heard that they said that, “Please forgive Mother Saci for her offenses. You’re a great Vaisnava. She is a great offender. Please forgive her.”

Then, Advaita said, “What? I forgive Mother Saci? Who am I? I am nothing. I am not even a devotee. I am the lowest. How can I forgive? She’s such a great Vaisnava… Vaisnavi. She is always worshipping. She is always serving. She is always doing Deity worship. She’s always serving Lord Caitanya. She’s always chanting the …” and He became ecstatic singing out the glories of Mother Yasoda. He started to jump up and dance in ecstasy, “Mother Yas…” excuse me. “Mother Saci! How wonderful devotee she is!” and He was just going on, on eulogizing all of her great qualities, dancing in ecstasy, and he became so ecstating thinking about how low He was and how great Mothe Saci was that He fainted and became unconscious.

At that moment, Lord Caitanya told Mother Saci, “Now, go quick, grab His feet! Then you’ll be forgiven for the offense.” So Mother Saci, when He was unconscious… He wouldn’t ever let her touch His feet… His lotus feet, you see, willingly. He was taking the humble position. At that moment, she could run over and touch His lotus feet and get forgiven for the so-called offense that she had committed. In this way, Lord Caitanya used His devotee as an example.

It is said in the Bha… in the Gita that the Lord uses His devotee. In the Gita Purport, that the Lord uses His devotee to teach the world about spiritual life. Arjuna was put into Maya just so that we could hear the Bhagavad-gita. In this way, Mother Saci was deprived of getting pure love for Krishna just so that we could get the instruction from her activity never to commit any offense against the pure Vaisnavas, and to avoid very strictly the offenses against the holy name.

To commit an offense against the holy name is in our worst self-interest. Once we start to chant the holy name, then we should try to do everything to please Krishna, you see. Whatever we have to do to maintain our body and mind together in a healthy condition, of course Krishna does not begrudge, but at the same time, we should be very careful not to simply try to use the holy name for some uh, material sense gratificatory purpose. Then, the effect of that chanting will be delayed. Still, we should chant, even if we are committing some offense, because even with offense, there will be effect, but it will be later. The only one offense that we should completely avoid because that can completely stop our progress in spiritual life, that is the offending of a pure devotee of the Lord. So, in this way, in this pastime with Daksa and Lord Siva, we can also see, in the future verses how Daksa loses his own position and is punished simply because of seeing the great devotees of the Lord with a material vision.

Actually, why devotee is so exhalted is because he’s heart and soul dedicated to the Lord. In the lila with Ambarisa, Visnu explained to Durvasa that, “My heart is My devotee, and My devotee’s heart is Me.” Because a devotee is always thinking of the Lord, the Lord is living in the heart of the devotee, and because the devotee is thinking of the Lord, the Lord thinks of His devotee; therefore, His heart is the devotee. So He told Durvasa, “You commit offense to devotee, you have to get his forgiveness. I can do nothing.” So the devotee is so exhalted, even a great sage like Durvasa Muni could travel in outer space, had to go back to the humble grhastha Ambarisa, who was a great King, who was the Emperor of the world, because he was ruling the world in order to please Krishna, he was ruling the world that the people could gradually come back to spiriutal life. Even Ambarisa sometimes worshipped demigods like Siva, like Durga and others just to give the example to the people in general about how to do various Vedic rites, but in his mind, and in his discussion, he would always explain how the demigods were the part of Visnu and he would not think them as independent, but he would worship them as the various angams, or parts of the body of the universal form of the Lord.

In this way, in his royal activities, in his private life, throughout his various uh, stages, he was always engaged in the service of Visnu, of Krishna. Therefore, even a great mystic yogi like Durvasa, who tried to offend him was chastised by the Sudarsana-cakra and he had to personally beg forgiveness from that great King, Maharaja Ambarisa. He said, “I thought you were a grhastha. I thought you were oridinary householder. Now I can see you are great mystic. You are a greater mystic than I am. You are a pure devotee of the Lord.” So, this bhakti-yoga gives the greatest mystic power, even greater than the mystic power achieved by the ordinary yogis who perform the mystic yoga process. So, in this way, we should understand that this secret of bhakti-yoga is the most hidden secret and the king of education, raja-guhyam, raja-vidyam. It’s also the rahasyahyeta uttamam. In so many verses it’s explained how great this process of devotional service is, so we should take it very seriously, chant Hare Krishna, avoid offenses, do our service to Krishna, do our ordinary activities in such a way that they’re ultimately leading us closer and closer to Krishna.

Whatever we may be. Grhe thako vane thako, sada hari bole dako. Whether a grhastha, whether a brahmacari, or whether a sannyasi, or a vanaprasthi, whether a man or whether a woman, we should do our service in such a way to please the Lord, you see. In this way, we can achieve the highest benediction offered by Caitanya Mahaprabhu, by Krishna Himself, that is pure love for Krishna, which is the perfection of all liberation and which gives complete satisfaction to the self.

sa vai puṁsāṁ paro dharmo

yato bhaktir adhokṣaje

ahaituky apratihatā

yayātmā suprasīdati

Hare Krishna.

Just to give it in Bengali:

(Bengali)

hare kṛṣṇa hare kṛṣṇa

kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa hare hare

hare rāma hare rāma

rāma rāma hare hare

(Bengali)

Are there any questions?

Question: (Bengali)

Jayapataka Swami: Because he cursed Lord Siva, he was killed later but by the mercy of Lord Siva, he was… he had his head chopped off and he was killed, but by the mercy of Lord Siva, his head was replaced by the head of a goat, and he was given back his life. So… so far we know, he’s still living as Daksa with the head of a goat. Hare Krishna.

And at… with the head of a goat, then he could understand that he had committed a great offense against the Vaisnavas. When he was taken back to life, he offered his prayers to Lord Siva. That you will be reading later on, all these details in the Bhagavatam.

It’s a very great history. It takes about two volumes, like this to complete or at least one full volume and a little to complete the whole history, how Daksa curses Siva, how Sati retaliates, and then finally how she gives up her body, then how Siva attacks the uh, arena, the sacrifice of Daksa and how Daksa is uh… in all the different brahmanas who had committed different aparadhas are punished — These things are described. And ultimately how Lord Siva forgave them all and then brought them back into their original position. Main thing, this type of cursing is only done by the very neophyte person. Because Daksa is a very attached grh… very attached grhamedhi, even he’s very exhalted, but he’s very attached to his material position, therefore, he does not see the quality of Siva. So, we should be very careful not to be too attached to our material position, material fame, material uh, wealth, or power or beauty or education because this can make us falsely proud and then if we get some little neglect, then we may start to become offensive to the Vaisnavas, and this is very dangerous.

Daksa, because of his material position, as being a son of Brahma, being a prajapati, being the father-in-law of Siva, actually Siva, he was in dhyana. He was in samadhi. He didn’t know that Daksa was there or not. Why would… He was… He’s so great person. He can stand up for Daksa. What is the harm? Even though actually he’s much greater than Daksa, but out of his own greatness, he could do such thing, but he was in dhyana. He was in samadhi, so he didn’t know Daksa was there.

Lord Siva’s the greatest devotee, the greatest mystic. He was in complete samadhi. He wasn’t conscious of the outside world. He didn’t know these things were happening until after he came out of samadhi, he heard all the things that happened, and he saw that his… Daksa was cursing, and his… uh, the brahmanas were cursing and Nandisvara and other uh, of his parsadas were cursing and then he said, “No no.” And He got up and left, but he didn’t know all these things were going… He was in samadhi, and Daksa, because he wasn’t saying anything, he became angry and he started cursing. So we should be very careful about being falsely proud about some material position, material possession or quality, because that false pride can lead us to offend a devotee, which can harm our spiriutal progress to no end.

Hare Krishna.

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Transcribed by Prasadesvara Krishna dasa

Revised by Jagannataha dasa Brahmacari