19821228 Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 8.20.5-6

Śrīmad Bhāgavatam

The following is a lecture given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Svāmī on December 28, 1982 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The class begins with a reading from the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, 8th Canto, Chapter 20, Verse 5 and 6.

Translation: I do not fear hell, poverty, an ocean of distress, falldown from my position or even death itself as much as I fear cheating a brāhmaṇa.

yad yad dhāsyati loke ’smin
samparetaṁ dhanādikam
tasya tyāge nimittaṁ kiṁ
vipras tuṣyen na tena cet
[SB 8.20.6]

Translation: My lord, you can also see, that all the material opulences of this world are certainly separated from their possessor at death. Therefore, if the brāhmaṇa Vāmanadeva is not satisfied by whatever gifts one has given, why not please Him with the riches one is destined to lose at death?

Purport: The word vipra means brāhmaṇa, and at the same time “confidential.” Bali Mahārāja had confidentially decided to give the gift to Lord Vāmanadeva without discussion, but because such a decision would hurt the hearts of the asuras and his spiritual master, Śukrācārya, he spoke equivocally. Bali Mahārāja, as a pure devotee, had already decided to give all the land to Lord Viṣṇu.

Jayapatākā Swami: So, Bali Mahārāja is telling his guru, so called guru, family guru, that he can’t follow his instruction; that he has to give the charity requested by Vāmanadeva. Because Bali Mahārāja is a pure devotee, he is determined to surrender unto the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

This is of course the most confidential decision, and the most important decision that one can make in life. Once, of course, one makes the decision, then there should be no turning back. Bali Mahārāja once he made the decision, he didn’t turn back. Even though Vāmanadeva tested him by binding him up. Of course, in the end, Vāmanadeva agreed to become the gatekeeper of Bali Mahārāja, to have the Sudarśana cakra protect his planet, and made the planet more opulent than even the heavenly kingdom. And allowed Indra to return back to his heavenly kingdom. And many of the demons were also..  of course, they were all pushed back to the lower planetary system.

Here, the determination of Bali Mahārāja is being seen. Sometimes it happens, the parents may say, “Don’t do it!”. Some friends may say, “Don’t do it, don’t surrender, don’t be a devotee.” But in any case, one has to take what is going to actually be beneficial for one’s spiritual life. Once Actually this in this jīv jāgo, we sing:

enechi auṣadhi māyā nāśibāro lāgi'
hari-nāma mahā-mantra lao tumi māgi'

That Lord Caitanya is singing, “I have brought the mercy, I have brought the medicine for the Kali-yuga.” Just like nowadays, there are so many diseases in this Kali-yuga. And you hear on the radio we were driving to see the saṅkīrtana people in the malls. Then they were advertising on the radio, that for merchandise for some kind of epilepsy, some kind of atrophy or something, muscular dystrophy or some… Then like about half the time, every ten minutes someone was going on that the new disease has come, kids.. are affected, this one is affected, only your money can help. You have to send the money, you have to find a cure, you see. You see.

Then if somebody finds a cure, all the newspapers, radio would say, Dr. Schaumberg has found a cure for.. dilated, flagellated.. you know dystrophies or something. And then everyone is very happy, because that’s a very serious disease, and you know the cure has been found. Of course, materially the problem is that you have solved one disease and then again, the radio comes on, there is a new disease just came up. So again, send your money, because now then this one, but now there this heart disease or this/that So, there is no end to the diseases, it is just one after another, because people are not stopping their sinful activities, they have to get some disease or another. If they find a cure for the existing one, nature will produce a new one. So, some of the diseases come from the very medicines they take.

Actually, even the modern science now says, that many of the diseases . are coming from the hospitals. That hospitals are place where people are concentrated diseased people. So that means we get all the germs together in one place. So, the germs when they get together, they produce new strains of disease that never existed, they don’t exist outside of hospitals, and they only come from hospitals. And they are so powerful that you can’t, there is no cure for them, infection and things. Special strains that are produced in hospitals.

Actually, one of our Swami is in the hospital. He had some kidney stone, and tremendous pain. And he, you know..  Say, the devotee wherever he is, is able to immediately pick up exactly what the situation is. Just like Prabhupāda was once in a train, and somebody asked him that how many cars are there in the Punjab Mail? You know, He said 13. Exactly He knows everything. He was on the train you know, exactly how many. Just while entering immediately he saw how many cars were on the train, how many conductors, how many every.. just by being on there, all the crucial details. Anything that is visible, pick it up. It's the symptom of a devotee.

This devotee could immediately see, that people were dying like anything, it’s a hospital. They go to die there, right? So when they die you know it’s kind of demoralizing for the other patients. So what they do is they have a special signal and then all the doors shut and they take your body, *swish* whisk it down the hall, that time they make sure there is no guests around, because everyone thinks… have you ever seen a dead body in the hospital? You never see one. They got the whole thing worked out that you don’t see it. They are dying all the time. Most people go to hospital and die. You know, a few come out. At least a very good percentage you know die there. Most of the people, they do die in the world, and a lot of them die in the hospital, but you never see one when you are in there, because they have it all worked out so that you just don’t see it. It’s like people come in there and get healthy and go out, but you don’t see the death.

So, this is the kind of situation actually. In the material world there are so many diseases but ultimately of course it always ends in death, sooner or later. And even you cure one disease, another one comes. So.. Lord Caitanya said, enechi auṣadhi māyā nāśibāro lāgi' – "I have brought the medicine for māyā. This medicine is such a medicine that it completely eradicates māyā.” That means that with this medicine, you don’t have to take any more medicine. This is like the tendency of Ponce de Leon, they put his stamp on one letter I got. He was looking for the Fountain of Youth. You see. he died of old age before he could find out, anyway. The problem is that everyone is looking for that eternal youth, they’re looking for that way of remaining permanently in this material body. Well, Lord Caitanya has actually brought the medicine whereby one can achieve eternal life, and one can completely eradicate all the miseries of māyā in the most sublime way, you see.

Actually He is.. they should definitely having a stamp for Him, of course we don’t particularly want them to go smashing the stamp with their franchiser machine but at least they should be glorifying Him, because He has actually found the real fountain of youth. You see, eternal youth, nava-yauvanaṁ ca. [Bs 5.33] So when Lord Caitanya said, enechi auṣadhi māyā - I brought the medicine, You see? He should be getting all the Nobel prizes, just close up the whole shop and just give Him the whole thing, from now until eternity, just put it right into His trust fund. Because His eight-sloka Śikṣāṣṭakam, the greatest literary work every year, forget all the rest, and.. He has done a greatest medical, He found the cure for the birth, death, old age, disease. So, like that. Of course you can also say any of His representatives have also done the same, Prabhupāda.

So Lord Caitanya brought this medicine, this is the once and for all medicine. You take this you are cured. Alright, nothing else is required. So therefore, what is that medicine? hari-nāma mahā-mantra, so Bhaktivinoda, He recommends you should, lao tumi māgi' – māgi' means you beg, beg or borrow. You see. Somebody māgi, that means that somehow or another he is getting it, by begging or borrowing whatever he is getting it. He is requesting it, please, begging, please give. So, one should beg the holy name, one should be so eager that somehow or another they are begging, “You please give.”

And then.. when Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura sings the next verse that "Bhakti vinoda prabhur…" prabhur means the… prabhu means master and when you put an ‘r’ on the end of something in Bengali, it means the possessive, prabhur means the possession of the prabhu. What? Prabhur carane.. carana means lotus feet. That I have taken the shelter of Prabhu’s, of the Lord’s lotus feet.

bhakativinoda prabhur-caraṇe pariyā - I have falling down actually, I have fallen and grabbed the lotus feet of the Lord, You see? Sei hari-nāma mantra, that mahā-mantra,

hare kṛṣṇa hare kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa hare hare
hare rāma hare rāma rāma rāma hare hare

Loilo – lao means you take, and loilo is past tense, it means I have taken. Māgiya… Loilo māgiya - "I have begged and received, taken.. that supreme medicine, that great medicine.”

You see , I don’t know whenever I hear that I get the feeling, imagine in America the feeling of somebody that just stole a base, someone that just made it a home or something like that, just made a touchdown. I don’t know there is no equivalent you know because there is always one more after that has to be done. But this is like the final, this is the winning the marathon.. that ends all the other marathons. Your home, you have reached it. You’ve begged the Holy Name from the Lord, He has given you shelter, loilo – you have got that transcendental shelter.

So then that finishes the whole material what they call 'ganjam', the whole material uh, mess, what to speak of repeated birth and death and all the other karma, jñāna, it is simply… now you are in the eternal association of Kṛṣṇa. You see, something to really be smug about, to be very satisfied about, but not in a personal way but in appreciation that it is the mercy you see? the mercy of the Lord! It is not that we deserved it particularly you see, because there is no amount of deservedness or.. qualification one can accumulate that one can say, “Now, I have enough to deserve getting that mercy of the Lord.” But by the causeless mercy of the Lord, He can give it.

Causeless meaning that ultimately it is His kindness, because there is no amount of anything, we could accumulate, that we could say that now we have earned it.

You can become a Brahmā by hundred births of following varṇāśrama-dharma perfectly to the T, you see, without the slightest mistake if we have a hundred births, perfect varṇāśrama-dharma, you can become Brahmā, See you can earn it. Even then you need a little bit of mercy. To be able to clear a hundred births without a slip is no joke. But it is conceivable that, I mean, a person can actually earn. But this even you can be Brahmā for a hundred births you know, you can’t say that “I deserve now to get love for Godhead. I deserve to get the shelter of the Lord.”

No amount of material activities and even devotional service, by the mercy.. to get the ability to do devotional service is simply the mercy of the Lord. So, Bali Mahārāja, he has been offered.. actually, this opportunity to do service. And everyone is telling him, “Don’t do it.” Because they cannot understand the value of it. They are telling him, “Don’t do service don’t surrender, don’t give up your possessions to this brāhmaṇa.” Why? “Because He is God in disguise.” Just see the fun.

Bali Mahārāja, he has already decided, “This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. First of all, if you take Him as a brāhmaṇa, I already gave my word to Him. Then he gives to it. I am more afraid of cheating a brāhmaṇa than I am of everything else, because who knows what is going to happen if I try to cheat a brāhmaṇa. The reaction to that is so great.” You know how the story about that one.. king, who unknowingly gave away the cow twice what happened to him? Can you imagine? You have already given your word to the brāhmaṇa and you tell him, “No bug off, get out of here, I am not giving you.”

This is what Śukrācārya told him to say, “No, I just was joking. I can’t give you. I… I don’t have any land.” Some scam, you know. Some kind of a put off that, “No, I can’t give you.” Some excuse . "I am very miserly, very poor, it is very difficult for me today, come back next week", to Vāmanadeva. Bali Mahārāja wasn’t that kind of person that he is going to lie face to face with the Lord. You see. Especially because it was admitted that this is not actually an ordinary brāhmaṇa, you can tell by His effulgence, you can tell by his by His by His qualities that this person is only the Supreme Person. That Śukrācārya had done his intelligence, he knew that, the mother of the demigods somehow or another got this blessing to have Kṛṣṇa… Viṣṇu as her son. He said, "Viṣṇu is always sides with the demigods, so watch out!”, you see. Up to that point they are doing Viṣṇu worship. You see?

This is like the ordinary brāhmaṇas, they may do worship to Viṣṇu, but it is for their material upliftment, or it’s for liberation, it is never pure devotion. But Bali Mahārāja, the grandson of Prahlāda, he is a pure devotee, so now he is being offered opportunity to do some service. He is not going to give it up. It just exposed the teachers. The guru, so-called guru, that he wasn’t actually giving him the best spiritual advice. Materially he might be giving some advice. But spiritually, it was not the best advice.

So, in the same way, one has to see, one may have parents, one may have so called friends, they may advise one, “Oh you shouldn’t be a devotee because of this or that.” Even one’s mind may sometimes distract and say, “No don’t continue your devotional service, it is difficult for this or that reason.” But whether or not to listen, Bhaktisiddhānta Ṭhākura, he wrote that poem Prabhupāda repeatedly quoted to us that, “mana! tumi kisera vaiṣṇava? duṣṭa-mana! - You materialistic mind, what kind of Vaiṣṇava are you? You are telling me to leave the devotees and do some kind of separate worship? You are trying to cheat me? Why you are saying these things? What type of a devotee are you to suggest such a horrible thing as to leave the society of devotees? Mind, you my friend or my enemy?”

The Bhagavad-gītā says, “the uncontrolled mind is our worst enemy and the controlled mind is our best friend.” We have to see even our mind may become agitated and try to create some excuse, “Oh, this devotee never looks at me with the right.. look in the eye. Or this week I lost my T-shirt, someone stole it." Something you know. Something, the mind may get agitated. Little or big, whatever. Then we have to see that this is the uncontrolled mind trying to mislead me, “This is my duṣṭa-mana, not my sat-mana.”

This duṣṭa means naughty, materialistic, mischievous, trying to cheat us. We have to see that our mind does not take the counsel or does not give counsel which is going to take us out of that shelter of Lord Caitanya’s movement. Such an advice, posing as some kind of a spiritual mentor or master, which is advising us to give up the service of, give up the association of Kṛṣṇa and His devotees, we have to reject. Just like Bali Mahārāja did. “No this is not possible, this is the auṣadhi to destroy māyā, you want me to come again under māyā or to not leave māyā, no we cannot accept.”

So of course, once one makes that decision.. one should stick to it very carefully. If one achieves any kind of obstacle, then one should take that as an opportunity to rise above it. Just like.. when there is some mountain or some goal that has to be crossed, that forces a person to become more strong, to train up to become more adept Without any obstacles, then sometimes a devotee just doesn’t increase. If a devotee is ever-increasing then it doesn’t even recognize when obstacles come, doesn’t even see them as obstacles because already that devotee is building up more and more every day, that the obstacles are just passed automatically.

Once the devotee is stagnating, when the devotee is not consciously trying to increase the devotional service, not consciously trying to surrender more and more, then when on the road on the path of progress when an obstacle comes up, they say, “Oh, this is difficult to cross over.” It is not difficult if we keep pushing ourselves all along to increase our service, then these obstacles are not significant. But if when we are neglectful when we come up to them, just like when you come up to an exam and you haven’t been attending classes, you haven’t been studying, then it seems, “Oh this is very difficult. This exam is there, now I have to cram and study and pass it.”, Right? But the other students that go to class everyday and read every week, keep up with their homework and when the exam comes, they don’t even blink. Not a big deal. It’s the ones that spend all the time now in the… I don’t know where they spend the time nowadays… but waste of time, they are not prepared for those exams.

So, these tests, you see like marathons or like just in our daily lives when little things come up, and they seem bigger to us because we are not prepared. So we have to prepare ourselves by chanting and by.. consciously, not just that automatically we just sit there, we're just like some robot we are chanting and doing our… no! We should make a conscious effort.. to apply our intelligence, apply our mind, apply our senses, then we will be able to easily cross over obstacles. If we are just coasting along and go with the flow of all the devotees, and we are not really putting our mind, not trying to mentally surrender to Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa says: man-manā bhava mad-bhakto [Bg 18.65] you think of Me, become My devotee, one has to first think, mana bhava put your mind to it.

So many devotees have fallen away. “Why?”, Prabhupāda was asked. “Why they have fallen? They seem to be senior people, older people, why?” He said that, “Physically they were doing but they never surrendered in their mind. They were just showing that they are going on, but their mind was somewhere else. Their mind they never fully dedicated, that heart, soul, mind, they never put there at Kṛṣṇa’s lotus feet. Outwardly they were showing but they always kept some kind of separatist.. attitude in the mind. Even though it was not visible to anyone but the spiritual master, it was there.”

You know the story about the wedding party and crossing the river. They were rowing the whole night, and in the morning they looked Why the boat didn’t leave the shore? The anchor was there. The anchor you see is putting our mind, actually concentrating, how to become stronger and stronger in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, how to improve on our service, “Alright, just some obstacle.” How to rise above that, how to fix our mind on Kṛṣṇa, not thinking that there is any alternative. You see?

Isn’t there a story in the Bible about Ruth, or something, one lady, that was told, “You can, you can leave, and you can survive this sinful city but if you look back you will turn into a pillar of salt or something? Or, you’ll die. Don’t look back.” You see. But even after she is going, there are all sinful people there, they are all completely in māyā, you see. But then she, she was so attached, she looked back, “What’s happening?” and she turned into salt.

So, when one surrenders to Kṛṣṇa, one shouldn’t look back, “Well what if I am missing out on this sense gratification or maybe there’s a…” or any thought, if any thought like that comes, slap down your mind, “What is this, you duṣṭa-mana? What type of devotee are you? You are trying to cheat me again. You are trying to again remind me of things which I have already given up, things which I have already rejected.” But if we train the mind like that, and get the mind habituated to sitting there at the Lotus feet of guru and Kṛṣṇa, what happens is that then the mind gets its filth wiped away and then you can actually started to get a taste for devotional service and then the mind very easily stays with Kṛṣṇa.

We have to concentrate in the beginning until we get a taste, after that the concentration comes easily. Just like when we have a big feast in front it doesn’t take a lot of effort to concentrate on it. Right? The taste is there. If you are sick, if you have got some bad you know, pyorrhea or you have got some stomach or liver problem, you put a big feast you don’t have any appetite no interest. So why we don’t have an appetite sometimes for Kṛṣṇa consciousness, because we are diseased. So, we have to concentrate to get out of the diseased condition.

We can go on just mechanically, it will just take longer, thats all. The danger is that the mind may distract us. So therefore, we are supposed to concentrate, we are supposed to put our mind to it. Man-manā bhava mad-bhakto - put our mind to being a devotee of Kṛṣṇa. man-manā bhava mad-bhakto, mad-yāji - to worship Kṛṣṇa, serve Him, engaged. What is the best worship? It's hari-nāma saṅkīrtana. It is the best worship. He said that of all the sacrifices I am japa - chanting the holy names.

Of course, even greater than japa, everyone knows is saṅkīrtana -cooperatively glorifying the Lord’s holy name. Mad-yāji mām namaskuru and we do it not in some kind of, you know, false pride, but namaskuru, in a humble way. We bow down to Him, we surrender to the Lord, we offer Him our obeisances. We take the shelter that He is offering and with that we engage our mind, we be His devotee and we glorify Him and we worship Him. This creates all good fortune for everyone.

jaya śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya prabhu-nityānanda
śrī-advaita gadādhara śrīvāsādi-gaura-bhakta-vṛnda