19860814 Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 1.17.6

The following is a lecture given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami on August 14,1986 in Hyderabad, India. The class begins with a reading from the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 1st canto, chapter 17, verse 6.

Jayapatākā Svāmī: (Leads the Verse and Translation with devotees repeat) (Reads Purport)

yas tvaṁ kṛṣṇe gate dūraṁ
saha-gāṇḍīva-dhanvanā
śocyo ’sy aśocyān rahasi
praharan vadham arhasi
[SB 1.17.6]

Translation by His Divine Grace Śrīla Abhay Charan Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda:

You rogue, do you dare beat an innocent cow because Lord Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna, the carrier of the Gāṇḍīva bow, are out of sight? Since you are beating the innocent in a secluded place, you are considered a culprit and therefore deserve to be killed.

Parīkṣit Mahārāja said You rogue, do you dare beat an innocent cow because Lord Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna, the carrier of the Gāṇḍīva bow, are out of sight? Since you are beating the innocent in a secluded place, you are considered a culprit and therefore deserve to be killed.

Purport: In a civilization where God is conspicuously banished, and there is no devotee warrior like Arjuna, the associates of the Age of Kali take advantage of this lawless kingdom and arrange to kill innocent animals like the cow in secluded slaughterhouses. Such murderers of animals stand to be condemned to death by the order of a pious king like Mahārāja Parīkṣit. For a pious king, the culprit who kills an animal in a secluded place is punishable by the death penalty, exactly like a murderer who kills an innocent child in a secluded place.

Thus end the purport of verse 6, of the 1st canto, chapter 17 entitled “Punishment and Reward of Kali”.

Jayapatākā Svāmī: “Om tat sat”

When the king found red-handed Kali beating the innocent cow, he didn’t have to go through the system of courts, and the system of bureaucracy of red tape. Immediately as a king he was empowered to give justice. He found the person was beating an innocent cow, so immediately king Parīkṣit was giving him the judgement and a punishment.

Nowadays because the law is so difficult, so justice is very difficult to achieve, very expensive to achieve. If you want to get justice, you have to pay High court judges I mean, High court lawyers high fees. Or to get justice you have to spend a lot of money. Then where is the hope for an ordinary person to get justice? And even if he fights a case, it may take years and years together before he can get any kind of judgement.

So, here Parīkṣit Mahārāja, he was able to give immediate justice, when he saw that there was someone who was guilty of a grave offence. In modern society, it started off by slaughtering animals and people, they gradually became callous. They have become callous towards the slaughtered animal. But we didn’t hear, even when I was a boy, 25 -30 years ago, about terrorism, where innocent people would be murdered in cold blood, just to make some political point. [ Kṛṣṇa Balaram ki Jaya ! Nṛsiṁha Dev ki Jaya!]. That was unheard of.

But now, as people are becoming more and more callous, through the animal slaughter, they have already become callous to animal slaughter, now terrorism has become a common day affair. And it’s not unheard of that such terrorist are given also amnesty very easily, even though they have murdered dozens, or even hundreds of people. So, here we can see that Parīkṣit Mahārāja, his wisdom in protecting the cow, an innocent creature, which is simply doing welfare for society.

The cow is providing liquid religiosity in the form of milk, which can also be made from into yogurt, ghee, cheese and many other products. From milk products, man can easily become very healthy and get sufficient animal fat to supply that need. There’s no need or necessity to kill an animal to eat the flesh, when nature has provided, Kṛṣṇa has provided ample, animal nutrients in the form of milk. And the arrangement is so wonderful that the cow’s calf can drink only ¼ th of the cow’s production, the other ¾ th can be given to the human beings. In fact, if the calf is allowed to drink all of the cow’s production, sometime the calf could also suffer a great injury or could even die. So this arrangement has been made so that the human beings can get this perfect foodstuff. And as such the cow is considered to be the most valuable member of the animal kingdom, because it’s simply providing the best service to the human beings. And all it does is eat some grass yet is providing this wonderful foodstuff.

Sometimes people say that dog is man’s best friend, but all the dog does is if someone comes, the dog barks to tell you that some stranger is coming. And the dog wags his tail and licks. The cow is also quite agreeable to licking someone if you go and rub under the neck. Compared to what service the cow is doing, the dog’s service is actually insignificant. He’s barking when someone comes, but they say dog is man’s best friend.

Recently in Philippines they passed a law that nobody should eat the dog, because people in that country were habituated to eating the dogs. But they said that, when the American tourists come, European tourists come, they find it disgusting that, people are eating dogs who are man’s best friend. But they don’t think otherwise that people are eating cows who are really the best friends to mankind, because they provide all these valuable food products, and because the cow is completely good. A dog can become rabies and bite you and you have to take injections so you cannot get rabies and die. But we haven’t heard about cows getting rabies and biting people. We hear that dogs have produced syphilis in society. We don’t find that cows are spreading any kind of disease in society as such. At least nothing so horrible. So in all different aspects, whether economically, or socially, or religiously the cow is doing such a great service.

But Kali is trying to destroy religiosity in this age. So one good way of doing it is by destroying the cow, because the cow is producing milk which allows human beings to become more religious. So by encouraging cow slaughter, It 1) increases the person’s bad karma, 2) It deprives him of the taste and of the source of milk, which is the liquid religiosity. So Parīkṣit Mahārāja, when he saw that here is an innocent animal being beaten, cruelty to animal, or cruelty to human was considered to be on the same level, both punishable. Especially cruelty to a cow, Parīkṣit Mahārāja considered was good enough to kill the culprit.

Nowadays the cows are being slaughtered in a secluded place. So people can’t see what’s happening? Actually, sometimes ah little children, if they are asked what are you eating? They say meat. You know what meat comes from, they say no. Then you take them and show them a little cow and say this is a cow. This is what you are eating, the child says I don’t want to eat anymore. They are natural, many of them said no I don’t want to eat, I don’t want to eat that. The parents force them no you have to eat it. My own previous ashram nephew, he refuses to eat meat at the age of 4. Does not want to eat it, hides it under his plate, throws it on the floor, doesn’t want it. So the parents are worried, what will happen if he doesn’t eat meat? So this type of, even some of my disciples, who are very neophyte and ignorant, I heard that when they became vegetarian, they were allowing their children to eat eggs, because the doctor had said without eating some eggs, you won’t get sufficient food value. So like this the people are bewildered. They’re bewildered, what is to do and what not to do. As a result, the whole society is getting polluted. How someone can? [Silence]

So Parīkṣit Mahārāja, he took the action directly in his hands when he saw kali was beating this cow. He said, “you are culprit, you are beating a cow, trying to kill it in a secluded place, and to kill this, for killing this cow, you are going to get immediate justice. I’m going to kill you.” There’s only way to instill fear in the hearts of the miscreants is by giving swift justice.

Our temple in Māyāpur was attacked by dacoits. The dacoits were kept in the jail for 90 days, then statutory bail had to be given, because the police had not yet drawn up the charge sheet. So the dacoits were released from the prison on jail ah on bail. The very next day, the dacoit there was a dacoit attack in another village that’s in our Māyāpur union, and one grihasta was attacked - a farmer. He had a shotgun with 2 shells. So each fired upon the dacoits who were attacking his house and they ran off. But 2 dacoits were spot dead from the firing of the shotgun. Those 2 dacoits were amongst the dacoits who had been released from the jail the day before, accused in our case.

Because there’s no swift justice, they got released, and the next day they go out to commit dacoity. Its Kṛṣṇa’s justice, that they were killed for their offence for attacking the temple. But Kṛṣṇa may give justice, but you cannot expect the swift justice in the kali- yuga under the present systems, and that’s very unfortunate. There should be quick and immediate justice, then people will be afraid. The head of the dacoit gang had 18 warrants of his arrest for murder out, but they couldn’t catch him. How is it fair? He was going on 18 times, yet he wasn’t being caught. Finally, there was a fight amongst his own gang, dividing up the booty, the the stolen goods, and one of his own members shot him. So this kind of thing is going on, even we are seeing it right now in our own experience, what to speak of in the newspapers, what we’ve seen from our own experience. It’s very hard to get that, that these criminals are not afraid of the Law. If they are afraid, just after being let out, how the next day they’d even go out and attack?

So Parīkṣit Maharaj, because he was on one hand very strict, that kept the miscreants under bay, and on the other hand, he was very active in promoting spiritual upliftment for all of his citizens. He knew that unless the citizens were given spiritual upliftment, they are going to develop all type of bad qualities, and then it’ll become very difficult to govern,

and they don’t and his kingdom would become inauspicious, because of increase in sinful reactions, of sinful activities. So the head of state has to take 1/6 th of all the karma of his citizens. You can imagine, the karmas that the different heads of state of the different governments have to take in the world today. So Parīkṣit Mahārāja, he also knew that the king has 1/6 th of the punya or the pious activities. So he engaged all of his citizens in pious activity. By engaging all of the citizens in pious activity, kingdom is benefited, he is benefited, and his citizens are most benefited. So that type of God conscious head of state is actually required.

Today, most of the governments in the world are either atheistic, or secular. In the dictionary secular means without God or without religion. So they mean to say that by secular government, they are non- sectarian, they don’t favor any religion. But it that’s so negative. We don’t favor anyone, it’s negative. Rather they should do it in positive. We favor all equally. We should actually, the government should favor religion, but if they favor all religions according to their makeup of the country in a fair way. Not that anyone should get prejudice. Any bonafide religion can be favored.

But under the present system, no religion is favored. If we favor one, then others because we don’t favor any religion. We favor charity, we favor social work, we favor slaughter houses, we favor gambling, we favor tobacco, we favor everything, we don’t favor religion. This is completely backwards. This type of secularism should be changed to a positive form of secularism, where religion is favored, irreligion is unfavored.

The Parīkṣit Maharaj, he favored religion, he didn’t favor irreligion. Government is sponsoring slaughterhouse, but government won’t sponsor religion. This is the age of kali.

So Srila Prabhupad reminded us how Parīkṣit Mahārāja, by chanting the Holy name, by spreading the sankirtan, was able to keep kali at bay. So then if we educate people at large to chant “Hare Kṛṣṇa hare Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa hare hare hare rāma hare rāma rāma rāma hare hare”, then kali will be kept at bay. Again kali will be, can be contained.

Now especially that this democracy is the form of government in most of the countries of the world.

And democracy means that “people, by the people, for the people”. So the people have no one to blame but themself for electing irreligious governments with irreligious policy. We have to educate the people that they should insist that the religion should be protected by the government and supported. Then there is no need if all the religions are supported. Then there is no need for the people to want to have a Kalistan, or a Pakistan so that they can practice, they can support their own religion.

By the secular system of supporting no religion, then the minority religions, they feel that blow. We are ought to support our religion. So we will have a separate country we can support our religion. Better to support all the religions and then these types of separatist movements are not at all necessary. The system of sanātana-dharma is that all religions are to different percentages coming from the sanātana-dharma, possessed of the qualities of sanātana dharma. And all the religion should be promoted. Especially pure religion, which is pure devotional service to Lord and the glorification of Kṛṣṇa or God, that should be promoted.

Instead of wasting so much time glorifying politicians, movie stars through which, no one gains really any benefit. The public media, public forums should be used to glorify the Supreme Personality of Godhead and His devotees. And thus, people could learn higher standard of morality, higher standard of behavior. Parīkṣit Maharaj says here that you are acting this way because Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna, the carrier of the Gāṇḍīva bow, Gāṇḍīva bow are not present? In other words, when the cat’s away, the mice will play. Because Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna had left, so this Kali was taking advantage. Wherever there is no Kṛṣṇa, there is Māyā.

kṛṣṇa—sūrya-sama; māyā haya andhakāra
yāhāṅ kṛṣṇa, tāhāṅ nāhi māyāra adhikāra

Where there is Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa is like the sun. Maya is like ignorance, like darkness. Where there is Kṛṣṇa, there is no Nations. So we need to bring Kṛṣṇa in our heart, bring Kṛṣṇa in our family, bring Kṛṣṇa in our community, in our cities, in our villages, in our country, in the world. Supreme Personality of Godhead Kṛṣṇa should be in everyone’s consciousness, always. This is the way of eradicating all the suffering of the people, of installing in them real spiritual values and direct perception of the self. So Caitanya Mahāprabhu, He had begun the sankirtan movement so that everyone can chant the Holy names in public, and this is our program is to chant publicly the Hare Kṛṣṇa Mahā mantra.

Prabhupāda said in Māyāpur that one should be able to hear 24 hours a day, the Hare Kṛṣṇa Mahā mantra, should be able to hear the names of Kṛṣṇa. So here in New Naimiṣāraṇya, we have provided one loudspeaker system and tape recorder so that all the time the Holy name could be heard to purify the atmosphere. This transcendental sound vibration which purifies the entire world is what can change the environment that we live in.

There’s once, there was a devotee who had worked in a chicken slaughterhouse, and he saw one man who was slaughtering the chickens. The chickens come by on conveyor belt and as they go by, the man chops their head off, one after another. Chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, day after day, thousands and thousands of chickens’ head chopped off. One day a supervisor was angry on him, he kept saying something with behind his back, yelling at him for something he did wrong. Grins. The guy just turned around and with the chopper, chuck [Devotees laugh] chopped right into the head of the supervisor, and killed him on the spot. Because all day he is killing, if he kill animal, or if he kill human, what’s the difference? After a while he just gets in a mood to kill. So they live in hell, when they die, they go to hell.

In America, there was recently a cartoon in one of the major newspapers of a soothsayer/fortune-teller sitting with a crystal ball and a client was on the opposite side, seated on a chair. She was talking to the client, “yes, I can see your previous life. Yes, you were a very important person, you were a colonel, the Col. Sanders.” The client on the other side sitting in the chair was a chicken. And Col. Sanders is a world-famous maker of Kentucky Fried Chicken, who is responsible for slaughtering millions and billions of chickens. So, even American public, they are trying to understand this law of karma, otherwise they couldn’t make cartoon like that. That this life you slaughter chicken, next life you become a chicken, and you can taste the sweet fruit of your karma.

So it may seem that this is very harsh. Parīkṣit Maharaj, he’s immediately killing a culpritfor beating at a cow, trying to kill a cow , all this is cruel, better to let him go. But actually, by doing this Parīkṣit Mahārāja is being very merciful. By giving this type of immediate justice, immediately the person is absolved from the karma, next life he can take a fresh start. Actually, by getting a justice like that, such a shock on intellect that it instills within one, the higher valued judgement. And from suffering like that one is absolved from the karmas and is actually promoted in a next life.

So nowadays, like in Malaysia, if you get caught smuggling Heroin, then the penalty is death. So recently there was two people that were caught smuggling heroin, so the government, they gave death sentence to the court. Their different governments appealed, are all the young men, give them another chance. They didn’t listen, hanged them. So if they go into that countries, the drug dealers they are very conscious, be careful, or do not deal drugs there, because they charge a heavy penalty. Still somehow, they are doing because of the insatiable lust. But so many people are being killed spiritually by taking this drug. So if somebody the karma for that is so great. Someone takes this heavy punishment, that may seem very heavy but next life they can get a fresh start. So in this world, so many people are being spiritually killed, but no one is giving any punishment nor is there any question.

Therefore, Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu started this program of chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa Mahā mantra, spreading the message of Kṛṣṇa consciousness everywhere. To stop this rock, which is set in, the gangrene which is set into the body of the human society before

every last spiritual principle is destroyed. The Vedas say that the difference between the human being and the animal is religion. If you take the religious value, religious life from the human being, then they are no better than the animal. In the jungle if you see a rat jump on a bug and eat it, nobody thinks that that’s a bad activity, if a tiger jumps and kills a deer it’s considered natural. But when a human being kills another, because he is supposed to have higher sense of values, that’s considered sinful.

Those sense of values come from knowing the laws of nature, the laws of God. The laws of God are given in the scriptures and to follow religion is to follow the laws of God. So if you don’t have religion that means you don’t follow the laws of God, that means we are just like animals. Actually, a human being without a religion is lower than an animal, because an animal will follow natural instincts. If an animal isn’t hungry, generally it won’t kill, except for some very envious species. But an envious human being even without provocation, he can kill as we are seeing today in the terrorists.

In Rome, there was recently a terrorist attack on the yellow Jewish Airlines. It happened that that very day, 5 or 6 of our devotees had booked on that airline to fly to Israel to do a preaching program. They were waiting in the line 5 minutes before the terrorists attacked, to get their ticket. But someone from the temple called the airport and paged them to come to the phone. So three of the people went to the phone, one was waiting in the line. Two minutes before the attack came, the person waiting in the line remembered “oh ! I left something in the car”, he walked off to the back. He was just about to go upto the stairway when “daradadadadadaddaadadadaddd” the terrorists started shooting, throwing grenades, he jumped over the stairway and hid under the stairs. Right where he was standing, the machine gun firing went. All the people standing in the line were practically all wounded or shot. Within 30 seconds, he was standing in the line, he just left it. Six devotees were standing there within 5 minutes before the attack came. All this was because they are going on Yellow Jewish Airlines, not that all the people are even Jewish, but they are just going in that airline, so they are firing and shooting them all down. Kṛṣṇa says “na me bhaktaḥ praṇaśyati” My devotee doesn’t perish. Somehow by Kṛṣṇa’s mercy, the devotees were protected. But those devotees saw that how these terrorist, they are just mad shooting at everyone and anything. Because they were just the man standing next to the devotee who jumped under the stairway, his head was blown off, and the blood even spluttered on the devotee’s cloth. So close they could see that how the kali-yuga is working. Just by Kṛṣṇa’s mercy they were protected.

That’s how people say well, this is in the name of religion. This is no religion as such to do with this. This is because people are not trained in religion, they are trained in sectarianism, they are trained in body consciousness, “You are Hindu, you are Jew, you are Muslim, You are Christian”. They don’t read that, they don’t train in the schools what is the teaching of the scriptures? They just train them “You are Hindu, You are Christian, You are Muslim”. So they think that the religion of the Christian is to hate the Jew and Muslim, or the Jew is to hate the Christian and the Hindu and so on and so forth. They don’t train that actually if they read their religious book, they find that the teaching is supposed to love God, and love all of the children of God. They don’t, since it is not trained in the schools, it is hardly trained in the homes, it is hardly trained in the ah no one goes to the religious institutions much anymore. So most of the people, instead of being trained, whatever religion is, what is the actual teaching, they just have a very superficial understanding, and that is that I’m this and that I should hate and compete against everyone else. So this becomes another form of grhamedhi division.

The Bhāgavatam explains that there are two types of householders in the world - grihastas and grhamedhis. Grihastas are those who are progressively increasing their spiritual advancement, and grhamedhis are those who are having sense gratification as their goal of life, and therefore they are envious against others, who stand in the way of their sense gratification. They are envious against anyone else. So a grhamedhi first has his own family, then he extends his family through various ah extensions like if he is a black, he says all blacks will gang together, if he is a Muslim, all Muslims can or if he’s a Hindu, all Hindu, or if he is a this nationality, Americans vs Russians, Russians vs Americans, Chinese vs Indians vs Russia and so on. So in this way, you know all this type of sectarianism, extended body consciousness, the world is divided and who is ruling? Kali. Kali is ruling, divide and rule.

So our program is unite and end the rule of Kali. And that unity can come only by giving real spiritual knowledge, real spiritual injunction into the society. The simple method for injecting spirituality in this materialistic society is through this process of chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, distributing Kṛṣṇa prasādam and distributing the teachings of Kṛṣṇa - pure books like the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam and the Bhagavad Gita As it is. This is our basic program coming in the line from Parīkṣit Maharaj to end the contamination of the Kali yuga.

Thank you very much.

Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Hare Hare
Hare rama Hare rama rama rama Hare Hare