19970916 Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 7.5.4

The following is a class given by his His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Guru Maharaj on September 16th 1997 in Bangalore, India. The class begins with a reading from Śrīmad Bhāgavatam Canto7, Chapter 5, verse 4.

Jayapatākā Swami: (leads chanting of the verse) (devotees repeat)

ekadāsura-rāṭ putram
aṅkam āropya pāṇḍava
apraccha kathyatāṁ vatsa
manyate sādhu yad bhavān

is there kannada translation there should be simultaneous translation like United Nations

 Translation:

My dear King Yudhiṣṭhira, once upon a time the King of the demons, Hiraṇyakaśipu, took his son Prahlāda on his lap and very affectionately inquired: My dear son, please let me know what you think is the best of all the subjects you have studied from your teachers.

Purport by Śrīla Prabhupad: (Jaya Śrīla Prabhupad)

Hiraṇyakaśipu did not ask his young son anything that would be very difficult for him to answer; instead, he gave the boy a chance to speak plainly about whatever he thought might be best. Prahlāda Mahārāja, of course, being a perfect devotee, knew everything and could say what the best part of life is. In the Vedas it is said, yasmin vijñāte sarvam evaṁ vijñātaṁ bhavati: if one properly understands God, he can understand any subject matter very nicely. Sometimes we have to challenge big scientists and philosophers, but by the grace of Kṛṣṇa we emerge successful. It is impossible, practically speaking, for ordinary men to challenge scientists or philosophers concerning genuine knowledge, but a devotee can challenge them because the best of everything is known to a devotee by the grace of Kṛṣṇa. As confirmed in Bhagavad-goat (10.11):

teṣām evānukampārtham
aham ajñāna-jaṁ tamaḥ
nāśayāmy ātma-bhāva-stho
jñāna-dīpena bhāsvatā

Kṛṣṇa, who is situated in the core of everyone’s heart as the Supersoul, dissipates all the ignorance from the heart of a devotee. As a special favor, He enlightens the devotee with all knowledge by putting before him the torch of light. Prahlāda Mahārāja, therefore, knew the best of knowledge, and when his father inquired from him, Prahlāda gave him that knowledge. Prahlāda Mahārāja was able to solve the most difficult parts of problems because of his advanced Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Therefore he replied as follows.

Jayapatākā Swami: Hari Om tat sat.

Thus, end the Bhaktivedanta Swami Purport to the 7^th Canto 5^th chapter verse 4 of the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam in the matter of ‘’ The saintly son of Hiraṇyakaśipu’

 In the previous verse explains Prahlāda certainly heard and recited the topics of politics and economics taught by the teachers, but he understood that political philosophy involves considering someone a friend and someone else an enemy, and thus he did not like it.

 So, we can see hear Hiraṇyakaśipu he wants to hear from Prahlāda what he is learning in school common thing for a father to ask a son ‘what are you learning at school right? but he asked him what is the best thing you learning.

So Prahlāda being very sincere and honest the best thing he learnt was what he learned from Nārada muni which was about the Supreme Personality of Godhead and devotional service so that wasn’t in the normal curriculum of Hiraṇyakaśipus Gurukul his thing was political science how to defeat your enemy and economics how to make more money notice that in the modern educational system the syllabus of Hiraṇyakaśipu is basically the syllabus which we have today.

And the same things that he prohibited you know discussing spiritual science and religiosity and things like that has been more or less taken out from the education system.

Hiraṇyakaśipu will be very pleased in fact he may give a special like ..certified by Hiraṇyakaśipu (laughter)

Now the people want to get this other knowledge they have to get it from their homes from the temples from the bhakta vrndas you know and maybe somehow, we are slipping in the back door by the Kṛṣṇa test we can go out after hours teach them to prepare for the Kṛṣṇa test you are still doing that???

Somehow .. Gītā Test, Gītā camps.

Actually children should learn about God from people should learn about God from their very childhood even a child can understand these things it’s not so difficult and then if they understand the Supreme Personality of Godhead then everything becomes very it easy to figure out.

I have many students tell me that they have no time to chant no time to read Bhāgavat Gita because they are busy with their studies, we get them to take rest early and get up early and study in the morning and chant few rounds 3/4rounds before studying and read a few verses of Bhāgavat Gītā.

Then they find that they are able to actually get much better marks in their school and college and university.

So, in fact was it two years ago in Hyderabad one person stood up gave a speech were you there and one student stood up and he became the valedictorian got the number of first mark in the whole city-wide exams because that time he went to the gita camp in Hyderabad he went back took the test and was first without studying so he said because of this I am a believer of course he had studied before but somehow sometime you study at the time of the test the mind may also go blank. Right!

So Kṛṣṇa who is situated in the core of everyone’s heart as the Super soul dissipates all the ignorance from the heart of a devotees as a special favor, he enlightens the devotee with all knowledge by putting before him the torch of light so we take shelter of Kṛṣṇa then he can reveal everything to us that’s his very special mercy the darkness of ignorance how do you get rid of darkness.

It’s like sometimes it’s very dark here how do we get rid of this darkness. So all you do is turn on the light and darkens goes, darkness is the absence of light people say I can chant I got so many problems I have so much darkness I have no room for light once you turn the light on there is no more darkness problems are solved or the darkness may be in a few corners a few shadows are there.

So, they are not very significant things so we need to get people to turn on the light. we see here how Hiraṇyakaśipu puts his son on his lap he affectionately inquires my dear boy best of our family tell me what your study affectionate father right who would think that such affectionate father would do the things that Hiraṇyakaśipu later did all because of this consciousness of friend and enemy Prahlāda has become contaminated by the enemy devotees of God.

As a self-respecting asura anyone who believes in God is my enemy we will kill him to death. My dear boy have you learnt about killing those devotees.

So much affection right and that’s what we are having in the world so much affection for your particular friends so much hatred for devotees.

How can you have peace on earth right? If everybody is divided into friends and enemies that’s why there is no peace on this earth because everybody is thinking that he is my friend he is my enemy. I am against my enemy my enemy is against me.

This is the difference between devotees. A devotee even if he sees an enemy someone who wants to do harm still the devotee wants to help that person that person could also be a devotee to give up his enmity.

So, devotee doesn’t create enmities.

Dhruva Mahārāja when he got older and he was a kṣatriya king and he got into a whole fight with Yakshas he got out of control so then he was advised by his elders śikṣā gurus not to escalate the things so much it was becoming more than it was any practical use so then Dhruva stopped.

For self-defense and protection and certain things a devotee has a right to do but when it goes too far when it becomes enemy and friend consciousness then it’s not conducive for the devotees. so, in this world we have created Nationalism.

But Nationalism doesn’t it just defines ok all the people in this nation are supposed to be your friends and all the people in the next nation they are your enemies.

Prabhupāda said the neighbor nation is your enemy and the one on the other side is your friend. So, Britain by dividing and partitioning India created two enemies this is the way that politics works.

Also, in South America you have Peru and Ecuador enemies but on the other side Peru and Columbia are friends Peru and Chile are enemies they are neighbors, but Peru and Argentina are friends Argentina and Chile is enemies. Common enemy means friends right.

So now the whole world is bewildered because before it was easy we had just Russia and America ok so everybody with Russia they are enemies of those with America and vice versa it was very easy for politics.

Politics was a simple matter and now no cold war Russia has given up overtly the communism so it’s very bewildering for politicians who’s the enemy and who is the friend you know. politics is very easy when it is well defined this is your enemy and this is your friend and so it’s a whole new thing everybody has to be a friend it’s very easy for the policy against Iraq Iraq the enemy for America for india Iraq’s not and enemy so much no big problem.

So, in the world if we want a whole world that’s peaceful, they can’t follow Hiraṇyakaśipu system they have to follow Prahlāda system the only way to have a world in peace is when people realize there is one God and we respect everyone who believes in One God and who worships everybody respects everybody who is cooperative with the order of God whether they believe or not at least they should cooperate with his order that’s really a spiritual kind of secularism which is not atheistic.

Prabhupāda said the government should see that everybody follows their religion if somebody is Christian, they should follow if they are Hindu, they should follow their particular religion whatever they are then they should see that specially the preachers follow let everybody follow what religion they follow but religion should be promoted because religion is what brings out the finer qualities in people.

If people actually have God Consciousness then all things are revealed to them know what’s happening instead of God consciousness, we have our sect consciousness our religion consciousness.

I may never read a bible and I may never ever read the Vedas I may never read the Quran I may not know anything about those particular scriptures but I will identify I am a Hindu I am a Christian I am a Muslim and whatever I am others are my enemies that was the kind of things that was created during the partition in India.

But Prabhupāda said that before it wasn’t like that people in India for thousands of years even during the Mughal rule it was only few of the Mughal relies I think Aurangzeb few that were really heavy but there were some good ones who were very tolerant Akbar and even during a Muslim festival even Hindus would attend it’s a social event like we see all the politicians do in the newspaper every time it was iftar but it was general like if it was a Hindu festival Muslims might attend there wasn’t so much of an issue but then divide and rule tactics were used in India and everything became polarized .

Like in Middle East so many Hindus are there working from India. Arabs don’t have any particular enmity against Hindus it’s only the Pakistanis and Indians Muslims who will object from doing Hari Naam. How to change that?

A big Hurdle and then for politicians its easy it’s something good for them because then we have all these enemies in different blocks you can play one against the other and get some vote banks so we are not directly involved with politics we want to see a peaceful situation for the people and our these are not obstacles for us because what we want to do is train the environment where people actually learn to love each other to respect each other by loving God by loving Kṛṣṇa.

They want to call Kṛṣṇa by another name alright as long as it means Kṛṣṇa , whatever language they want to chant this was the broad vision of Śrīla Prabhupāda within Kṛṣṇa conscious movement and we should be so much focused on all of the devotees in other words it’s not that devotees friend and everybody else is an enemy.

The devotees are very close friends and relatives and others are innocent people that we want to make our friends except there may be few demons we don’t have anything against them but they are against us.

So, we have to be careful of them if we get too close to them, they may try to harm us that’s all. So especially within the devotee’s society we have to watch out for this contamination of kali.

This is kalis main thing friends and enemies right quarrel always happens by creating enmity. Husband and wife are supposed to be the closest friends work together cooperatively somehow each will quarrel create some difference of opinion make it as issue people fight with each.

Suddenly the husband thinks that my wife is my enemy and wife think husband is my enemy and there are problems mothers’ and brothers.

In the fourth canto it mentions in the purañjana forest that if somebody cheats you somebody gets cheated for a farthing it says in the Sanskrit for a kudi one of those conch shells kodi if for some kodis they get cheated then the person that cheats them becomes enemy for life you have cheated me and everybody cheats, little bit here and there and it’s very hard nature of conditioned soul is to make mistakes to be illusioned to what else to make imperfect senses and cheating propensity.

I was seeing in one of the hundis there was no lock in South Africa it was very nice glass hundi with all kinds of brass things and like kind of like a little glass coming and money goes and you can see how much is there you put in and they found that the darwan was taking a clothes hanger you know this wire clothes hangers opening up and he was fishing poking the clothes hanger in the bill so it sticks in pulling it out from the top somehow somebody in the middle of the night when he is guarding he is fishing from the hundi somehow somebody got up one night and caught him just by Kṛṣṇa arrangement.

So Prabhupāda told the story that he had a servant and he would always send the servant to do the shopping because he has no time to go but he knew basically what the things cost he knew that the servant was taking a little bit but when he took too much then he got heavy what’s going on here then you know calculating the servant you know after that he would be more careful you know Prabhupāda was saying that servant means takes little bit.

Yesterday my servant drank my bottle of water like this he has the water he kept some other water it had a funny taste twice filtered but no there was a bottle then later he wrote me a letter I thought that you didn’t want it anymore so I drank I am sorry so that tendency is there.

So, in kali yuga we have to take precaution not to make it you know not to invite that cheating propensity of anybody keep the honest people honest, but unless it’s really out of hand you know not that we want to promote cheating we try to cure the person of the disease.

Just as the famous story about one disciple who became who was a thief and he got initiated and he couldn’t sleep he couldn’t because he was so habituated to stealing.

So then what he did he would get up in the night he would take peoples clothes and put these clothes over there and this persons over there and go back to sleep just to have that rasa of stealing you know but we hope you don’t have too many different kinds of people become devotees but we want to protect Kṛṣṇa ’s things you know see that nobody takes but even when they do it, it’s not like one time because it’s bad for them if people habitually stealing from Kṛṣṇa they are not used them to staying in a temple they are just going to go to hell what is the use right even if we take something from Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa can you take that we get that material benefit but we don’t get love for Kṛṣṇa what we really want is to develop love for Kṛṣṇa so when we take it that someone who really becomes Kṛṣṇa conscious they say Kṛṣṇa s interest is my interest so they won’t take anything from Kṛṣṇa they want to use everything for Kṛṣṇa like Madhavendra Puri.

It’s a principle that we don’t taste something before it is offered to Kṛṣṇa it all belongs to Kṛṣṇa. When he saw the kheer being taken to be offered to the Gopinatha deity at Remuna and he could smell the kheer going by and thought wow something that belonged to the lord.

So, then he felt so fallen that the whole night he didn’t eat he just stayed up and was chanting but his desire was totally pure it wasn’t that he wanted to taste it or because of some lusty desire he wanted to taste it to make a offering to his deity Gopal so Gopinath then stole one pot of kheer and kept it.

This famous story everyone knows the pujari woke up had a dream in the night take a pot of kheer and give it to Madhavendra puri he is in the market place chanting. The pūjārī got up had his bath and went into the pujari room and sure enough there was one pot of cloth behind the cloth of Gopinath.

The deity of Gopinath has stolen kheer for his devotee after that he became known as kheer chor Gopinath and he went calling out for madhavendra puri and madhavendra puri was there told him what happened you are the most fortunate person in the entire world in the whole universe for you Kṛṣṇa has stolen this kheer.

So madhavendra puri is showing, how the right attitude everything he did he wanted to do it for the pleasure of the Lord.

So that’s the attitude that we want to develop even within our society as we have so many different Gurus and so many devotees are there of course may be in certain places there is a predominance of one kind because when relationships build up some place there are many gurus passing so there is many gurus disciples but the point is that like when we had the opening so many gurus came here and different disciples of different gurus from Bombay from different places they came and also how they felt very much at home here in Bangalore this is the point because you are the disciple of another Guru who is also dedicated to following Prabhupāda does that mean I shouldn’t love you?

We love all the vaiṣṇavas. One may feel a personal responsibility to help their god brother or god sister but we should also feel responsibility to help all devotees just like we want to help innocent people who have no Guru yet because you have no guru does that mean I won’t give you mercy.

So, in the Vaiṣṇava society you can have this freedom from friend enemies so may be close friend closer friends’ closest friend something like that but everyone is friend so that’s the wonderful mood that Prabhupāda is establishing established in ISKCON.

But sometimes I feel you know we are not really; we still have a long way to go to fully develop that even within the community kali is so expert, trying to create divisions you know the temple inmates with the temple congregation or the young with the old, or them.

arried and the unmarried or any other the Tamils and the Kannadis educated and uneducated something you know they always try to create any kind of division.

This is kalis sport and as devotees we have to be division wreckers and unify us keep everybody united together Prahlāda he just told all the sons of the demons let’s all chant hare Kṛṣṇa together no divisions right. everybody has their own responsibility their own role their own particular duties in their āśramas but there is a unity in diversity.

The diversity we can see that doesn’t take too much to see its pretty easy to see diversity but how to create a unity within the diversity by having the love and appreciation of all the devotees by loving Kṛṣṇa when we understand Kṛṣṇa and we love Kṛṣṇa and its easy to love the devotees isn’t it?

So as Bangalore grows, we will help in the future we will have you know.

Now we have the national games and they built the stadium and its lying empty in future we will have so many devotees to take the stadium and fill it up for chanting hare Kṛṣṇa ….( Hari Bol drums sound…from congregation ) but we want that everybody remains friends so the vrindas were the opportunities for the congregation to associate and in the temple to have we have our ishtaghosti and ways devotees can be associate naturally some will be closer to some devotees will have personal relationships with some, we can feel a solidarity and a relationship in a broader sense a loving family feeling with everyone

Thank you very much

Hare Kṛṣṇa hare Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa hare hare
hare rāma hare rāma rāma rāma hare hare

Any questions?

Just .one point comes to mind just we always see that although materialists may have all good qualities but because of their lack of devotion in the end it all becomes useless. Where a devotee even if they have same defect, may be a great defect but because of their devotion in the end everything is made alright we see Hiraṇyakaśipu such a nice loving father but in the end because of not being a devotee everything is los.

So, we want a happy world just get everyone to be devotees that’s normally very difficult but by Lord Chaitanya’s mercy we get people to chant hare Kṛṣṇa then and chant the names of pañca tattva then gradually we see their hearts change and they become devotees. Even demoniac people can become devotees

Any question about class ??? yes

Devotee: (inaudible)

Jayapatākā Swami: How can we understand that?

Answer: Well not so difficult if we are all serving the same divine interest if we are all loving the spiritual master the founder Acharya Kṛṣṇa and we are serving someone will be serving in one way someone may serve in another way someone may be working in the āśrama someone may be helping from outside but everyone is working for the same purpose so in that way so the common goal the common purpose is the unity which is accepted like knowledge through love and trusting the diversity is that different devotees are doing different things they may be living in different āśrama living in different circumstances so the diversity is external and the unity is internal.

And may be just like here there is a total cooperation on Sunday I heard every so many devotees from temple and congregation like they are all manning different book tables and preaching areas and so on so there is a unity in everyone serving together at the same time the diversity that somebody is living with their families somebody is living in the ashram somebody is a brahmacārī somebody is a Kumari

Devotee: [Not Clear – 00:3:40]

Jayapatākā Swami: there is diversity of interest if you have a common interest then you can have unity if you have a totally contradictory interests because of god consciousness everybody can unite on god but when there is no god consciousness then it’s very hard to have any unity.

The materialist tries to have unity by sense gratification but then it creates friends and enemies because by the very nature of the material world if there is a 100 people here I take one rupee from each of the 100 then we each all have a 100 rupees then I get 200 rupees 199 everybody else is 99.

So then I become twice as rich as everybody else then everybody gets envious why he has more than me so in material life this is always difficult to create because of the different interest but therefore you see in the daiva varnasrama society a Vaishya was making money but he was using that money instead of trying to centralize and having a big bureaucracy in the government which doesn’t really do much for anybody except tax everybody the Vedic system was small government charitable people socially civically responsible people with a lean government no more than 25% taxation and the only ones to be taxed would be land owners and Vaiśyas .

Employees weren’t taxed brāhmaṇas weren’t taxed and the kṣatriyas were taxing so there was no question about them taxing so the tax was limited not like sometime you know sometime some huge tax you have to pay 90 % of your income who’s going to pay created a black market in India right now they are offering you declare your undisclosed income and you will pay 30% tax live in peace.

I don’t know how far it’s working, but at least it’s coming to something more reasonable but when in a daiva varnasrama society when the kṣatriyas were spending the tax money to do works for the people for having festivals and having reserves for when there is drought or famine and feeding and the Vaiśyas they would give profusely in charity so the Kṣatriyas and Vaiśyas who were giving charity to the brahmans who were also giving charity and doing service for the whole society the śūdras the workers were so well taken care they didn’t need any charity they were working and getting everything they needed and everybody was being uplifted to go to a …( inaudible from audience ) anyway that’s a theory that happened in the time of Rāmacandra now we don’t want to identify people of being so much of this caste or that caste but rather how to socially organize the society .

The secret of varnasram is ‘samsidhim Hari toṣaṇam’ everything should be done for the pleasure of Hari then you can have a unity in the diversity.

Ultimately the unity comes by serving god even if someone wants to have material desires the material desires to but to some extent they are cooperating with overall plan of things and then in moderation then you can still have unity in diversity when somebody is hoarding when they are creating a scarcity for other to illegitimately gain that’s when the government was supposed to come in and stop that but you know by now sometimes you hear politicians you are taking illegitimate gain its very bad give me bribe then I won’t say anything that’s not the purpose of the government so people are feeling frustrated sometimes

 Devotees: Inaudible …. (laughter) this devotee he brought a friend another devotee came ……

Jayapatākā Swami: why (not audible)

Jayapatākā Swami: the same one

Audience (not audible) laughter

Jayapatākā Swami: That was the problem you were facing in that opening I had 18 or 20 gurus and Prabhupāda ’s disciples here and how to get everybody service because if we gave the half service the other half also feel we want to do something and how to give all the other visiting devotees service.

So, we created so many new kinds of service so that everybody could do conch blowing, gaṅgā sprinkling, ladies kīrtan, men’s kīrtan, everything that scripture mentioned ringing bell, brahmā Saṁhitā, oṁ namo Bhāgavate vāsudevāya so on.

So that way we could give so then carrying the kalash doing the abhishek so somehow everybody got a service more or less what I heard and that’s why everybody felt happy so we want to that’s why the management has to always see that everybody gets a chance to serve if there is too much bottle necking and not enough service then that shouldn’t be a problem to figure out how to create more services keep everybody engaged that’s why the bhakta vrndas are important because at some point it is difficult to keep everybody engaged.

So that it allows unlimited people to be engaged so you can just go on having more and more bhakta vrndas so at least some service everybody is getting in the congregation and then in the temple at a certain point you actually run out of services you know we have not reached that point but then what do you do if you have so many people the you can think of doing more things festivals that’s how is some big temples they have daily festival, in Guruvayoor they have procession three times a day some days 5 times but three times minimum.

Now we are having procession on Rādhāstami and Janmāṣṭamī and a few times only get more and more devotees you may go on increasing something for everyone to do so that’s where the management the leader need to always use their intelligence how to make Kṛṣṇa conscious a challenge and how to make it interesting.

Prabhupāda raised the same point and he said that there were so many sons of a father tried to massage the back of the father one said I don’t want to massage this part want that part no me no me (laughter audience) they start smashing the father aaaah you are killing me so I hope there is no fist fight over the fan (audience laughter) and then he had to have two fans (laughter) [Not Clear – 00:46:28] then everyone will be fanning but that’s not the only service there are other services so that’s where you so then sometimes they do in some temples they have marathon before I come for one week who wins the marathon they get to bathe the feet of the guru on the arrival day someone gets to pour some gets to take the towel so then they do that way temple leaders getting everyone to work a little extra for the preaching and cause when the guru is there any way things slow down sometimes for couple of days in some places so there is different techniques you can use I have a meeting today I have to go to other place .you are having any other ceremony here this is a good topic we can go on talking you want to discuss this more tonight.