20100306 Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 5.14.44

mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ
paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim
yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande
paramānanda-mādhavam
śrī caitanya īśvaram

Srimad-Bhagavatam 5.14.44

yo dustyajān kṣiti-suta-svajanārtha-dārān
prārthyāṁ śriyaṁ sura-varaiḥ sadayāvalokām
naicchan nṛpas tad-ucitaṁ mahatāṁ madhudviṭ-
sevānurakta-manasām abhavo 'pi phalguḥ

yaḥ—who; dustyajān—very difficult to give up; kṣiti—the earth; suta—children; sva-jana-artha-dārān—relatives, riches and a beautiful wife; prārthyām—desirable; śriyam—the goddess of fortune; sura-varaiḥ—by the best of the demigods; sa-daya-avalokām—whose merciful glance; na—not; aicchat—desired; nṛpaḥ—the king; tat-ucitam—this is quite befitting him; mahatām—of great personalities (mahātmās); madhu-dviṭ—of Lord Kṛṣṇa, who killed the demon Madhu; sevā-anurakta—attracted by the loving service; manasām—of those whose minds; abhavaḥ api—even the position of liberation; phalguḥ—insignificant.

TRANSLATION

Śukadeva Gosvāmī continued: My dear King, the activities of Bharata Mahārāja are wonderful. He gave up everything difficult for others to give up. He gave up his kingdom, his wife and his family. His opulence was so great that even the demigods envied it, yet he gave it up. It was quite befitting a great personality like him to be a great devotee. He could renounce everything because he was so attracted to the beauty, opulence, reputation, knowledge, strength and renunciation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa is so attractive that one can give up all desirable things for His sake. Indeed, even liberation is considered insignificant for those whose minds are attracted to the loving service of the Lord.

PURPORT

This verse confirms Kṛṣṇa's all-attractiveness. Mahārāja Bharata was so attracted to Kṛṣṇa that he gave up all his material possessions. Generally materialistic people are attracted by such possessions.

ato gṛha-kṣetra-sutāpta-vittair
janasya moho 'yam ahaṁ mameti
(SB 5.5.8)

"One becomes attracted to his body, home, property, children, relatives and wealth. In this way one increases life's illusions and thinks in terms of 'I and mine.' " The attraction for material things is certainly due to illusion. There is no value in attraction to material things, for the conditioned soul is diverted by them. One's life is successful if he is absorbed in the attraction of Kṛṣṇa's strength, beauty and pastimes as described in the Tenth Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. The Māyāvādīs are attracted to merging into the existence of the Lord, but Kṛṣṇa is more attractive than the desire to merge. The word abhavaḥ means "not to take birth again in this material world." A devotee doesn't care whether he is going to be reborn or not. He is simply satisfied with the Lord's service in any condition. That is real mukti.

īhā yasya harer dāsye
karmaṇā manasā girā
nikhilāsv apy avasthāsu
jīvan-muktaḥ sa ucyate

"One who acts to serve Kṛṣṇa with his body, mind, intelligence and words is a liberated person, even within this material world." (Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu 1.2.187) A person who always desires to serve Kṛṣṇa is interested in ways to convince people that there is a Supreme Personality of Godhead and that the Supreme Personality of Godhead is Kṛṣṇa. That is his ambition. It doesn't matter whether he is in heaven or in hell. This is called uttamaśloka-lālasa.

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Guru Maharaja:

So, this shows the greatness of Bharat Maharaja. It is said… proposed that one time Bharat Maharaja left all this desirable things. He left just like a person leaves the hot stool in the toilet. They won’t look back. They flush, it is gone. So, you don’t feel any separation, “Oh, foreign body…” it is gone.

So, like that he left everything, because he was so much attracted to Krsna. So, this is a very rare quality. And he had a lot to enjoy, he had a kingdom of the world, he had the… the… beautiful wife, he had nice, loving family, yea, he had everything.

I remember how Prabhupada, he was preaching to one guy from Kotanagar. He would come to see Prabhupada. It is a little… it is not exactly a village, it is a kind of a… it is a part of the urban sprawl that surrounds Kolkata, but it is on the other side, it is… although north of… Howrah district is either Howrah, Hoogly. So, this guy, he lived in a little one storied room, but he was around seventy years old, and Prabhupada said, “Why don’t you come and stay here with me?” So… but somehow or other he avoided, and Prabhupada said, “He is very attached to his home and family.” But he had nothing to be much attached to. But whatever he had, he was very attached. So, the devotee of the Lord is known as akinchana or niskinchana, that they are detached from everything.

One time we were arriving or taking off from the Howrah railway station, and we were with Srila Prabhupada. Maybe we were going to the Kumbha mela, I don’t remember. But he showed some like very poor people who had taken… in that time they had engines that were running on coal. So, to start the coal they had started fire wood. Now this was half-burned fire wood, that after the coal lit through the fire wood… so, some of them gathered this half-burned firewood and they are carrying on their head, and Prabhupada said, “They are not niskinchana, they may have almost nothing, they are like the poorest of the poor, that has no resale value. What if you try to take one from them? They will fight. What…, not,,, uh… and that will be a big thing you know. So, they are very attached. They have taken that, put it on their head, they are carrying it” and so he said, they are not niskinchana, they have got kinchana, they have got something, something, half-burned firewood, whatever. But that they are attached to.

So, he said, like this people in the material world, they are all attached to something, like you see there are very poor people in India. There is a few here in America, you also see some people.

When a very poor, hungry man, he came by the car, and he looked very hungry. Jai Gauranga Das, he said, “You want one or two rajabhogas.” Actually the rule is to say one. But he said, I will take two. So, he gave him two as a detached devotee. Jai Gauranga ki….

Later he found that …15.10-15.20…(inaudible)…. But so, there are few poor people, homeless people in the states also, and as soon he got, he was eating voraciously, he was very hungry. So, this people, they still, although they have almost nothing, but whatever they have, they are very attached to. So, they are not niskinchana. But here Bharata, he had the kingdom of the whole world, he had wealth, he had wife, he had all the desirable objects, but he was wanting to achieve Krsna’s lotus feet. So, that time he was advised that he was over fifty, he should take Vanaprasta, he should meditate on the Lord. So, he went to the forest, he gave everything up, this is a very rare… we are not … to follow that example, but we should be detached enough that if the situation we are in is not desirable, not convenient for our devotional service, then we should leave that. If it is all right, then, well, maybe we can say, but like this person in Kotanagar… his wife was not a devotee, so he was not thinking for Prasad, he was not doing much of deity worship, but he was aspiring to be a devotee. He came to Prabhupada and he would chant japa, but he didn’t have the strength even at the seventy years of age to live his family and live in the ashram. So, Prabhupada said, “In Mayapur we can make some flats for the retired people. The retired people, they can leave here.” He said there are two qualities, one will be those who want to lock it up and leave, they have to pay for the entire room, and they can lock up and leave but when they die, the room goes to us… confirmed. The others, they get the room, but they can’t lock it up, if like they leave, they give up the room. Then they… so, we had the two qualities. They could stay with their wives, they could take vanaprasta, but see said that there are lot of government servants and others who previously joined the Ramakrsna mission and others, but he wanted to get them to join Iskcon. We didn’t really start this year. Lot of things that Prabhupada said which we didn’t do. In different parts of the world, he gave different instructions, like here in the West he gave instructions to create self-sufficiency farms, but most of the devotees are used to urban living. So, it is difficult.

In New Talavan, they have one thousand three hundred acres. Ten acres, ten they set aside for cultivation, and they can’t find anyone to do the cultivation. It is like this. This is America. So, they do have cows, the cows graze off the land, but they cultivate… they say even when they cultivate the weed, no one eat it. If they buy from the stores, nice and clean, you could get weed from the field, it got some straw in it, you got to dust it off, wash a little it. So, we are spoilt, we pay a lot for the food in the market, we can grow it ourselves. In the future, like now America in the West is going through a recession, it is said that California is one of the worst hit. So, we don’t know, now we can pull out of it, because they …20.30… money. Well, in the future you don’t know, Prabhupada said, sometimes they may go into a recession because they don’t come out of it. At that time to have our own farms would be useful. So, maybe like in Mayapur, all the land… now we are using some for cultivation, but in the future Prabhupada wanted us to build a city. So, we thought, “well, at least we should have enough land somewhere… we need a masterplan for the city, we should have some land where we can grow our own food for the … at least for the core deities, core sevites, this idea we have, although right now that is not the thing that we got to fulfill.

Anyway, this Bharat Maharaja, who this planet is named after, this planet is known as Bharata Varsha, because he was such a great soul. So, he was so attached to Krsna, to Krsna’s beauty, Krsna’s pastimes, he simply wanted to serve Krsna. This is what the devotees want. They want to serve the Lord. They don’t want anything else. So, it says the jnanis they like liberation, to get merged into light, and the astanga yogis, hatha yogis, they like to realize the paramtmatma. And the devotees want to serve the Lord. So, Lord Caitanya, when he was offered twenty-one hours of puja by Advaita Gosai, he told one after another who they were, gave them blessings. Then he said, bring Kolavecha Sridhar. He was a simple man. He would sell bananas, I guess the equivalent in America to the free market, he will sell in the street, “banana, banana, come here, banana leaves.” Actually banana can be used, leaves or plates, the trunk is bowls, the centre is sabji, the flowers are sabji, the fruit is… of course everyone knows banana fruit. So, all the parts of the banana are useful.

In fact, the root can be planted to get more bananas. Alternate every banana tree comes two or three little trees. So, the root can be used to plant additional trees. So, this is what he would live on. He would sell the banana trees. Now he would spend fifty percent of whatever he made on puja to the Ganges. Now this is like you heard the saying, “selling coal in new castle.” The idea is, in new castle they make coal. So, selling coal there is not a very lucrative business. Coal is everywhere. So, selling bananas in Nabadwipa, it is not like… you are not going to become rich, because everybody has a couple of banana trees in their house. But that was what he was doing. If someone would need extra, then only they would buy. Otherwise, the banana, it grows like a weed. So, Lord Caitanya, as a child, when he was about eight or nine, he would go shopping for his mother. At that time, he looked at Kolavecha’s bananas, “how much?” You see, one cent was divided into eighty conch shells, little pea, they are called Koris. So, one bunch of bananas, a few like maybe say five or six, eight koris, not even a cent. So, Lord Caitanya would say, “What do you mean? I am a poor brahmana, you are taking so much from me.”

“Arree, you can check the market, I have the lowest price, best quality, dressed for less ok.

He got… buy less, … less, everything less, but still expensive, but … cheaper than your, right?

Our Gaura Nandini, she has brought…Kola would say, oh this is cheaper than yours. So, she living in Germany where the flight goes in Euros. So, here it is cheap, so he said, you check the market, I got the cheapest bananas. Lord Caitanya said, no, no, no, I will give you four koris. He took them bac, you see, what you are doing? When he took him back by force, then Lord Caitanya said, what you are doing, you think I was taking advantage without paying? What you are accusing a brahmana being a thief, what you are doing? He gave such a hard time. He said, “Look, if you pay the price, I will give you. But I am charging the lowest price in the market. Ok, I will give you six koris, he said eight, I will give you six, or four or five or… so, they took the bananas back by force, and then he left.

So, this would go on everyday bananas… centre of the banana tree. That is called the thor in Bengali, and the … the thor is called mocha. So, actually they drink the water from the core. That is the thor. They say it dissolves the kidney and bile stones. So, they recommend you take. It is kind of a chewy sabji. It has like a rubber in it so can chew. So, I don’t imagine you have here. You have banana flowers that are cores, you have? So, when you go to Mayapur, you should ask, “We want banana core, we want banana flower.” you can try it out. You see, I don’t know how to cook it, I just eat it. And one time in our farm in Ecuador there are so many bananas. So, I took a flower, I cooked it, “O it was like poison.” Because I didn’t know you have boil first, pour off the water, then you cook it with ghee and spices. So, I just cooked it, and it was very bitter, very very bitter, because I didn’t know how to do it. There is a whole process.

You will be surprised that you will have to pull out so many… you also have to pull out the what you call…30.30…. So, anyway, this flowers and stems, they are like plastic, you can’t digest them. It is a whole process. If you see banana flowers with all this sticks in it, don’t eat it, you can’t digest, you have to pull out the stems, and then cut out the flower, boil it, pour off the water, and then they cook it, it is a whole process, it is considered a delicacy. They call mocha ghanta. So, they only have it in eastern India, because they don’t have so many bananas in Western India. It is too dry. So, in South India, I don’t know if they have … they have in South India?… they might have. In Orissa and Bengal they have. So, some… Lord Caitanya would buy the flowers and the stem and the fruits for some days. So, everyday he would go, until he grew up, and then he would start this sankirtana movement. He would go and visit the house of Kolavecha. He would say, “Hey, you got treasure here, you are a rich man.”

He said, “What kind of treasure? You are keeping hidden.”

What was the treasure? He had this treasure like Bharat maharaja, he had pure devotion for Krsna, he had attraction to Krsna. That was his treasure. So, and then he said, I have to worship the Ganges. This is the order of my guru.

He said, “What do you mean? I am the worshipable object of the Ganges.”

“Vsnu, Vsnu, how can you say such a thing. That’s like Krsna is the worshipable object of the Ganges. I thought you were naughty when you were a child, but you are more naughty now, how can you say such a thing?” So, like that. He would go, drop in alone to see Kolavecha, and he would joke on him in different ways. Sometimes the neighbors would come. They would say, hey Kolavecha!

Sit down. You got holes in your dhotis. Why don’t you.

He said, Well, it lets air in, it is cooling.

You have got a hole in the roof of your house.

Well, that lets the sunlight in.

It also lets the rain in …

Listen, why don’t you just collect all your money for one year, stop this puja to Ganges, you will get a greater income, and then you will reinvest it, you will make more money, and then you can invest more money in worshipping the Ganges, you see it is a good process.

He said, “If I stop, what is the guarantee after one year I will start again? If Krsna wants me to be rich, he will make me rich. If he wants me to be poor, that is ok. But whatever I make, 50% I am going to spend on the Ganges. So, they said, “What’s this, all the night you are howling Haribol, Haribol, hare Krsna, what is wrong with you, you keep us awake at night, now you know why because of hunger pangs you can’t sleep.”

So, like this the neighbors criticized him and they went off. So, Lord Caitanya, when he was revealing to his selected to few devotees, his divinity, he called for Kolavedha Sridhara, so when he told Kolavecha, Gaura Hari wants to see you.

See me? He fainted.

Because he was such a humble devotee, he thought, why the great Nimai Pandita, the great Gaura Hari, he wants to see me? It was like too much. He fainted.

So, the servants, what to do? They picked him up and they carried him. They dropped on the feet of Lord Caitanya. He looked up. Now Lord Caitanya, he was revealing to everyone that he is actually Krsna. So, when he looked at Lord Caitanya now, he didn’t see anything about Lord Caitanya. He was like emitting effulgence from all directions. So, Kolavecha, when he looked around, he just saw Lord Caitanya and a few of his servants were worshipping him. So, he paid his obeisance’s. So, Lord Caitanya asked Kolavecha Sridhara, “I want to give you a boon.” you see that is the nature of Krsna, Vsnu. They always give blessings to their devotees. He is known as Varadha.

In fact, there is a deity in our Kanchipuram who is known as Varadaraja. He is the king of giving blessings. He gave a blessing to the secretary of Ramanuja, who had taken the cloth of Ramanuja, and let Ramanuja escape from some Shivaite king. So, the Shivaiti king told, accept Siva as the supreme, not Vsnu. He said, I cannot. Vsnu is supreme and Siva is the next to Vsnu, but he is not supreme. You are blind, you don’t see the truth. So, he told him, O blind him.

So, they poked out his eyes. They thought he was Ramanuja. Later they found out that Ramanuja had left. So, he was singing bhajans to this Varadraja, and Varadraja spoke to him, any blessing you want? I will give you.

So, he said, those who blinded me, please forgive him. They don’t know what they did.

So, the second time he gave blessing, like this again he prayed for someone else. So, then he went to see Ramanuja with great difficulty because he was blind. So, Ramanuja told him, you tell that if the deity offers you a gain and blessing, you tell that the property that the guru has is defected, he should make it work again, he should make it whole, and then that property can be more useful for the guru. So, he said, Ok, I will tell him that. So, he again he sang bhajans,

Hare Krsna..