A Summary of the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapuranam : 4.7 - Swami Krishnananda.

=========================================================================

Sunday, February 05,  2023. 06:00. 

Chapter-4. The Stories of Siva and Sati, and Rishabhadeva and Bharata -7.

=========================================================================

When the king heard these words he was surprised, and understood that this was not an ordinary person. He came down from the palanquin, prostrated himself, and said, “O great sadhu! Bless me. I did not know who you are. If I have committed any mistake, please pardon me. Instruct me. Tell me who you are, masquerading as a human being. Perhaps you are some divinity, a god. I do not know who you are. Please tell me. I have made a mistake. Pardon me, again and again, O sadhu! Tell me who you are.”

Then the great discourse of Bharata is narrated in the beautiful language of the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana. The whole world is compared to a forest, where animals like human beings are moving in search of their grub. This is a wild jungle. This entire world is compared to a forest where we can find anything anywhere, and also nothing anywhere. Ignorant, animal-like individuals lose their sense of propriety and do not want to know what the purpose of their existence actually is. They move in this forest like prowling tigers, like predators. This is to be properly understood. Do we think that the world is a pleasure garden? It is no such thing. It is full of thorns, a jungle which is to be feared. It is better that we get free of this jungle as early as possible.

Then the Skandha continues with the description of the whole process of creation—how the body of individuals is formed. The whole creation process is, in some ways, similar to the one we studied in the Second and Third Skandhas of the Srimad Bhagavata. The great wisdom of the structure of the universe and the power of the Supreme Being are described in this discourse called the Rahugana-Bharata Samvada in the Fifth Skandha of the Srimad Bhagavata.

There is also a beautiful story, called Puranjana Upakhyana. Puranjana was a king who was attached to the glamours of sense. He was caught up in the lure of maya and everything was beautiful for him, until it was time for him to depart from this world. I am not going into the details of this story now.

Puranjana represents the caught-up individual who is deluded by the Disneyland, as it were, of this world, where we do not know what we are seeing. Everything is shining everywhere. We do not know what we are actually seeing. One thing is here, and the same thing is also somewhere else—like a magic show. There are certain shows where mirrors are positioned in such a way that everything is reflected everywhere. One thing is here, and the same thing is there. Wherever we look, we see only that. And we may hit our head against the mirror, thinking it is a passage.

This world is also like that, where we hit our head against something under the impression that it is another thing altogether. We hug a snake, thinking it is a rose; we drink poison, thinking it is nectar; and we live in this body, thinking it is beautiful—whereas it is the ugliest thing that has been created by the admixture of the five elements. If the skin is removed, we will see the beauty of this body. Everyone will run away from a person who has no skin, and crows will eat the flesh. So, there is a point in saying that beauty is skin deep. Where is the beauty of a person who has no skin? Therefore, beauty is in the skin only. Is it not so? All is chaos.

Such kind of confusion and ignorance pervades the whole world of creation, right from Brahma onwards. Wherever we go, we will find bondage. We will be caught either by this policeman or that policeman. We have no freedom anywhere. This is the kind of world we live in. Either we will be caught by dazzling things or we will be caught by dreadful things—but either way, we will be caught. It does not matter who catches us.

“Such is the world. Beware of it,” said Bharata to King Rahugana. “It is a jungle, not a palace or an empire that you are ruling. You are a fool if you think that you are ruling an empire. You will perish one day, and everything will be lost. Nobody is going to continue to live for a long time in this world. Everything is passing, everything is passing, everything is passing. All is going to perish. Nothing will stay alive for a moment. This is the world in which you are reigning supreme as an emperor. Rahugana, understand what I am saying to you.”

Rahugana was enlightened. He again prostrated himself before this mighty master. And Bharata engaged himself in meditation on the Supreme Person, Purushottama, who is the saviour of all, who is the Moksha-data. Disregarding His presence, we move after the sense objects. We see the ensnaring, entangling presentations before our senses, and we get caught in them and have no time to think of the Mahapurusha, the Purushottama. It is His presence which gives light to all these presentations in this world. Minus Him, the world will not exist. He is the Satchidananda Svarupa behind the nama and rupa prapancha, and all this world. We pursue the shadows, which cannot be cast unless there is a screen behind them. We forget the screen, and we pursue the shadows. That is why we are going to attain nothing worthwhile in this world by the pursuit of external objects. All externality is a shadow cast by Universality. Universality is the True Being which is Satchidananda. When it is cast into the mould of the space-time process, it looks like objects of sense. They are only appearances. The objects do not really exist, just as the various figures that we see in a magic show do not really exist. It is a magical performance. Mahamaya is pervading everywhere, and the magician is Ishvara Himself, wielding His magic wand in His great art of creating worlds and worlds. We should not get caught. Like Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanatana and Sanatkumara, we should be cautious of the existence of the great Purushottama everywhere. He is the Master of all creation, and knowing Him is our true salvation.

If you can roll up the whole space like a sheet of leather, then you can have peace of mind without knowledge of God.

The Purusha Sukta concludes by saying there is no way of crossing over this sea of samsara except by knowing Him who is the Purushottama. One crosses the domain of death by knowing Him. Knowing Him is being Him. They are not two different things. The knowledge of God is also the being of God, and therefore, when we know God, we be God, as it were.

Such is the glorious story that we have here in the Rahugana-Bharata Samvada in the Fifth Skandha, and there are incidental stories of this type in the Sixth and the Seventh Skandhas also.

*****
Next
Chapter - 5: Narada Instructs Yudhisthira on Ashrama Dharma
To be continued

=====================================================================

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Glory of God : A Summary of the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapuranam : 2.5 - Swami Krishnananda.

Image
------------------------------------------------ Thursday, August 20, 2020. 8:52. PM. Chapter 2: The Process of Creation-5. ----------------------------------------------- 1. There are supposedly eighty-four lakhs (8,400,000) of species through which every soul has to pass; and we may say, as human beings, we have passed through these and become human beings, which is a great achievement. Manushyatvam durlabham is the adage of the ancient masters: It is difficult to be born as a human being because we have to cross these stages of all the lower species in order to be endowed with the prerogative of being born a human. If we read the Jataka stories of Buddha’s previous lives, we will find this interesting account of what Buddha was in his earlier times. He was everything every kind of animal, a cannibal, a thief, a lecherous man. Buddha was everything at one time or the other, and there was nothing that he was not. He passed through all these stages of human nature until
Read more

The Glory of God : A Summary of the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapuranam : 5. Swami Krishnananda

Image
======================================================================== Ananta Padmanabhaswamy Temple : Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.  ======================================================================== 08/08/2019 Discourse 1: King Parikshit’s Question to Suka Maharishi -5. ========================================================================= So, the origin of action – everybody’s action, up to the action of the atom – is impelled by this great Action of the Purusha – bhutabhavodbhavakaro visargaḥ karmasamjnitah. Really speaking, there are not many actions taking place in the world in terms of various individualities. One Action is taking place, as the rumbling of thousands of waves in the ocean is actually the one action of the ocean itself. Many actions are not taking place in the ocean; it is one impulse of the root and the heart of the bowels of the ocean that rises up as the waves. One action is taking place in the ocean; One Action is taking place in this
Read more

A Summary of the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapuranam : 4.4 - Swami Krishnananda.

Image
 ====================================================================== ======================================================================= Thursday, August  18, 2022. 21:00.  The Glory of God :  Chapter-4. The Stories of Siva and Sati, and Rishabhadeva and Bharata -4. ========================================================================= “When I was engaged in battle with Drona and Karna, I saw some vague being moving about, not touching the ground. It was sometimes visible, sometimes not visible. It had ashes on its body, a serpent around its neck, and a trident in its hand. I could not make out what it was. It was an illusion before me. At the time I could not speak about this because I was engaged in war, but I remember this incident now and want to ask you what it was that I was seeing there,” said Arjuna Sri Krishna said, “You are a blessed man to have that vision. It was Bhagavan Sankara himself, invisibly moving in the battlefield to help you. Otherwise, even with all yo
Read more