The Glory of God: A Summary of the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana: ( 04/04/2013. )

------------------------------------------------ Monday,  October 05, 2020. 5:56. PM. Chapter 2: The Process of Creation-7. ----------------------------------------------- 1. Incidentally, we have to say how the Bhagavata came into being at all. It was written by Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa, the great sage, after he completed writing the Mahabharata and the seventeen Puranas. It is said in the beginning of the Srimad Bhagavata that after having completed the Mahabharata, the great epic into which every knowledge has been pressed into service by the wise Vyasa, he felt that something had been left out and he had not completed his work, and he was disturbed by this ‘something’ which he could not properly comprehend. 2. At that time Narada came and asked, “What is the problem? Why are you looking despondent?” Vyasa replied, “I have written everything conceivable on dharma, artha and kama in the Mahabharata, yet I feel that something has been left out. I have to complete my mission, but I...

------------------------------------------------ Sunday, September 13, 2020. Chapter 2: The Process of Creation-6. ----------------------------------------------- 1 We are to give justice to everybody, but that is not possible because of the insistence of the personality of each individual. A snake cares only for itself, and it can strike anyone who comes near it. It does not think that all are equal. It is not possible for even a human being to think that all are equal, because the insistence of the body and the survival instinct of the particular personality—the shape into which one is born—is so strong. But justice is meted out by the judiciary of the cosmos, and that judiciary has an eye everywhere and knows all things that are taking place. A snake is respected in the same way that a saint is respected; there is no difference. 2. But for us it is horrible to hear all these things. Is God as affectionate towards a snake as He is towards a saint or sage? The point is, t...

------------------------------------------------ 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 ...

Tuesday, June 30, 2020.8:23. PM. Chapter 2: The Process of Creation-4. This creation lasts as long as the life of Brahma continues. When the hundred years of Brahma are over, there is cosmic dissolution. All the world will become liquid, as it were; there will be cosmic waters. But the question will arise, what happens to the individuals, people like us, when everything in creation is dissolved during dissolution? Do we attain liberation? No, we do not attain liberation even if the whole world is dissolved, because liberation is freedom from desires of every kind. A mere physical dissolution of things does not mean the dissolution of mental desires. Just as sleep is not the end of the day and is only a commencement of the next day, in a similar manner, this cosmic sleep at the time of dissolution is a universal cessation of all activity but not a liberation of the forces of individualities. They will all be dissolved into a seed form of subtle potentiality when the universe dissolves a...

=========================================================== Swami Sivananda Asramam. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Friday, May 22, 2020. Chapter 2: The Process of Creation-3. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Here is a little departure in the story of the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana. There is the vast ocean, the vast Earth, the entire physical universe before us—sun, moon, stars, all things. God created vegetation first. The plant kingdom manifested itself in the process of evolution. In this context, a question arises: Did God create all things at one stoke with a fiat of His will, or did He allow things to grow gradually from lower to higher species in a systematic manner? Both seem to be a valid answer in this connection. It is something like what goes on in the dream world. Do we suddenly dream mountains, rivers and things in our perception of dre...

================================================ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 25/04/2020. Chapter 2: The Process of Creation-2 ------------------------------------------------------ 1. But having said all these things, Suka concludes by giving his final opinion: akāmaḥ sarva-kāmo vā mokṣa-kāma udāra-dhīḥ, tīvreṇa bhakti-yogena yajeta puruṣaṁ param (S.B. 2.3.10). Infinite desires can be fulfilled by infinite adorations of different varieties, summoning the angels in heaven in different ways, which are the upasanas as mentioned; but if you want nothing or want all things at the same time, then your heart should be devoted to the Supreme Narayana who is the mokshadata—the giver of liberation. ----------------------------------------------------------- 2. The condition to attain Narayana is that we want nothing or we want everything at the same time, because wanting everything is equal to wanting nothing. The trouble is ...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 02/03/2020. Chapter 2: The Process of Creation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ #The Srimad Bhagavata Mahapuranam consists of twelve books.   In the earlier sections—the first nine books—we have a cosmology of the whole of creation, and practically the history of mankind as conceived from the point of view of a religious interpretation of the process of creation. ##Suka Maharishi placed before Raja Parikshit a picture of the Cosmic Being, through whose Being, through whose Person run all the levels of existence—seven realms above and seven realms below, from Patala to Brahmaloka. ###Having described this wondrous structure of creation through every level which one has to pass in the proces...