SB 3.3.20

Giriraj Swami: 

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

Reading from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Canto Three, Chapter Three, “The Lord’s Pastime out of Vṛndāvana,” 

TEXT 20

snigdha-smitāvalokena
vācā pīyūṣa-kalpayā
caritreṇānavadyena
śrī-niketena cātmanā

TRANSLATION

He was there in His transcendental body, the residence of the goddess of fortune, with His usual gentle and sweetly smiling face, His nectarean words and His flawless character.

PURPORT by Srila Prabhupada

In the previous verse it is described that Lord Kṛṣṇa, being situated in the truths of Sāṅkhya philosophy, is detached from all kinds of matter. In the present verse it is described that He is the residence of the goddess of fortune. These two things are not at all contradictory. Lord Kṛṣṇa is detached from the variegatedness of the inferior nature, but He is in eternal, blissful enjoyment of the spiritual nature, or His internal potency. One who has a poor fund of knowledge cannot understand this distinction between the external and internal potencies. In Bhagavad-gītā, the internal potency is described as the parā prakṛti. In the Viṣṇu Purāṇa also, the internal potency of Viṣṇu is described as parā śakti. The Lord is never detached from the association of parā śakti. This parā śakti and her manifestations are described in the Brahma-saṁhitā (5.37) as ānanda-cinmaya-rasa-pratibhāvitābhiḥ. The Lord is eternally joyful and cognizant in the taste derived from such transcendental bliss. Negation of the variegatedness of the inferior energy does not necessitate negation of the positive transcendental bliss of the spiritual world. Therefore the Lord’s gentleness, His smile, His character and everything related to Him are all transcendental. Such manifestations of the internal potency are the reality, of which the material shadow is only a temporary representation from which everyone with proper knowledge must be detached.

COMMENT

So, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam describes the actual result of devotional service.

vāsudeve bhagavati
bhakti-yogaḥ prayojitaḥ
janayaty āśu vairāgyaṁ
jñānaṁ ca yad ahaitukam

When one engages in the service of the Lord, causeless knowledge and detachment will automatically follow, and in the previous verse, Lord Krishna was described in the same way as being full of knowledge and detachment. Vairāgya comes from two words: raga means attachment, and vai means without. The whole process of devotional service is meant to detach us from matter or from the desire to enjoy matter. One cannot actually be considered a devotee unless he develops knowledge and detachment because knowledge and detachment are the natural results of devotional service, and Lord Krishna exhibited fully both knowledge and detachment.

Now, someone may think that Lord Krishna had sixteen thousand wives, sixteen thousand palaces, and thousands and millions of sons and relatives and friends. How can we say that he is detached? When the Vedic literatures speak about detachment, they speak of detachment from the material world or the desire to exploit the material nature. But besides the material nature, there is another nature which is the spiritual energy, and in fact, the process of devotional service is meant to detach us from the material energy and attach us to the spiritual energy. The impersonal philosophers have full understanding of the material energy, and by trying to enjoy matter, one becomes more and more entangled in sinful activities and sinful reactions, and thus one has to suffer in the material world life after life after life. There is no way one can become free from material sufferings unless he becomes detached from material enjoyment, so-called. As long as one remains attached to the material world, one has to suffer, and one has no choice, and the main attachment in the material world is sex. The Vedic literatures say, maithuna-āgara, that attachment to sex is the shackles or the chains that tie us to the material world, and as long as we are bound to the material world, we have to suffer in so many different ways which cannot even be counted.

So, the specific purpose of human life is to become liberated from the material miseries, which means to become detached from the material nature. So, the impersonalists understand very well how the living entity becomes entangled in the material world and how he has to suffer consequently, and they see that when the living entity tries to enjoy the material varieties, he becomes trapped and is punished. So, to become free from the punishment of material reactions, they want to become free from the attachment to material varieties, but they do not know about spiritual varieties. So, they want to negate all sorts of variety and simply merge into oneness or nothingness. But here we find that Lord Krishna, although perfectly detached and full of knowledge, has so many queens, so many palaces, so many children, and so on, yet he is full of knowledge and detachment because his queens, his palaces, his family members are not material; they are spiritual, and they are all expansions of the superior energy. So, we are actually meant to detach ourselves from material variegatedness in order to become attached to spiritual varieties. As Srila Prabhupada often said, the servant of the king enjoys practically on the same level as the king. The servant lives in the same palace as the king, the servant enjoys the same opulences as the king, he has all of the facilities of the king, the only difference is that he is in the mood of servant, but the facilities are the same, and the enjoyment is the same.

So, we can actually enter into the kingdom of God, into the pastimes of God, and enjoy full spiritual bliss, provided we transfer ourselves from the control of the material energy or maya to the control of the spiritual energy. The material energy is personified as Durga. Durga is the warden who keeps us bound in the prison of material existence. Not only does she keep us in the prison, but she punishes us, and therefore she holds a trident, three prongs, and with the trident, she pierces the materialistic persons with the threefold miseries: miseries caused by other living entities, miseries caused by acts of nature, and miseries caused by our own minds and bodies. So, she always punishes the conditioned souls: “That you don’t want to surrender to Krishna or to Krishna’s devotees? I shall punish you. You shall have to suffer the most.” The conditioned souls are always being pierced by the threefold miseries of material existence.

On the other side, the spiritual energy is personified as Srimati Radharani. So, we want to transfer ourselves from the superintendence of Durga Devi to the superintendence of Srimati Radharani, and one who does so is a great soul, mahātmānas tu māṁ pārtha daivīṁ prakṛtim āśritāḥ. The great souls take shelter of the divine energy or the superior energy, and they are always engaged in chanting and hearing the glories of the Lord. In fact, such chanting and hearing keeps them in the spiritual energy. Such chanting and hearing cleanses the heart of the desire to enjoy Krishna. śṛṇvatāṁ sva-kathāḥ kṛṣṇaḥ puṇya-śravaṇa-kīrtanaḥ, that by that just chanting and hearing the glories of the Lord is itself pious activity, and the Lord, who is within the heart as the best friend of the living entity, helps the living entity by cleansing the desire for material enjoyment from within the heart when He sees that the living entity is eager to hear about Him.

But unfortunately, we are not eager to hear about the Lord. We are more eager to hear about so many other subjects, which generally come in the category of grāmya-kathā, which means useless talks about the affairs of men, women, and other related affairs. Just like when devotees meet their parents or their relatives, generally the relatives are very eager to indulge in grāmya-kathā. They want to discuss all the news about the friends and relatives, about the engagements, the marriages, the children, the divorces, the scandals, the successes, and all sorts of garbage. So, Lord Chaitanya has especially advised that we should be aloof from such talks, grāmya-kathā. And we should engage only in Krishna-kathā, and Rupa Gosvami has also given the same advice. He has mentioned six items that destroy devotional service, atyāhāraḥ prayāsaś ca, which involves avoiding over-endeavoring for material things, which are difficult to achieve. Niyamāgraha refers to breaking the rules and regulations, not following the rules and regulations, or being fanatical about the rules and regulations without understanding the purpose. Prajalpa means idle talk, useless talk, nonsensical talk about ordinary material things.

We have to change the subject matter of chanting and hearing from ordinary material subjects to sublime transcendental topics like the topics of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Lord Krishna has appeared specifically to create subjects for transcendental discussion, and Srila Vyasadeva has compiled the Vedic literatures so that we have enough topics to discuss in relation to the absolute truth. We should always remember that the goal of human life is liberation from material existence and attainment of the service of the Lord. We should engage our propensity to speak and hear in the topics of the Lord and not in any other topics. When we hear about the opulences of the Lord or the pastimes of the Lord, the hearing of such topics acts to cleanse the heart of the desire for material enjoyment and to attract the conditioned soul to the transcendental realm. First, it convinces him about the transcendental realm and then attracts him because most conditioned souls, poor fellows, don’t think that the descriptions of the Lord’s pastimes or the Lord’s abode are real. They think that this material world is real, that the material body is real, that money is real, that cars are real, that houses are real. They think that these are the real things that we should strive for, and they think that the pastimes of the Lord are not real. Theoretically, they may accept they’re real, but practically, they give more importance to the flesh and blood of the material body rather than to the transcendental pastimes of Lord Krishna.

However, by continuous chanting and hearing, the heart becomes cleansed of all misconceptions, and we realize that the spiritual world and the spiritual energy are real, and that the material world is temporary and illusory. We divert our. . .

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