SB 5.1.15 – Priyavrata’s Dilemma

Giriraj Swami: 

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

Reading from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Canto Five, Chapter One, “The Activities of Mahārāja Priyavrata,”

TEXT 15

īśābhisṛṣṭaṁ hy avarundhmahe ‘ṅga
duḥkhaṁ sukhaṁ vā guṇa-karma-saṅgāt
āsthāya tat tad yad ayuṅkta nāthaś
cakṣuṣmatāndhā iva nīyamānāḥ

TRANSLATION

My dear Priyavrata, according to our association with different modes of material nature, the Supreme Personality of Godhead gives us our specific bodies and the happiness and distress we achieve. One must therefore remain situated as he is and be conducted by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, exactly as a blind man is led by a person who has eyes with which to see.

PURPORT by Srila Prabhupada

By material means, one cannot avoid the happiness and distress unique to his particular body. There are 8,400,000 bodily forms, each destined to enjoy and suffer a certain amount of happiness and distress. This we cannot change, for the happiness and distress are ordained by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, in accordance with whose decision we have received our bodies. Since we cannot avoid the plan of the Supreme Godhead, we must agree to be directed by Him, just as a blind man is led by a person who has eyes. Under any circumstances, if we remain in the condition allotted to us by the Supreme Lord and follow His instructions, we will become perfect. The main purpose of life is to follow the instructions of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. It is such instructions that constitute one’s religion or occupational duty.

In Bhagavad-gītā, therefore, Lord Kṛṣṇa says, sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja: “Give up all other engagements. Simply surrender unto Me and follow Me.” (Bg. 18.66) This process of surrendering by following the instructions of the Supreme Personality of Godhead is not meant for any particular caste or creed. A brāhmaṇa can surrender, and so can a kṣatriya, vaiśya or śūdra. Everyone can adopt this process. As stated in this verse, cakṣuṣmatāndhā iva nīyamānāḥ: one should follow the Lord the way a blind man follows a person who has eyes. If we follow the Supreme Personality of Godhead by following the directions He gives in the Vedas and Bhagavad-gītā, our lives will be successful. The Lord therefore says:

man-manā bhava mad-bhakto
mad-yājī māṁ namaskuru
mām evaiṣyasi satyaṁ te
pratijāne priyo ‘si me

“Always think of Me, become My devotee, and offer respect and obeisances unto Me. Then you will certainly come back home, back to Godhead. I promise you this because you are My very dear friend.” (Bg. 18.65) This instruction is meant for everyone — brāhmaṇa, kṣatriya, vaiśya or śūdra. If anyone, from any division of life, surrenders to the Supreme Personality of Godhead and follows His instructions, his life will be successful.

The previous verse has given the analogy of bulls moving under the direction of the driver of a bullock cart. The bulls, being completely surrendered to the driver, remain wherever he wants to place them and eat whatever he wants them to eat. Similarly, being completely surrendered to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, we should not aspire for happiness, or regret distress; we must be satisfied with the position allotted to us by the Lord. We should follow the path of devotional service and not be dissatisfied with the happiness and distress He has given. People in the material modes of passion and ignorance generally cannot understand the plan of the Supreme Personality of Godhead with its 8,400,000 forms of life, but the human form affords one the special privilege to understand this plan, engage in devotional service and elevate oneself to the highest position of perfection by following the Lord’s instructions. The entire world is working under the influence of the modes of material nature, especially ignorance and passion, but if people engage in hearing and chanting about the glories of the Supreme Lord, their lives can be successful, and they can be elevated to the highest perfection. In the Bṛhan-nāradīya Purāṇa, therefore, it is said:

harer nāma harer nāma
harer nāmaiva kevalam
kalau nāsty eva nāsty eva
nāsty eva gatir anyathā

“In this Age of Kali, there is no other way, no other way, no other way for spiritual perfection than the holy name, the holy name, the holy name of the Lord.” Everyone should be given the chance to hear the holy names of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, for thus one will gradually come to understand his real position in life and be elevated to the transcendental position above the mode of goodness. Thus all impediments to his progress will be cut to pieces. In conclusion, therefore, we must be satisfied in whatever position we have been put into by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and we should try to engage ourselves in His devotional service. Then our lives will be successful.

COMMENT

So we are continuing the discussion of Priyavrata’s dilemma and the resolution of it. Priyavrata had left home to engage in austerities for the perfection of life, and Narada Muni had instructed him to remain free from the entanglement of household life and material affairs and to dedicate himself exclusively to perfection of life in Krishna consciousness. But Priyavrata’s father, Svayambhuva Manu himself wanted to retire from his duties as ruler of the universe, and he wanted Priyavrata as his son to relieve him and take charge of the management. But Priyavrata being inclined to Supreme Personality of Godhead and having been instructed by Narada Muni, was not inclined to accept the proposition of Svayambhuva Manu. So Lord Brahma, the first created being in the universe and the chief demigod responsible for the universe, personally came to resolve the matter, and he began to instruct Priyavrata.

So here we are continuing the discussion of Lord Brahma’s instructions. Here Lord Brahma continues on the point that every living being is awarded a particular body by the Supreme Lord, and with the body he receives, there are certain propensities and tendencies to work in a particular way. And therefore, according to one’s qualities, one is assigned a particular type of work. But it doesn’t matter what type of work one does, because in whatever position one gets, one can serve the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Here, Lord Brahma makes a similar point that not only are we given a particular body with senses and mind and intelligence that are fit for a certain type of work, and therefore we should not mind what the work is. But here he says that along with the body, we are also given a certain amount of happiness and distress. And therefore, we should accept whatever happiness and distress comes as the result of the body we have acquired from under the direction of the Supreme Lord. We should accept whatever comes our way as destined and use our time and energy for Krishna consciousness. Earlier in the First Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Narada makes the same point, that just as miseries comes on its own accord without making any effort, similarly happiness will also come on its own accord without making any effort. Therefore, we should not vainly try to increase our happiness or reduce our distress, but we should tolerate both as they are ordained for us, and these are karmic energy for Krishna consciousness.

Srila Prabhupada gave the example of a saying in India that even if you go to Calcutta, your destiny will accompany you. Calcutta was the biggest city, so everyone wanted to go there. Like nowadays, people in India want to come to America. So in those days, people in the town or villages wanted to go to Calcutta. They thought they would make their fortune. They will prosper in life and enjoy. So there is a saying, even if you go to Calcutta, your destiny will accompany you. And the word for destiny is the same as the word for forehead. In fact, the saying could be rendered, “Even if you go to Calcutta, your forehead will come with you.” And it is like that, no matter where you go, your forehead comes with you. But the idea is that your destiny is written on your forehead. And therefore, in India, when people are sort of lamenting their bad luck, they go like this, they hit their forehead. You feel like it is written in their forehead, “How could that have happened?” So wherever you go, your forehead will go with you. Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu told a story that he got from a person. Because he, at a certain point, had to make an important decision about his life, whether to take a certain risk in the course of his service or whether to avoid the risk for the sake of his family and their future. So somehow, he thought of the story that there was once a master who lived in Baghdad, and he sent his servant in the marketplace. And in the marketplace, he bumped into death personified. And he was horrified that death personified was standing right in front of him, looking at him with a very menacing feature. So he panicked and just ran to his master’s house and told him what happened. So he said, “I have to get out of here, death is waiting for me.” So he decided to go to Samara. And the master, he was concerned that death personified has terrified his servant. So he went to the market and there he met death personified. He said, “Why you jostle my servant? Why did you give him a menacing look and scare him?” And he said, “I didn’t give him a menacing look. I was just surprised to see him in Baghdad this morning because I have an appointment with him in Samara this afternoon.”

So Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu told the story to make the point that whatever is destined to you, you get, no matter what efforts you make to escape it. You will meet your destiny. And therefore, we shouldn’t make our decisions based on what is favorable for increasing my happiness or reducing my distress because those are already destined. But we can make good decisions based on what is favorable for Krishna consciousness. Yesterday, I quoted Srila Prabhupada’s paraphrase of a verse that even if one follows the rules and regulations of varnashrama-dharma perfectly, but if you have no Krishna consciousness, you will go to hell. The actual verse comes from the Eleventh Canto of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, "Instruction of Narada to Vasudeva.” Narada has described the four social and spiritual orders and he describes that they emanate from different parts of the body of the universal form of the Lord. The brahmans come from the head of the Lord, the kshatriyas come from the arms, the vaishyas come from the belly, the sudras come from the legs. But then he says,

ya eṣāṁ puruṣaṁ sākṣād
ātma-prabhavam īśvaram
na bhajanty avajānanti
sthānād bhraṣṭāḥ patanty adhaḥ

The meaning is that if one does not. . . well, the two words are na bhajanty, which means one does not worship and serve or avajānanti, if one derides the puruṣaṁ from who all the four social and spiritual orders come, sthānād bhraṣṭāḥ, who will fall from this position, patanty adhaḥ, and go to hell. Now, how is it possible? How is it possible? So the explanation is that we all come from God. We all come from the puruṣa, all the varnas and ashrams comes from the puruṣaṁ. And therefore, we have a natural relationship with Him and naturally duty towards Him, just like a child has towards his parents. So avajānanti, of course, if one derides the Personality of Godhead, one offends the Personality of Godhead, one will fall down. But na bhajanty, if one just doesn’t think about God or one doesn’t worship God, why should he fall down? It is like some people say, “Well, if you are a good person under this, it will be doing the same thing here for him. You see, you are a good person if you don’t hurt anyone, if you don’t lie or steal and cheat. Why do you have to worship God? Why do you have to be Krishna conscious?” So the answer is that God is your father. If you don’t know who your father is, if you don’t serve your father, if you don’t offer him respect for all that He has given to you in your very life, isn’t that wrong? It is wrong. So, our constitutional position is really eternal servants of Krishna, jīvera ‘svarūpa’ haya — kṛṣṇera ‘nitya-dāsa’.

So we don’t act in our constitutional position, in a sense, we are already fallen, but we know we are already fallen. We are trying to elevate ourselves. But we can only elevate ourselves by becoming conscious of our original father, by becoming Krishna conscious. We cannot elevate ourselves just by following the rules and regulations of varnashrama-dharma without reference to the origin of it all. And if we just officially try to follow the rules and regulations without God, without the desire to please God, we will eventually become puffed up, thinking, “I am a perfect brahman, I am perfect kshatriya.” We become puffed up. And then we will say, “We don’t need to follow the rules and regulations.” So we will fall from our position in varnashrama-dharma. Then when we fall from our position, sthānād bhraṣṭāḥ, then we become unregulated. But Srila Prabhupada said, the beginning of human life is varnashrama-dharma. Without dharma, dharmena hina paśubhiḥ samana, without dharma, we are the same as animals. So when one falls from one’s position in varnashrama-dharma without any Krishna consciousness, he becomes like an animal, unregulated. And then being unregulated, he commits sinful activities and he goes to hell. Sometimes it even happens with people we know temporarily, at least, when they leave the association of devotees and give up Krishna consciousness, they can just fall lower and lower and get implicated in more and more sinful activities, at least for some time. Because it was actually the Krishna consciousness that gave them the strength to follow the regulative principles. And without Krishna consciousness, without the association of devotees, they lost the strength to follow the regulative principles. And then they fell down. [Unintelligible 00:41:20] want some help.

But of course, Krishna is there, He doesn’t lose track of the person. [Unintelligible 00:41:35] somehow or other the person will come back to Krishna consciousness. So varnashrama-dharma in the context of Krishna consciousness, it has value. But otherwise, śrama eva hi kevalam, it is a waste of time. So the main point is Krishna consciousness. And here, Lord Brahma is telling Priyavrata that it doesn’t matter what position you are in, because whatever condition you are in, you can serve the Lord. Priyavrata thinking, he wanted to be like a meditator and didn’t want to be the ruler. So in the previous verse, Lord Brahma said that it doesn’t matter what position you are, what work you do, even if you are a brahman who is just involved in offering prayers to the Lord, and absorbed in remembrance of the Lord, or you are ruler of universe and absorbed in governance of the universe, in either case, you can serve the Lord. You can serve the Lord by this work and become perfect. So Priyavrata might have thought, Well, okay, I can serve the Lord in any position. That is all right. But what about how I feel? I might be able to serve the Lord as the grihastha and as ruler, but I will be miserable. So, as he is speaking from what had happened, Prabhupada wanted me to be temple president. So anyway. So here, Lord Brahma says, “It doesn’t matter what position you are in because your happiness and your distress are already ordained. You can’t increase your happiness by trying to place yourself in a position that you think will be favorable for your happiness. And you can’t reduce your distress by placing yourself in a position that you think will reduce your distress. Because whatever is due to you, both happiness and distress, will come. It has already been allotted to you along with the body that you have gotten. And who allotted you? The Lord Himself. So you cannot go against the arrangement of the Lord. So it is better just to accept the Lord’s arrangement and tolerate whatever happiness and distress comes to you as ordained by your past activities in the present body. And get down to real business, which is to serve the Lord, to surrender to the Lord, and follow the Lord’s instructions. And that you can do in any position. And that will bring you to a state that is beyond the material happiness and distress that are destined to you. That will establish you in your relationship with the Lord, and in your relationship with the Lord, you will relish a type of transcendental happiness that is beyond mundane happiness and distress.

And then there are nice verses that explain how even though a devotee may be suffering distress externally, but because he is pleasing the Lord, he is actually relishing pleasure internally. One verse of the Second Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam said that, just as a man will leave his home and go into the world looking for wealth, and sometimes he travels in the mountains, sometimes he travels in the jungles, sometimes he travels from the cities and along the way, he suffers so many miseries. But when he thinks of his family, that thought gives him pleasure. And when he actually returns home from his journey, all the distress he suffered along the way is completely forgotten.

So in the purport Srila Prabhupada explain that the hope for the devotee, the Lord is his family, and although externally he undergoes hardships in the course of service to the Lord, but internally when he thinks that the Lord will be pleased by my service and I will return to His abode, then internally he actually relishes transcendental pleasure. And when actually he goes back home back to Godhead, he forgets all miseries encountered along the way. And Srila Jiva Gosvami says that, that sense of affection, priti, can be experienced in a way even in the world. And he uses the same example that the man will leave his wife and children in the village and go to Calcutta. And in Calcutta, he sleeps on floor, buy few chickpeas, and survive on dried chickpeas. And the money he earns by his labor almost all of it, he will send home to his wife and children. But when he gets the report that his children are growing and with the money he is sending, his wife is able to get new clothing and give them proper food, and milk, and get proper educated, then he feels happy even though externally he in a difficult circumstance, but internally it feels happy because knowing that they are benefiting from his effort that they are pleased by this work. And of course, when he actually goes home and he is reunited with them, he forgets all of his miseries.

So, that is our position that whatever position we are placed in, we accept it, we don’t artificially try to escape the position that is ordained for us. And whatever material or external happiness and distress are allotted to us we accept and tolerate, and we really focus our energy on pleasing Krishna, serving Krishna. Once His Holiness Tamal Krishna Goswami, when we were struggling to get the Juhu land, he complained to Srila Prabhupada that he is so disturbed with all the affairs that he can’t even chant his rounds properly. And Srila Prabhupada replied, “I know because I feel the same way. I have the same problem.” And then Srila Prabhupada went on to say how much Krishna appreciates such service knowing the devotee takes all risks and undergoes all difficulties for the sake of His service, how much Krishna appreciates the service and how He rewards the devotee. So then Goswami Maharaja said, “Well, frankly speaking Srila Prabhupada, I was just try to put myself in a position where I didn’t have a lot of difficulties but from what you are saying, I should welcome a chance to be in a situation where there is a lot difficulties because if I accept those difficulties for the sake of Krishna’s services, Krishna will be more pleased, and give me more and more. And Srila Prabhupada said, “Yes. That is right.” So although the verse says we should just accept what is allotted for us but I guess if we really wanted to please Him. . . we should try to reduce our happiness and increase our miseries. [Unintelligible 00:52:50] whatever comes will come.

Hare Krishna. Are there any questions or comments?

Devotee: Yes, I have one question regarding happiness and distress that is allotted in our life will come. [Unintelligible 00:53:25] and I can relate that to the relationship I have with my own children. So my question is this, if I give them some chores when they want to play, they are not happy they have to do that. But when they argue, when they fight with me about it, I get a little more intense. And sometimes give them more to do. Okay. But if I see that they just accept it and they just try even a little bit a lot of times I reduce the so-called sentence of their chores because I am pleased by them just trying. So is it also this way in our life materially speaking I know spiritually is that we can be situated in our happiness but our external situation meaning the happiness and stress and the situations we go through but what we are accepting would reduce our distress [Unintelligible 00:53:25]

Giriraj Swami: He said that as a father, he will give his children some chores and they will resist the chores because they want to play. But if they resist the chores and becomes more intense you may actually give them more to do. But if they are very submissive and agree to do the work that he allotted them then he may even help them, give them less to do because he is pleased with their response.

Well, the same could apply to us in relation to the Lord because from the spiritual point of view, one could say that the Lord is testing us. So if He gives us a test and we pass the test then the test is over. But if He gives us the test and we fail the test in the sense that instead of accepting what the Lord has given us we fight against it, then He will keep giving us the tests until we pass them. So it is better to just surrender the first time. Actually, there is one verse that when you were asking questions, there is one verse that I would say summarizes the purport to the verse we just read. It was spoken by Lord Brahma in his prayers to Lord Krishna, and it was accepted by Lord Chaitanya in His discussion with Ramananda Raya as the proper answer to the question of how one can achieve the goal of life.

So this is from the Tenth Canto, Fourteenth Chapter, jñāne prayāsam udapāsya namanta eva, one should give up, in one lecture Srila Prabhupada translates, one should give up habit of speculation; jīvanti san-mukharitāṁ bhavadīya-vārtām, one should remain in association of devotees; sthāne sthitāḥ, one should remain in one’s position. This is the very point, you don’t have to change your position, every position in varnashrama-dharma, sthāne sthitāḥ śruti-gatāṁ, and hear the messages of Godhead from the scriptures and serve the Lord with body, mind, and word. And if you do that the Supreme Lord who is ajita, unconquerable, he becomes conquerable. I would say that encapsulates the message.

Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.

All glories to Srila Prabhupada.