SB 7.8.52

Giriraj Swami:

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

Today we read from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Canto Seven, Chapter Eight: “The Lord Slays the King of the Demons,” Text Fifty-two. Please repeat

śrī-yakṣā ūcuḥ

vayam anucara-mukhyāḥ karmabhis te mano-jñais

ta iha diti-sutena prāpitā vāhakatvam

sa tu jana-paritāpaṁ tat-kṛtaṁ jānatā te

narahara upanītaḥ pañcatāṁ pañca-viṁśa

TRANSLATION

The inhabitants of Yakṣaloka prayed: O controller of the twenty-four elements, we are considered the best servants of Your Lordship because of rendering services pleasing to You, yet we engaged as palanquin carriers by the order of Hiraṇyakaśipu, the son of Diti. O Lord in the form of Nṛsiṁhadeva, You know how this demon gave trouble to everyone, but now You have killed him, and his body is mixing with the five material elements.

PURPORT by Srila Prabhupada

The Supreme Lord is the controller of the ten senses, the five material elements, the five sense objects, the mind, the intelligence, the false ego and the soul. Therefore He is addressed as pañca-viṁśa, the twenty-fifth element. The inhabitants of the Yakṣa planet are supposed to be the best of all servants, but Hiraṇyakaśipu engaged them as palanquin carriers. The entire universe was in trouble because of Hiraṇyakaśipu, but now that Hiraṇyakaśipu’s body was mixing with the five material elements — earth, water, fire, air and sky — everyone felt relief. Upon Hiraṇyakaśipu’s death, the Yakṣas were reinstated in their original service to the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Thus they felt obliged to the Lord and offered their prayers.

COMMENT

So we are reading the story of the demon Hiranyakasipu and ultimately how he was killed by Nṛsiṁhadeva. Hiranyakasipu performed great austerities, by his austerities, he was granted certain boons that make him believe that he was immortal, that was what he wanted to become immortal. And with his powers and with the boons, he conquered the universe, and subjugated the citizens of the higher planets, the demigods, and engaged them in his service. But Hiranyakasipu had a son named Prahlada, who was instructed in the womb by Narada Muni, during the fighting between Hiranyakasipu and the demons, and Indra and the demigods. At one stage the demigods got the upper hand and they took possession of Hiranyakasipu’s wife, and she was pregnant. The demigods thought that she must be carrying or that she is carrying the seed of Hiranyakasipu in her womb, and that the child will be a great demon, like Hiranyakasipu. But Narada appeared on the scene and told them that, “No, the child will be a great devotee. Don’t kill him.”

And out of respect for the order of the sage, the demigods desisted and Narada took the pregnant mother with him, to his ashram and gave her protection there. And while there, he instructed the mother, but the son in the womb was hearing the instruction. He instructed the mother in spiritual knowledge, in bhakti-yoga, and the result was that Prahlada became a great devotee. But in any case as far as the fighting is concerned ultimately Hiranyakasipu was victorious and he took back his wife, and eventually he discovered that Prahlada was a great devotee of Vishnu. And Hiranyakasipu was the evolved enemy of Vishnu, because Vishnu had killed his younger brother Hiraṇyakṣa. So Hiranyakasipu vowed to avenge the death of his brother, and kill Vishnu. Of course Vishnu is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. No one can kill him, but Hiranyakasipu being in the mood of a demon, thought that the Lord was an ordinary mortal, just one who had more powers, because like Hiranyakasipu himself he had tremendous powers by his austerities. So by austerities and penances one can develop powers. By the practice of yoga, one can develop powers. But if one’s heart is impure, one will use one’s strength and power for the wrong purposes.

So Hiranyakasipu thought that Vishnu was a man like him, who had some mystic powers as he did. And he also thought that Vishnu had a psychological propensity, or weakness to love flatterers. Because Vishnu is always surrounded by demigods, or kings, or sages, fulfilling his glories. So he thought that Vishnu was partial to people who flattered him, which would have been the case of Hiranyakasipu. ātmavan manyate jagat, as he thought, he thought that others thought the same way, as he liked to be flatters, he thought that Vishnu also liked to be flattered. And as he was absorbed in the conception of friends and enemies, he felt that Vishnu was also absorbed in such conceptions. And he considered his flatterers, to be his friends and people like Hiranyakasipu and demons to be his enemies.

So when Hiranyakasipu discovered that Prahlada was a devotee of Vishnu, he became furious. First he tried to reform him. And of course he was his son, he had natural affection for his son. So he tried to reform him and bring him back to what he considered to be the proper consciousness of being a materialist, who is anyone’s sense gratification, and who was against Vishnu. But all of his attempts failed. He compared Prahlada to the tail of the dog. If the dog has a curved tail, if it comes up you try to smooth it down but it keeps coming up again. So no matter what he did, he tried to straighten out Prahlada, he kept coming back up, as the devotee of Vishnu. And then he decided to kill him. He felt that if he did not kill him, then this disease of Vishnu bhakti will spread. Although he was his own son, but he was diseased, so just like part of your own body might be diseased, but if you can’t cure the disease, the disease might spread, so you have to amputate. So he concluded he had to kill Prahlada. And when he started to torture Prahlada, and tried to kill him, that was when Nṛsiṁhadeva appeared. That was the one thing that the Lord cannot tolerate, His devotees being tortured and He appeared from the pillar, at the threshold of the palace, and killed Hiranyakasipu. 

So here we have Nṛsiṁhadeva, sitting on the throne of Hiranyakasipu, in a ferocious mood, in a furious mood. And everyone in the universe was afraid of the Lord’s anger. And imagine they had been subjugated by Hiranyakasipu, and here Nṛsiṁhadeva came to kill him, but he was so ferocious, and furious and nothing seemed to be able to pacify him. So anyway the demigods, in an effort to please the Lord and pacify Him, came forward and offered various prayers. And the verse we just read is the prayer by the residents of Yaksaloka. There is life on other planets, as Srila Prabhupada said, God did not just throw [Unintelligible 00:21:22] in the space for no purpose. He created the different planets as places of residence for different grades of beings. Everything within the material universe has some purpose, and the general purpose is to give the fallen souls the chance to become reformed, or become devotees of Vishnu or Krishna, and return home, go back home, back to Godhead. Because different living entities have different mentalities and propensities, so they are place in environments that are suitable for their mentality and activities, and that are appropriate in terms of what the living entity deserve in terms of their karma. They get just the amount of enjoyment and suffering, and pain and pleasure that they deserve. So the inhabitants of the higher planets in particular are devotees, but they are not pure devotees, and that is why they are still in the material world. They have material desires, but they are devotees. They accept the supremacy of the Lord and they engage in service of the Lord. 

So here the residents of Yaksaloka come forward and they addressed the Lord as the Twenty-fifth element, the controller of the other twenty-four. The scientists are both analyzing the material nature, and discovering elements and making those developments, but the most important element is the individual soul, that is the twenty-fourth, and the supreme soul, the twenty-fifth. They always miss them. As Srila Prabhupada said, they look in their microscopes, magnifying more and more, seeing things that are smaller and smaller, but they will not see that Vishnu is there, although he is, but they will not see him. So they miss the point, and that of course is the problem with the present civilization, they missed the point. All they know is matter, they don’t know about spirit soul, and the relationship between the soul and super soul, and the relationship between them. And this gross body is made of the five gross elements—earth, water, fire, air, and sky. And when the body dies, the body is always dead but when the soul leaves the body, then the body which is made of these five material elements, mixed with the same five elements. The conservation of matter, the earth in the body mixes with the earth outside the body, and so on. The water in the body mixes with the water outside the body, and so on. 

And so Hiranyakasipu, took the best of the servants of Lord Vishnu, and engaged them in his service. And although these devotees were so qualified in pleasing the Lord, he engaged them to carry his power. So this is demoniac. The constitutional position of the living entity, is that he becomes the servant of Krishna, [Unintelligible 00:26:36], so that if one can engage others in our service, it is demoniac. And that is pretty much what everyone in the material world tries to do. They are always thinking what they can get out of other people. They want to exploit others and engage them in their service, instead of Krishna’s service.

So Hiranyakasipu was like that. There was a demoniac political party in Madras. That is another subject, democracy, but that is demon crazy. Prabhupada has called democracy demon crazy. Somehow or others, these demons get vote, and they capture the highest votes, and they plunder. Their only business is to plunder. This is mentioned in the Twelfth Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam- Unintelligible 00:28:07]in the age of Kali. He said there are no pickpockets. Pickpocket means someone very cleverly puts his hand in your pocket, and takes the money out, and you don’t know it. But the specific word in Sanskrit is plunder. Plunder means he come by force and grabs you by the throat and takes your money. So what they do is they pass laws, depend on the culture in the county, but they pass laws that allow them to take the money. You know that they are taking your money but there is nothing you can do about it, and then they divide it among themselves.

So this party in Madras, they were openly demoniac, and they made the rule, because in India especially then, that was when I first went to India quite a few years ago, people would always have pictures of Krishna, Rama, Vishnu, demigods, everywhere; in their cars, in their offices, in their shops, in their homes. And that was common, even in the post offices, banks, wherever you went. So they passed the law that no pictures of gods or goddesses, but of course you can have the picture of the chief minister. And it reminded me of Hiranyakasipu, that is what he did; no more worship of Vishnu, no more praying to Vishnu, no more sacrifices to Vishnu, just worship me and serve me. That is demoniac. 

And devotees, they are the opposite. Demons, they want to exploit and devotees they want to serve. They want to encourage others in service to Vishnu. And in between are the impersonalist. They want to become null and void. No exploitation and no service, nothing. So we, as aspiring devotees, are trying to emerge from the demonic entitlement of exploiting, and wanting to engage others in our service to be godly and want to serve God, and encourage others into service to God. But because we come from that conditioning, having being born in the material world, we might also have some vestiges of that tendency to exploit others, and want others to serve us. And of course because we are serving Krishna, it become a little subtle. You think, I am serving Krishna so if you serve me you are also serving Krishna through me. And that is true. If you are completely pure, and you doing nothing but serving Krishna, your only desire is to serve Krishna, then if someone serves you, then whatever service he offers to you, would be pass on to Krishna. That is the principle of paramparā, one after the other. You should serve me, I serve my master, he serves his master, and ultimately it goes to Krishna. The same applies to everyone. So you have to be careful of that demonic energy, to want to engage others in our own service, which doesn’t necessarily mean that we don’t engage.

Well Srila Prabhupada did say that if someone asks us to do some service, we should always say yes. And if someone asks us if they can do service for us, we should always say no. That is really the best. But practically, because we are a missionary movement it is a combined effort and there has to be cooperation. Cooperation means sometimes I serve you, sometimes you serve me, because it is all meant for the pleasure of Krishna. And that is bhakti, give pleasure to Krishna. And that is the only criterion, not to enjoy, not to renounce, but to give pleasure to Krishna. But Srila Prabhupada said sometimes if its favorable to Krishna’s service to live under a tree, we will live under a tree. If it is favorable to Krishna’s service to live in a mansion, we will live in a mansion. But the criterion is what is favorable for Krishna’s service, not what is favorable from our sense gratification. 

When I left Santa Barbara, the weather was beautiful, it was 70 degrees, like heaven, and I had heard it was snowing in Dallas. Am I crazy or something? But then I thought of Srila Prabhupada, he would live in Bombay in 1971, and he was preparing to go to Russia, to Moscow, and Malati dasi, our godsister said to Srila Prabhupada, “Srila Prabhupada, you are leaving Bombay, just when the mango season is beginning.” And Srila Prabhupada replied, “Preaching in the snow is sweeter than the sweetest mangoes.” So his standard is to please Krishna and that is how the devotee experiences pleasure, that is how we perceive happiness, and the happiness of Krishna, we haven’t perceived any other kind of happiness. The interaction of the senses with the objects of the senses.

So we have to develop that taste for serving Krishna, where we get so much more pleasure out of serving Krishna, or at least we know that the potential for pleasure in serving Krishna is much greater than any other pleasure that we put all our efforts into that activity. And of course our main practice, and I do come back to it because it is so important, our main practice is chanting the holy name, and chanting the holy name with attention. In the beginning, our minds do intend to wander, because we are conditioned, we are used to thinking of so many things. And placing ourselves in the position of Krishna as the enjoyer so we think of what to enjoy, other things we could enjoy. And as the proprietor. thinking of all the things that we possess, or want to possess. And thinking of ourselves as the controller, how we can control things to get more to enjoy. But when we realize that actually the pleasure of Krishna consciousness, the pleasure of chanting the holy names is so much greater, then we let go of the other thoughts. They may come and go but we don’t hold onto them. We go back to the holy name.

Once one disciple asked Srila Prabhupada that, “What do we do with the mind when we chant? How do we control the mind when we chant?” And Srila Prabhupada said, “The mind? You chant with your tongue and you hear with your ears. Where is the question of your mind? Mind does not enter the picture at all.” And actually it is true. Higher than the mind is the intelligence, and the intelligence is what guides our attention. When the mind is wandering here and there, the intelligence will say, “Okay, now you need to hear the holy name.” But actually the mind isn’t required. It is just the intelligence. The intelligence will keep us focused on the sound of the holy name, which is basically an activity of the tongue and the ears. But the more our senses are engaged in Krishna, the easier it is to either focus the mind or calm the mind. And one of the techniques in chanting is to look at the words of the mantra. Actually many devotees have experienced that when their minds wander too much, and they just can’t bring it back to the sound of the mantra, if they look at the words to the mantra then it helps them focus the mind. And when they get back into the groove of chanting, and hearing, then they can continue the words. 

So Giri was on the airplane yesterday. It is hard on [Unintelligible 00:41:17], very conducive and I just have to look at the words, and here they are. Many bead bags have the words. So I just had my hands in my beads and I was looking at the words and it worked just like in the temple room or in the sanctuary. And then when you actually start to relish and you don’t care about anything, just close your eyes, not fall asleep. Yesterday I was hearing a tape about Srila Prabhupada and he was discussing this verse, [Unintelligible 00:42:16]. He said actually hearing, not sitting in classes and speaking. And yes, relish the holy name. I didn’t even want to get off the plane, not here, the connecting flight in LA. I didn’t want to get off the plane. So that is our goal; to chant and hear and relish and distribute, and that cleanses away—ceto-darpaṇa-mārjanam, cleanses away all the dirty things. And the basis of the dirty things as Srila Prabhupada said, is identifying with the body. Everyone identifies with the body. So ceto-darpaṇa-mārjanam, that cleanses the false identification with the body. So we realize we are eternal servants of Krishna, and then instead of working for the body, we work for Krishna, and we are happy to do it. 

In another lecture, Srila Prabhupada, the very first thing he said is that everyone identifies with some party, some group or some party, based on the body. But we identify with Krishna’s party. That should be our goal. So even millions of years ago, Hiranyakasipu he had his party. But Prahlada did not join his party. He was in Vishnu’s party. And that was the basis of the conflict. But even though materially, Hiranyakasipu was so powerful, in the end he was killed by the Lord. And then all the citizens of the universe who had been oppressed by the demons, they were relived. The main relief wasn’t that they were relived from their material miseries, but the real relief was that they could engage in the service of the Lord again. That was the greatest hardship, having to serve a demon, instead of the Lord. So they felt very relieved and happy that they could return to their constitutional position of service to Lord, and therefore they offer their prayer to Nṛsiṁhadeva. 

Hare Krishna

Are there any questions or comments? Yes

Devotee: You were talking about that demoniac party in Madras. Why did the voters repeatedly put their faith in the new guy, even though the politicians failed to deliver time after time? 

Giriraj Swami: He is asking why people voted for the demoniac party and even re-elected it. 

Devotee: I am talking in general. They become very enthusiastic about the latest candidate r.

Giriraj Swami: Why do people at all? Yes. Well, because they are in maya; there is an illusion. They don’t see the obvious. When I first joined, Srila Prabhupada said that basically people want sense gratification, and the politicians offered sense gratification. So they will vote for the person or the party who they feel will give them the most sense gratification. But the nature of sense gratification is such that the senses are never satisfied. And it is such that Srila Prabhupada said that they left one party, and then after some time, they will become disappointed, they become frustrated. So then now vote out that party, and vote in another party. And then after some time, they will be disappointed and frustrated with them, they will vote them out, and vote in another party. This cycle will continue. This is exactly what happens.

In India, it began at a certain stage, and it continued until 1977. Indira Gandhi had declared a state of emergency and she assumed absolute power like a dictator, and then during that period everyone was flattered with her. And she though actually, People love me. So she became over confident. She thought, Oh people love me.’ I can call election. And at that elections, she was defeated. So everyone was jubilant, [Unintelligible 00:48:49] And Prabhupada was staying at his new quarters in Juhu then. He commented that the people of Juhu, [Unintelligible 00:49:06] “The tiger is gone, the tiger is gone.” They don’t know that in place of the tiger they got a lion. There is no difference. They will be devoured by one or the other. [Unintelligible 00:49:20] they see but they don’t see. They see that whoever they elect is corrupt, exploits them, and fails to do whatever, but they don’t see. They see it but they don’t see and they keep repeating cycle of [Unintelligible 00:49:55]

In Bombay, I ran into [Unintelligible 00:50:19] Prabhu, who Srila Prabhupada had encouraged to run for office in the “In God We Trust Party.” If there was a candidate representing God, or serving God then that would be different. Once in the 1960s, there was the war in Vietnam, the young men were being drafted and there is so much protest. So one young man, he was avoiding the service in Vietnam, he took shelter in a church, he claimed sanctuary in a church. And so it was a big fight. He was in the church and the police were coming to try to get him for evading the draft and all the young people were protesting. They were supporting the young man. So the devotees asked Srila Prabhupada what should they do, should they join the protesters. Prabhupada said that actually, they are all the same, because when it comes to meat eating, intoxication, illicit sex, and gambling, they are all the same. They are all [Unintelligible 00:51:57] so we can’t really support any of them. 

Of course, in one sense there could if they [Unintelligible 00:52:12] although persons could be like that but the one difference could be if one type of government is more favorable to Krishna consciousness like in Russia. At least now the devotees, they can practice Krishna consciousness. They still eat meat, they still take intoxicants, they still all those things, but at least the devotees can practice Krishna consciousness; that is important. Practice and preach. 

Okay. Thank you yes. [Unintelligible 00:53:03]

Devotee: Maharaja, do you know what Sri Narda was doing during the time of Hiranyakasipu’s reign?

Giriraj Swami: Yes. [Unintelligible 00:53:27] Prabhu is asking, do we know what Sri Narda was doing during Hiranyakasipu’s reign and in some places, it is mentioned that he also had to serve him. Really only Brahma and Shiva were exempted. But given his ability to travel, and this is a bit of a speculation, he might just have gone some time, [Unintelligible 00:54:00] and gone back to his ashram, because his wife was being protected at the ashram. Prahlada was protecting her. But some details are not mentioned and there are other scriptures but because we are so meager on the earth planet as it is, what we have in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, is so much for us. But Srila Prabhupada said that on the higher planets, the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is like hundreds of times longer than what we have. We can only absorb so much so we don’t have every detail. But [Unintelligible 00:54:56] he knew he could see into the future and Prahlada would be a great devotee, and he gave him the instructions that guided him [Unintelligible 00:55:10].

Okay, thank you very much.

All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

Giriraj Swami Maharaja ki jaya.