When Garuda is a pure devotee why does he eat fish?

Transcript

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Question when Garuda is a pure devotee why does he feel hunger and in fact so much hunger that he has to eat fish it is also said that during the Amrit month and Leela when Garuda comes Vasuki has to go away because there is a natural enmity between Garuda and Vasuki isn’t it at the spiritual level there should be no enmity answer the spiritual and the material are at one level two distinct things and just because one is spiritual being doesn’t mean that the material body will stop functioning in it’s normal way for example some people may say that Sanskrit is Devabhasha is a divine language is a language of the gods and they may say that the western languages are Mleccha Bhasha when one becomes purified if one was born in a country where English is the natural language and thereafter a person becomes connected with Krishna becomes a devotee, becomes deeply spiritually conscious does that mean that they will no longer speak in English and they will start speaking Sanskrit if they put in the effort to learn Sanskrit, they may learn Sanskrit but just learning Sanskrit doesn’t make them spiritual and their becoming spiritual doesn’t necessarily mean they have to learn Sanskrit the soul is situated in a particular physical material body and that body has it’s particular nature and it will act according to that nature what what pure devotion changes is the intention with which we do our actions not necessarily the expression of those actions once a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha while meeting Mahasangha while meeting Prabhupada told him that Swamiji you speak Sanskrit verses in a very Bengali way Prabhupada said what can I do I am a Bengali what do you expect Prabhupada I am a Bengali so essentially Prabhupada knew the import of the Sanskrit verses he was living that import and his intention was simply to serve Krishna purely but still that does not mean that his Sanskrit pronunciation would no longer be Bengali the accent would be there because that’s where the particular body he had got during this manifestation in this world had grown up so with this background that our spiritualization of our being means that our intention becomes spiritual not necessarily the expression of that action becomes has to conform with someone’s expectation of spirituality so it’s not that a pure devotee has to necessarily speak in Sanskrit they may speak in English it’s not necessary that they have to pronounce Sanskrit in a particular way they may pronounce it in their own way so now applying all this to Garuda Garuda has the body of an eagle the soul is spiritual actually Prabhupada is quite clear that when animals eat meat they incur no sinful activity because they are simply acting according to their nature we human beings have the capacity to discern between right and wrong and we human beings have the higher consciousness by which we can understand how meat eating is unhealthy is bad and thus we can avoid that meat eating so for animals when they act according to their bodies there is no sin involved now when a pure devotee is manifesting in a particular body a particular non-human body such as in this case an eagle’s body then is it that that soul will be transcendent to the body if we say that he is in an eagle’s body but then he is not meant to eat eagle’s food then why should I have an eagle’s body at all why have the beaks of an eagle why have the talons of an eagle that is for fighting the enemies enemies could be fought in some other body also enemies could be fought in the human body also there is variety in the spiritual world and that variety means that there is at the spiritual level individuality so when Garuda is a pure devotee his intention is pure even if he is eating meat even if he is eating fish his whole existence is devoted to the pleasure of the lord and the intention to please the lord will be manifested through actions that are done according to the nature of the body so if he is flapping its wings that is in the service of the lord and through the flapping of the wings who knows the hymns of the Vedas may manifest, the prayers for offering the food may manifest and indeed by being contacted with Garuda the fish who becomes its food may well get liberated Garuda is always remembering the lord and the fish who dies by coming in contact with such a devotee can also get elevated and liberated so we can’t just look at the externals and impose certain expectations on some so when the intention is pure the expression of the intention will be according to the situation and the pure intention will have a pure result so Garuda’s eating fish will also continue his pure life because he is simply acting according to the nature of the body that he has been given and purification doesn’t mean rejecting the nature of the body it means utilizing everything that we have including our body in the lord’s service and when a devotee walks with his pure intention, even if someone is incidentally hurt actually they get benefited actually Prabhupada out of his transcendental compassion spoke strongly to someone those people were still benefited even if they felt angered or alienated Prabhupada’s strong words would still enter into their heart purify them and sow the seeds by which their spiritual awakening would take place sometime in the future whenever they were more spiritually receptive the same principle applies to Vasuki also that at one level there is no enmity between the lord’s eternal associates at another level when the soul comes to the material world there is the functioning according to the body in which that soul is manifested now Garuda may have an eternal spiritual body as Garuda but when he comes to the material world the body functions according to the material nature according to the particular nature the body is in even if it is Vasuki we see that why Vasuki alone, there are other situations also when say Ram is bound by the Nagapash of Indrajit then Garuda comes and just seeing Garuda many of the fish just run away and thus Ram and Lakshman are released so for us to recognize that there is a nature and that acting according to the nature is not a violation of the principle of devotion the principle of devotion is that we don’t work for the nature, we don’t work against the nature we work with the nature for the service of our lord so the nature of snakes and eagles are their enemies but in the service of the lord they may come together for particular purposes but that does not necessarily mean that their natural enmity will no longer be there so they are ready to work together for the lord but especially, now there is no mention exactly that Vasuki is a pure devotee when the snakes are inimical to the lord or his devotees then like happens in the case of Ram Indrajit’s weapons snakes, they flee away in the case of Vasuki he was not acting inimically but still it is described later that he in order to be engaged in the service of the lord of churning the milk ocean using the Vandara mountain, he had to be energized by the mode of ignorance that means his body was in its own way influenced by a particular mode, snakes are said to be in the mode of ignorance and he was not an exception to that, so that was the intention to assist in the lord’s service but still the body had a particular nature he worked according to that nature so if you understand that spiritualization of consciousness means intention this means cultivating having the intention of selfless service not the suppression of one’s body nature then we can understand that Garuda can be entirely transcendental while also acting according to his ego’s body