In the Daksha pastime, Lord Shiva remains calm when he is insulted, but become enraged when Sati dies – why the difference?

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Transcript

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in the Daksha pastime Lord Shiva when he was insulted he did not become angry and he is glorified as being very tolerant at that time but later on he does become very angry when Sati quits her body and then there is a lot of lot of cursing, counter cursing and punishing that happens so why the difference in these two behaviors is it that when one is we are ourselves insulted we tolerate but when somebody else is insulted at that time we have to take a strong stand yes that’s definitely part of it as devotees we need to know that each one of us is an individual and we have to work according to our individual situation for the practice of bhakti so we can learn values from the behavior of devotees in different context but sometimes the different values are being exhibited at different times so for example in the first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita Prabhupada is quite appreciative of Arjuna wherein he says that although a war is about to take place Arjuna is so thoughtful he is not just thinking I have to win this war he is thinking about long term consequences and this indicates and he is so wise but in the next chapter suddenly Prabhupada starts with Arjuna is in tears and these tears indicate ignorance and attachment and everybody is under the spell of attachment and the Bhagavad Gita is spoken to free one from attachment so why this radical change so actually in the first chapter Madhusudana Saraswati is a prominent Gita commentator from the medieval times he says that Madhusudana Saraswati says that the first chapter is primarily supposed to demonstrate the qualification of Arjuna for receiving spiritual knowledge and so in that context he is appreciated and glorified in the second context he is capable of he is qualified to receive spiritual knowledge but right now he doesn’t have spiritual knowledge and he is speaking and arguing as if he has knowledge and knows what to do and that is undesirable so a student say for example who gets into a top college say an Ivy League college now when they are going to go into that college at that time their CV and everything is very impressive and even the admitting authorities might say hello, this is very impressive we are happy to have you with us but then after that the same authorities may say that actually you know once they get into the university they start studying at that time you don’t know much so different lessons are drawn from different contexts so in the first part a personal insult to Lord Shiva he is calm and composed about it but later on when it is not a personal insult but it’s much much more it’s a father rejecting his own daughter and then their forgiveness and justice are delicate and where what is to be done has to be decided according to context so a father can become can let considerations of prestige and ego harden one’s heart so much and the father watches while his own daughter is killing herself and that indicates an exceptional level of hard heartedness then that deserves punishment it’s not just that his wife has been killed, his wife has died because of that but it’s outrageous extent of one’s arrogance letting one letting one’s arrogance determine one’s own actions so it’s one thing that because of my greed I say I speak some small lies so that I can get something which somebody else might be more qualified to get that’s bad but it’s ok but because of my greed I start doing some character assassination of people or suppose somebody does actually physically assassinating their rivals that’s a very serious thing so depending on the degree of the wrongness of action also the response comes so Lord Shiva not being offered respect is not a minor problem not being part of a sacrifice in the sacrificial arrangements it is a serious affront but still it’s not somebody losing their life there are degrees so in the second case Daksha’s arrogance led him to a far more egregious egregious wrong action and that deserves punishment so in the first situation it is talked about how Lord Shiva the point of the first context is to glorify Lord Shiva about how he is tolerant even when he is provoked, even when he is insulted he stays tolerant and forgiving but then when somebody dear to him is killed because of someone else’s arrogance and negligence then a strong action has to be taken.
Lord Shiva devatas generally are transcendental sometimes they may act as a brahmana and forgive sometimes they may take the role of a Kshatriya and they may punish their punishment is not so much in the sense of revenge it’s more in the sense of justice to establish law and order of course in this particular case things go out of hand go out of proportion but the point is that there is justice also as an important principle to be considered so that’s why the different responses thank you