The tradition makes itself accessible SB – 1.4.14-25

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you Srimad Bhagavatam 144 14 the appearance of Aradha is going on and till now in this chapter, Sona has questioned about the background of the Bhagavatam he has asked the two levels of origination of the Bhagavatam first is he is asked about how did Vyasadeva get the inspiration to speak this, to write this and then he is also asked about how Shukadeva Swami how did Shukadeva Swami learn it and how did Shukadeva Swami speak it to Parikshit Maharaj and in connection with that, in his questions he has described the glories of both Parikshit Maharaj and Shukadeva Swami so now these questions which are raised over here will be answered gradually chapters 4 to 6 will describe the answer to the question which was raised in just one verse that is the third verse so this one half of the question was Krutavan Samhita Muni so how did Vyasadeva get the inspiration to compile the Bhagavatam so that was one half one part of the question and that’s how things will move forward now so Shuta Vach 14th text so at the when the time had come that Vyapara was ending so second millennium overlapped with the third at time at that time to Parashara Muni Jataha was born in the womb of the daughter of Vasu Satyavati this is referred to over here so Vasu was a fisherman and the story is described in the Mahabharata especially that Satyavati had been asked to gain pious credits by doing service and one service was she was to act as a boatman or a boatwoman for pilgrims who wanted to cross the river and when she was crossing over she was taking Parashara Muni across so at the external level Parashara Muni got captivated by her beauty and then he united with her and that captivation with her beauty was not the primary cause there are many other extenuating factors involved over there that Parashara Muni saw that this was a time when the constellations were such that this was a time when a great soul could be born and he had the power to keep, to preserve her virginity and not only did he preserve her virginity but because she had agreed to do such a service her body became fragrant, normally when a woman conceives out of wedlock she is considered to be contaminated but not only was she not contaminated internally in terms of her virginity being preserved but even at external level she became purified that purification in the sense of that benediction that she got was that her body became fragrant so she was a fisher woman and she became so that beautiful beauty and fragrance that was what later attracted Maharaj Shantanu to her so that’s of course a different story the relevant point is that was this union did not take place simply because of lust as some people allege it happened because of the transcendental arrangement of the Lord which was for which the arrangement which which Parashar Muni could make out with his mystical vision that he had because of his saintliness and we can look at it from multiple perspectives first of all it’s a sage who is involved it’s not some ordinary person secondly the woman the sage gives the benediction that the woman does not lose her chastity rather she gets positive benediction by that thirdly most importantly we could say is from if we look from the Vedic perspective the level of consciousness of the people who unite determines the level of consciousness of the progeny that is born and here what is happening is that Kalaiahare Kalaiahare is a portion of Lord Hari is born over here so if simply a man and woman are uniting and that too outside marriage driven by lust then through such a union the Lord will not choose to appear because the Lord is absolutely independent yes he can appear from anywhere but he also appears first by I think some principles of Dharma and here he demonstrates that how while there are material principles of regulation that apply to all of us and we need to take them very seriously but when there are great sages and there are special circumstances involved then those circumstances don’t apply if they had been just driven by lust then a soul who is driven by lust would have appeared through their through their union but a soul who is completely pure and transcendental the supreme soul that is the one who appeared through their womb and therefore we can understand that this is not any lust induced extramarital kind of or a premarital kind of illicit affair it is a transcendental connection done for the sake of being about the descent of the special Kalaiahare special manifestation of the Lord into this world in the form of Yasadeva so 15th vivikta eka asina udite ravi mandale sakata chit sarasvatya so at one time on the coast of Saraswati upaspushya jalam shuchihi upaspushya after finishing the morning ablutions jalam shuchihi so he was purified by performing the morning ablutions with water vivikta eka asina vivikta means secluded place he was situated in concentration eka asina he was situated udite ravi mandale udite ravi mandale and he saw that the sun was rising so the point here is he is describing the auspicious morning time the morning time the brahma muhurtha time is considered very auspicious for doing sacred activities and that is indicated over here when it is said that one morning after bathing so he had done everything which is to be done for living living purely he had bathed he had touched water he had seated in a secluded place and the sun was rising so at a very auspicious time what happened to him paravarajna sarushi kaalena vikaram ramasa yuga dharma viti karam praptam bhuvi yuge yuge paravarajna sarushi paravarajna means this rishi had great knowledge he had knowledge about the past as well as the present kaalena avyakta ramasa so he knew the power ramasa the great force of the unmanifested time that means the time is not yet come time is itself not very grossly visible to us but it exists and it acts yuga dharma viti karam yuga dharma that means the prescribed activities for a particular age that viti karam the violation that was going to happen praptam bhuvi yuge yuge so praptam so he is saying that on the earth in different ages there are anomalies that take place krishna has also talked about in the bhagavata by the power of time by the great power of time in this world there is there are anomalies that take place and those anomalies are described over here so being a great sage he had sat in meditation and he saw that this kalyuga which is going to come up soon there are going to be great anomalies and by the power of time he saw that yuga dharma viti karam that people are not going to follow the yuga dharma properly properly so amoghadrek he was one whose vision did not go in vain mogha means to go waste amogha means not going waste it was precise it did not go wrong he could see with his perfect vision vision equipped with knowledge it should not be misinformed or go in vain bhauti kaanam chabhavanam he saw that bhauti kaanam of material things bhavanam the actions of those material things that material things would lose their power rendered by and people would be rendered faithless they would no longer have the mode of goodness their intelligence would get misdirected they would be dull witted as Prabhupada translated to the Odian their lifespan would be decreased that they would be unfortunate such people on seeing them so his qualification is described twice in this set of verses because both descriptions come in the 18th verse itself divyena chakshusha and amoghadruk so with his divine vision he could see Krishna also uses this word divine vision in 11.8 he states that oh Arjuna I am giving you this divine vision by which you can see what is happening and by you can see the universal form so here basically divine vision refers to any vision that enables it can mean divine not just necessarily seeing the supreme divinity it can refer to a vision that enables one to see beyond what normally one is normally able to see and especially see those things which deepen one’s connection with the supreme lord it may not be directly a darshan of the supreme lord it was the darshan of Vishwaroopa for Arjuna and in this case here to the darshan of the degradation of Kali Yuga which prompted within Vyasadeva the contemplation of of how people could be connected with the supreme in such a degraded and distracted age so in that sense it was he because divya chakshu because he saw the godlessness of this age and he with his godly compassion thought of how to connect people with god sarvavarnashramanam yaddadhyah yaddadhyah sarvavarnashramanam so he thought about how to do the benefit for all these ashramas so first his vision is commended he saw he saw and understood the problem doctor’s expertise has to be in two parts expertise in diagnosis and expertise in prescription so sometimes the doctor diagnoses the disease wrong then also then nothing can work even if the diagnosis is right and the doctor prescribes something wrong then also the patient will not be cured so here the divya chakshu shiha is used to describe his expert diagnostic ability and Amoghadrik he is used to describe his prescriptional expertise so in this way he was expert in both things and he observed the anomaly of the age and then he he contemplated okay what could be the solution for this age 19 chaturhotram karma shuddham prajanam vikshava idhikam vidadhadyagya santatya vedam ekam chaturvidham chaturhotram karma shuddham chaturhotram if you read the Ramayana and the Mahabharata there is a great emphasis given for making sure the sacrificial fire is going on even an impious king like Dhritarashtra he said he had a sacrificial altar in which the fire would go on all the time and when Draupadi was dishonoured when the Pandavas were dishonoured especially when Draupadi was dishonoured at that time the sacrificial fire started getting extinguished and when that happened Dhritarashtra realised oh some line has been crossed things have gone too far and at that time he tried to intervene and salvage the situation chaturhotram so this the fire sacrifices the four kinds of fire sacrifices they are meant to actually purify the people prajanam vikshava idhikam so according to the Vedas these are described so so vedadhaad yagya santatya and that vedadhaad that is made into yagya santatya yagya is actually meant for for the auspicious of people vedam ekam chaturvidam so what he did is there are the sacrifices there was one veda at that time but one which is very big many times people see a 500 page book and they say oh I can’t read this and they often don’t even take it up for reading but if there are say 100, 120 pages 150 pages, 4 books, they say ok maybe we can read this and eventually they end up reading the same thing but through smaller manageable sections, something like that Vyasadev he divided vedam ekam chaturvidam, the one veda he divided into four sections and in this way he the vedic sacrifices that were there and the associated directions that were given he made them more accessible to people in general now he described in the 20th text what he did so the overview of the vedic literature is given over here and first line describes the four vedas Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva so Sama and Atharva Sandhi becomes Sama Atharva O becomes O over there but there are four vedas, Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda and Atharva Veda and Veda Chatvarudrata these were the four main parts then Itihasa Puranam Itihasa is referred to the Mahabharata and the Ramayana Puranas referred to the various Puranas these are called Panchamo Veda Uchchate so the Bhagavatam makes it very clear that we should not have a fragmented view of this literature where we think that the Vedas are one body of literature and the Puranas are another body of literature and Itihasa is another body and they don’t have much in common especially some scholars think that ok the Vedas are one body and Itihasa Puranas are another body and they evolved at different times and they evolved they talk about different Devatas and one says they think of they have a very fragmented view the Bhagavatam makes it clear no it’s not fragmented it’s integrated that there is one purpose that underlies all the the various literature and that one purpose is to raise people’s God Consciousness and ultimately take people towards God so Panchamo Veda Uchchate so Itihasa Puranas are considered to be the Pancham Veda Tatrarga so here it is described for the 21st text Tatrarga Veda Dhara Pailaha Sama Gojaimin Hikavi Vaishampayano E Vaiko Nishnatho Yusham Utham Tatrarga thereupon so Rigveda Dhara Pailaha so Rigveda Dhara one who was one who assimilated one who took in the Rigveda was Pailaha Pailaha refers to the sage Paila Sama Gojaimin Hikavi the Sama Veda was taken up by Jaimini Vaishampayano E Vaiko Nishnatho Yusham Utham so Vaishampayano became expert in the Yajur Veda so he is now describing that because these branches of knowledge were very complex and it needed required mastery it’s like you know in our school days we studied Physics, Chemistry and we studied various subjects but then if you want to go to graduation post graduation then we had to specialise we can’t study all subjects, we focus on one or two subjects and further when we go, if you want to teach then we have general knowledge of various subjects but then we may go into super specialised level then be a professor of say a professor of chemistry and a professor of engineering chemistry, there can be a huge amount of difference between the two so similarly here there is specialisation that is being described and one sage Prabhupada uses contemporary translations over here and uses the word professor to talk about them generally the professor of the Samveda so Vaishampayana Vishnato to accommodate the sophistication of the subject matter it was made the specialisation was done so different sages were made specialists of different subjects so sages and subjects we had, sophistication and specialisation Atharvangir Samasit Sumanturdarunamuni Itihasapurananam Pitameromaharshanaham Atharvangir Samasit so the Atharva Veda was given to Angir Muni Sumanturdarunamuni he was also known as Sumantumuni Darunaham he was totally devoted to the Atharva Veda Itihasapurananam so the two words it was mentioned that Itihasapurananam Pancham Vedas they are also given a special person to specialise in he was entrusted and that was Pitameromaharshanaham it was my father Romaharshanaham who got the responsibility for these Vedas Taetarsayo Vedam Swam Swam Vyas Vyasyanane Kadha Shishyay Shishyay Shikshay Vedas Shakhino Bhavan Taetarsayo Vedam that in this way the sages entrusted Taetarsayo Vedam Swam Swam Vyasyanane Kadha that they gave it to their asyan they studied it and entrusted Shikshay Vyasyanane Kadha to their many disciples Shishyay so basically a disciplic tradition was started so the disciples and grand disciples and great grand disciples Shishyay Vedas Shakhino Bhavan so this is something this is describing the origination of this knowledge and this happened over a period of time and that is what is being described here by Suta Goswami Tushanakaji Roshis and the purpose is giving the historical background by which he will describe then how the Bhagavatam came about to be composed certainly the book of knowledge Durmedhir by the less intellectual Dharyante Purushahiyatha Dharyante Purushahiyatha so to make that knowledge understandable for people who are not very intelligent the word Durmedha was used earlier to describe the populace of this age also Dharyante Purushahiyatha Evam Chakar Bhagavan so that that Vedic knowledge was edited by Chakar, Chakar means edited Bhagavan, Bhagavan refers to Vyasadev Vyasa Krupana Vatsala Krupana Vatsala Vatsala is one who is affectionate Bhakta Vatsala is the normal epithet used to describe the supreme lord that is affectionate to his devotees now Prahlad Maharaj also uses the word Krupana Vatsala to refer to Lord Narasimhadev that he is merciful even to those who are miserly so that same point is being made over here that Vyasadev he was just not even merciful not just to the learned he was merciful even to those who are those who are who are not very intelligent who are caught up in the materialistic conception of life and are seeking only material gains even for them what did he do he composed the Bhagavatam and does he he actually composition of Bhagavatam will come a little later here it is mentioned that he edited the Veda so the way he edited has been described briefly previously and in this way he made the Vedic wisdom accessible and it is important for all of us who are practitioners and teachers at some level of Vedic wisdom that it is important it is the responsibility of the living tradition to keep the tradition living that means that the living tradition has to make the the wisdom of the tradition intelligible and accessible in a to the contemporary ethos otherwise we may say that we are beating the tradition we are keeping we are being faithful to the tradition but being faithful to the tradition also means being faithful to the purpose of the tradition and that purpose of the tradition is to make sure that it benefits people so if it is presented in a way that doesn’t make sense that is not comprehensible to the people then then that purpose can be defeated so it is important that things be presented in a way that is intelligible, accessible and appealing to people and that is what Vyasadev did at the start of Kalyugam and that is what the teachers of the tradition do throughout the history of the tradition they make the tradition’s wisdom accessible to people so it was not just in terms of the size, editing in terms of size that was what Vyasadev did that was of course one thing but he also made the overall content more accessible so here it is described that for those who are those are not for them the Shrutis are not accessible so who are these three? the Shudras, the women and the dvija refers to those who have taken the second birth that means those who have taken the initiation, the Gayath initiation as it is called and that Gayath initiation is something which is dvija bandhanam so those who are born in dvija, they are born in dvija but they are not really developed the qualities of a dvija so Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya who have gone to a lower level not ascended to the expected level of qualification for them the Shrutis were not accessible but still even for them for them also auspiciousness was not to be denied and how was that auspiciousness provided for them? that was provided that they could also achieve the and for that purpose that literature which was known as the Mahabharata the sage he composed this to have mercy on those who were going to not for whom the Vedas were not accessible now this may raise the question is it that this is like a casteist slur or sexist slur this was not meant for the women or not for the low castes here we have to understand that sometimes the content is very intellectual and those who were those whose primary vocation was engaging in physical work or those who were caught in too many household duties and others with domestic affairs the point was not discrimination the point was enhancing accessibility that if things are presented in a way that they are accessible to them then they can take it up they can use it and they can become benefited by that so that is the point over here that is the point that is being made here also that for those in the Vedas who were not accessible for them that same wisdom of that long term benefit they could get through the study of the Bharata Akhyana through the study of the Mahabharata and in this way the point that is being made here is that the Mahabharata is also continuation of the same tradition of wisdom but it is a adaptation for for people who for whom some parts of the tradition were not accessible so the whole mood of the tradition is to make itself accessible to different people at different levels of consciousness and how that accessibility is done may vary according to time and place circumstances but here this is what is being described that earlier it was now out of mercy they were what happened after they composed all this and how from here the composition of the Bhagavatam took place that we will discuss in our future talks thank you they were given this particular literature as a means of accessing the same timeless wisdom