Bhagavatam-daily 110 – 11.08.26 – Depending on anyone except Krishna makes us vulnerable to frustration

Hare Krishna.
The prostitute, Pingala, she was waiting for a customer outside her door, dressed attractively, eagerly anticipating and calculating who would be wealthy enough to satisfy her and maybe give some more also. But nobody was coming. People were coming and they were going.
As mentioned in the previous verse, nobody was coming to her. एवं दुराशय द्वस्त So, in this way, her desire was frustrated, was getting frustrated. The vain hope, द्वस्त, was being destroyed.
And she was waiting, waiting, getting exhausted, waiting निद्र. She just went inside, napped for some time. Again, द्वार्यवलंबति No, no, no.
If I sleep, where will a customer come? I will miss a customer. So again, she would get up and come out. द्वार्यवलंबति निर्गच्छन्ति प्रविष्यति And so, द्वार्यवलंबति means she will stand on the door.
Or sometimes she thinks, maybe I should just go out further and wait on the street itself to see if I can catch somebody’s attention. निर्गच्छन्ति, going out towards, प्रविष्यति Nobody is coming. How long can I wait like this? She would go back to her house, निशितम् And then she started peddling her wares, practically speaking, by the evening itself, at the start of the night.
And now it became midnight, निशितम् And समपद्यत, night arrived. So actually, here, our anxiety is described at not getting a customer. In this world, all of us, whether we like it or not, are dependent on others.
Everybody, to some extent, is a mercenary. Everybody needs money to live in this world. And for the sake of money, people do many things.
So, certainly, selling one’s body by a woman, for a woman, chastity is considered to be a very important, practically the most important thing. So to give that up for the sake of money is considered very unfortunate and very bad. But still, the point is that this same anxiety, we all go through in our lives also.
When we start embarking on a particular activity with a particular expectation. A doctor may start a clinic and if no customers come, the doctor will go in anxiety. A shopkeeper, a pharmacist, a retailer, or whoever starts a shop, wants customers and if customers don’t come, there will be anxiety.
So, in this world, we are all dependent on others. And the dependence on others creates anxiety. Even if somebody is very wealthy and is that I don’t depend on anyone else.
Now, that may be true in the sense that that person, everyone else obeys that person. But then even when somebody is obeying us, and we may say that that person is dependent on salary for me, but still we are dependent that I tell somebody else to get something for me and that person doesn’t get it, then I get irritated with that person. So, even a person who is a big business magnate, for that person to maintain the business requires people to purchase the products.
Even if somebody says, I have got so much savings that I don’t want to do any business. I can just live relaxed. But still, as I said, that person wants to relate with some other people and those people with whom he or she relates, if they don’t live up to the expectation, then there is frustration.
So, here it is mentioned, Durashaya Dvasta. So, her hope that she would get a customer was getting Dvasta, getting destroyed. Like that, ultimately in this world, when we pin our hopes on someone else, on another human being, sooner or later, we end up being frustrated.
Do we need to pin our hopes on Krishna, not on the people of this world? Because they are all fallible. Now, sometimes many of them are not well-intentioned also. People are out to exploit others.
Sometimes people in marketing, they may market a particular product, buy this and this will give this and this and this and they are interested not in our good, they are simply interested in earning money. They want to just sell the thing on to us so that we will give them money. Doctors or sometimes mercenaries like that, they are not interested so much in curing the patient as in prolonging the treatment so that the patient will keep consulting them and they will keep earning more money by that.
Or they may recommend a battery of extra tests so that they will get some commission, some feedback from the labs where the tests are done. The point is that our being dependent on others makes us vulnerable and that vulnerability is the source of insecurity. We may try to make some financial arrangements by which we can minimize the vulnerability.
We can try to screen the recommendations so that only trustworthy people are there with us. But ultimately our dependence on others does create vulnerability. But it is our dependence on Krishna which actually brings about invulnerability.
Because when we depend on Krishna, if we depend on Krishna and stay at the material level of consciousness, soon we will become frustrated with Krishna also. Because at the material level, even Krishna also doesn’t fulfill the desires. I did this and I prayed to Krishna for this and I depended on Krishna, but I did not get it.
So actually, truly depend on Krishna means not just depend on Krishna for giving us what we want, but to truly depend on Krishna also means to rise to the spiritual level of consciousness. Because it means to depend on Krishna’s instructions and Krishna’s instructions are that we rise to the spiritual level of consciousness. So when we rise to the spiritual level of consciousness, then we become satisfied spiritually because we sense the presence of Krishna and the presence of Krishna satisfies us.
So to depend on Krishna means and to feel his shelter means to rise to the spiritual level of consciousness. As long as we are in the material world, we will, even if we are spiritualists, we will still have to to some extent interact with other people and we will be dependent on other people. And even as devotees in a devotee community, it may happen that other people may disappoint us at times.
Other devotees may also disappoint us at times. This is all inevitable in material existence. But still the point remains that if we are internally sheltered in Krishna, then we are less jolted by the insecurities and the uncertainties and the vicissitudes of this world.
So when we are sheltered in Krishna more and more, then it’s like we have a shock absorber in our vehicle and the jolts of the road don’t affect us so much. So similarly, in our worldly relationships, where we depend on others, if we take shelter in Krishna, then the jolts which we experience in those relationships will be much lesser. And quite often, the association of devotees can also help us to take better shelter of Krishna.
And in that sense, the jolts get transcended. And that way, we move onwards in our spiritual life. Realizing Krishna’s shelter and seeking more and more shelter of Krishna.
And that way, growing in our life. So Pingala here, at this stage, is getting frustrated by seeking the shelter of someone in this world. So how she, through her process of contemplation and realization, renounced the hope for a worldly shelter and sought shelter of Jagadeeshwara.
That will be described in the narrative as it progresses.