Bhagavatam-daily 111 – 11.08.27 – Pray for the leap from frustration to renunciation

Thank you now the brahmana is continuing the description of the story of pingala because she has been waiting eagerly desperately for some lover to come and she is in need of money as well as affection especially money and the desire for wealth it became dried up it became exhausted she realized it’s not going to be fulfilled vaktraya means her face it became resided it became grief-struck disappointed morose but then nirvedha paramo jagya nirvedha detachment paramo the highest detachment uh jagya awakened in her and the anxiety which was there which was there till now regarding that it went up regarding the anxiety about that just disappeared because of detachment and she started feeling peace happiness in fact now this is a remarkable event normally even there is disappointment that disappointment leads to frustration and frustration leads to sometimes people doing something worse you know because of frustration for example if somebody is watching a cricket match hoping that say if the person is indian hoping that india will win the match and then india plays poorly poorly poorly and finally india loses the person gets frustrated and sometimes because of that this cricket is such a waste of time i’m never going to watch a cricket match again so that sort of detachment is born of frustration because we want certain enjoyment we don’t get enjoyment then we feel forget this whole thing i’ll not do it anymore so was pingala’s detachment like that actually it’s described that it is not ordinary detachment it’s paramo in superior very great the word param is used for spiritual the word param is used basically in a sense that it is special very high level of detachment so in this particular narrative it is not mentioned about pingala’s background but we understand that in the past the culture was such that everybody knew about basic spiritual knowledge and as we will see in her reflections which she will speak from a couple of verses onwards so there her statements are not just oh i got frustrated what the he did not use cuss words and start condemning things rather she focused on recognizing the very futility of the pursuit of sense gratification there is a difference between frustration with with a particular pursuit of sense gratification and renunciation of the very pursuit of sense gratification so as i said that when watching a cricket match and seeing the favorite team losing that leads to that is frustration with a particular pursuit of sense gratification but then after that maybe in the future the next match comes at the person they go maybe india will win this match let me watch this match now so there’s a difference between the two and from frustration to renunciation requires a significant leap that very few people are able to scale and that’s why after the frustration sometimes they go into other forms of sense gratification okay this form of sense gratification did not work let me get another sense gratification so people may just try to play another game or drink or whatever do something else like that i’ll just go and watch a movie so at least i’ll get some pleasure there like that the point is that people lose time like this and then they lose their energy and they degrade their consciousness further but here for her something different happened her face had become dejected so she had become morose because her hopes had become disappointed thwarted frustrated but then based on the spiritual knowledge she had heard in the past that spiritual knowledge awakened so now in our spiritual life also how krishna can act we don’t know so sometimes we get frustrated by something and suddenly from the frustration some realization comes oh this is how it is so that realization is a great fortune and now we the nature of sense gratification is that it will lead us to frustration sooner or later but the to scale the scale the chasm from frustration to renunciation we need to deepen our spiritual conviction our spiritual scriptural realization our intellectual assimilation of scripture and of course along with that it means purification so there are two components here often we keep hearing about how sense gratification leads to misery and yet that does not lead that does not create any detachment within us from the pursuit of sense gratification that is because there is only frustration of a particular uh pursuit of sense gratification that’s not renunciation so we are not okay this thing did not lead me to happiness but we are not concluded from that that this will never lead me to happiness this is the happiness itself is insignificant in it and i need to dedicate my life to pursuing some higher form of happiness so as long as that realization doesn’t come we keep staying lost and we may become become frustrated and go away from sense gratification temporarily but again we’ll come back but by remembering things like by meditating on incidents like i’ve described in pingala’s life we can also hope and pray that sooner or later that nirveda paramoja again that supreme renunciation that high level of renunciation will manifest in our heart too and if we study scripture regularly then every time we are studying scripture that message is going inside us although it may not seem to have much of an effect because again after reading scripture after being after feeling convinced about something but next time when temptation comes again we fall doesn’t matter again we rise and we keep moving but every time we keep hearing actually the message is going deeper and deeper and something of it is sticking deep in our heart and gradually it will become strong enough that it will manifest outwards and then there will be nirveda paramoja again similarly if you are remembering krishna that remembrance of krishna also leads to purification and gradually purification means the impure desires become weaker the impure desires for worldly enjoyment and the pure desires for serving krishna become stronger for loving and serving krishna become stronger so every day that we are doing this we are actually every day i’m practicing bhakti we are doing we are becoming purified so our conviction every day that every time that we hear scripture we are our conviction is deepening so essentially we need to focus on this principle that the purification and assimilation will take us eventually from the frustration with a particular form of sense gratification to the renunciation with the whole prospect of sense gratification itself and that is what has happened to her and the result of that is the chinta hetu the chinta which was there what was the cause of chinta that was vittashaya the desire for wealth was a cause of chinta that went away and then sukhava then you say okay the anxiety went away how did the happiness come about because she got wisdom and the nature of wisdom is that when it rises in our heart it brings joy oh now i understand things are like this i thought it was like that but now understand it is like this oh this is so wonderful so actually wisdom brings a sense of joy it enlivens us from within and that’s what she has got so what exactly the wisdom she has got that she will speak in her song which will be narrated in the future verses