Bhagavatam-daily 121 – 11.08.37 – See the disappearance of tormenting desires as Krishna’s mercy

It anymore thank you shreemadbhagavatam 11 8 37 nūnaṃ me bhagavān prīto viṣṇu kena pikarmana nirvedo yam durāśāya yam me jātah sukhāvahā nūnaṃ me bhagavān prīto so here pingala is speaking her song singing her song and she’s made the determination to put an end to her sinful life devoted to sense gratification and earning money thereby and she’s decided to devote herself to the lord and now she’s thinking how did this dramatic change come about in me what prompted this change and as she’s contemplating this he says nūnaṃ me bhagavān prīto certainly nūnaṃ certainly with me bhagavān prīto the lord must have been pleased with me viṣṇu kena pikarmana lord viṣṇu because of some reason kena pikarmana i don’t know what is the reason that the lord is pleased with me nirvedo yam durāśāya nirvedo yam this detachment has come upon me from durāśāya that desire which is difficult to fulfill but which is difficult to give up also hmm so durāśāya durāśāya is there was this very strong attachment to sense enjoyment which was there but from that i have become detached and yam me jātah sukhāvah and because of that seeing the nirveda jātah what has been born in me is sukhāvah great happiness has come upon me now suppose a person has been an alcohol addict and afterwards the person has decided that i want to give up this addiction and so that person so the recovering alcoholic addict you know fights against the addiction and again and again relapses and struggles and is going through a lot of misery and then suddenly at one particular point finds hey no there’s no desire within me for the alcohol i’m not going to drink it anymore just so there are these invisible ropes of attachments that keep pulling us towards the sense objects and those ropes cause so much agitation so much trouble because resisting them becomes a big big battle it’s a pain and often we are half-hearted resisting because at one level we think oh this will give me pleasure how can i live without the pleasure and other level we know this is not going to give me pleasure i don’t want to do this but still so on one side the extra the pull of those desires is there on other side our own ambiguity is also there to whether to resist it or to indulge in it and it’s agony at that time but suddenly if one finds out the desire is not there only it’s a great relief now just imagine somebody has a constant back pain and suddenly the so whenever that person wakes up in the morning and finds the first sensation is the pain in the back and then one morning that person wakes up and finds out the pain is gone this is so wonderful what a relief so it is not that the person has got positive happiness but just the absence of a constant nagging pain itself is a source of great joy so similarly the absence of constant nagging desires itself is a joy for one who becomes free from their desires and that is what happened to pingala over here and that’s why she’s saying what a relief it is you know we can understand the relief from pain much more easily if somebody had as i said some somebody had back pain suddenly the back pain goes away you would say oh this is such a wonderful thing it would be occasion for celebration practically speaking oh the pain is gone now physical pains we appreciate much more easily or appreciate not in the sense that we like the pains but if somebody is in physical pain and some that physical pain has gone away we can relate with that and we can understand that because the pain is physical but actually similarly there can be mental pains there can be the pain because of our attachment because of our anxiety because of our whichever mental dysfunction is there so in this case it is attachment and it’s a very real and serious pain although it may not be seen by others but you know if a person is alcoholic alcohol addict and then every time say the person passes by alcohol shop that desire is the rope of the desire asha starts pulling the person and sometimes even before that person approaches that alcohol shop the desire is pulling what to speak of after and in this way the person is just trapped not knowing what to do when a person is living like this if suddenly when the person that person addict finds it oh the desire is gone what a relief it is so now where has that relief come from Spingala is experiencing that kind of relief she as I described in the earlier verses night time was a time of profession so she had dressed herself nicely and was waiting for some lover to come she was not seeing the person who would come just as a customer she was hoping that some lover would come and maybe this person maybe that person maybe that person and no when nobody came naturally she was distressed and still on one side the hope was there that somebody will come on the other hand the either the dawning undeniable realization was there that actually nobody’s going to come so she was torn between that and on the other side there was her bodily desire for bodily gratification also which was also pulling her in that direction so it was all torment and suddenly and the set of realizations came and she became illumined she’s so relieved she’s thinking where has this come from and this sort of miraculous transformation of my consciousness the cessation of the torment of desire is surely this is nothing but the mercy of the lord that surely the lord must be pleased with me and lord must be pleased with me and now she’s looking back at her life and she’s thinking what have i done my lord you know i don’t even know what i may have done because of which the lord may have given this mercy so you know this also shows her devotional disposition often you know the materialistic attitude towards religion is that people demand god i have done this for you i’ve done this for you you see i have the bills of all the donations i have the receipts of all the donations i have given to you and still you are doing you have not done anything for me so you know rather than thinking that way her humility is some work i must have done i don’t know what work it is so if i don’t even know what work it is i can’t take i can’t really take credit for that so he’s thinking this is somehow or the other the is pleased with me that the lord is pleased with me and this is also a very insightful understanding of how to understand that the lord is pleased with me an insightful understanding is displayed by pingala of how to understand the lord is pleased with me you know often we may think that if krishna is pleased with me will he come in my dreams or will i see the deities smiling in front of me or maybe maybe we have we may have various notions of how to understand that krishna is pleased with me but actually we are not spiritually advanced enough to have supernatural spiritual visions right now and even if one day we see the deities smiling at us or one day krishna comes in our dream yes that is good we can see that as an encouragement for continuing on in our bhakti but a more sustainable and a more transformational way for us to see krishna’s pleasure is is in the change in our consciousness so if we find that we have got attraction on a steady basis for hearing bhagavatam or we have got attraction for doing a particular service we should know that that attraction is a sign of krishna’s pleasure because krishna somehow has become pleased with me and has given me this attraction because by this attraction i will be able to move on steadily in my service to krishna i will be able to move on steadily in my journey to him and similarly it may be that on the other hand if someone if suddenly as i said in the case of pingala the other side has happened that there is suddenly detachment which is awakened in the heart and she’s thinking oh this is also a sign of the lord being pleased so again she is not taking credit for it thinking that oh see i am so intelligent i have got such a brilliant realization and now i have become detached now when that set of thoughts comes by which some illumination happens and by that by that detachment comes you know we need to attribute it right if you have to stay humble and we have to stay protected so when sanatana goswami renounces his royal opulence and not only that just to for the sake of renouncing it he goes to jail and then after that he risks his life and somehow escapes from the jail and comes chaitanya mahaprabhu it is chaitanya charitam it is very interesting description that chaitanya mahaprabhu certainly welcomes sanatana goswami but he doesn’t go about praising sanatana goswami oh how renounced you are he says that oh the super soul’s actions are very grave and it is by the grace of the super soul that although you had so much opulence you develop renunciation and then you have taken shelter of krishna chaitanya mahaprabhu is instructing all of us that sometimes when we make additional commitments or we get the determination to make additional commit extra commitments or special commitments either in terms of giving up some anti-devotional things or taking up some devotional things we shouldn’t become proud of the determination or realization we can we can rightly attribute it to krishna stay humble and become grateful to krishna for that as fingala is demonstrating here thank you