Bhagavatam-daily 122 – 11.08.38 – Misery is not due to unfulfilled desire, but desire itself

Shrimad bhagavatam 11 8 38 mayy vamsyur manda bhagyaya klesha nirvedahetava ye naanubandham nirritya purushah shamam rikshati mayy vamsyur manda bhagyaya mayy ma eva not sir this this should be considered as misfortune so this should not be considered as misfortune what is this you know her inability to get any lover any customer because of which she was very distressed sorely afflicted so her face had dried up but klesha so you got the klesha so normally when misery comes in our life we think that it is misfortune but she is saying this misery which came to me i don’t consider it to be misfortune because this misery became the cause of the source of nirvedahetava it became the cause of nirveda detachment and and what happens by the detachment ye naanubandham nirritya ye anubandham the bondage that is there nirritya this detachment removed the bondage and what happens when the one the bondage is removed and detachment comes purushah shamam rikshati shamam means peace of mind rikshati one attains so this is a a continuation of pingala’s meditation and she is she’s not only made a positive resolution based on her frustrating experience but she’s also got getting a very remarkably positive perspective of the whole situation so in the previous verse she stated that i consider my detachment as the lord’s mercy on me lord somehow the lord is pleased with me and now she’s saying that this incident that happened it’s definitely not a misfortune this is definitely not mandabhagya so normally if a person is doing business and if some days no customer comes then the person say oh today was a bad day and bad day means it’s misfortune so it’s mandabhagya but now she is into the business of selling she was into the business of selling her body and actually on a day a day on which nobody would come that could be considered to be a a day which is a bad day it could be considered misfortune but she’s saying no i don’t consider this my not ma ma it’s not misfortune yeah now why is that because you know a thing is good or bad not just based on its appearance but on its consequence so something may look as bad oh no business nobody has come to me today but then yeah what is the consequence of that klesha so this certainly when the thing came it was it was klesha it was this fear there was anxiety there was there was disappointment oh what will happen if nobody comes to me but nirvedahetava nirvedahetava there is detachment which is resulted from it and the detachment is a great gift it’s a great treasure you know you know customers will come and go but and many customers have come and gone but this get getting this side of insightful detachment is a once in a lifetime life transforming event in fact it’s rarer than once in a lifetime because this kind of detachment um may take many lifetimes to come so klesha nirvedahetava so from this misery detachment has come then it’s a matter of great fortune klesha nirvedahetava and so look at the consequence the consequence of that was actually okay that i just became free from that desire so earlier the unfulfilled desire was the cause of anxiety but actually it was the cause of misery but the real cause of misery was the even more foundational cause of misery is the presence of desire itself that means that just like for alcoholic who is addicted to alcohol and somehow find that oh there is no alcohol available that unfulfilled desire is the cause of misery for for that alcoholic but if we go deeper you know that alcoholic has say woken up late at night with a urge for alcohol and has found that there’s no no alcohol in my home so then gets out at night and moves around early morning goes to a bar and then the bar they say oh alcohol is over here they’ll be frustrated so that unfulfilled desire is a cause of frustration cause of misery but if we think from an objective perspective then you know having to wake up in the middle of the night at some unearthly hour and be dragged by a desire to come out of home and go to a bar searching for alcohol that itself is a misery so unfulfilled desire is is maybe a cause of misery but at a deeper level it is desire itself that is the cause of misery and if that desire goes away then he could be peacefully sleeping at home not troubled at all so similar that way she is so here she is saying that actually it is what this is what has happened to her initially she was singing the klesha was because of the unfulfilled desire no customer came but now she’s saying that the desire itself has gone away klesha nirveda it has related it has led to detachment and that is wonderful and that the bandhan that was there so alcoholic has a bandhan as a rope invisible rope which drags the alcoholic to the shop and this place and that place like that but that which has become free i become liberated from that the purusha now she is talking not just in terms of herself now she’s talking about a general philosophical principle so in this verse she is not using the word me she’s using she used the word me in the previous word and this was she’s talking in general terms so using the purusha in the past the male word the word purusha was not considered like gender discriminatory as living out females even a female would use the word purusha because it was used in an inclusive sense so just like in not just in sanskrit but even in english english man proposes god disposes so here man is used to refer to humanity in an inclusive sense so like that although she’s a female she used the word purusha because the word purusha is a generic reference to humanity so when a person becomes detached from desire then what happens purusha attains shama now shama refers to a peaceful mind in the 18th chapter of the bhagavad-gita 18.42 krishna talks about the qualities of a brahmana and there he says shama and dama are the relevant qualities now dama refers to sense control that means there is desire present the desire for sense gratification is there but one determinedly says no even if the desire is there i’m not going to indulge in it so that involves a battle against our desires but shama is peacefulness that means there is no agitating desire itself and that is a much more harmonious and happier situation when the desire is not present at all so she’s saying that if and how can men will desire not be present when there is detachment as long as there’s attachment desire will be present and then there is a battle with the desire but when there is detachment desire itself is not present and therefore there is no agitation so she says that when nirveda comes then shamam rijyate one gets peacefulness and she herself has got that peacefulness so this is a so rather than seeing fortune in terms of appearance of things we can see it in terms of consequence of things and when misery comes in our life because of our unfulfilled desire we can see that a greater misery is the presence of desire itself and the absence of desire is a matter of great fortune so she’s saying this is in the previous verse she has said this is the lord’s mercy somebody may say how can the misery be a mercy misery can be a mercy if it helps us remove the cause of the misery the desire that is the cause of misery and therefore she is firmly saying this is not misfortune this is this is the mercy