Bhagavatam-daily 125 – 11.08.41 – Recognize the danger to realize the need for a rescuer

Thank you pingala is continuing describing her realizations is coming towards the conclusion now this is the last but one verse samsara koope this material existence is like a koopa it is a dark well pathitam fallen so this is a fallen in the dark well of material existence vishayair mushita ikshanam vishayair by the sense objects ikshanam eyes uh vision mushita stolen away and not only that as if that is not bad enough i’ve fallen in the well but in there is also within the well there is kal ahina kal is a time ahina is a serpent and the serpent of time has got atmanam has caught the living entity and such a situation ko anyas who other who else is capable of delivering apart from the adhishvara the supreme lord so here pingala is now reiterating her conviction about the necessity of taking shelter of the lord by going beyond her specific predicament to the general predicament of everyone in material existence so she herself had been hoping for a lover who would pay her generously but no one turned out she got frustrated and she got realization and she’s grateful for the realization but now she is going to a general principle that we are all trapped in material existence in general learning requires movement between the concrete and the abstract the specific and the universal so from specific incidents we need to draw universal or broad learning broad ranging lessons so for example she is herself demonstrating here that what is the lesson that she is learning i have taken shelter of the lord i am going to take shelter of the lord lord has bestowed mercy on me and it is not just i that have been blessed by the lord actually everyone needs to be blessed by the lord because everyone is in trouble in this world so for example when a more relevant example for us could be that if we indulge in some form of sinful sense gratification and we get misery by that now we need to learn from that specific incident the general principle that sense gratification leads to misery and therefore i should not engage in sense gratification if we don’t learn this lesson then we stay entangled and trapped and then we don’t move onwards in our spiritual life so if we are to move onwards we need to learn the lesson properly and learning the lesson properly means recognizing that we are all likely to get trapped in material existence and not just likely to get trapped we are already trapped but we can get better trapped greater trapped rather so samsara koope patitam fallen in the dark well of material existence now this is a common metaphor used in scripture to illustrate the plight of all of us if somebody has fallen in a well now well is deep and dark and it’s practically impossible to come out of it now most wells don’t really have some hand holds or leg holds by which one can climb out so if somebody has fallen in a well it’s difficult to come out very very difficult and further scripture is spoken in a culture particular cultural setting so in that cultural setting those examples make the most sense but that cultural setting need not be so removed from us that we can’t understand it you know in the past when people would live in villages often based on the changes in natural settings in nature people would move for their village would be at one place and afterward they may move the village to another place because maybe the wild maybe because of whatever the greenery went down over there or whatever reason so then now when people stay at a particular place they dig a well and when they leave that place it’s not that they’re going to fill up the well the well stays as it is and then that well can become a great hazard because if somebody is walking along and especially if grass has overgrown that well and then somebody just walks over and then thinks that there’s grass over there but falls into the well it’s a great great danger now if there are no people around because it’s an abandoned well in an abandoned village then someone coming to rescue also is a remote possibility so it’s a really great danger to be trapped in a well like that so here so that’s why because it’s such a great danger from which it’s almost impossible to be rescued by one’s own efforts here the point is made that actually I am actually the point is made that the material existence is like being trapped in a well and as samsara koope patitam now to be fallen in a well is bad enough here Pingala expands the metaphor in two further ways if somebody is falling in the well at least maybe somebody can that person can try to hold on to something the wall and somehow try to climb up but if vishayayirmushi tekshanam that if further the eyes have been destroyed the vision has been destroyed by the sense objects suppose somebody has become blinded because of the impact because of something has gone in the eyes or whatever so somebody has actually become blinded also inside the well then the hope of rescue becomes even more remote and on top that the top of that grastam kala hinatmanam if there is a serpent say something like a python which is or any other serpent which has just caught one in its grip so grastam kala hinatmanam so this person has been caught by a serpent then what is the hope for coming out so then it’s almost impossible to be so this triple factors triple danger is almost inescapably fatal so now why is material existence compared to a well and a well a person goes down down far below the normal level of living so like that in material existence our consciousness goes way way down below and the normal spiritual level of consciousness that is natural to us as souls further so when the consciousness goes lower means our desires are at a lower level we seek pleasure in lower things and overall our existence is at a lower level of reality lower level means at a material bodily level of reality instead of at a spiritual level now when it says that the sense objects have stolen the vision what does that mean that the sense objects actually stealing the vision doesn’t necessarily mean making blind here you may say that i can see you know i can see things around me yes we can but here the blinding is in more in terms of blinding us to spiritual reality sense objects captivate us so much that we don’t look for any reality beyond the material reality where the sense objects are there so blinding is in terms of not entire blinding but selective blinding where we become blind to spiritual reality and that blinding happens because you are captivated by sense objects in the material reality just like if a person gets too caught in watching a movie then there is the world around him and there are the objects in the world around him but the person is blinded to rest of the things because of being captivated by the whatever is being played on the theater in the movie so like that we become blinded that means our we become spiritually blinded and materially captivated by the sense objects and then the serpent of time has caught us that means now we are existing in the domain of time and the time is coming closer and closer and it is going death is going to come closer and closer it’s coming closer and closer at every moment and it’s going to devour us so in such a predicament who can save us except the supreme lord the lord gives mercy and raises our consciousness from the material to the spiritual level and only when he does that then can we be rescued so that is that lord Pingala is going to take shelter of and she’s urging all of us also to take shelter of that lord so when we when we take shelter of Krishna’s mercy by practicing bhakti then our consciousness rises from the material to the spiritual level that is like the person being raised out of the well by a rope and our spiritual vision gets restored because we see that the sense objects are not all that attractive as they seem to be and Krishna is far more attractive so when Krishna reveals himself through his devotional manifestation like the deities then the blinding of our eyes to spiritual reality that has happened that gets countered cured and Krishna ultimately takes us out of the domain of time to the eternal spiritual reality that’s how he rescues us from the serpent of time also so it is that lord with the rescuer whom we need to take shelter of as Pingala is doing thank