Bhagavatam-daily 141 – 11.09.16 – Remember the world’s hugeness to not be sucked in our own small world

Thank you Bhagavatam 11.9.16 Bhagavatam 11.9.16 Dawood Brahmana is explaining to Maharaj Yadav what he has learned from his various gurus and now he is going to describe what he learned from a spider, the specific reference to the spider will come 5 verses later in the 21st verse but before that in these 4 verses from 16 to 5 verses 16 to 20 he gives the lesson and that lesson is about the extraordinary and inconceivable relationship of the lord with his creation just as a spider manifests a net out of itself and then it remains unaffected rather uses the net for its own purpose uses it for its own purpose a web for its own purpose not net so like that the lord manifests the creation that will be the theme which will come but here the focus is on what is the relationship between the lord and the living entity so here it is stated Eko Narayano Devaha Eko there is only one god Narayano and that lord is Narayana the Bhagavatam is quite clear that it does not support the notion of polytheism but monotheism is not simplistic it is complex in the sense that that one god has many manifestations and still there is Eko Narayana Devaha so there is assertions like this that those multiple manifestations should not make us think that there are multiple gods no there is only one god one supreme being he is Narayana he is the shelter of all the Naras and that one god now in the Abrahamic religions there is the conception there is one god and there is no one equal to him and this is one of also the defining doctrines of Islam now often there is a dichotomy dichotomy of this one true god and false gods but here there is one and the idea is that the god is wholly other the god is disconnected from his creation matter is matter is fallen matter is dark and god is wholly other so we cannot know him now the Bhagavatam describes a much more nuanced relationship with god so Eko Narayana Devaha there is one god Purva Srishtam Swamaya Purva Srishtam in the past he has Srishtam created so he has created the whole material manifestation Swamaya Swamaya by his own energy he does not need the help of anyone else for creating this no extraneous help is needed he is self sufficient in his own existence and he is self competent in bringing about the creation so technically speaking what Krishna brings about is not the creation but it is the manifestation of the creation the matter is not created in the sense of it didn’t exist before it came into existence rather it is its forms are created in that sense it is manifested that is done by Purva Srishtam Swamaya it is done by his energy automatically effortlessly effortlessly naturally the creation happens naturally so Purva Srishtam Swamaya by his own energy the world is created Samritya Kaal Kalaya Kalpanta Itameshwara Samritya Kaal Kalaya Samritya is destroyed Kaal Kalaya when as per the cosmic time scales when the time duration of universe ends then Samritya is all destroyed Kaal Kalaya through his own energy as time Kaal Kalaya Kalaya refers to his partial manifestation so actually the Purusha avatars are in charge of the material world so all the Amshas and Kalas they all come from Krishna so here Kalaya so Vishwanath Chakrathakur explains that this is referring to Maha Vishnu actually to the Vishnu avatars to the Purusha avatars it refers to not just the not just any particular manifestation of Krishna but to specifically his Purusha avatars the Karuna Dakshaya Vishnu Maha Vishnu who is the source of the substrate of metal existence that is Pradhana so what happens this lord who is the supreme controller what happens to him he withdraws everything into himself Samritya so it’s destroyed not in the sense of annihilate or put out of existence but rather to end the manifestation or end the forms of matter and then there is only one absolute truth means there is nothing else apart from him so especially when the creation ends at that time there is only the lord who exists and all of the substratum of creation Pradhana gets withdrawn into him and nothing exists apart from him Atma refers here to the lord’s own self Adhara Adhara refers to shelter so Atmadhara refers that lord of the Adhara lord of the shelter the foundation of the whole creation Akhila Shraya means that he is our shelter Akhila of everything so in this world we are often caught in the small ups and downs maybe in our relationship with someone in the economy in our jobs situation in our health and these ups and downs do matter to us at the same time the magnitude of these ups and downs is actually insignificant when compared with the magnitudes of ups and downs that happen in the cosmos what is say losing one job as compared to say the whole universe being destroyed at the time of cosmic annihilation and all living beings perishing at that time so we are at the mercy of forces far greater than ours our own force and to the extent that we can realize this and to the extent that we can live our lives in awareness of the higher forces that govern our destiny to that extent we will be able to seek shelter in the highest reality in this world our consciousness often gets consumed in making our own plans and in trying to execute those plans and we live in the small world of our own plans where we think that successful execution of our plan is a great victory and its obstruction of frustration is a great defeat certainly we have been given talents by Krishna and whatever service we are doing to Krishna we don’t need to do it responsibly, competently, seriously so in that sense planning is fine but our planning should not consume us so much that we completely forget the big picture and get caught in a tunnel view of reality wherein we don’t think of anything beyond our own selves wherein we focus only on immediate successes and failures immediate even if they are long term in terms of this life still they are short term in terms of the eternity that is our nature and in terms of the vast cosmic time span that characterizes this universe so by remembering the supreme lord’s control we can transcend material existence’s misery and attain a state of equanimity even in this life and ultimately by being devoted to the lord attain eternal equanimity in the hereafter