Bhagavatam-daily 145 – 11.09.20 – Free will requires existence of arena for its execution

Tam ahus tri guna vyaktim srajantim vishvato mukham yasmin prodham idam vishvam yena samsarate puman so here david brahmana is continuing to describe what he has learnt from a spider about how the Lord relates with the world so here tam ahus tri guna vyaktim here tam refers to the three modes which is the pradhan with the three modes present within it tri guna vyaktim it is the ahus is said to be tri guna vyaktim it is the manifesting as the cause with three gunas srajantim kriyatim vishvato mukham so the various manifestations within the creation it creates them yasmin prodham idam vishvam so yasmin means within this within what within that tam prodham idam vishvam within that is arranged this whole universe yena samsara te puman and within that puman the living entity undergoes material existence samsara te this verse talks about how the soul is trapped in material existence and vital in understanding this trapped nature of the soul it should recognize that actually the soul is a soul is transcendental and there is a whole universe created for the souls for those souls who want to play with matter to facilitate their desire for playing with matter this whole material existence is created so this material existence is actually the foundation where the soul interacts with matter and delights in matter now if you look at the three modes of material nature what are they exactly and how do they form the arena wherein the soul samsara te and how what is the connection of all this with the supreme lord in the bhagavad gita the word brahma is used even for material nature not only used for bhagwan brahma mahadyonir aham bija pradapita so brahma is the mahadyoni the great womb in which all living beings are injected so at one level we have to understand the non difference of the absolute truth from everything so that same absolute truth brahma manifests as a spiritual brahman it manifests as the unconscious matter and it manifests as the conscious jivas so at one level when we are focusing on the non difference you have to understand that everything is Krishna and when you want to understand the non when we are focusing on the difference for the purpose of relationships then we look at how each of them is distinct now in this case while explicating the relationship between matter and spirit or between the world and god one of the questions that comes is this is a fundamental question in vedantic debates that if god is good then why is this world which is a place of misery there at all now how can the all good god create a world which is filled with so much misery or this could be called as a problem of evil but in this in this particular context it goes deeper normally the problem of evil is defined as why is there within this world why is there evil so why are the small children die sometimes why do people get extremely painful diseases things like that but here what Krishna is here when the Vedanta talks about it it goes much deeper and the focus goes on to why is there how do we understand the existential incompatibility between the existence of all auspicious all good eternal spirit Brahman and the existence of a temporary world here and that answer to that rest on understanding how the absolute truth has energies so one of the energies the absolute truth is absolute and pure and transcendental and the absolute truth always remains transcendental but the absolute truth has energies and when those energies especially the material energy has free will especially this living entities spiritual energy separate spiritual energy the fragmental spiritual energy has free will and with that free will when that free will is abused so this is the understanding that there is this living entity who has free will and when the free will is misused then that can lead to deleterious results that can backfire and cause the living entity to do things which lead to evil so the evil in the world is not because of the nature of God it is the nature of the energy in nature it is due to the misuse of the energy misuse of the free will by the energy of God so now for them the very existence of free will requires an arena where free will can be executed otherwise if there is no such arena then the existence of free will becomes meaningless you say a child wants to play and he says you can play but there is no playground to play there is no place at all to play then the freedom for playing has no meaning so like that the soul who wants to play independent of God needs a place where at least the illusion of independence can be there and that illusion is the material world and it is comprised of tamahus trigunavyaktim so tamahus the three modes act as coloring agents for material existence by which they paint up illusions of different kinds according to the particular desires of the living entities by which they can try to enjoy this world so the point is that the living entities in this world are always going to try to enjoy matter and when they try to enjoy matter the way they will either succeed or fail depends on their particular desire and if their desire is to live harmoniously serve the Lord harmoniously then they will not suffer then they will not fail but if they have other desires then those desires will indeed cause misery and if they are to get out of that misery it’s important that they recognize the the finiteness of material existence and the finiteness in terms of especially the time span that whatever we achieve it’s lost in due course of time and thus they redirect their desires towards the eternal so this material manifestation which manifests from the Mahat Tattva when activated by the three modes is the playground is the arena for the living entity to play according to its desires and yena samsarate puman samsarate living entity undergo samsar over here so now krishna is not affected by the evil of this world and he is not responsible for the evil of this world because he has given his free will and he has given guidance about how to use the free will properly and when we misuse it then it is we who suffer so the specific correlation of this particular philosophical principle with aspirable mentioned in the next verse and the emphasis in general will be on how we can turn towards the lord and attain the lord so tamahus trigunam yaktim srajanthim vishvatomukham yasmin prothamidam vishvam yena samsarate puman the Mahat Tattva which is like the we could call it at a level of simplicity analysis which is like the screen on which the illusion on the movie which played and the movie captivate the observer so on the screen this illusion of existence is played and there the entity becomes entangled but by turning towards the lord the entity can come out of entanglement and attain liberation thank you