Bhagavatam-daily 152 – 11.09.27 – Don’t serve the body-guru – serve Krishna with the body

Jivaikto so here yadud brahmana is describing how we how should we relate with the body if we say that the body is also guru now the guru is to be served so should we serve the guru vishwamitra raises this question and he says no whereas we serve the guru wholeheartedly with using our full energy we should know that but we cannot serve the body wholeheartedly because the guru is not a benevolent teacher the guru is the body is not sorry the body is not a benevolent teacher the body is something from which we learn it is not the body teaches so that’s why if we start serving the body then the body will mislead us will drag us deeper and deeper into material consciousness through its various pulls and the example that is given over here lunanti means to plunder practically so so lunanti means to pull and pull in different directions and in that way drag a person away and to plunder the attention the wealth of a person when a person has many wives is the lord of the house that means the husband the master the person who thinks that i am the master of the house that person is pulled in various directions by the different co-wives the bhagavatam does talk about polygamy where a king usually a king may have multiple wives but almost all the stories of co-wives involve fighting infighting and we have dashrath who had three co-wives and there was the bitter plotting which KK succumbed to and there we have Chitraketu who had multiple co-wives and when finally he got Harshashoka through his eldest queen the other queens became so jealous that they conspired to kill the infant so infanticide is such a brutal crime and that’s what the extent to which this took so except for Krishna where Krishna had multiple wives and they all existed joyfully because Krishna could satisfy them usually if we say there are okay there may be occasions where co-wives also live harmoniously but usually it is that the co-wives their conflicts are internal sign you know it causes great misery to everyone involved so here the point that is being made is just as a person who has many wives gets pulled by those different wives in different directions similarly the various pulls and the forces within the body drags us in different directions this is the jiva it drags us in one direction significantly there is a verse in Prahlad Maharaj’s prayer 7 9 40 which in its second third and fourth lines is identical to this verse and that’s first line is only different although the first line’s first word is similar so he says oh Achyuta oh infallible lord the insatiable tongue drags me in one direction Achyuta so the point is that is a prayer and so in that prayer the focus is on the prayer also mentions praying to the lord for help oh Achyuta i am pulled in all these different directions please save me and please pull me towards you now this is more of a object it is not so much of a prayer as a objective lesson that is learned or observation that is made so that part is not here and here it is so the tongue drags a person away in one direction for food and then thirst drags the person away in another direction amum refers to the soul who has identified himself with the body shishno anyatas refers to the nitals which pulls in another direction the skin pulls in another direction the belly pulls in another direction the ear wants to hear melodious songs the tongue wants to that the nose wants to smell some fragrant things it’s caught by perfumes that people put on their bodies and then the eyes are restless looking at this sensory attractive object that sense attractive object and then the working senses sometimes when a person is angry the fists are clenched and in the face i just want to go and push the nose of the offending person into his mouth and into his body itself pound a person to powder like that karmashaktir basically the different senses are dragging us in different sense directions and in this way while we are in the body we stay trapped in material existence and we will stay trapped in material existence in fact we’ll go deeper into the trap of material existence if we just give in to the body so now the brahmana first two verses ago in the 25th verse stated that the body is also a guru from which i have learned but immediately has given two examples to qualify the role of the body as a guru so he states that beware the body it does not mean that the body is such a thing that if we just indulge in it firstly he says that it will make us do terrible activities which will lead to perpetuation in our perpetuation of our material existence so just as a tree before dying so this seed gives the seed for creating another tree like that the body creates karmic seeds that lead to the formation of another body so the body if left to its own devices will make us suffer in the next life because of the bad karma that we do and now in this verse he’s saying that the body will cause us to suffer even in this life because sometimes when we see people enjoying sense gratification we may feel that they are happy oh they’re eating or so many delicious foods which because of the rules which i’m following in i cannot eat or they’re having so many so many sexually attractive partners and this and that and we may think that these people are enjoying so much but the point is that the more we engage in sense gratification the more we give into the demands of the senses the more those demands increase so the more we give into the sense the demands the senses more the senses demand and because of this the person even if the person has sense gratification the person doesn’t have peas because the senses will agitate more and more and more no matter how many delicious items we have to eat senses will want more and still more and still more and in this way the senses will keep us trapped in material existence not only trapped in terms of the future life but even in this life we will be restless just like a person has many wives so that he thinks oh i’ll enjoy with so many women but when all these different wives are pulling in different directions then actually there is so much agitation that there is very little satisfaction so like that the senses pull in different directions and pull more and more then there is no satisfaction there is only agitation over there so the person marries many times to get more enjoyment but gets more agitation in the process like that the if we give into the body sensory pulls and we think that i’ll get more satisfaction but actually we’ll get more agitation and that’s why we should serve krishna with the body not serve the body the body is a indirect guru not a direct guru the body is not a direct guru whom we should serve the body is the indirect guru in the sense that the body through the misery it causes compels us or pushes us towards serving krishna thank you