Bhagavatam-daily 177 – 11.10.19 – Death represents our ultimate failure to sustain relationships

Uddhava Gita.
Thank you. Bhavatam daily 177, 11, 10, 19 Here Lord Krishna is countering the materialistic philosophy of the followers of Jain meaning which argues that we can become happy at the material level of consciousness itself so the counter argument is there in various stages first it is said that one will continue on cycle of birth and death then it is said that in the previous text it was said that actually even if one is expert still one will get misery because we see in this world that sometimes even intelligent people suffer and foolish people enjoy so just our actions are not decisive in determining happiness or misery and in this text they stated that even if somehow by being expert or by being foolish but fortunate one is able to minimize misery and one comes to the level one can avoid misery entirely still no one can avoid the ultimate misery of death so yadi praptim if one is able to achieve attain vighatam cha removal of misery jananti sukha dukha yo so one knows how to achieve happiness and avoid misery tepyadha navidur yogam still they cannot avoid navidur no one knows how to no one can mrityur na prabhavedha they do not know the process yoga is the process they do not know the process they will not know the process by which to avoid prevent mrityu from exerting its power prabhaved on them in the mahabharat when abhimanyu is killed brutally and unfairly by six warriors yudhishthira is devastated thinking that he was responsible for the death of that boy 16 year old whom because he had sent he had said to yudhishthira into the chakra saying that we will follow and we will protect you so being overwhelmed by grief he didn’t know what to do at that time he asked yudhishthira who came there and gave wise counsel and in that council he stated that no one in this world can avoid the law of death and then he gives a list of kings great people who are more much more virtues than abhimanyu and how even they had to succumb to death so in this world there are various laws just like say there is a law of gravity if you drop an object it falls to the ground so the mahabharat states that there is similarly the law of death where everyone has to die now that may be sooner or later that may be in terms of individual life duration some people may live on for a long period of time and others may die young what we call as a premature death without aging and the deterioration of the body that comes with aging but here it is said that even yudhishthira is able to avoid misery including the misery of say premature death still eventually the misery of death is going to come so the philosophy used over here argues that actually we can enjoy mental enjoyment in the previous life next life also because if we do right karma will go to heaven and we can enjoy self-gratification there and then after that we come back here still here also we can do good karma we can enjoy self gratification here and again go to heaven and enjoy there also so the problem with this idea that okay in this life and the next life also the problem is that that actually there is the ripping heart wrenching agonizing separation that comes at death because we are not just attached to sense gratification but we are but we also become attached to the specific objects that give us sense gratification and death means we use them all not only we lose the external objects that give us a sense gratification but usually before death we our own body also deteriorates and we lose the bodily capacity to enjoy sense gratification also so death is the is our ultimate failure to sustain relationships with sources of happiness so usually in the material conception of life we consider the sense objects to be the sources of happiness but then death represents our failure to maintain relationship with the sense objects death rips us apart from all the things that we have worked for and we go to the next life we are nothing but our karma even if we say that oh i’ll do good karma and i’ll get a good destination that does not do anything to counter the reality that we do still suffer in this world when specific objects of attachment are stripped away from us and also when sense gratification is the goal of life then the bodily conception remains and even if one understand that oh actually i’m going to heaven but still the destruction the deterioration the destruction of the body that happens with death that is extremely painful if one is a spiritual consciousness then the misery is relatively less because one has the intelligence to know that there is a that my identity is beyond the body and one also has practiced the process by which one can transcend one can raise one’s consciousness above the body to the level of spirit to the level of krishna who is the ultimate spiritual reality and thereby minimize the pain that is experienced through transitions like death so even if death is considered transition also by karmakandis because the conception of life is material so the pain of death is quite huge and in this way the essential point is that there is suffering that cannot be avoided even if one is expert or even if one is fortunate and when one minimizes suffering throughout one’s life actually no one can eliminate suffering throughout one’s life even if a person has done large amount of good karma still sufferings remain and the sufferings come upon occasionally and they come upon one more increasingly as one gets old gets diseased and then succumbs to death so yes there can be varieties in the extent to which people suffer just like there is variety in the level of comfort that is there in the see the first class compartment in the train and a third class compartment where people are squeezed together squeezed and squashed together practically so yes while we are in the train it can make a substantial difference but if the train is on a track that is going to cause it to topple off a mountain then whether one is situated in the first class bogie or a third class bogie will not make a difference so that is the point being made over here that even if one is able to avoid misery and achieve happiness in this world still one cannot avoid death and death represents the ultimate misery and the ultimate loss of the sources of happiness and that’s why one should practice learn to practice the process of yoga especially bhakti yoga by which one can raise one’s consciousness to the spiritual level and thereby transcend not only the misery of death but also the preceding miseries in material existence by the by raising one’s consciousness thank you