Bhagavatam-daily 213 – 11.11.18 – Know not just the letter of the Vedas but their purpose too

Thank you Krishna is speaking to Uddhava and he is talking about the characteristics of a liberated soul after describing how such a liberated soul is detached from worldly things Krishna now moves on to another characteristic that we should not conflate rote learning with spiritual liberation mere learning or mere relation with a liberated state if somebody is expert in scripture that means someone is expert especially in the Vedas and by the Vedas quite often Krishna refers to the Bhagavatam also in general refers to the Karmakand section wherein the focus is not so much on transcendence not so much on liberation as on elevation the focus is on attaining the heaven attaining heavens not going beyond material existence only when one knows that absolute truth one goes beyond the cycle of birth and death there is no other path for attaining that state of going beyond death and going beyond material existence and here Krishna is stating a similar point that if somebody knows the Vedas but but doesn’t know the the transcendental absolute truth, the supreme lord, the supreme person, density person’s labor is futile so Vishwanath Achyut Thakur explains that here refers not to the Brahman effulgence but to the transcendental lord but to the person manifesting the absolute truth as Krishna will use that reference in that sense soon in future verses and of course it is Krishna himself who is speaking and further we see in the Bhagavad Gita also Krishna talks about how by all the Vedas I am to be known and yet he also says that one needs to go beyond the Vedas into point 45 he states that the Vedas deal with subject matter in the three modes and go beyond the three modes go beyond the three modes and in this way is there a contradiction? no the Bhagavad Gita moves organically from the Vedas to the purpose of the Vedas which lies beyond the letter of the Vedas so here Krishna is telling that similarly somebody is expert in the letter of the Vedas but is not is not expert in knowing the purpose of the Vedas that person labor is futile we see this in the Brahmana pastime where they were expert at doing the Vedic sacrifices but they were lost as far as they did not understand that the lord of sacrifice Bhagavad Gita 9.24 Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita 9.24 that he is the he is the enjoyer and the master of all sacrifices that Yajneshwar had come to their Yajnesthali asking for food but the Brahmanas did not realize who this Yajneshwar Yajneshwar had come in the sense that he had sent his friends asking for food but they did not knew because they did not understand so they knew the letter of the Vedas they knew based on the letter of the Vedas how to perform sacrifices but they did not know how to fulfill the purpose of the Vedas by worshipping the transcendental lord properly so such people are reproached by Krishna here and he says their labor is their shrama goes waste and for that wastage he gives the example here of a person who is taking care of a cow which gives no milk so we need to understand this example carefully because at one level we know that even today it’s a matter of great concern for followers of the Vedic tradition about that cows are being neglected of course they are being slaughtered even when they are young but the followers those who are do go say I don’t want the cows to be killed even after they have stopped lactating stopped giving milk so it’s a sacred duty to protect them and this sacred duty protects the Vaishyas from becoming greedy because when everything we start seeing simply in commercial terms how much money how much money how much money this will give me how much money this will give me then we get excessive commercialized vision but we are told ok this is something which you have to do irrespective of whether you get money or not then gradually the obsession for money decreases and one starts thinking of other things also and then one starts saying oh this cow the cow is so gentle cow is so maternal and I shouldn’t just see the cow as a learning device I should see a cow as a object of object of affection and that way one’s consciousness gradually starts expanding by doing Go Seva and Go Raksha as a mandated activity then why is Krishna after saying that Go Raksha is a mandated activity now here comparing an unproductive activity with with caring for a unproductive cow here Krishna is drawing an example from ordinary judgment it’s not that Krishna is supporting the Krishna is supporting that oh if a cow is not giving milk now stop caring for it Krishna is simply saying simply giving an example drawn from ordinary perception that people in general if they want to know what are the things that are a burden for them so if something is not giving any result and still we have to do it we would consider that to be a burden so from people’s mundane perception point of view taking care of a cow which is not giving milk will be seen as a burden now of course the point of Krishna’s example is not to say that that perception is correct it’s simply to use that common perception to illustrate a scriptural principle so in the Bhagavatam earlier that has been used by by Suta Goswami while describing how all kinds of activities if they are if one does not bring attraction to Krishna then it’s I mean the 10th Canto Brahmaji has also used another example that if one does not practice Bhakti then even the cultivating great knowledge of course there he is not talking about Karmakanda he is not talking about Vedas he is talking about a path of impersonal realization but the principle remains the same anything without Krishna is futile and there he gives the example that beating husk from which the grains have already been taken out so the same principle that everything is futile without Krishna can be illustrated using various examples and here the particular example that is used is of how is from not from the point of scriptural mandate it is the point of a common perception and the point of the example is to illustrate that that mere expertise in Vedas without mere knowledge of Vedas without knowing Krishna is futile