Bhagavatam-daily 275 – 11.13.8 – Illusion makes us to stick to the source of suffering

Shuddha Vacham Vidanti Martya Prayena Vishayan Padma Padam Kathapi Bhunjate Krishna Tatkatham Shukha Rajyatavat Shuddha said Vidanti Martya Prayena They know Martya people know that Vishayan Padma Padam the pursuit of sense gratification material life brings Padma Padam, becomes miserable Kathapi Bhunjate Krishna Tatkatham Shukha Rajyatavat How is it possible as if they are like Shukha Rajyatavat, like dogs, asses and goats so here Uddhava is asking a question similar to Krishna’s similar to Arjuna’s in the Bhagavad Gita 3.36 where Arjuna had asked so Arjuna had asked and here Krishna is asking Uddhava is asking something similar that people know the pursuit of sense gratification leads to misery and yet they pursue sense gratification why is that? Krishna will reply in a philosophical way explaining the nature of illusion how sense gratification deludes us how maya distorts our perception and makes us do the very thing that causes us misery but what we need to do is recognize at this stage the significance of the examples that Uddhava has used over here Arjuna does not use any such examples Tatkatham Shukha Rajyatavat so Shwa is a dog the word Shwa is used by Krishna in various ways especially in the famous Vidya Vinaya Sampanya Brahmins use Shwa Shwa is used over there so Khara and Ajah Khara is the ass Ajah is the goat so the point being made here is that why is the person behaving like an animal now dogs there are different perceptions of dogs at one level a dog is considered to be like a faithful servant and that’s why Bhaktanath Thakur prays that Vishnava Thakur Tomara Kukur I want to be like your dog so the idea is that we can look at nature in objective ways and we can learn the positive and also learn the corrective so Shwa is the dog so at one level we can learn from the dog that oh a dog is so faithful so when we are serving someone we should also remain faithful and serve faithfully at the same time we can also learn something else that is that a dog is sometimes known to act foolishly so Acharya has given the example that sometimes the dog is supposed to be an intelligent person but then the pursuit of food and sex can make even an intelligent animal foolish so sometimes when a dog goes to a she-dog a bitch for getting pleasure and she is not interested and she snarls and bites and the dog gets hurt sometimes the dog is going for food somewhere and although that master has a stick or that person holds whatever the dog wants the person has a stick or a stone and beats the dog or sometimes while stealing the dog foolishly barks and then the owner comes and hits him so essentially the dog is not very prudent in its pursuits and because of this imprudence the dog ends up causing harm to itself and the way to deal with this is to not have dog like consciousness so we humans are meant for higher consciousness and the highest consciousness is the consciousness of knowing and working towards an eternal destination now of course the animals can’t do that we humans have the capacity to pursue that and obviously we humans also need food, we need to take care of the bodily needs but we don’t have to let the body needs become the goal of our life and certainly we shouldn’t pursue them so disproportionately as to let it consume us and hurt us, so sometimes people overeat to such an extent that while other people are starving and dying these people overeat and die so essentially life can be very disruptive if we let ourselves be disrupted, dominated degraded by our desires for bodily pleasure so Shiva the dog is considered in that sense although it’s faithful but it’s not considered a very intelligent creature Shiva-Khara and now Khara of course is donkey, donkey is foolish and the folly of the donkey is again seen in both ways, one is that sometimes the donkey approaches the she-donkey and the she-donkey kicks and the donkey is so foolish that it thinks that oh that kick also it’s seen as a sign of pleasure and of course we know the donkey is Aishwarya Prabhupada writes in the 7.15 purport, the donkey is the emblem of stupidity it carries so much burden maybe huge number of clothes if it is a the donkey of a washerman and all that it gets at the end of all that labour is just a little bit of grass and it could have got that grass anywhere, now again this example is pointed not to say that we humans should not work hard but we should work intelligently in a way that the result that we get is proportionate to the kind of effort that we are putting into the work if we work, work, work and don’t get any result that is worthwhile then what is the use of such working so that was the third example of archery, now a goat is a standard example given for obliviousness about imminent danger especially slaughter, the goat stands in a slaughter queue and is satisfied with a little bunching of grass not even noticing, not even protesting that the goats ahead in the line are being slaughtered and soon it will be its turn to be slaughtered, so like that we humans if we just get a little bit of self gratification, we don’t perceive our imminent mortality and thus we stay satisfied in petty pleasures while the ghastly danger of death still awaits us so here Buddha was asking this question that how is it normally we human beings are pleasure seeking and pain avoiding but how is it that the hope for this little pleasure sense gratification makes us choose and accept huge amounts of pain that are entirely disproportionate to the amount of pleasure that we get in the sense of gratification so risking beating, risking death risking humiliation all this is the little pleasure of sense gratification worth it all, it is not and yet human beings for the sake of that little pleasure undergo so much trouble, so why do they do this that is the question of Uddhava over here, thank you