Bhagavatam-daily 38 – 11.07.28 – Ability present, activity absent is astonishing

Srimad Bhagavatam 11.7.28 Here, Maharaja Yadu is speaking to the Avadhut Brahmana, and he is highlighting the paradox between ability and inactivity that characterizes this remarkable individual. So, tvam tu kalpaha. Kalpaha means you are capable of doing things, and sometimes some people might just be physically capable, but he says you are not just physically capable of doing things, you are kavir, you are actually learned, you are daksha, you are expert, then subhago, subhago means your body is well formed, you are handsome, amritabhashana, and actually, you are having sweet speech.
So, now if you think about this, these are the qualities that any person who wants to be successful in this world will want to have. And if a person has these characteristics, that person would think that, oh, now I will have a dream success in my life. I’m clever, I’m handsome, I have sweet speech, I have skills, I have relationship expertise, I’ll conquer the world.
Now, actually, everybody has the desire to do wonderful things, desire to show how great I am, desire to enjoy, but many people don’t have the qualities by which to do these things. Now, Maharaj Yadu is pointing out, you have all these qualities, and yet, what are you doing? na kartane hase kin cheech. You are not doing anything, and you are not even desiring anything.
jada unmat pisha chavat. And he’s saying you are living like a jada, like a stupefied person, or even a unmat, a maddened person, pisha chavat, almost like a ghost. So, now, the last three, last three describers seem to be in jarring contrast with the earlier positive describers.
And actually, he may say that to call somebody like a ghost would be an insult to that person. Actually, jada and unmat itself is bad enough, but, oh, you are foolish. Jada is more like dumb, like a dumb person.
Unmat is like a maddened person. Dumb is more like dull, but person doesn’t do much. Unmat means a person does a lot of crazy activities.
And pisha chavat means it’s even worse. So, you are like a ghost itself. So, why this contrast between the first two lines is describing such excellent qualities and last line is practically blaspheming? No, that is not a blasphemy in the last lines.
It is actually a description of the kind of activities that he is doing. He is describing in a provocative way, but he’s just lying down, doing nothing. And this sort of activity is not what normal materialistic people consider civilized or normal activity.
So, often, our fear of the unfamiliar leads us to label the unfamiliar in unflattering categories. That means, if we can’t make sense of someone, what the person is doing, then we think, oh, that person might be having a little, as in they say, screwdela, a little loose screw. The person must be a little crazy.
So, we often give unflattering labels to unfamiliar behavior. So, in common parlance, this kind of behavior, where a person just sits around doing nothing, as we’ll see later, that would be considered very odd. And so, he’s using this provocative description so as to highlight the contrast.
Normally, if a person has good looks, has good intelligence, good speech, good abilities, then such a person would actually behave in a way by which one could conquer the world. But here, you don’t care for the world at all. There are some people who don’t do activity because they don’t have ability.
But you have ability, still you don’t do activity. Now, not only are you not doing activity, you don’t even have the mentality to do activity. You don’t even have these desires.
So, now, you will ask, what is the reason for this? Why are you lying like this? Jadawat. So, Vishwanath Chakravorty Thakur, in his commentary, mentions that each of these qualities is significant. Subhago, for example, he says that you are handsome.
That means that it is, you can actually get the association of beautiful woman if you want. Similarly, you can get wealth, you can get followers, you can get influence because you have intelligence, you have eloquence, you have skills, but you are getting none of the things. So, here, this particular person’s example shatters the stereotype of spiritualists as good for nothing people.
As people who renounce the world because of a spoiled grape sort of attitude. Because they could not get the grape, because when the wolf or the fox could not get the grapes because the grapes were too high. So, the fox label the grapes as sour grapes.
We all know that story. Similarly, people think that when somebody is not able to achieve anything worthwhile in the world, then that person renounces the world and labels the world as an evil place. But one of the surprising things about the Krishna consciousness movement also for many devotees when they come is the sheer number of educated, qualified, intelligent people who are there and that makes them think, why has someone taken a path like this? This person could have achieved so much in the world.
So, actually, we take to Krishna consciousness not because the world is too difficult to gain, but because the world is not worthwhile enough to gain. Actually, the world is not too big to attain, rather the world is too small to attain. What do we mean too small to attain? When a person’s spiritual intelligence awakens, then that person thinks that I am an eternal being.
So, I should achieve something that will stay with me forever. Why should I strain so much energy and spend my whole life trying to achieve something which will go away? So, the world with all its resources is temporary and therefore a wise person feels, why should I chase after this world? Because anyway, even if I achieved, it’s not going to stay with me. So, you turn away from the world not because it is too big to attain.
So many talents are required. I don’t have those talents. So much work will be required.
I can’t do so much work. So, it appears too big to attain and so we give it up. That’s not the reason why a devotee renounces the world.
A devotee turns away from the world. By turning away here, it’s not necessarily sanyasis and brahmacharis. It’s even people who, anybody who is serious about spiritual life, there has to be some level of turning away from the world.
Even if one is living in the world, but they’re not devotees also not infatuated with the world. They have their sights fixed higher beyond this world. So, we understand that our heart longs for eternal love and this world with all its promises is too small to satisfy our heart’s longing for immortal love and that’s why we long for something big enough to satisfy our heart’s eternal longing for love and that biggest person is Krishna.
So, we turn, we have the ability to enjoy this world if we want to, but we turn away from it because we understand the world is too small and I want something which is bigger. So, we don’t think of the bigness in terms of, bigness of our goals doesn’t mean that we think we are big people. No, we are small, but by Krishna’s grace, we can achieve the big results.
The biggest achievement in life we can achieve by his mercy. So, of course, some people may come because of distress towards Krishna also and at one level, however we come to Krishna, that is good. But if you have to sustain ourselves in Krishna, then that has to be, that sustenance is possible based on a conviction of the glory of Krishna and the futility of the world, not just frustration with the world.
So, frustration means I can’t get it. Futility means it’s not worth getting. And so, we have to rise from recognizing the first, recognizing, rise from the frustrating experience of the world to realizing the futility of worldly achievements and further to realizing the glory of devotional achievements and then we will march ahead