Bhagavatam-daily 78 – 11.07.68 – In scriptural study focus on practical application, not historical precision

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Bhagavatam 11768 अहों मे पश्चतापायं अल्पपुण्यस्य दुर्मतेहे अतुप्तस्या कृतार्थस्या ग्रहस्त्रैवर्गी कोहतः So here, the male pigeon is speaking and stating how he is expressing his lamentation. विल्ला अति दुखिता was mentioned in the previous verse, so this is the story of the pigeons being narrated by the Avadhut Brahmana to King Yadu, so अहों मे, अल्लास, अल्लास, I am seeing पश्चता, तापाय, आपश्चता, I am seeing what आपाय, आपाय is destruction, devastation, so this destruction has come upon me, अल्पपुण्यस्य, I who have very few पुण्य, my pious credits are insufficient, दुर्मतेहे, my intelligence is misdirected, अत्रुप्तस्याकृतार्थस्य, अत्रुप्तस्य, unsatisfied, अकृतार्थस्य, अर्थ is purpose, अकृत, the purpose of life has not been fulfilled, ग्रिहस् त्रैवर्गिको हतः, ग्रिहस् is of the householder life, त्रैवर्गिको हतः, त्रैवर्ग refers to the three purposes, धर्म, अर्थ and काम of life, हतः, my three purposes of life are destroyed, so now the अवदुद् ब्रामण is actually telling, giving vent to the grief and now the purpose of scripture more is not so much literal recitation of events as is it is a practical education in values, so here we may wonder what was this particular bird, the he-bird, was he some special bird that he could understand the concepts of धर्म, अर्थ and काम and was thinking that oh my धर्म, अर्थ and काम has not been fulfilled, now we do see in the past that there are talking animals, there in the Ramayana there are the वानराज who talk, but the वानराज it’s also mentioned in Ramayana they are not ordinary animals, they are actually वानराज and they are a species who is higher than humans actually, we see in terms of power also many of the वानराज are much stronger than humans, so they understand concepts of, Hanuman for example doesn’t just understand concepts of धर्म, he understands much more advanced concepts also, he is very very dharmic, so he is a teacher of धर्म also, exemplar of धर्म, so these are exceptions, so now in general we understand the capacity to perceive धर्म in terms of understanding the higher purposes of life, in terms of that is present only in humans, so was there some precocious pigeon who also had that capacity which normally humans only have, the point here is that it could have been, the Acharyas are not making any specific comments on this particular perspective, on this particular issue, it is possible that sometimes a bird may be, a soul may have been in a human body, practice spiritual life and thereafter gone into a, because of some unfortunate attachment may have gone into a animal body, but not be reduced to animal consciousness as it happened in the case of say Bharat Maharaj who became a deer because of attachment to a deer, but still retained human consciousness, that’s why he did not frolic around like a deer, rather he actually tried to stay with the sages and learn from them, now we also have Gajendra who also was living like ordinary elephant lives, but then at the moment of crisis remembered spiritual values and offered prayers to the Lord, so there are multiple possibilities, there can be some extraordinary souls who are in bodies of lower species, but their consciousness either by some special arrangement of the Lord or by some devotional spiritual activity done in the past, they still have some higher perception available at that time, and that manifests either throughout the life as happened in the case of a deer or it manifests occasionally as happened, it happened not occasionally, in the moment of crisis as it happened with Gajendra, but either way there is no such mention of this pigeon being some special soul who has somehow got a pigeon’s body or it is that it was a soul of a devotee in a previous life who later became a pigeon, but somehow it’s just the Brahmana while moving around in nature observed a pigeon and observed the life and learned from it, so in the framing narrative nothing special about the pigeon is mentioned, so when we focus on scriptural study, now the scripture is not giving us a course in Ethology, Ethology is the study of animals in their natural habitat, it is actually giving us education in spirituality, so what can we humans learn from this situation, so if somebody finds it difficult to accept that there was a bird who could speak, who could lament about oh my dharma, artha, kama has not been fulfilled, such a person can also understand that actually what is important is not the literal narration of facts, but it is the practical application in our life and so how a human being who is trapped in a similar situation would respond and what we as human beings can learn that is also being depicted through the story, so it’s so easy in Kalyuga to get distracted from the essence even while we are studying the essence, when there are so many distractions in life as it is we have internet, TV, movies and materialistic culture all around us filling us with temptations, but even when we study scripture our minds often can get caught in peripherals in scripture and if our mind is caught peripherally in the peripherals of scripture then we cannot learn the essential essence, so we instead of focusing on peripherals, did it exactly happen like this, this is also the special pigeon who had the knowledge of dharma, artha, kama or was it that in the past ages all pigeons had the understanding of dharma, artha, kama or was it that this is what the lesson that is to be learned for us and that is being projected by the Abdud Brahmana into the character of the bird, so thereby creating some sort of a historical novel, a historical novel is something in which it is definitely based on history but many of the details which are not available in the historical record are filled using the standards of novels, so it could be any of these and the important point is that we are not studying Bhagavatam to learn history, we are studying Bhagavatam to learn spirituality and the spiritual principle remains relevant and applicable irrespective of how we see this particular detail in the story and that universally relevant spiritual principle is that one who is extremely attached and one who stays caught at the material level of reality because of the attachment misses out on fulfilling the purposes of life, only missing out on fulfilling the spiritual purpose of life but also on getting inevitable frustration at the material level in life also and that’s why we should not let ourselves be thus misled and entrapped, that is the core lesson that we should focus on when we try to learn from this pastime