Bhagavatam-daily 8 – 11.06.47 – What the impersonalists attain with difficulty devotees attain that and more with ease

Thank you. vāta-vasana Those who wear the dress, vasana, of vāta, air, that means those who are not having any dress. yarishayaḥ such sages śramaṇa strict followers the śramaṇas were at ascetics, basically.
urdhra-mantinaham They have raised their semen upwards by sexual continence. brahma-akhyam dhāmateyānti That abode known as Brahma, they attain. This is in Persian Brahman.
śāntahaḥ sannyāsinomalhaḥ These peaceful renunciates who are sinless, attain this destination. So, now, this verse from the Bhāgavatam is spoken by Uddhava as he is going to beseech the Lord for guidance. And he has previously talked about the glory of devotional service.
In the previous verse, he said that just by accepting the prasāda of the Lord, one can conquer over illusion. And in the next verse also, he will say that just by practicing devotional service, one will cross over material existence. In this verse, when he talks about this process of impersonal realization, he is talking about this primarily to contrast the difficulty of this process with the ease of the process of bhakti.
So, he is not denying the validity of the process. It is a process by which one can attain brahmākhyam param, dhāmate yānti, one can attain brahma. But then, it’s very difficult.
What is the difficulty? That actually one has to do so many things, sannyāsī, uddhamantina, one has to be renunciate, one has to turn the sim in upwards, one has to shāntah, one has to be very peaceful, one has to be, as is śramaṇa, sannyāsī, renunciate. So, the bhavita talks about this also, saying that the impersonals also attain kṛṣṇa, but for those whose mind is attached to the impersonal for them progress is very difficult. This is not to mean that they cannot progress.
Śrīmad Bhāgavatam actually, to some extent, accommodates the impersonalists also, as in the Bhagavad Gītā, in the sense that bhāgavatam states that here the impersonals will also, that they will have to attain the Brahman destination. Now, in the verse itself, there is no mention that the process is very difficult, there are no words like that, glacier, as there are explicitly in the Bhagavad Gītā 12.5. But, it’s clear from the criteria, that one has to be sannyāsī, amala, urdhamantina, one has to be śramaṇa, that actually all this talks about a renounced order. So, even if for argument’s sake, we grant that the impersonalist path also leads to perfection, still the impersonalist path is very demanding, it requires external renunciation, it requires inner pacification that drives us, and after that, slowly, often laboriously, one rises to the Brahman realization.
But, if one can actually move on towards Krishna by the process of bhakti, then, śuśukha mūkharta bhauja, it is a joyfully performed process, and sometimes the Uddhav Gītā is actually a misunderstood monistic song. Vishwanath Pitakur explains in his overall comments in the book that the Uddhav Gītā does acknowledge jñāna as a valid process, and because it’s a book that focuses on renunciation from the world, considering the impending doom of the Yadu dynasty for Uddhava. So, the Uddhav Gītā’s message is that better to renounce the world, if you can do it by bhakti, that is the best.
If you can’t do it by bhakti, then do it by jñāna, but anyway renounce the world. That is the central message of the Uddhav Gītā. So, that also in one sense harmonizes the overall message from the context of the Bhāgavatam.
Parīkṣit Mahārāja has to renounce the world preferably to act according to bhakti, if you can’t then act according to karma. So, scripture has a central core and a peripheral context. Central core message is consistent always and that is the central message of the Uddhav Gītā.
Gītā. So, is the central message of the Gītā. So, now that laziness is often referring to how we are very lethargic about applying ourselves to spirituality.
So, although bhakti is a remarkably easy process especially when compared to the other yogic processes still Bhakti can seem very demanding and it seems like that because the mind is expert at imagining that alternatives might be better. So maybe actually I am more of an intellectual, maybe yarn might be better for me. Actually I have a lot of dynamic activity desire in me, so maybe karma might be, karma yoga might be better for me.
No. Whatever we might be better at, all that can be used in bhakti yoga. Because whatever other faculties we may have, whether we are extroverts or whether we are active or whether we are contemplative, ultimately all our faculties follow the heart and bhakti addresses the heart.
So by practicing bhakti yoga, we actually harness whatever other faculties we may have and bhakti yoga provides room for utilizing whatever faculties we have in his service. That means if we are intellectuals, that doesn’t mean that we have to follow the jnana path. Bhakti is so inclusive that we can use our intelligence in rendering service to Krishna and sharing Krishna’s message and thereby we can actually practice the path of bhakti.
So bhakti includes the intellect, you don’t have to give up bhakti to give room for the intellect to act. And the same applies to various other faculties also that we may have. So whatever can be attained by other impersonal, other transcendentalists by great effort, that can be attained by devotees with relative ease in comparatively speaking.
And it is this message of the ease of devotional service as compared to the complexity and difficulty of other processes that can act as an impetus for us to wholeheartedly practice bhakti.