Bhagavatam-daily 94 – 11.08.10 – Focus on essence takes us beyond peripheral differences among scriptures

Thank you Anubhya means smallest Anubhya means smallest Mahad is great Mahadbhashya is the greatest Shastrabhya Kushalona raha So A wise person Kushala is expert person Skilled person Shastrabhya Shastrabhya From various scriptures Naraha, the wise person Sarvatah saram adadya From everywhere Take the saar Take the essence Pushpebhya Iva shatpadaha Pushpebhya Pushpa is flower Just as from the flower Shatpadaha Hanibi Hanibi Has lots of feet So In a poetic sense The number 100 Is invoked And is referred to as a shatpadaha Hanibi may not be Exactly a centipede But the Pointer here is not numerical precision But Poetic allusion And what is mentioned here is The hanibi goes to different Flowers and takes nectar from them And Similarly Should a wise person Here the Brahmin is taking about what he learned from Various gurus and he is telling here What he has learned from the hanibi So this Can be an excellent Foundation for Interfaith And not just for interfaith But rather for Transcending superficial External controversies And contradictions When we study Scripture whether be it the Scripture of our own tradition or Scriptures of others traditions The point is that Actually Sarvatahasaram Adadhyad From everywhere we need to Seek the essence and Delight in the essence So Bhaktivinoda Thakur The Chaitanya Shikshama states that If we go to a Place of worship Of somebody Of some other tradition And their god is worshipped in a way different from What we are familiar to Then what should we do He says rather than thinking Oh this is a false god As there are many Religious traditions especially the Exclusives to religious traditions speak like this This all gods Except the one god revealed in our Scripture is a false god So instead of thinking that Way here the Bhaktivinoda Thakur says That we should say that here is the same one god Whom I am worshipping through my tradition And he has Manifested himself In a way different from What I am familiar with And even different from what I may be able to comprehend also But still Seeing how the lord Has manifested To extend his grace I feel My heart Attracted to the lord As he is worshipped according to The system that I am familiar with So there are three different things talked about First is that we See this wherever god Manifests we see However in different traditions people are worshipping God we see that as a manifestation of God’s grace So we don’t see it as just oh I am a Hindu And that they are Christians or I am Hindu And they are Muslims We see that this is also a manifestation Of God’s grace According to the level of those people Although that is also a manifestation That does not mean that we have to adopt that Entirely or indiscriminately No Rather He says that we should stand In a respectful mood over there and contemplate These things So Just as we Can appreciate Things from what so local Authors what mundane Authors have written Sometimes from Keats And K.R.D.R. Kapurling And other poets Especially Of the Vyasa Santra I agree On some occasions in his Hare Krishna Explosion And he would Use those quotes from them Not necessarily for Entire spiritual purpose He would use them to just say that Oh he did not like western medicine He did not like western Western Systems of diagnosis and things like that So anyway The point which you are making here is That Actually Prabhupada is ready Whenever required To study Other religious traditions also He went Actually Prabhupada He offered dramatically Different take from that of the Hindu right wing Prabhupada said Jesus Christ is also our Guru Who had so much Love for God that he was ready to Lay down his life for the service of God So It is Bhaktivinoda Thakur who first In our tradition mentioned that When Sambhavami yuge yuge I come in many trid… Every millennia So he, Prabhupada mentioned In his Bhagavata commentary that The appearance of God can also Include the appearance of his son and Appearance of his confidential servant This refers to the appearance of Jesus and Mohammed So either way The point is that our Acharyas have Accepted the Principle of devotion and the Principle of revelation Even within other religious traditions So So What is The context in which all this is spoken That Actually The Avadhut Brahmana is instructing Maharaj Yadu And he is telling that Savatasarama Take the essence from everything So now What this means is Not that we have to go out of our way To search various scriptures To find what their essence is No, we focus on the scriptures that are Revealed to us in our tradition And from those scriptures We understand the essence And whenever we Have to converse with people Who don’t share Our faith, then we can Focus on the essence and try to Share that essence with others Often the essence is universally Appealing if it is So The key point is That We don’t have to Although we don’t go about reading other scriptures to find out Their essence, but we understand the essence By serious study in our tradition And then If for the purposes of services or General hearing reading We find some Quotes from other traditions which also Substantiate this point of Substantiate the points Given in the various scriptures We accept those points as authority So for people who are Secular minded and Want to be atheistic To talk with them about The commonality of Love And the commonality of work That we have The idea would be that if we work according to what we Love to do And that was what Varanashram Actually did for society But even in that situation It’s not there Still We all have our duties And The important thing is that We Learn to stick a sock On the essence otherwise Bahush There is Bahushastra Bahuvakya chitta brahma hai Sadhana sadhya srishti na hai Nishchay Otherwise if we just study Shastra Ferret around a little bit in this Shastra Ferret around a little bit in that Shastra Ferret means just search around Then we will not get anything substantial We need to study Scripture in a much more serious And Serious way that befits the profundity Of scripture And by going deep within our tradition We will also be able to appreciate The depth that is there in other traditions But without living our Tradition deeply, without Drinking the nectar that is available in the Flower with us If we start flirting around Other flowers Then we will not know what the taste of nectar is at all And even when nectar is present In other flowers We will be caught by the Different appearance, the different looks As some similar Different points of cultural difference And we will not be able to See the one essence We will not be able to do So to be able to do this We need to Develop the mentality of a honey bee Which knows That there are many things apart from the honey Also in that flower Some parts of the flower will be Even rotten or whatever There may be so many other parts of the flower But the honey bee Doesn’t concern itself with that Similarly the serious seeker Does not become obsessed With the What to speak of other religious traditions But even within one’s own religious traditions There are always sociological And other controversies which keep coming up But we just need to Push them aside And fix ourselves In our loving relationship with Krishna And by that We can also Relish, not just lifelong But relish eternally The nectar of Love for Krishna Which is the Saramadhya, which is the essential conclusion of all Scripture.
Thank you