Bhagavatam tenth canto study 11 – 10.2.25-30 The devatas glorify the true nature of the Absolute Truth

Srimad Bhagavatam Canto 10 Chapter 2 Prayers by the Devata, demigods Garbhastuti chapter, well known chapter in the 10th canto and text 25 onwards So, the back story here is that Krishna has appeared in the womb of Devaki and the devatas have now come there to offer their prayers to Krishna. So, at that time, because the supreme lord whom they had earlier prayed to, because they had been terrorised by Kamsa and other demons, that lord had answered their prayer and has now come here. Therefore, they are gratefully appealing to him and Brahma Bhavashya Tatraitya Tatraitya, there Brahma and Shiva came there along with Munibhir Narada Narada Muni is one of the most celebrated sages and he is almost omnipresent in scripture wherever we whichever pastime we see there we see Narada Muni is practically there and Devai Saanucharai Saakam Devatas came along with their followers Saanucharai So, Prabhupada mentioned the purport of devatas were like Indra, Chandra Varuna and others Girbhir Vrishanam Ai Dayan Girbhir and they offered prayers to him Vrishanam Ai Dayan Vrishanam means that lord who can satisfy anyone who can bestow blessings upon everyone that lord appeared here and he that lord has appeared here and then he is pleased pacified by the devatas by their prayers so these prayers are beautiful and the first prayer itself is a classic this text, text 26 Satya Pratam Satya Param Tri Satyam Satyasya Yonim Nihitam Ja Satya Satyasya Satyam Hritha Satya Netram Satyatmakam Twam Sharanam Prapanna Satyatmakam Twam Sharanam Prapanna So in this verse, the word satya comes thrice in the first line, satya-vratam, satya-param tri-satyam, then it comes once in the second line, satya-se-yonim nihitam chisatye, then it comes thrice again in the third line, satya-se-satyam nithi-satya-netram, satya-atmakam tvam sharanam prapanna.
In this way, eight times this word comes. And the most beautiful prayers, satya-vratam. You are true to your vow, O Lord.
When we had prayed to you asking that please descend and rescue us from the danger of these demons, you have now descended. So you are indeed true to your word, O Lord. We are grateful to you.
Satya-param. And it is not surprising, actually Prabhupada would say that it is not wonderful that you are true to your word because you are yourself the supreme truth, you are the transcendental truth, you are the omnipotent truth, tri-satyam. Tri-satyam means, satya refers here to the past, present and future.
The three phases of reality, past, present and future, in all of them you reign supreme. And that means here what is said is that, actually, tri-satyam means that the Lord reigns supreme in past, present and future, that means that He is actually present as the Lord of everything, be it in the beginning of creation, in the middle while the creation is on and at the end when the creation ends. He remains the Lord eternally.
He is beyond everything that we might experience in this world otherwise because He is the supreme, He is the eternal supreme. There is nothing beyond Him and thus He is our eternal Lord, indeed. There is nothing more that He can achieve, that there is no truth beyond Him.
That you are the womb of the truth, that means it is through you that you appear, it is through you that all truth appears, the world appears true to us. But where does the truth of the world come from? It comes from you, O Lord. If you were not real, nothing would be real.
Hitam cha satya, hitam cha satya, you know that. Actually, whatever you have ordained, that becomes the truth. The world is sustained, you have entered into this world and that’s why this world is true.
The world will not appear true, as the first verse of the Bhagavatam itself says that. This world is given the sense of reality because of the supreme reality is present over here. Without Him, that would not be there.
Satya sa satyam, ritya satya netram, satya sa satyam, among all. So, the impersonalists say that there is truth and falsity, that this world is maya and beyond the world is Brahman, who is the supreme reality. But here it is said, satya sa satyam, that means you are the supreme truth among all truths.
There is no truth beyond you. So, there can be multiple levels of truths. Satya sa satyam, although there can be multiple levels of truth, but you are the supreme truth.
Ritya satya netram, that my dear Lord, whatever you speak, the pleasing truths that are there in this world, they all come from you. That means anybody who is wise, anybody who gives some insight, where do those people get the capacity to give insight from? It comes from you. Anyone who speaks pleasingly and enlighteningly, that capacity comes from you.
Satya netram satyatmakam tvam. You, my dear Lord, you are the essence of truth. Atmakam, your essence is true.
You, your whole being, your body, mind, soul are all spiritual. You are Satchitananda. You are transcendental to this world and therefore, tvam sharanam prapannam.
O Lord, we surrender to you. So, actually, one of the fundamental necessities for surrender is the understanding that without Krishna, we are all incomplete. That without Krishna, whatever we have, even if it seems to be real, it is not actually real.
It is temporary, has the appearance of reality, after which it will become illusory. So therefore, what we need to do is recognise that He is our eternal Lord and He is the person whom we are to take shelter of. In this world, we want what is real.
We want what is authentic. We want to check if somebody is, somebody looks very attractive. So, are they really like that? That is it that when they don’t have any makeup, when they don’t have any, they may look wonderful in public, in the public eye, but privately, how are they? Is or their charm, their glamour, is it for real or is it just a show which they put on as a performance before others? So, this can be understood and when we understand this, then it is very endearing when we see that it is present in the Lord.
In this world, there are different people who may have different levels of attractiveness, but the supreme attractiveness is in the Supreme Lord. So, tvaṁ śaraṇaṁ prapannaḥ, let us surrender to that Lord, there is no one beyond Him who can be the object of our surrender. When He is there, why do we need anything or anyone else for surrendering to? So, He is our eternal Lord.
It’s text 27 now. Actually, these prayers in the Bhagavatam are quite profound and philosophical prayers and sometimes when people read a novel, they read the sections which are interesting and the sections where nothing much seems to be happening, they skip it over and they hope they can figure out things without, even if they have skipped out, skip those sections. They want to get to the real action, the real masala.
So, sometimes it is said, author says that when they are editing the book, we should edit out the sections that people will skip over. We should edit out the section that people will skip over. That means, anything that people are inclined to skip over, we don’t keep it in our book, so that people will read everything.
So, now if we consider the Bhagavatam, if people see that as a book of stories and the Tenth Canto has many beautiful leelas, so amidst all these leelas, what is the reason for anyone to even have such profound prayers, which for all practical purposes would look like sections which people will skip over? Most people are not going to read these complicated prayers. So, why does the Bhagavatam, not just once or twice, but repeatedly bring in these prayers, in long prayers? And now here also if you will see, at what point are these prayers coming? They are coming in the midst of some dramatic suspenseful action. Krishna’s earlier brothers have all been, his older brothers have all been killed and whether he is going to be born or not, whether he will meet a similar fate, we don’t know.
And even with not knowing all this, still they are, I mean, although it is uncertain whether he will be, all the suspense is there, adrenaline of suspense, if we go into a long abstract philosophy, most people might just skip that and move on to something else. So, why does the Bhagavatam contain this? Even if we say that that’s how the events happened and they are describing that, but you know the events have happened, but every narration is actually a selection. At every moment, so many things are happening that nobody can actually tell all of it at the same moment, nobody can tell all of it.
You have to describe everything that happened in one day, we cannot do it exhaustively. So, every narration is a selection where the narrator selects what they feel is the most important, what the readers need to know and based on that, things move on. So, if that is the case, then why would the narrator of the Srimad Bhagavatam have something like this, profound prayers right at the moment of the action? And we will see this not once or twice, but this is something that characterises the Bhagavatam throughout.
And that’s because these prayers serve a vital purpose. They serve the purpose of reminding us that this person whom we are observing, about whom the story is being told, this person is no ordinary person. He is the supreme being and by understanding him, by understanding his position, we can become transcendentally attracted to him.
As Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that, janma karma chame divyam evam yo vetti tattva taha tyaktva deham punar janma naiti maa meti so arjuna. So, maa meti, when will we be able to attain him? When we understand him in truth. So, these prayers help us to understand Krishna in truth.
They help us to remember who he is and to thereby move forwards towards attaining him. So, here there is a complex prayer offered that, so after understanding this context of why these prayers are there, now let us look at this particular prayer. Eka ano asau bhi palashtri mulas.
So, eka ano, eka ano. So, there is one living entity who is in this material world in a body. There is of course a super soul, but there is one person, one soul in that body.
Eka ano. So, aadi vrukshaha. So, there are the, this is like the original tree which is the body from which in that tree is situated the living being.
From that, in that there are from, if you consider it to be a tree, just as tree gives fruits, there are two fruits, happiness and distress. And three mulas, the trees grow, so this tree grow by the three modes of material nature. There are four kinds of tastes.
Dharma, artha, kaama, moksha people get. Panchavidha. And there are five senses with which the souls acquire knowledge in the material world and they experience sadatma.
They actually experience six kinds of circumstances, lamentation, illusion, old age, death, hunger and thirst. And then sappattvag, that is covered over, just as a tree is covered over by bark. There are seven layers of bark, we have the seven components of the material body, skin, blood, muscle, fat, bone, marrow and semen.
And then the tree has eight branches, you could say. Ashtavittapo, these are the five gross elements and subtle elements. And navakshu, so there are the nine holes in the body, the two excretory organs, the two eyes, the two ears, the nostrils and the mouth.
And then there, it has interest in it to unleash itself, which refers to the ten airs which pass through the body. And in this body, there are two words, vikako, the whole point of analysis of material nature is to understand what lies beyond material nature. And this, without getting into the technicalities of the specific analysis that is being done over here, can focus on the principle that there is a fundamental difference between material sciences approach to studying material nature and spiritual subject matters or spiritualities or scriptures approach to studying material nature.
So science may analyse periodic elements, science may analyse different kinds of fundamental particles and all that can be interesting to some people, all that can be quite helpful in learning how to function in this world. But the purpose of spiritual knowledge is ultimately to go beyond this world. And for going beyond this world, we focus primarily on understanding what exists beyond this world.
So the whole purpose of this analysis is, the well known metaphor is that there are two birds in a tree. So now that metaphor is elaborately developed over here. But again, the purpose of the metaphor is that although the tree can be analysed in many different ways, the important thing is not the tree, but the two birds and that transcendental bird who is there.
So sometimes when scriptures use technical analysis, we can go into the technicalities if that is what interests us. But sometimes the technicalities may seem so either uninteresting or overwhelming, incomprehensible. And because of that, we may start feeling, oh, I can never understand scripture.
But it’s not like that. Each culture, scripture is spoken in a particular, the Bhagavatam is spoken in a particular cultural context. And at that time, there is a particular way of looking at the world.
Today, the way of looking at the world is different. At that time, Ayurveda was, say, a prominent mode of treatment. Now, allopathy is a prominent mode of treatment.
There are simply different ways of looking at the material nature. We are not talking about what is right and what is wrong. That could be a different issue, different subject.
But the important thing is that the material world is complex and it can be analysed in different ways. So rather than getting into technicalities of analysis, we can focus on the purpose of the analysis. The purpose of analysis in the Bhagavatam is to take us towards Bhagavan.
So let’s focus on that here. So the devatas, after doing this analysis, they focus, there are the two birds. And then there is that supreme bird, there is the transcendental bird.
He is the object of prayers over here. My dear lord, you are the one supreme reality. There is no one beyond you.
At this material world, which is now visible to us, you are its original source. So, you are the supreme object of shelter when everything is destroyed. So basically, we are talking that this bird who is situated in the heart, the second bird, is not just ordinary bird.
He is the source of the world. He is the resort of the world or the refuge of the world after the world is destroyed. And then while it is there also, you are, it is by your, you are the maintainer of this world.
It is by your mercy the world is maintained. That although you are so intimately and so eternally connected with the world, why is it that people are not able to perceive you? Because people are covered by maya. Chetasastvam, their consciousness is covered by maya and thus, Pashyantinanana Vipashchitoye.
As I ought to speak of ordinary people, even Vipashchito, even the learned people, actually Pashyanti Vipashchitoye. Ordinary people cannot, those who are covered by maya cannot see this. But Vipashchita, those who are learned, they can see this.
So, there is a fundamental difference between how ordinary people see things and how the educated people see things. And a person is coughing, ordinary people say this person is simply coughing. The doctor will see, oh, this person has got some disease.
Maybe they got TB or they got some other disease. So, the doctor will see much more even on seeing those things. And in many ways, knowledge means to see more than what our eyes show.
Knowledge means to see more than what our eyes show. That is seeing with knowledge. Otherwise, what the eyes show, everybody sees that.
What is the big deal in seeing that? It is only when we learn to see something beyond what our eyes are showing, that is when we grow. That is what is being seen over here by the sages, Vipashchito, that although the world is what we see, the wise see beyond the world to the sustainer of the world. So, Emerson has said that, Emerson was a western thinker and American prominent thinker and he said that, all that I have seen increases my faith in the one whom I have not seen.
So, the Lord may be invisible, but the wise people, they can actually see the visible and infer the invisible. In fact, all scientific knowledge is about looking at universal principles beyond the visible specifics, visible phenomena. So, taking this principle deeper, science looks only for material principles underlying the material phenomena, natural causes for natural phenomena, but we go deeper beyond the material to the transcendental.
And that is the vision the devatas are offering, my dear Lord. So, the point is that you who are in this womb, you are no ordinary person. You are the source and sustainer of this universe.
And next verse, verse no. 29, विभर्षिरूपान्यवभोधात्मः शेमायूसलोकस्यचराचरस्यन् सत्वोपपान्नानिसुखावहानि सतामबद्राणिमुहःखलानान विभर्षिरूपान्यवभोधात्मः So, you, my dear Lord, accept various forms, you manifest in various forms. So, the Lord is invisible.
Does He always stay invisible? No. By His mercy, He also becomes visible in this world sometimes. विभर्षिरूपान्यवभोधात्मः And although you assume these forms, you descend in these various forms, that doesn’t mean that you become deluded.
When we get a material body, quite often, we become deluded by that material body. But such is not the case of the Lord. विभर्षिरूपान्यवभोधात्मः You remain transcendental.
You remain full of knowledge. शेमाय लोकस्य चराचरस्य You descend to the world to do good to all living beings. चर and चर, the moving and non-moving.
All living beings, you descend to do good to them. शेमाय सत्वोपपन्नानि सुखावाणि सुखावाणि My dear Lord, you are yourself full of transcendental bliss and you wish to give bliss to all living beings. But those who are सत्वोपपन्नानि that means those who have situated that you, O Lord, who are always transcendental, you bring joy to the सतां.
So you bring सुखावाणि सतां You bring happiness to those who are truthful, those who are situated in सत्, those who are the devotees, those who are the transcendentalists. So, on the other hand, अभध्राणि मुहु खलानाम But the demons, they feel as if, O Lord, you have done a great injustice to them. That you have actually that you have hurt them, you are inauspicious for them actually.
Even for the demons, the Lord is auspicious, but they don’t feel he is auspicious. They feel that he has come to disrupt all their plans, to destroy them, and that’s why they do not appreciate him. So here, if you look at the overall set of verses that are being told over here, the key here is that they are delineating the position of the Supreme Lord.
O Lord, you are the Supreme Truth in this body which is very complex, beyond that also, you are the transcendental truth. When we see this world, beyond this world also, whatever we see in this world, you are the truth, and you appear as the truth even in this world, but you are accepted by those who are seeking truth and you are not accepted, or you are not, your appearance is not appreciated by those who reject you, those who are ungodly, or even anti-godly. So, text 13, समाधिनावेशितचेदसैके पदपोतेनमहत्कुतेन कुर्वन्ति गोवत्सपदम् भवाप्धिम् This tenth canto verses have a deep sense of Sanskrit sweetness to them.
So, कुर्वन्ति गोवत्सपदम् भवाप्धिम् My dear Lord, this whole material existence is like an ocean, it becomes like गोवत्सपदम् It becomes like the size of the hoof print of a calf, not even a cow. A cow might have a little bigger footprint. But calves, they are so small and tender, they are so tiny.
If you have to cross over an ocean, it is almost impossible. You have to cross over a small puddle or the puddle that is created by the footprint of a calf, when that puddle is not even noticeable. You will easily cross over.
And this transformation of the huge into the tiny, that happens my dear Lord, by your grace. It is you. What do you do exactly? How do you manifest this miraculous grace? तोई अम्भुजाक्षा खिले सत्वधाम्नी That now, in the previous verse it was said that you bring सुखावहानी, you bring great joy to those who are सताम्, those who are devoted to you.
So how do you bring that great joy to the सताम्? Let me explain this first. तोई अम्भुजाक्षा खिले सत्वधाम्नी सत्वधाम्नी सत्वधाम्नी That you are the abode of all that is real, all that is you are the shelter of everything that is real अखिले सत्वधाम्नी Everything that is real, that is sheltered in you तोई अम्भुजाक्षा You O lotus eyed one समाधिनावेशित चेत सैके समाधिनावेशित चेत सैके That the great souls in Samadhi they become absorbed in you समाधिनावेशित चेत सैके One pointed attention they keep on you वद्पातपोतेन महत्कृतेन वद्पातपोतेन महत्कृतेन Then your your feet absorption in your lotus feet becomes like a boat by which महत्कृतेन वद्पातपोतेन महत्कृतेन This boat is what the great souls enter into These lotus feet are what the great souls serve These lotus feet are what the great souls serve And when they serve your lotus feet This metallic ocean is very very difficult to cross It becomes easy to cross It becomes eminently crossable अम्भुजा So here they are glorifying How potent O Lord are your lotus feet How wonderful it is that when you descend to this world सुखावाहानी सतां You bring happiness to the saintly by helping them transcend material existence Helping them become freed from भवरोग Just like a patient who is in pain If a very potent doctor comes and has such a strong, good medicine that the disease gets cured completely Then having such a doctor is a great medicine That which seemed very very difficult to cure for oneself That becomes cured very easily by the potency of the medicine provided by the doctor Similarly, you O Lord are so potent that the vast little ocean can easily be crossed over by your grace