CC daily 126 – M 6.178 – Use the three-fold typology to understand import of scripture

Shetan Shetan Amrit Madhyamila chapter 6 text 178 Bhagwan samandha bhakti abhidheya prema prayojan vedatina vastukay Sarvam Vrttacharya as arguments encountered by Lord Shetan Mahaprabhu and Lord Shetan Mahaprabhu is introducing his own hermeneutic for coherently understanding the import of Vedic scripture, so here he states that the content of the Vedas can be divided into three broad subjects, eti na vastuka, three subjects, what are those three subjects? sambandha, abhidheya and prayojan now whenever you want to make sense of anything complex, you try to divide it into manageable sections its like if somebody has to eat a watermelon, the whole watermelon cannot be stuffed into the mouth the usual way to eat a watermelon is to actually put in whatever is edible that is to divide it into small small parts which are of edible size and then to eat it one by one so like that there is a vast body of knowledge and to understand them is very difficult so some sort of structural schemata is required for gaining a sense of their content and ultimately for making sense of the content gaining a sense means initially at least this is what it is all about making sense means putting it all together in a coherent whole so when we begin to study scripture a body as vast as the Vedas Chaitanya Mahaprabhu offers as a common sense tripartite typology which divides the content of the Vedas into three broad sections so what are these sections? these are by Krishna's mercy what Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is describing here Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is of course Krishna himself and so he knows best what the import of the Vedas is because after all who can know the message of the book better than the author himself Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself is not claiming his authority based on that position here neither has he revealed his divinity to Sarvabhattacharya nor has Sarvabhattacharya accepted the divinity right now the two of them are debating discussing as scholars Sarvabhattacharya initially thought that he is the he is the foremost scholarly among the two and thus he had placed himself in a position of instructing Lord Chaitanya but in the preceding discussion Lord Chaitanya has proven his own undoubtable formidable scholarship by which he has shown Sarvabhattacharya's conclusions to be mistaken by quoting extensively from the Vedic scriptures and by reasoning coherently based on those quotes Chaitanya Mahaprabhu has shown how Sarvabhattacharya's interpretation of the Vedanta following Shankara's interpretation is wrong it is riddled with self-contradiction and putting one in self-delusion self-delusion means so thoroughly deluded that one does not even understand that I am an illusion and that illusion is caused by one's self so now the way out of this illusion is to learn to serve Krishna because dhāvi-buddhi-yogaṁ tam yena mām upayāti that only when Krishna gives intelligence then we can understand and we get the intelligence to move towards it of course Sarvabhattacharya at this stage is not ready to start serving Krishna but that same Krishna has manifested as Lord Chaitanya and Sarvabhama is going to serve Lord Chaitanya or at least he is serving although he is challenging but he is discussing and now Sarvabhama will hear from Lord Chaitanya and Lord Chaitanya experiences and such hearing is also service at one level so here Lord Chaitanya is making the point that if you want to understand scripture we have to accept some sort of schemata the schemata he proposes is that of three-fold division of sammanda, abhidheya and prayojan whenever we move forward in any field we need to work on sammanda sammanda is the understanding that that there is some object with which we want to develop a relationship for example now that object may be a child wants a toy and say a child says he or she sees a toy in some advertisement or in some shop and desires to develop a relationship the relationship as an owner I enjoy then after that after sammanda there is abhidheya abhidheya is the process by which that is to be acquired so what is the process the process is that now the child does not have any independent source of money usually then child will probably have to ask from the mother or father and when the child asks from the mother or father the result is that the child works towards establishing something which is tangible that means say the child wants the the parents may or may not want to give the toy depending on whether it is good for the child or not that's a different issue but abhidheya is the process for getting the toy and then prayojan is when the parents agree and the child gets the toy and the child starts dancing oh now I got it child feels happy now like that the prayojan in the material world doesn't live up to the promise it doesn't bring the satisfaction that was promised in the beginning whereas in spiritual circles the prayojan does bring the satisfaction that was promised that means that when we strive to practice bhakti so at that time sammandha we develop a we decide that ok Krishna is God I am his part he is all interactive he is supremely lovable object I am longing to love someone so let me direct my love towards him with this understanding when we start loving Krishna then we gain great satisfaction because we feel very fulfilled by that love for Krishna we feel enriched we feel enlivened we feel gratified so because the sambandha leads to abhidheya the abhidheya is the practice of devotional service the process by which we develop our connection with Krishna and once the that is developed then it's not exactly immediate but the result does come we eventually develop love for Krishna and that brings everlasting ecstasy so now how does this typology apply to the scripture the scripture talks about many different subjects but they all have ultimately a purpose and all of them are ultimately meant to help us push us towards developing a sambandha with Krishna get down to the abhidheya bhakti and then relish the prayojan of prema which will bring eternal satisfaction and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu says that by this sort of typology this sort of division of scriptural concepts we can get a coherent understanding that will be true to the import of the scripture and fulfilling to the human heart's aspiration for love and happiness.