Churing the ocean, the Bhagavatam and the heart – 1

So today we will discuss on the topic of churning the milk ocean, the Bhagavatam and the heart. So in the three classes today, tomorrow and day after, I will discuss an overview of Srimad Bhagavatam Canto 8 chapters 5 to 12.

This is one of the longest pastimes in the Srimad Bhagavatam where it extends over eight chapters and this pastime is the churning of the milk ocean. The Srimad Bhagavatam has 335 chapters and it has many many pastimes in it. So most pastimes go for one, two, three chapters and this pastime goes quite long and this pastime also illustrates many of the themes that are present in the Bhagavatam.

So the pastime itself is about churning the ocean. Along with that, there is another kind of churning also. The original or the first commentator on the Srimad Bhagavatam whose commentary we have right now with us, there may be commentators before him but we don't have the commentaries of those commentators.

That commentator is Sridhar Swami. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu considers Sridhar Swami a great authority and Sridhar Swami while writing the commentary of Srimad Bhagavatam says that how can a tiny mortal like me speak on the Bhagavatam? You know, how can a pebble churn the ocean when a mighty mountain like Mandara failed to churn the ocean, had difficulty in churning and how can a pebble do that? So similarly he says, I am finite human being like a pebble. So how can I churn the Bhagavatam? But then he prays that oh dear Lord, just as you enabled to the ocean to be churned by your mercy, similarly let me churn the ocean of the Bhagavatam and let me write and speak some realisations.

So Sridhar Swami is here talking about when we study the Bhagavatam what are we doing? We are churning it. So the Bhagavatam is vast. There are thousands and thousands of verses in it.

Traditionally it is said there are 18,000 verses. So such a vast oceanic scope of the Bhagavatam, it is encyclopaedic in content and it is endless in meaning and this Srimad Bhagavatam when we have to understand it, the process of contemplating it and relishing it is like churning. Now normally we use the word churning for say churning milk.

So we want to make curd, we want to make butter, so the whole process involves churning so that eventually we can get something of a higher quality. So milk itself is very good but from that we want to get something which is even more valuable. So we churn.

So churn essentially means a process of transformation but it is a transformation that is a positive transformation to get something better than what is already there. Now we may say how can we churn the Bhagavatam? How can we get something better than the Bhagavatam? No, we are not getting something better than the Bhagavatam but what we are churning when we say we churn the Bhagavatam, we are churning our understanding of the Bhagavatam. So if initially when we read the verses, okay, the story is here, that story is there, some of the stories in the Bhagavatam we may have heard from our parents, grandparents or have seen in some channels in television or ever in Amar Chitra Katha or some other storybooks like that but that is only a very general introduction.

So churning means when we churn the Bhagavatam then our understanding of the Bhagavatam increases and our attraction to the Bhagavatam, to Bhagawan, to the devotees and to Krishna increases by that. So there is churning of the ocean, there is churning of the Bhagavatam and there is churning of the heart. The process of Bhakti Yoga is essentially churning.

Our heart is it like an ocean? We may say the heart is very small. Of course when we talk about the heart, we talk about two things. We can talk about a biological heart which is the organ for pumping blood and then there is the metaphorical heart which is the seat of emotions.

That metaphorical heart is the soul and that's what we are referring to over here. The seat of emotions, the source of consciousness, the locus of meaning, understanding and love. That is the soul and that that that metaphorical heart is actually oceanic.

It's small in size but it's oceanic in terms of the desires that are present in it. There are endless desires just like in the ocean there seem to be endless waves. So like that there seem to be endless desires in our heart and many of these desires are superficial, trivial.

They are about small small things which really won't make much difference in the long run. So we want to churn our heart so that the purer, greater, worthier desires come up and those desires define and drive our life and take us to a glorious destination. So this is churning the ocean, churning the Bhagavatam and churning the heart.

So we will discuss the past time and as the past time is going on we will go back to the other two themes also. Now in the fifth chapter of the eighth canto, the past time begins with the fight between good and evil. The human heart is a microcosm of the universe.

So in our heart there is a battle between good and evil. Now we have the virtuous side and we have a lower vicious side and there is a battle between the two. So this is a reflection of a cosmic reality.

In the cosmic reality there are forces of good and there are forces of evil. So there are the devtas, the gods and there are the demons, the asuras. Now in our, in Kalyuga, our universe or our human experience has become very finite and limited because there is a diminishing of human capacities and that's why with our finite experience of the universe we cannot perceive these higher beings.

The demons are lower than humans in terms of consciousness but they are higher in terms of powers. The Ravana for example is a rakshasa. So rakshasas are lower in consciousness but he was so powerful that he felt that a human being cannot defeat me.

That's why when he took a benediction also from Brahma, he said I don't need a benediction that humans won't be able to kill me because humans will never be able to kill me he thought. They are weak beings. So the demons and the devtas they are both more powerful than human beings but the demons have lower consciousness than humans.

So this battle between good and evil constantly goes on and here when this battle was happening at that time the devtas found themselves overwhelmed. The devtas found that they were overpowered. So the head of the gods was Indra and the head of the demons was Bali Maharaj and when the gods were defeated they just lost all power and they found that they were overwhelmed.

So they went to Brahmaji. Brahmaji is also a devta but he is not involved directly in the administration of the universe. Most of the gods act like kshatriyas.

They are rulers and they are warriors but rarely if ever we see Brahma acting as a warrior. Brahma is more of an advisor. So Brahma is the original brahmana and brahmanas generally don't use weapons but they are advisors.

They are advisors to humanity and they are petitioners to divinity. Petitioners means that they take the prayers from the human beings and then they offer them to the higher beings. So here when the devatas went to Brahmaji, Brahmaji heard their plea and then he petitioned on their behalf to the supreme lord that is lord Vishnu.

When they asked lord Vishnu, now normally we will see that before Krishna appears, before lord Ram appears, before most of the incarnations appear, the devatas are in trouble and when they pray to the lord, the lord descends and then the lord overpowers the demons but in this case the lord did not do that. The lord's advice was surprisingly different. He told them that the time is not favourable for you right now.

You will not be able to attain victory, therefore declare a truce. Devatas could have thought if a truce had to be made, we could have done it ourselves. What was the need to come and pray to you? We wanted to win and that's why we have come to you.

But the lord said no, you declare a truce and then wait till the time becomes more favourable to you and in the meanwhile after making a truce you can collectively do something worthwhile and that is churn the ocean to get nectar. Now the word nectar has many meanings. Nectar often which is translated as amrita in Sanskrit or rather nectar is a translation of amrita.

It is also translated as ambrosia. So the word nectar is often used to refer to that which grants immortality. Now the Vedas, there is a progression in the Vedic literature.

The Vedas are literatures of karma kanda. Karma kanda is the branch of the Vedic knowledge. knowledge system which offers material religiosity that means practise dharma by which one will get artha and kama and then jnana kanda talks about moksha, the fourth purushartha.

These four are the purposes of life, purusharthas, dharma, artha, kama and moksha. So in the Vedas heavens are glorified and it is said by drinking heavens one will attain immortality but in the Upanishads it is described that these promises of immortality are actually exaggerations because even in the heavens the devtas die. They do not die in the heavens.

When they have to die they are sent out of the heavens and then they die. That's how in heavens there is no death but those who are in heaven have to die. So when they have to die they are sent out of heaven and then they die.

The point is that the statements about immortality for the heavenly beings are exaggerations. So there are four kinds of beings. There are martya, there are amara, there are chiranjeevi and there are nitya.

So martya are all of us human beings. We have very short lifetimes. Then higher than us are the devatas.

They are called amara. Amara in one sense can mean immortal. But this immortality is not literal.

It is comparative. That means as compared to human beings the devatas live for so long that from the human perspective it appears like immortality. So they live for a very long time.

Usually many of the important devatas they live for the lifespan of one manvantara. Of one manu that is called as manvantara. I won't go into the technicalities over here.

But higher than that is chiranjeevi. The word chiranjeevi also literally means chiran means for long time or forever jeeva to live. So chiranjeevis live for a much longer time.

They live almost for one day for the lifespan of brahma. Which is much much larger. But even they are not eternal.

The only eternal beings are vitya. They are in the spiritual world. So the devatas are amara that means they live for a very very long time.

But still they are also apprehensive of death. And they want to prolong their lifespan as much as possible. And the idea was that this nectar which could be returned from the ocean by the arrangement of lord Vishnu as he suggested then that would prolong their lifespan.

Now it's interesting that the demons and devatas have similar desires but different means. The demons also want a very long lifespan. But vishnubhakta smuto deva asuras tadviparyaya the difference is that the devatas are vishnubhakta.

The devatas are devoted to the supreme lord and the demons are tadviparyaya. The demons are opposed to the supreme lord. So the demons do not want to follow the lord.

They want to defy dharma. They don't want to practise bhakti and still they want to gain power and prosperity. But in this case they also the demons also wanted the amrit.

So lord Vishnu had told Indira who is the chief of the devatas that you make sandhi, you make peace, a truce with Bali and thereby you can gain the nectar by churning the milk ocean by combinedly doing that massive endeavour. Now interestingly in the fifth and the six chapters some important things happen which reflect the mood of the bhagavatam. So till now I have told the pastime.

Now we will talk about churning the bhagavatam. So in the bhagavatam in between the narration of the pastime there are lots of prayers. So the bhagavatam is not just a dramatic book.

In the Mahabharata and the Ramayan we don't find so many prayers. In fact in the Valmiki Ramayan there is not even a single prayer to Lord Ram. Why? Because the Valmiki Ramayan starts with the question of Valmiki to Narayan please describe to me the characteristics of the ideal human being.

So Valmiki Ramayan depicts Lord Ram not as God but as the ideal human being. Of course there are indirect references to Lord Ram as God but there is nowhere like the elaborate prayers that are there in the bhagavatam and similarly there may be short prayers in the Mahabharata. But the Mahabharata and the Ramayan are narrative driven.

The focus is narrative. The bhagavatam actually is not so much narrative driven. The bhagavatam takes its time to savour the words of praise that are offered by the devotees to the Lord.

So in the fifth chapter as well as the sixth chapter twice prayers are described. Now the prayers in the fifth chapter are to invoke the Lord's appearance that means the Brahmaji and the devotees have gone and they are praying to the Lord. When they are praying please appear so they offer elaborate philosophical prayers and then after the Lord appears they again offer prayers elaborately.

So what is the reason that the bhagavatam has so much prayers? Actually prayer comprises one of the central pillars of our relationship with Krishna and that's why prayers are important no doubt. Along with that the bhagavatam also does a lot of things through the prayers. Through the prayers broadly if we see three things happen.

First is that the bhagavatam conveys emotion. All relationships are a central element in them is emotion. So through the prayers the emotions of those who are offering the prayers are conveyed and some of the emotions that are conveyed are remarkable.

In the sixth canto we see Vritrasura and Vritrasura is described as a very ferocious demon. His giant body and his crush others just by his feet and when he would laugh or roar people would tremble and fall away and he had a bad head and big eyes and huge muscles. Very ferocious looking.

And here what is the Vritrasura offering in his prayers to lord Vishnu? So Vritrasura there is praying. This is a tender bird who is almost not yet born. It's born but its wings have not been developed.

So that's why it's Ajatapaksha. So it's born but it has not actually become a paksha means one who is able to fly. It's born out of the egg but it has not developed the ability to fly.

So that bird is helpless and that bird can't get its food. Just as the tender baby bird waits for the mother to come, waits for its parent to come and provide its food. It says similarly my dear lord I long for you.

And then just as the calf longs for the udders of the cow so that it can get milk. And then just as a lover she waits for her beloved to come back so that they can continue their loving relationships. Now these three birds which philosophically glorify the supreme lord and their underlying emotion is the emotion of fear.

Here we don't find tenderness, there is awareness of the glory, there is awe and reverence for the lord and there is a recognition of their urgent need for his help. So the emotions are conveyed through the prayers. Secondly philosophy is discussed.

So the Bhagavatam by describing the glories of the lord describes through the prayers the relationship of the lord with the world and that comprises philosophy. So the prayers themselves are philosophical education. When we study them we understand how Krishna relates with the world, how Krishna relates with people, what is Krishna's nature, what is Krishna's position, what is Krishna's power.

So all these comprise philosophy and they provide philosophical education. So that is the second purpose served by the prayers and the third purpose is that it builds character portraits. Character portrait means who is this person, what does this person like.

So we understand that through the prayers. So we understand people not just by what they do. Generally when we want to know people there are basically four characteristics by which we arrive at understanding of who people are.

It is what they wear or how they look, what they speak, how they speak and what they do. So how they look, what they speak, how they speak and what they do. So now among these two are connected with speech and generally this is the way whenever we meet a new person we arrive at some understanding who is this person, what is the nature and that comes by these things.

So through the prayers so the Bhagavatam describes the actions the people do. Okay this demon did this thing or this devata did this thing or this person did that thing. So through that we understand what the person is like but through the speech also we understand.

So how they speak and what they speak. So through both these we understand what the person is like and that is also important for developing the character and in that so the Bhagavatam through its prayers it conveys emotion, it discusses philosophy and it builds character portraits. So here we see the devatas typically as material worshippers, the people who go to the devatas they are material worshippers that means they are worshipping the devatas for getting some material benefits and similarly devatas themselves are material worshippers.

They are going to the supreme lord to get some material relief for their problem and then so this is the mood which the Bhagavatam builds up and if we see the various past times in the Bhagavatam essentially will show how Karmakand that is material worship is lower and how that should be abandoned and pure devotion should be adopted, should be accepted and should be established in the heart. So at the start of this past time the devatas are in the mood of Karmakand. Now moving forward if we look at this past time further now the lord could have easily himself descended and killed the demons.

Why did the lord go through the whole ploy or plan or request instruct the devatas to go and churn the ocean to first form a truce with the demons and together do that. The Bhagavatam itself answers this. This is for because the lord wanted to perform Leela.

The concept of Leela is the unique contribution of the Vedic wisdom tradition to world theology. There is no such concept of Leela in any other religion in the world. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, they talk about God, they talk about God's glory but the concept of Leela what does God do in his own abode that is not given at all in these religions.

Now actually this raises a question why should God do anything at all. In fact Aristotle had a conception of God which was an unmoved mover. So Aristotle was a unmoved very important Greek philosopher and much of the western world view including the Christian world view is shaped by Aristotle.

So there were two prominent Christian thinkers St. Augustine who was a third fourth century and he integrated Christian teachings with Greek philosophy based on the insights of Socrates. Now Socrates had a disciple Plato and Plato had a disciple Aristotle. Now Plato and Aristotle had many differences.

So Aristotle's teachings were integrated into Christianity by a mediaeval scholar Thomas Aquinas. So if you look at the Bible, the Bible doesn't have much philosophy directly but the philosophy was borrowed by the biblical tradition from the Greek tradition through these primary thinkers. So Aristotle had the idea of God as the unmoved mover.

That means he said that God by the supreme being has to be perfect. As the supreme being is perfect then the perfect being doesn't have to do anything at all because normally we do something because we want something. Krishna addresses this in the Gita In 4.14 he describes that In 4.14 that I do not I do not need anything I do not desire anything.

I do not need anything. Need means something which we need for our existence. Desire means we want something for our pleasure like that.

So I do not need or desire anything. One who understands this Such a person will not become bound by karma. Now if God does not need anything God does not desire anything then why does God do anything at all? Now that question will come up.

Then why does the world exist? Why did God create us? Why did God create the world? This is a complex philosophical question and the Vedanta Sutra addresses this elaborately and Ramanacharya explains in his commentary to the Vedanta Sutra which is called the Sri Bhashya He says that this world has been created by the Lord as His Leela and he says when the scriptures say that the Lord does not do any work the Lord does not do Natasya Karyam Karanam that the Lord does not have any work to do so he says that's true but Leela is not work Leela is play so he says that when a person is after doing work the person just wants to maybe play a game so that does not work so that's why the script God does not do any work but just for His own pleasure He plays Now Baldevidya Bhushan refines this example in his commentary on the Vedanta Sutra which is called as the Govinda Bhashya and he says that actually even when people play playing is for a purpose what is that purpose? to get enjoyment and if God needs to get enjoyment from something then that is also a blemish in God's perfection because God is self-satisfied so he says Leela is not like a play Leela is like a dance what is the difference between a play and a dance? it says that when a person is very happy then the person just rises up and starts dancing now the person is not dancing to become happy the person is dancing because that person is happy so dancing is not done to attain happiness dancing is done to express happiness so like that the Lord performs Leela out of his own ecstatic nature his nature gets expressed as the ecstasy of his actions so now we may wonder okay this is all from God's perspective what about my perspective why did God create me why did God create this world so actually his Leela is for his pleasure but along with that while getting his pleasure he does many other things also he gives us pleasure he redeems the world he destroys the wicked he rescues the pious he does all these things but he does all this along with that while he's doing all this he's expressing his pleasure and as a side effect he's also doing these other activities so the most important purpose of the Lord in doing Leela is just expressing his pleasure and that's what he does eternally in the spiritual world and that's what he's doing over here he doesn't have to get the milk ocean churned but he does it because that's what he wants to perform Leela and we will see how through this Leela he also performs many other activities he instructs the devatas he chastises the demons and most importantly he leaves a legacy of his pastimes for spiritual seekers to study and relish for all of eternity now this is so the Lord whatever he is doing it's a Leela and now in the Leela how does this all relate to our heart we will focus on the churning of the heart when we start discussing the pastime of the churning of the ocean so by the end of the seventh chapter what happens is that the Lord tells the devatas you go and so fifth and sixth chapter talk about the Lord being besieged with prayers and the Lord responding to the prayers and the Lord telling go and sign a truce so then Indira goes to Bali Maharaj and both of them readily sign a truce initially the demons want to attack Indira when he comes there but Bali Maharaj knows the Kshatriya principles and he says see he has come without weapons we should not attack him wait let's see what he wants to say then when Indira presents his proposal very humbly first he praises Bali Maharaj he has come almost like a peace messenger over here so he praises Bali Maharaj and then he presents the demons immediately they also want nectar they also want to become immortal and then they decide to go and get the mountain the Mandara mountain which they are going to use as the churning rod so what happens thereafter we'll discuss tomorrow any questions thank you very.