Daily-Bhagavatam 73 – 11.07.63 – Temporary shelter is a danger if it distracts from eternal shelter
11.7.63 So here the avadut brahmana is continuing the description of what he learned from the various gurus and he's telling now what he learned from the Kapod and their life so Dhrishtva Tan is describing that when the mother and father birds had gone for searching for food at that time look the hunter came there and the hunter saw the baby birds now how did the hunter see the birds the hunter was just wandering around in the forest looking for some fare and he saw those baby birds and they were swalay swalay Himalaya is the place where snow sticks so swalay is their own home so actually what other place could the baby birds have been safer swalay in the vicinity of their home they were they were moving around they're frolicking baby birds what can they do they were playing along and there was one the hunter was wandering around in the forest and the hunter just spread its a net near the nest and the birds were trapped and this was disaster now we see here how there is danger at every step in this world now padam padam padam the Bhagavatam states about the nature of the world there is danger at every step and this is not just for humans it is even for the animals it is the nature of material existence itself and actually normally we think of home as a safe place but the birds were at home and they were captured so actually speaking the dangerousness of the world is in one sense more for animals than even for humans Prabhupada writes in the Ishopanishad purport of Asuryanamate Loka mantra 3 that actually the economic necessities of the animals are fulfilled under nasty and unpleasant conditions so he is using the word economic necessities so here in a not a literal sense the animals don't have currency but economic necessities refers to the bodily needs basically we use money to fulfill our bodily necessities so they are in nasty and unpleasant conditions why? because a bird might just be pecking at some grains and at that time suddenly some cat or some dangerous animal some predator makes food down and pounds on that bird and eat it so actually in the jungle often we talk about the law of the jungle the law of the jungle might is right and death can come at any time Darwin observed nature and he saw the brutality within nature and he coined the principle survival of the fittest so of course the fact is that even the fit don't survive everyone has to die and relatively speaking being fitter may enable a person to survive longer but ultimately everyone dies and the dangerousness of life in the jungle is far greater humans create some kind of civilization they have some kind of law and order administration government police and all this keeps the disruption of law and order under check and the purpose of keeping the disruption of law and order under check is to enable people to live peacefully and thereby contemplate the purpose of life at a very basic level when life is itself at threat the first thought is of survival and that is natural human instinct for self-preservation but once the once one is not in anxiety for survival then one can think of what is the purpose of survival what am I living for the first question people have is am I living am I going to live or not at all once that is clear okay I'm living then what am I living for and that question actually begins the metaphysical quest so then the uncertainty of material existence and its inevitable immortality become further spurs for intensifying the metaphysical quest when we see death around us when we see danger around us then we understand oh actually I belong to the immortal realm that is where I need to return that is the realm I need to attain and for that I need to purify myself raise my consciousness take more shelter of Krishna and this way we get further impetus to practice bhakti so although the world is padam padam for all living beings padam padam but the param padam cannot be attained by the non-human species it can be attained only in the human species so the brahmana is using the story of the kapota and the kapoti to demonstrate how those who settle into a comfortable life in this world they their life can be disrupted at any moment by any danger and then all the shelter that they have built can become devastated and the point is not that one should not build a shelter not that one should not be responsible in taking care of their family members but the point is that one should not let this become the only obsession only purpose of one's life we need to remember that while I do these duties they should not consume my time and consciousness and emotions entirely but rather should remember that I arrange a temporary shelter so that I can with greater focus seek the shelter of the eternal that means there are three stages over here if there is a survival itself then all our energy gets focused on survival itself so we make some respectable arrangements for proper existence in this world we have a job we get education students whether we get proper education we have a job we get a home these are basic necessities which have to be taken care of now we don't stay satisfied with that but we recognize that now that the temporary shelter may never be satisfactorily comfortable and just trying to horizontally improve the temporary shelter is a wild goose chase it is chasing a mirage will never be successful so we arrange the temporary shelter at some basic level of comfort and then we try to rise up raise our consciousness up and seek the eternal shelter.