Gita 10.34 – The comprehensiveness of death’s stealing represents Krishna

Thank you Bhagavad Gita 10.34 here Krishna continues describing his opulences and he states here that so God's glory can be seen in everything when we talk about Vibhuti Vibhuti is greatness and the greatness can be positive and the greatness can also be negative there can be people who are people who are great in a destructive sense, now usually we talk about those people as notorious still they have some intelligence Bhagavad Gita uses the word Dushkruti for describing them that they have intelligence but they misdirect their intelligence they have their ability but they misdirect their ability and thus they, as people get misled so Hara means to steal or to take away so there are thieves who may take away things from people, there are even plunderers who may take things away or sometimes the agents of the law may confiscate things if a person is a defaulter, has not paid on a loan has taken too much debt and doesn't have the money to pay then the agents of the government may come and take things away from the people at such times they take things away nobody takes away as thoroughly as this debt plunderers or people agents of the government may take away a house, property they may take away even other possessions but when death comes it takes away utterly everything not even the body goes with us our body which we think which we identify so strongly with, so intimately with that we not only think of the body as we not only think of the body as ours but we think of the body as me even that is taken away from us so that comprehensiveness of the seizing that is there that happens at the time of death that is a manifestation of Krishna so of course Krishna takes us away from the temporary so that we we get the impetus to take our heart towards the eternal that means when we perceive how death is going to take everything away then we can by contemplation awaken a sense of renunciation and thus with that renunciation we can redirect our heart towards Krishna, towards higher spiritual reality so the important thing here is that Krishna is the Krishna's glory is manifested in his in this fearsome act of death taking away everything so of course one of the names of Krishna is Hari and as Hari he steals but ultimately Hari is as he has told in 5.29 in the Bhagavad Gita he is the well-wisher of all living beings and as the well-wisher of everyone he enables everyone to grow to move closer to him to ultimately attain him so he takes away the anarthas that keep us away from him he takes away the miseries that come when we stay attached to our anarthas so ultimately what Krishna steals what he takes away from us is good because he gives himself to us when our heart is no longer filled with worldly attachments and dreams and schemes for worldly things then our heart becomes open to receive the higher wisdom of bhakti and thus we can move closer to Krishna so whether it is Krishna in the manifestation of death or Krishna as Hari himself in both cases when he takes away he takes away to give something more why don't we turn our head and heart towards him and see what he has given to us so again lord's glory is not one-sided Krishna is at one level the cause of death but at another level he is the cause also of life he is the cause of he is the person he is the agency through which life manifests in this world generating principle which happens in future when a man and a woman come together a new life results but that new life doesn't result only by the man and a woman coming together many times the two parents very sincerely and fervently and desperately want a child but they don't get it hand in palm the Puranas are filled with stories of how kings and queens had great difficulty in conceiving children the reason for this is that just the union of the male and the female is not enough for life to come it is Krishna who is the conceiver, who is the generating principle it is when Krishna's grace manifests that the union of a husband and a wife becomes productive and a child is born so in this way it is Krishna who is generating principle and generating principle applies to other things also it is wherever generation takes place it is by Krishna's grace so it's actually if you think about how life manifests, it's a wonderful thing how from one cell it's utterly microscopic from that one cell a fully grown person like you and me comes about and that growth of a full person from a unicellular organism unicellular entity or unicellular organism or you just a single cell that is a miracle and that happens by Krishna's mercy so so this verse can be understood in various different ways this part of the verse Prabhupada explained that I am these qualities among women fame, beauty, fine speech, smriti good memory, medha intelligence, dhriti, shama is forgiveness, patience, tolerance these are all laudable qualities and the personality it's broadly a masculine personality and feminine personality and there are significant differences between the two as are documented in self-help books such as men are from mars, women are from venus now within the masculine and feminine division there are of course areas of overlapping but along with the areas of overlapping there are substantial areas of non-intersection certain qualities are distinctively masculine certain qualities are distinctively feminine so another way of understanding this is that in Sanskrit itself nouns themselves can be of different or qualities themselves of the nouns their grammatical sense it can be masculine, feminine or neutral and these are prominent masculine prominent feminine describers so either way we can see the pervasiveness that wherever we see anything striking wherever we see anything good we see that as a manifestation of Krishna's opulence and here we see that even if we consider Prabhupada's explanation of these being the qualities of women then this is an important balance to some statements wherein Prabhupada reported to us that women are less intelligent Prabhupada based his authority on the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavad Gita clearly attributes priti and medha intelligence and memory which is also an important characteristic of intelligence both of these are qualities in women so goddess of learning is also of female it's not a male so overall we often misunderstand scripture if we just take one side of scripture and focus on it to the exclusion of the other side to get a balanced perspective we need to associate with those who are studying scripture deeply and more importantly a living scripture in their association we learn and grow in a way that scripture becomes a living guiding lighthouse for us thank you.