If intention is more important than action, why was Nriga punished despite his charitable intention?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
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so in Bhakti it is said that intention is more important than action but then Maharaja Yuga had a good intention to give charity and yet because of a mistake he was cursed and he had to become a lizard yes, actually that time Maharaja Yuga was not exactly practicing Bhakti he was doing Karmakand and Karmakand means one does material fruity activities Punya for getting good fruits so in that what he did was what he did was primarily only material for material gain he wanted to go to heaven and that’s why after the whole pastime happens what do you want first do you want to go to heaven or do you want to get a lizard’s body only those two options are there for him heaven or punishment so he is operating in material consciousness and he is doing Punya for getting the Swarga now when one does Karmakand at that time because it is material in one sense it is material technology so if I work on a computer now I may have a very good intention I want to maybe help you take your computer and operate it I want to help you in your computer but if I press a delete command computer is not going to see my intention it is just going to execute it so like that in Karmakand it is more or less like a technology so it itself doesn’t look at the intention it looks at whatever is the action that has been done so we have similarly he chants one mantra wrong and then his son who is meant to kill Indra becomes killed by Indra so in Karmakand that fear is there even a small mistake can lead to hugely wrong results in Bhakti on the other hand if we actually chant properly even if we are not able to chant properly some people may not be able to pronounce say Chinese people are often not able to pronounce Ram so Halle Lam Halle Lam they say Krishna is Bhavagrahi Lord accepts because here it’s not so much of material technology meant to manipulate matter it is actually love that is to be expressed because love is expressed the reciprocation for that is done by the Lord based on the intention so that’s why the two pastimes the principle for Bhakti does not apply for Karmakand and the two are different