SB 01.15.12 – Our devotion is the basis for, not a distraction from, our practical accomplishments

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
results even from dreadful seeming situations. Thank you. Now, Arjuna is moving on to describing how his personal accomplishments were also due to the grace of the Supreme Lord.
It was by His glory, by His splendor, by His power which He had holds the trishul in His paani hands and when Arjuna had gone to perform austerity in order to please the Devatas and thereby gain weapons for them so that he would be prepared for the eventual battle which would come at the end of the Vanavas, at the end of the exile. So, he did severe austerity and Lord Shiva came as a hunter and both of them shot a demon who had taken on the body of a beast and both of them claimed that I had shot first and because of that both of them started fighting but now Arjuna fought and fought and fought and of course he couldn’t defeat Lord Shiva. Lord Shiva is extremely powerful and that’s why He is referred to here as Bhagawan but Arjuna’s valour and skill pleased Lord Shiva.
Not only pleased, he was astonished to see his valour and skill in his hand. Girija is Lord Shiva’s wife. So, when Lord Shiva has come as a hunter, his wife had also come and she was also amazed to see Arjuna’s valour and skill and being pleased.
So, Lord Shiva gave his personal weapon, the Pashupath to Arjuna and not only that, after that what happened? At that time the other Devatas, prominent Devatas, the Vayu appeared and they also gave their weapons. Varuna gave his nose, Yamraj gave his thunderous mace and then Indra himself came and Indra blessed him and he said you come with me come to heaven and there I will not only give you my weapons but I’ll give you much more and then soon after that the Lokpalas disappeared and Arjuna saw a magnificent chariot streaking across the sky towards him and that was the chariot of Indra which had come to take him to heaven and in this very body Arjuna went to heaven. So, he attained Mahendra Bhavan.
Mahendra refers to Indra Bhavane and not only that was when you go to heavens to the palace of Indra but Indra being pleased with Arjuna who was his son actually invited him right on his own throne and he sat next to Indra on his throne. So, he was offered a very respected seat. Half of the royal throne of Indra was offered to Arjuna.
Now, this was a stupendous accomplishment because there are other stories in the Puranas where for example Trishanku was a king who wanted to go to heaven in Amunaivakalever in the same body and he couldn’t do it at all despite all his yajnas and despite his trying to appease Vishwamitra and try to exploit the rivalry between Vishwamitra and Vasishtha but still Amunaivakalever he couldn’t do. When he tried to force get crash into heaven he was actually crashed and thrown out and eventually he became suspended in between the heaven and the earth. So, very practically no one can attain heaven in this very body and later on and Arjuna did that later on when Dhritarashtra got the news from the sages that Arjuna had gone to heaven in this very body, he was thunderstruck because he realized that is a undeniable and scary testimony to his power and glory.
So, now again in these cases when Arjuna fought and satisfied Lord Shiva or Arjuna went to heaven, externally seeing Krishna was not there at all but our devotee knows that Krishna is always there with me and whatever I am able to do it is by Krishna’s grace and that’s why I write in the beginning of this verse in which Arjuna describes events in which Krishna had no explicit role yet still he’s saying it was by his splendor. So, Arjuna knows that he had extraordinary power but his power was actually Krishna’s power which Krishna had manifested through him. So, devotee we all want to do wonderful things in life, we want to achieve something and something worthwhile or even glorious and we want to be the passion to do things and sometimes we feel that chanting that if I just chant Hare Krishna then I mean I’m just spending so much time and just chanting chanting when will I have time to do anything worthwhile in my life but actually we should be able to see the connection through our chanting we are accessing the greatest power that is there in all of existence that is the power of God and that power of God will bring our inner life into harmony it will bring our all our disharmonious desires into harmony it will bring our mind intelligence and heart in one in one line and bring a concentrated focus by which we will be able to do wonderful things.
So, the two our prayer and our prayerful connection with Krishna and our practical action in this world we need to see the connection between the two and know that whatever we are able to achieve in this world that is by Krishna’s grace and whatever time we spend in focused devotion on Krishna is not actually going to take away our energy and our time from doing wonderful things but it will prepare us internally grant us harmony by which we will be able to do wonderful things in Krishna’s service. So, when we see this way when we see our worldly achievements as truly by coming by Krishna’s grace then we won’t resent the time we have to spend in cultivating focused devotion towards Krishna because we know that will attract Krishna’s grace and that will truly enable us to do wonderful things and in this way we will we will be able to both do wonderful things as well as offer ourselves wholeheartedly to Krishna and relish his wonderful sweetness even during our prayer times. Those two things will not contradict or drag us away but they will both contribute in enriching our life with devotion.