SB 01.15.20 – Beyond all the wrongs of our life – material and spiritual – is the treasure of remembrance of Krishna

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
you so after describing his intimate relationship with krishna and how krishna had played such an important role in all the major events of his life now arjuna is moving to the double devastation that has occurred in his life soham nirupendra rahitaha oh nirupendra oh king of kings oh emperor oh arjuna that lord purushottama has right has left me i have become bereaved of him so who was that purushottama he was not just the supreme lord he was my friend he was very dear to me he was a heart to heart friend for me and my heart has become as if empty my life has become desolate i felt utterly destitute and devastated by the loss is as if there’s nothing left inside my heart but that itself was devastating enough but worse than that sometimes when we can’t we don’t have the presence of the lord then the we can feel his presence through our service to him shila prabhupada taught us that we can feel the presence of the spiritual master through our service to him and arjuna had been entrusted a service krishna had told aruka his charioteer when all the kuru all the yadus had been caught in a fratricidal conflict which destroyed all of them so at that time he had said told aruka that ask arjuna to take all the queens out of dwarka because dwarka would soon get flooded and arjuna got the queens and the royal ladies of the yadu dynasty out and as he was taking them along many of them decided to go sati with their husbands but some of them were still there many of the queens of arjuna of krishna were also there and gopair asadhir avaleva so so when urukrama parigraham the queens of krishna who is all powerful now what happened i was protecting them but adhvanya recently while i was bringing them along some people who were dressed as cowherds asadhir they were in fiddles and they attacked and they defeated me vinay rajito’s me and i was supposed to protect women but i found that i was i felt like a woman the gopis use the word abala to refer to themselves that we don’t have much strength and arjuna is saying i became like abala i was supposed to protect the abalas and i thought that i was balavan but i became abala utterly helpless so not only have i lost the lord but i have failed him in the service that he gave me and you can think what a utter mortification it is for a person to lose one’s heart’s greatest treasure and one’s life’s greatest skill both at one time and you know there can be few devastations as bad as that suppose somebody is a say a cricket champion and then and suddenly that person loses his spouse or his child and that itself is bad enough and then just as the person is about to go to play a very critical match and that person suddenly was a champion batsman suddenly finds that when he swings the bat he can’t even get the bat near the ball leave alone hit the ball for boundaries and sixes as he would normally do it completely misses the line and gets clean bowled and clean bowled not just by some champion bowler there is some dignity but some bowler was just you know who’s just bowling in first class cricket and playing his first match and is utterly a routine bowler so to be defeated by cowherds cowherd to be defeated by kshatriyas at least is having some dignity because kshatriyas are trained for warfare but to be defeated by cowherds who are not even trained for warfare there can be practically nothing which can be more mortifying than that for a kshatriya like arjuna and most people would prefer death to such mortification in fact krishna himself says for one who has been honored dishonor is worse than death and how is krishna maintaining his life as it will be described in the future verses that he is remembering krishna he’s remembering krishna’s message especially the message that is spoken through the bhagavad gita and it is that message which is giving him solace so in our life we have certain relationship with krishna we have service to krishna and actually life can be so devastatingly unpredictable that in one moment everything that we cherish can be just swept away everything material even apparently everything spiritual but the most important spiritual thing is our remembrance of krishna and the scriptures with their philosophical message into their pastimes offer us abundant facilities for remembrance of krishna and whatever the past issues that happen in our material and our spiritual life are all meant to make us focus on the central essence of our spiritual relationship with krishna that is his remembrance and to treasure those things which enable us to remember so that central treasure is the is our is the holy name the prayers that we offer to krishna and that’s why the more we treasure them the less we will be troubled by whatever disturbances come in our material and spiritual life that’s why taking shelter of these central treasures of our spiritual life is so important for us more important than