SB 11.07.29 – When we are burning and suffering why keep ourselves away from the river

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you, so here the Brahmin is being questioned by Vidur Maharaj, and he is describing how he is, despite being capable, acting as unable, he is capable of doing expert activity, but still is inactive, and appears almost like a maddened person, so now he is going deeper, he is explaining why is it that most people are active, and why is it that you are inactive, so he is giving his tentative inference, and that will be confirmed when we will see the realizations, of the Abdul Brahmana as spoken by himself, so here he is describing how, people in general, what is the situation, they have been burned, burned by what, is a forest fire, a blazing fire, that is intolerably, distressing and destructive, samsara davana lindloka, missing in the Mangalarthi, the whole material existence is like a forest fire, and we are all burning, and how do the flames come to us, the flames come in the form of desires, and those desires fall in two broad categories, Krishna also says this in 2.44, when he says, so kama creates a desire for bhoga, and lobha creates a desire for Aishwarya, we want to, enjoy through the senses, and we want to enjoy through having wealth, by which we can get enjoyable activities, and get the enjoyment, and lust and greed, torment the hearts of everyone, and actually we see, that most of the media, the advertisements, largely focus on kama and lobha, they, exhibit, portray, attractive sense objects, and then they portray, various schemes, for getting money, doubling money, and they also portray objects that, apparently can be put, that can be purchased with money, with the promise that they will give us happiness, so essentially our culture, basically increases the dhavagni, the whole advertisement industry especially, and the metalistic culture in general, they, are the, spreaders of this blazing fire, of kama, lobha, dhavagni, so normally if a fire is spreading, rapidly, we try to, if we have the capacity, extinguish it by using fire extinguishers and, by, calling the, firefighting squads, but if we can’t do that, the very least that we do is, we try to save ourselves by going away from that fire, but unfortunately, most people act like moths, now when we feel the fire of lust and greed, somehow in a perverse way, we think that by going closer to that fire, by going deeper into that fire, we’ll get relief, and, when the sense objects come in front of us, we go deeper and deeper into this, we go closer to the sense objects, deeper and deeper, do our minds get captivated, by the, by the charm of the sense objects, by the hope for pleasure, and ultimately, by the misery of frustration that comes, because, most of the time, we don’t get the objects that we want, and even if we get them, they give very little pleasure, insignificant pleasure, as compared to what was the hype, and so in this way, the hankering and the frustration, associated with, lust and greed, are the, they are the, blazing fire, in which everyone is burning, such as the sensible people, there’s a fire burning, and if they themselves are getting scarred, then they run away from them, the fire, and expose themselves to, and go somewhere cooling, they might enter into a water, to gain relief, so, the example is given of a, Dipaha, Dipaha means an elephant, Gangaam bhasis taiva dipa, so there is a blazing forest fire, at that time, if an elephant is being burned in the fire, and is burning, so just as, the elephant gets relief by, by bathing in the cooling waters of the Ganga, when, it is, it is experiencing heat, whether it be external heat, because of a forest fire, or whether it be external heat, because of the fire of lust, what happened, those who are liberated, they do not, experience this fire, because they do situate themselves, in the bliss of transcendence, but this is also how it explains, that, elephants burning with lust, can get relief by bathing in the Ganga, because the Ganga cools, and cools not just physically, it’s purifying, Ganga water, literally, it brings the, the physical, the sensual heat down, similarly, when we expose ourselves, to the Ganga of Krishna katha, of Krishna naam, of, Krishna, then that can, do and extinguish, the fire of lust and greed, that is burning within our heart, so, when we are chanting, nothing may seem to be happening physically, we are not, most of us think of success in terms of, gross material things, generally we think of success largely in terms of, either fulfilling karma or lova, or making arrangements to fulfill karma and lova, getting a business contract, getting a, pay hike, getting a, better, arrangement for, getting a bigger house or things like that, but, although some of these can be our responsibilities, and we have to give them due thought, but we also need, a time when we free ourselves from this dhavagni, so that we can become internally rested and rejuvenated, and no longer stay internally tormented, and when we are uttering the holy name, at that time, we are, placing ourselves in the Ganga, of the holy name, and if we, are attentive in the chanting, then it is like we are burning in the fire, and we are standing next to the river, but we don’t enter into the river, and therefore we keep ourselves burning and suffering unnecessarily, so by visualizing and remembering, that, the holy name, offers us the, holy name comprises and offers us the opportunity, to, right, to be, and cooled by the Ganga water, we can, inspire ourselves to be attentive in chanting.