SB 5.23.14 – Obsession with artha doesn’t allow us to use it for dharma or even for kama

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Srimad Bhagavatam, 11.23.14 The Avanti Brahmana is speaking. He is lamenting. He is lamenting.
So, ahokashtam, kashta is misfortune. What a great misfortune! Bratha means waste. Bhakthana Thakur’s song often contains the word vitha janma gelo.
I have wasted my life. So, I have toiled and brought distress upon myself, all in vain. Generally, people say no pain, no gain.
But, here he is explaining how what he has got is all pain and no gain. That is the ultimate fate of unbalanced materialism, which is irreligious. So, I have worked so hard and normally the purusharthas of life are dharma, artha, kama and moksha.
So, artha is one of them. Artha can be used either to get kama, to fulfill our desires and enjoy, or artha can be recycled for dharma, so that in the future we will also get artha and we can get kama. And that is how the cycle is.
So, he is saying that the artha which I had, I did not use it for kama or I did not use it for dharma also. Normally, when people have wealth, they either want to enjoy now or they want to do some donation, do some pious and religious activity, so that they can enjoy in the future. That means they are putting their artha for dharma so that they can take care of the future enjoyment.
But when people are excessively materialistic, here this person was so miserly that he was simply concerned with accumulating wealth and he did not think of even using it for his own good, what to speak of the good of others, what to speak of enjoying in this life now. So, none of these he did. And āyāsaha.
So, āyāsaha is actually the labor which he did. I got nothing out of it. And that is the nature of the illusion of this world that when people become too greedy, there are many wealthy people who become super wealthy by exploiting others.
They cause others to suffer because of the way they exploit them. But then at the same time, they themselves suffer because their greed does not allow them any peace of mind. And their greed causes them to be in constant anxiety.
So, basically, unidimensional materialism where one does not give any time for God, any connection with dharma, that leads to misery, not just in a future life, but even in this life. The people who are rabidly materialistic, rabidly means in a deceased way, like a rabid dog is just barking and biting without thinking of anything. So, we can become rabidly materialistic like that if we stay in the association of materialistic people too much and too unguardedly.
And rabid materialism leads to misery not just in the next life, but even in this life. So many people in the name of material enjoyment take drugs, smoke and drink and they bring vṛtthātmā me antāpitahā. They bring suffering upon themselves and not just to speak in terms of karmic consequences in the future life, they are suffering now also.
And actually, unfortunately, this sort of culture is being propagated today as happiness. The TV serials show people having illicit affairs and doing all sorts of degraded activities and people think, oh, this is adventure, this is enjoyment. But that is not even material enjoyment.
There is so much anxiety, so much fear of loss of prestige and so little pleasure at the end of it all. So na dharmāya na kāmāya. Most of today’s society is like this.
People have crying hearts, but they plaster on smiling faces which are masks. And if we get caught up, then we will lose on real spiritual happiness and not get even material happiness. So na dharmāya na kāmāya.
So this rabid materialism, if we want to avoid getting infected by that, we need the vaccine of Krishna consciousness. Then, no matter how rabidly materialistic people are around us, those will not influence us, those will not make us materialistic. Because we will know that there is a higher happiness waiting for me.
Not just in the future, but even now if I absorb myself in Krishna. And then we can stay free from this infection of rabid materialism.