SB 8.3.27 The Lord is accessible by purity – and by sincerity

Transcript

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Srimad Bhagavatam 8.327 Yoga Randhita Karmano Hridayoga Vibhavite Yoginoyam Prapasyanti Yogeshantam Nathosmyaham Yoga Randhita Karmano Here, Gajendra is praying that the people who have randhita, burnt their karma by the practice of yoga Hridayoga Vibhavite and after that their heart has become purified.
Yoga Vibhavite Yoginoyam Prapasyanti Those are the yogis who are able to see the supreme lord. Yogeshantam Nathosmyaham And to that lord who is the master of the yogis. Yogisham I offer my obeisances.
So here, Gajendra is showing his awareness of how the lord is not very easy to attain in terms of perception. So he knows that he is in a non-human species. It is a very low species, unsuitable for spiritual realization.
He also knows that he has been trapped in this species because of his own past karma. And he is now praying, oh lord come and rescue me. That is in a sense the call of his heart because of his circumstantial situation where he is about to die due to the vicious grip of the jaws of the crocodile.
So now the lord is going to come and rescue him. The lord will become visible to him and he is acknowledging the fact that the visibility of the lord is something which is not very easy to achieve. It takes many lifetimes.
And the yogis, when they become perfect, then they are able to see perfection. So then, yoga vibhavite, when their hearts are purified. His heart, he has said, is not purified.
It is filled with attachments for family, children, worldly things. Therefore he is pondering, how will the lord come to me? What qualification do I have? What yoga have I practiced? So he said, actually I have no qualification. So my only qualification is that I am calling out to the lord.
So the sincerity of my call and the fervency of my offer of obeisances, that is my only qualification. And keeping this in mind, he prays, my dear lord, please appear, please appear. I am unqualified, but you are so merciful that even without any qualifications you can appear.
So actually seeing you requires a pure heart. But it is not the pure heart that causes your vision. It is your mercy that brings about your vision.
And your mercy can come to anyone. So I beg you, please bestow your mercy on me. So in this way, when Nagendra is praying, the essence of his prayer is that, My dear lord, please accept my obeisances sincerely, desperately offered to you.
And bestow your mercy upon me. So when we chant the holy names, it is always important to know that the holy name that we have is also recited, sung, meditated, chanted by the very advanced devotees. And actually, when the lord reveals himself as the holy name, and gives us the intoxicating taste of the holy name, we have no qualification for that.
It is simply the lord’s mercy. If at all we have any qualification, it is that we call out with the heart. So when we call out wholeheartedly, then that call invokes Krishna’s mercy.
So we don’t have the pure heart required. If we had a pure heart, then our mind would not get distracted towards lonely, immoral, sensual things. But the fact that it is often filled with that kind of desires indicates that we are still vulnerable to a relapse of those temptations.
Although presently we may have countered those temptations. Recognizing the danger of a relapse, we understand the vital necessity of purification. So that purification is possible by the steady practice.
But the steady practice is not possible when we are being thrown here and there mentally because of the forces of our past conditioning. So it’s a situation that seems like a trap. When we are pure, we will have taste.
But to become pure, we need to chant and for that we need taste. So what do we do? So actually, we use our intelligence and beg the lord for mercy. And the lord can give us mercy even when we don’t have purity.
And when he gives us the taste, then we can steadily move forward in our spiritual life. So here, Gajendra is acknowledging that my only qualification is that I am here in the moment of crisis. I am offering my obeisances to you.
The same mode of humility and sincerity based on a lack of qualification is the qualification that enables us not to become qualified to receive Krishna’s mercy but to become eligible for Krishna’s mercy in terms of Krishna becoming more favorably inspired towards us and thereby he gives us mercy. Thank you.