What is the meaning of the fifth canto – faith in structure of the universe – protecting the sixth canto – faith in the holy name?

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Transcript

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Question from Kiran Prabhu. What is the meaning of the fifth canto, which talks about faith in planetary system, acts as a gate to enter the sixth canto, which talks about faith in the holy name? Answer. Actually, ultimately all the gates lead to the tenth canto in the Srimad Bhagavatam, which describes Krishna’s intimate pastimes.
And, everything in the Bhagavatam is ultimately preparing us for that. So, when Bhaktivinod Thakur, presented the Bhagavatam to the Bhadraloka in Bengal, he wrote his famous Bhagavata essay. He realized that there will be several obstacles for these people to get to understand the Bhagavatam.
So, one of the obstacles was the cosmology. So, he explained that, he gave various explanations at different points, but with respect to the question, the important thing is he talks about Saragrahi and Bharagrahi. So, the essence of the Bhagavatam is not the description of chronology and cosmology that is there within it.
It is important, but it is by no standard all important. So, people who have too much faith in Pratiksha and Hanuman, they are likely to find this sort of description outrageous. And, they may just reject it.
And, they may not come to later sections, where, for example, in 6th canto they understand the power of the hodini, and later on in 10th canto they understand how Krishna manifests himself in a very sweet intimate way to relish pastimes with his devotees. So, now, does one need absolute faith in the 5th canto to proceed to the 6th canto and image of 10th canto? Not necessarily. One surely needs to have some doubt about the infallibility of Pratiksha and Hanuman.
That means, if somebody has complete faith in Pratiksha and Hanuman, the way I see the sky, I don’t see any Mount Meru there. And, Hanuman, our scientists have also done some observations, and they have done some inferences, and there is no such thing as Mount Meru. So, if we think that Pratiksha and Hanuman make us omniscient, that will surely act as a disqualification for us.
And those who have so much confidence in observation and inference cannot enter into the intimate pastimes of Adhoksha, the Lord who is beyond observation and inference. So, at least we should have some level of skepticism about the power of Pratiksha and Hanuman to reveal the ultimate realities of even this world, or to speak of the next world. And we should have some open-mindedness to recognize that the shabda might be seeing things from a different perspective, which might also be valid.
So, basically, for us, the fifth canto acts as a filter. If we have too much faith in Pratiksha and Hanuman, then we will not be able to move forward. And then, when we come to the sixth canto, we understand that, actually, there is this holy name.
So, at one level, from the dharmic point of view, the sixth canto seems a little… from the moral point of view, it seems a little unbalanced that somebody just chants one name and all the sins go away. How is that possible? In the legal system, if you go and tell, I have chanted one name, so I have committed all the crimes, all the crimes have been cancelled, it will not work. So, how can it work over here? So, actually, the Bhagavatam is taking us towards understanding the glory of bhakti.
Now, it is not that the person becomes free from all sins just by chanting one name. Actually, the idea is that the chanting of one name, if it is done properly, frees the person from the mentality to sin. And if he is freed from that mentality to sin, then there is no reason for him to be punished.
The purpose of punishment is not to just inflict suffering on a person, but it is to induce reformation in the person. And that reformation, if it is happening, as it will happen if one chants the holy names, then there is no need for the suffering. And the whole Ajamil pastime is told in such a way that… First, Shukadeva Goswami is told by Parishad Maharaj that actually, punishment given by the state or atonement done by oneself doesn’t work in changing people’s heart.
So, what is the way out? And then Shukadeva Goswami tells the pastime of Ajamil, which indicates that not only does bhakti remove the lower taste, but actually bhakti makes unnecessary the administering of punishment. And that is demonstrated through Ajamil being released from the clutches of Yamadutas by the Vishnudutas. So, essentially… So, the fifth canto talks too much about pratyaksha.
The sixth canto talks about our own sense of moral reasoning. If we have our own sense of moral reasoning, then the Ajamil pastime can seem very unbalanced, to put it politely, and outrageous, to put it bluntly. That somebody has committed so many immoral activities, criminal activities, can just be forgiven because chanting one name of Hari.
But if we are bharagrahi, we’ll get caught over here, and we’ll say, this doesn’t make sense, and we’ll put it aside. But if we are saaragrahi, let’s see what is the actual… The people who have written this Bhagavatam, even if somebody doesn’t accept that it is a revealed word, even if some sages have written this word, people who have written this, they seem to be intelligent people. The whole setting of the Bhagavatam indicates that something extraordinary is happening.
That a person who is about to die, is sitting down, and instead of trying to take medicine to save his life, is just sitting and hearing this. And these people, they are not doing frivolous entertainment at the time of death, because they are fasting. If a person wants to do entertainment, if people want to watch TV and enjoy cricket match, they also want to have a lot of things to eat and feast on.
So, this is not certainly mortal enjoyment. It’s serious business. So, what is the essence? What are these people actually doing? If one has that serious inquisitiveness, then one will not get caught in the pitfalls of the 5th and 6th cantos, but move forward to the 10th canto, and there one will get the essence.
Of course, the glimpses of that essence are there throughout. But in one sense, 5th canto challenges our sense of… our faith in Pratyaksha, and 6th canto challenges our faith in Anuman. And when we put aside those, even if we can’t give them up completely, we don’t necessarily have to give them up completely, but at least we recognize that they are not omniscient, and they could be wrong.
Let me see what are the values that Bhagavatam is talking about. What is it really talking about? Then we can go to the 10th canto. So, that is the meaning that these two, in one sense, protect us from the intimate pastimes of Krishna, because only when we have put aside our own conceptions of rightness and greatness, then we can understand how Krishna’s human-like pastimes are right and great.
It’s just so beautifully right and great for God to be conquered by love, that love is the highest reality, and to achieve the supreme reality, God himself goes down. So, this is not something which we can understand by logic, and this is certainly not something which we regularly see in this world. So, Pratiksha and Anuman don’t really support this idea of greatness, subordinating itself to love, but that is the ultimate standard of greatness.
So, essentially, the 5th canto protects, challenges our faith in Pratiksha, so that we can get to the 6th canto, and 6th canto challenges our faith in Anuman, so that we can get to the 10th canto. Thank you.