Why was Bharat Maharaja punished with a deer body for his compassion?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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And actually Krishna reciprocates with that. So his attachment is so bad that Bharat Maharaj, just because he got attached to a deer, he was born to, wasn’t it compassionate? See, compassion is good. Bharat Maharaj’s mistake was not that he was compassionate, was that after the compassionate act, what did he do? See, when the baby deer was drowning, at that time to save the life of the baby deer is good, it’s duty.
But after that to think that I have to be the caretaker of that deer always. Now if he wanted to be a caretaker, he could have been the caretaker of a whole kingdom. And he could have cared for thousands of people as a king.
But he had renounced that role. So, that movement acting compassionately is good. But, different ashrams require different roles.
So, at that point when he had renounced the world, for him to become more attached to the deer than to his sadhana, that is a serious deviation. And it is not just attachment. It is attachment that distracted him from sadhana.
It’s like, imagine somebody gets admitted into Ivy League College. And there they get attached to a puppy. And they stop studying.
And then they fail in their exams. It’s a disaster. Attachment to a puppy is not a problem.
But attachment to a puppy to such an extent that they lose the opportunity in the Ivy League, it’s terrible. So at that level, his first act of compassion is good. But his subsequent assuming the role of being the caretaker of the deer, and constantly worrying about the deer, that’s where he went wrong.
So, we as human beings will naturally feel compassion, feel various emotions, and they are good. But we shouldn’t let our emotions solely determine our actions. We have to balance our emotion with our reason, with our intelligence.