By the mercy of the spiritual master and Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, we can become Krishna conscious and make our life auspicious. This article is about why this material world is not auspicious and what can be the solultion?
Table of Contents
Lecture by Sri Chanchalapathi Dasa on April 17, 2015 – Srimad Bhagavatam – 3.15.9
sa tvam vidhatsva sam bhumams
tamasa lupta-karmanam
adabhra-dayaya drstya
apannan arhasiksitum
TRANSLATION
The demigods prayed to Brahma: Please look upon us mercifully, for we have fallen into a miserable condition; because of the darkness, all our work has been suspended.
We are reading in this chapter about the pregnancy of Diti and because of her carrying two very prominent demons there have been many inauspicious signs in the universe and so the demigods have become very disturbed and they have approached Lord Brahma.
Why the existence in the material world is inauspicious?
Chaitanya Charitamrita says that a materialist may calculate some things as shubha and some things as ashubha – auspicious and inauspicious. This is simply a mental speculation because existence in the material world is inauspicious for the living entity. We don’t belong here; this material world is designed to give us misery and things that we don’t aspire for. We know that this material world is parabhava – everything is destined to be finished.
That is why Srila Prabhupada said a devotee never goes to an astrologer; as devotees we should depend on Krishna. When in difficulty materialists typically run to an astrologer who tells them – now ashubha kala is there, after 3 months shubha kala will come, etc. There are many occasions where Srila Prabhupada very strongly said that we should not go to an astrologer at all trying to find out when my life will become better, etc. When we are in this material world it means it is a place of miseries. Our hope is Krishna Consciousness and that will bring shubha – that is the strong confidence of a devotee.
This material world is terrible, I was recently reading about one Malaysian Airlines which flew over Ukraine and it was suddenly shot down. They could not figure out why. There were some 250 people in that aircraft. Later on all that they figured out was that a missile struck the aircraft and it blew up. It was also found out that just ninety seconds before that, an Air India flight also flew in the same airspace and ninety seconds later another aircraft flew in the opposite direction. All separated by ninety seconds. This material world is like this, we think that we are safe, but we never know what danger will unfold at any time. There is no auspiciousness in this material world; that only Krishna Consciousness can bring us, a devotee should be convinced about this.
Material world and Spiritual world
Our prayer to the Lord is please bring good fortune upon us by making us Krishna Conscious. The Gautamiya Tantra which describes about Vrindavana says – in the spiritual world there is constant rain of love, and we belong to that atmosphere relating with Krishna constantly in loving devotional service. Today that activity has become suspended because of ignorance, now we are interested in pursuing wealth, sense gratification. We have become entangled in the complicated meshes of birth and death. It is a terrible situation.
There are so many kinds of miseries that are being imposed on us and in the midst of all this we are seeing some little green grass; like Prabhupada gave the example of a goat tied in a slaughter house and the butcher has given some green grass and the goat is chewing on the grass and thinking ‘such a nice life I am having.’ The goat cannot realize that at any moment he could also be slaughtered. This is actually the nature of this material existence. Any living form other than the human beings doesn’t have the ability to think about impending death. Even though we have that ability we are so much overwhelmed by the illusory energy that we look upon the green grass that is available in this material world.
We don’t realize – our situation is that we are being devoured by the forest fire of material existence and we are supposed to remember this every day before sunrise and pray to the spiritual master – please bless me – ghana ghanatvam. When there is a forest fire, Srila Prabhupada explains so nicely – what can be done to put out the forest fire? Can we call the fire brigade? Can we get buckets of water and start lining up people to pour water on the forest fire? No human endeavor can put out a forest fire, even in super rich countries they just watch and hope that it will go down. Thousands of hectares of forest are devoured, only thing that can put out a forest fire is the rain and that is not human effort. In other words our position is such that we are in a forest fire of material existence. We need the help of a spiritual master who is liberated and he can pour the rain of mercy and put out the forest fire.
The devatas are praying that – Lord Brahma, we are immersed in darkness and we are not able to do our duties. They are praying for a profuse flow of mercy. We should also pray to the spiritual master, to Krishna, to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu for adabhra daya – not a small quantity, because we are in such deep illusion and to come out of this illusion, we also need profuse mercy from the spiritual master.
Our heart should be full of appreciation for what we have received from the spiritual master. That adabhra-dayaya drstya – that profuse mercy that Srila Prabhupada has shown on all of us and how we can serve his mission, how we can please him, should be our life’s mission.
(The above transcripts have been edited for better readability. However they have not been verified and confirmed by the original speaker.)
Sri Chanchalapathi Dasa is serving at ISKCON since 1984. He is presently the Governing Body Commissioner, ISKCON Bangalore Group of Temples, Senior Vice President, ISKCON Sri Radha Krishna Temple, Bangalore and Vice Chairman, The Akshaya Patra Foundation.