KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM HH HARIVILAS MAHARAJ’S MORNING BHAGAVATAM CLASS ON SB 3.1.44:
- SB 2.6.40-41: The Personality of Godhead is pure, being free from all contaminations of material tinges. He is the Absolute Truth and the embodiment of full and perfect knowledge. He is all-pervading, without beginning or end, and without rival. O Nārada, O great sage, the great thinkers can know Him when completely freed from all material hankerings and when sheltered under undisturbed conditions of the senses. Otherwise, by untenable arguments, all is distorted, and the Lord disappears from our sight.
- His birth does not, like that of the living entities, take place under the influence of material nature and the bondage of the reactions of past deeds.
- His works and activities are independent pastimes and are not subject to the reactions of material nature.
- The law of karma enacted by the Supreme Lord for the living entities cannot be applicable to Him, nor has the Lord any desire to improve Himself by activities like those of ordinary living beings.
- One who can come to the conclusion of the Lord’s transcendence can become a devotee of the Lord and can at once be free from all reactions of past deeds. The Lord minimizes or nullifies the reactionary influence of the devotee’s past deeds.
- The Lord always acts in favor of the devotees, and therefore ordinary men who are fruitive actors or seekers of salvation may be attracted to the Lord when He acts as protector of the devotees.
- The secondary purpose of His appearance is to annihilate the upstart asuras and to stop the nonsense of atheistic propaganda by less intelligent persons. By the Lord’s causeless mercy, the asuras who are killed personally by the Personality of Godhead get salvation.
- The meaningful appearance of the Lord is always distinct from ordinary birth. Even the pure devotees have no connection with the material body, and certainly the Lord, who appears as He is, in His sac-cid-ānanda form, is not limited by a material form.
- Letter to Tamala Krishna – You write to say that you do not know what is my desire, but my desire is an open secret. I simply want all over the Western countries people may take this simple formula of chanting, dancing and eating Krishna Prasadam, and being happy. I am simply surprised that they should not accept this simple formula and be happy themselves.
- My only desire is that all people become happy and prosperous in Krishna Consciousness. My predecessors, Vaisnavas, they were so generous that they felt very much afflicted for the suffering of the human society. Sri Rupa Goswami tried to elevate them to real path of happiness by introducing this Govinda Ganamrta, the Nectarine of the Songs of Govinda. That will make them happy.
SB 3.1.44 TRANSLATION:
The appearance of the Lord is manifested for the annihilation of the upstarts. His activities are transcendental and are enacted for the understanding of all persons. Otherwise, since the Lord is transcendental to all material modes, what purpose could He serve by coming to earth?
Īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇaḥ sac-cid-ānanda-vigrahaḥ (Brahma-saṁhitā 5.1): the form of the Lord is eternal, blissful and all-satisfying. His so-called birth is therefore an appearance only, like the birth of the sun on the horizon. His birth does not, like that of the living entities, take place under the influence of material nature and the bondage of the reactions of past deeds. His works and activities are independent pastimes and are not subject to the reactions of material nature. In Bhagavad-gītā (4.14) it is said:
na māṁ karmāṇi limpanti
na me karma-phale spṛhā
iti māṁ yo ’bhijānāti
karmabhir na sa badhyate
The law of karma enacted by the Supreme Lord for the living entities cannot be applicable to Him, nor has the Lord any desire to improve Himself by activities like those of ordinary living beings. Ordinary living beings work for the improvement of their conditional lives. But the Lord is already full of all opulence, all strength, all fame, all beauty, all knowledge and all renunciation. Why should He desire improvement? No one can excel Him in any opulence, and therefore the desire for improvement is absolutely useless for Him. One should always discriminate between the activities of the Lord and those of ordinary living beings. Thus one may come to the right conclusion regarding the Lord’s transcendental position. One who can come to the conclusion of the Lord’s transcendence can become a devotee of the Lord and can at once be free from all reactions of past deeds. It is said, karmāṇi nirdahati kintu ca bhakti-bhājām: the Lord minimizes or nullifies the reactionary influence of the devotee’s past deeds. (Brahma-saṁhitā 5.54)
The activities of the Lord are to be accepted and relished by all living entities. His activities are to attract the ordinary man towards the Lord. The Lord always acts in favor of the devotees, and therefore ordinary men who are fruitive actors or seekers of salvation may be attracted to the Lord when He acts as protector of the devotees. The fruitive actors can attain their goals by devotional service, and the salvationists can also attain their goal in life by devotional service to the Lord. The devotees do not want the fruitive results of their work, nor do they want any kind of salvation. They relish the glorious superhuman activities of the Lord, such as His lifting Govardhana Hill and His killing the demon Pūtanā in infancy. His activities are enacted to attract all kinds of men — karmīs, jñānīs and bhaktas. Because He is transcendental to all laws of karma, there is no possibility of His accepting a form of māyā as is forced on the ordinary living entities who are bound by the actions and reactions of their own deeds.
The secondary purpose of His appearance is to annihilate the upstart asuras and to stop the nonsense of atheistic propaganda by less intelligent persons. By the Lord’s causeless mercy, the asuras who are killed personally by the Personality of Godhead get salvation. The meaningful appearance of the Lord is always distinct from ordinary birth. Even the pure devotees have no connection with the material body, and certainly the Lord, who appears as He is, in His sac-cid-ānanda form, is not limited by a material form.
Only the pure devotee actually gets protection from Krsna
Everyone gets maintenance from Krsna even the demons, but only pure devotees get personal protection
SB 2.6.40-41 (All about Krsna’s unique qualities)
The Personality of Godhead is pure, being free from all contaminations of material tinges. He is the Absolute Truth and the embodiment of full and perfect knowledge. He is all-pervading, without beginning or end, and without rival. O Nārada, O great sage, the great thinkers can know Him when completely freed from all material hankerings and when sheltered under undisturbed conditions of the senses. Otherwise, by untenable arguments, all is distorted, and the Lord disappears from our sight.
Vocab – untenable – no real substance
Vocab – Locus standi – no secure position
Vocab – Hankering – always thinking of possessing something
Vocab – Interpolation – insertion of something into another thing of some other nature
Vocab – Taunting – remark made to provoke someone..
Vocab – Aptitude – talent
Vocab – Glib – fluent and voluble, insincere and shallow.. lacking depth and substance
Here is an estimation of the Lord apart from His transcendental activities in the temporary, material creations. Māyāvāda philosophy tries to designate the Lord as contaminated by a material body when He accepts forms of incarnation. This sort of interpolation is completely denied herein by the explanation that the Lord’s position is pure and unalloyed in all circumstances. According to Māyāvāda philosophy, the spirit soul, when covered by nescience, is designated as jīva, but when freed from such ignorance or nescience he merges in the impersonal existence of the Absolute Truth. But here it is said that the Lord is eternally the symbol of full and perfect knowledge. This is His speciality: perpetual freedom from all material contaminations. This distinguishes the Lord from the individual, common living entities who have the aptitude for being subordinated by nescience and thus becoming materially designated. In the Vedas it is said that the Lord is vijñānam ānandam, full of bliss and knowledge. The conditioned souls are never to be compared to Him because such individual souls have the tendency to become contaminated. Although after liberation the living entity can become one with the same quality of existence as the Lord, his very tendency to become contaminated, which the Lord never has, makes the individual living entity different from the Lord. In the Vedas it is said, śuddham apāpa-viddham: the individual ātmā becomes polluted by sin, but the Lord is never contaminated by sins. The Lord is compared to the powerful sun. The sun is never contaminated by anything infectious because it is so powerful. On the contrary, infected things are sterilized by the rays of the sun. Similarly, the Lord is never contaminated by sins; on the contrary, the sinful living entities become sterilized by contact with the Lord. This means that the Lord is also all-pervading like the sun, and as such, the word pratyak is used in this verse. Nothing is excluded from the expansions of the Lord’s potency. The Lord is within everything, and He is all-covering also, without being disturbed by the activities of the individual souls. He is therefore infinite, and the living entities are infinitesimal. In the Vedas it is said that only the Lord alone exists, and all others’ existences depend on Him. He is the generating reservoir for everyone’s existential capacity; He is the Supreme Truth of all other categorical truths. He is the source of everyone’s opulence, and therefore no one can equal Him in opulence. Being full of all opulences, namely wealth, fame, strength, beauty, knowledge and renunciation, certainly He is the Supreme Person. And because He is a person, He has many personal qualities, although He is transcendental to the material modes. We have already discussed the statement itthaṁ-bhūta-guṇo hariḥ (Bhāg. 1.7.10). His transcendental qualities are so attractive that even the liberated souls (ātmārāmas) are also attracted by them. Although possessed of all personal qualities, He is nevertheless omnipotent. Therefore, personally He has nothing to do, for everything is being carried out by His omnipotent energies. This is confirmed by the Vedic mantras: parāsya śaktir vividhaiva śrūyate svābhāvikī jñāna-bala-kriyā ca. This suggests His specific spiritual form, which can never be experienced by the material senses. He can be seen only when the senses are purified by devotional service (yam evaiṣa vṛṇute tena labhyaḥ). As such, there are basic differences between the Lord and the living entities, in so many respects. No one can be compared to the Lord, as the Vedas declare (ekam evādvitīyaṁ brahma, dvaitād vai bhayaṁ bhavati). The Lord has no competitor, and He has nothing to fear from any other being, nor can anyone be equal to Him. Although He is the root of all other beings, there are basic differences between Him and other beings. Otherwise there would have been no necessity for the statement in the previous verse that no one can know Him one-hundred-percent as He is (na yaṁ vidanti tattvena). That no one can fully understand Him is explained also in this verse, but the qualification for understanding to some degree is mentioned here. Only the praśāntas, or the unalloyed devotees of the Lord, can know Him to a greater extent. The reason is that the devotees have no demands in their lives but to be obedient servants of the Lord, while all others, namely the empiric philosophers, the mystics and the fruitive workers, all basically have some demand, and as such, they cannot be pacified. The fruitive worker wants reward for his work, the mystic wants some perfection of life, and the empiric philosopher wants to merge in the existence of the Lord. Somehow or other, as long as there is a demand for sense satisfaction, there is no chance for pacification; on the contrary, by unnecessary dry speculative arguments, the whole matter becomes distorted, and thus the Lord moves still further away from our understanding. The dry speculators, however, because of their following the principles of austerity and penance, can have knowledge of the impersonal features of the Lord to some extent, but there is no chance of their understanding His ultimate form as Govinda because only the amalātmanas, or the completely sinless persons, can accept pure devotional service to the Lord, as confirmed in the Bhagavad-gītā (7.28):
yeṣāṁ tv anta-gataṁ pāpaṁ
janānāṁ puṇya-karmaṇām
te dvandva-moha-nirmuktā
bhajante māṁ dṛḍha-vratāḥ
Unless one is trained in BG and SB one cannot understand the things as they are.. One continues to thrive by believing lies.. One will not be able to think critically..
Eating, sleeping, mating and defending – against principles.. Per principles..
Natural attraction to nonsense
Understand maya and its actions, Krishna and his uniqueness, process of how to go back to Godhead, Culture,..
Letter to Tamala Krishna
You write to say that you do not know what is my desire, but my desire is an open secret. I simply want all over the Western countries people may take this simple formula of chanting, dancing and eating Krishna Prasadam, and being happy. I am simply surprised that they should not accept this simple formula and be happy themselves. My only desire is that all people become happy and prosperous in Krishna Consciousness. My predecessors, Vaisnavas, they were so generous that they felt very much afflicted for the suffering of the human society. Sri Rupa Goswami tried to elevate them to real path of happiness by introducing this Govinda Ganamrta, the Nectarine of the Songs of Govinda. That will make them happy.