Tag: Purpose of life

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SB 2.10.4 Notes – 2/9/22

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM HH HARIVILAS MAHARAJ’S MORNING BHAGAVATAM CLASS ON SB 2.10.4:

  • In the Bhagavad-gītā it is said that beginning from the topmost planet of this universe down to the lowest planet, Pātālaloka, all are destructible, and the conditioned souls may travel in space either by good or bad work or by modern spacecraft, but they are sure to die everywhere, although the duration of life in different planets is different.
  • The only means to attain eternal life is to go back home, back to Godhead, where there is no more rebirth as in the material planets. 
  • The conditioned souls, being unaware of this very simple fact because of forgetting their relationship with the Lord of Vaikuṇṭha, try to plan out a permanent life in this material world. Being illusioned by the external energy, they thus become engaged in various types of economic and religious development, forgetting that they are meant for going back home, back to Godhead.
  • This forgetfulness is so strong due to the influence of māyā that the conditioned souls do not at all want to go back to Godhead. By sense enjoyment they become victims of birth and death repeatedly and thus spoil human lives which are chances for going back to Viṣṇu. 
  • The directive scriptures made by the Manus in different ages and millenniums are called sad-dharma, good guidance for the human beings, who should take advantage of all the revealed scriptures for their own interest, to make life’s successful termination. 
  • The creation is not false, but it is a temporary manifestation just to give a chance for the conditioned souls to go back to Godhead. 
  • The desire to go back to Godhead and functions performed in that direction form the right path of work. When such a regulative path is accepted, the Lord gives all protection to His devotees by His causeless mercy, while the nondevotees risk their own activities to bind themselves in a chain of fruitive reactions.
  • The word sad-dharma is significant in this connection. Sad-dharma, or duty performed for going back to Godhead and thus becoming His unalloyed devotee, is the only pious activity; all others may pretend to be pious, but actually they are not.
  • To work situated in sad-dharma is the right direction of life. One’s aim of life should be to go back home, back to Godhead, and not be subjected to repeated births and deaths in the material world by getting good or bad bodies for temporary existence. Herein lies the intelligence of human life, and one should desire the activities of life in that way.
  • The completeness of human life can be realized only when one engages in the service of the Complete Whole. All services in this world – whether social, political, communal, international or even interplanetary – will remain incomplete until they are dovetailed with the Complete Whole. When everything is dovetailed with the Complete Whole, the attached parts and parcels also become complete in themselves.

SB 2.10.4 TRANSLATION:

The right situation for the living entities is to obey the laws of the Lord and thus be in perfect peace of mind under the protection of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The Manus and their laws are meant to give right direction in life. The impetus for activity is the desire for fruitive work.

This material world is created, maintained for some time, and again annihilated by the will of the Lord. The ingredients for creation and the subordinate creator, Brahmā, are first created by Lord Viṣṇu in His first and second incarnations. The first puruṣa incarnation is Mahā-Viṣṇu, and the second puruṣa incarnation is the Garbhodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, from whom Brahmā is created. The third puruṣa-avatāra is the Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, who lives as the Supersoul of everything in the universe and maintains the creation generated by Brahmā. Śiva is one of the many sons of Brahmā, and he annihilates the creation. Therefore the original creator of the universe is Viṣṇu, and He is also the maintainer of the created beings by His causeless mercy. As such, it is the duty of all conditioned souls to acknowledge the victory of the Lord and thus become pure devotees and live peacefully in this world, where miseries and dangers are always in existence. The conditioned souls, who take this material creation as the place for satisfaction of the senses and thus are illusioned by the external energy of Viṣṇu, remain again to be subjected to the laws of material nature, creation and destruction.

In the Bhagavad-gītā it is said that beginning from the topmost planet of this universe down to the lowest planet, Pātālaloka, all are destructible, and the conditioned souls may travel in space either by good or bad work or by modern spacecraft, but they are sure to die everywhere, although the duration of life in different planets is different. The only means to attain eternal life is to go back home, back to Godhead, where there is no more rebirth as in the material planets. The conditioned souls, being unaware of this very simple fact because of forgetting their relationship with the Lord of Vaikuṇṭha, try to plan out a permanent life in this material world. Being illusioned by the external energy, they thus become engaged in various types of economic and religious development, forgetting that they are meant for going back home, back to Godhead.

Even religious development is also some kind of illusion

 This forgetfulness is so strong due to the influence of māyā that the conditioned souls do not at all want to go back to Godhead. By sense enjoyment they become victims of birth and death repeatedly and thus spoil human lives which are chances for going back to Viṣṇu. The directive scriptures made by the Manus in different ages and millenniums are called sad-dharma, good guidance for the human beings, who should take advantage of all the revealed scriptures for their own interest, to make life’s successful termination. The creation is not false, but it is a temporary manifestation just to give a chance for the conditioned souls to go back to Godhead. The desire to go back to Godhead and functions performed in that direction form the right path of work. When such a regulative path is accepted, the Lord gives all protection to His devotees by His causeless mercy, while the nondevotees risk their own activities to bind themselves in a chain of fruitive reactions. The word sad-dharma is significant in this connection. Sad-dharma, or duty performed for going back to Godhead and thus becoming His unalloyed devotee, is the only pious activity; all others may pretend to be pious, but actually they are not. It is for this reason only that the Lord advises in the Bhagavad-gītā that one give up all so-called religious activities and completely engage in the devotional service of the Lord to become free from all anxieties due to the dangerous life of material existence. To work situated in sad-dharma is the right direction of life. One’s aim of life should be to go back home, back to Godhead, and not be subjected to repeated births and deaths in the material world by getting good or bad bodies for temporary existence. Herein lies the intelligence of human life, and one should desire the activities of life in that way.

Simple outline of what is the purpose of life.. 

There are millions of planets.. We have particular type of body, mind, intelligence, what is the purpose of life.. 

By reading BG with a devotee.. Maharaj understood the purpose of life.. 

State of maya and engaged in all kinds of fruitive activities

Fruitive is not in dictionary.. SP made this word

Activities of which you want to enjoy the fruit of the activity 

Work meant to please ourselves, family, extended family, humanity… 

Work meant to please Krsna

They teach that the purpose of life is sense gratification in a subtle way.. 

No one can get away with anything.. 

The culture does not teach that, they might teach some mundane morality.. 

Bad guys are glorified in the books and movies.. 

ISO says – The root of all evil is the deliberate disobedience of the laws of nature… 

If you live according to Krsna instructions.. There are so many benefits,.,. 

Srinvatam svakatah…

Daily hear BG and SB – The lord in our heart takes special interest in us and becomes the best wishing friend and helps us in every way to purify through hearing chanting.. Who can be our best friend than Krsna.. One who hears and follows His advice  takes special interest,.. And becomes best friend, reveals according to our surrender and becomes our personal protector.. This one verse is enough to take us back to Godhead.. 

ISO INVOCATION: 

The Personality of Godhead is perfect and complete, and because He is completely perfect, all emanations from Him, such as this phenomenal world, are perfectly equipped as complete wholes. Whatever is produced of the Complete Whole is also complete in itself. Because He is the Complete Whole, even though so many complete units emanate from Him, He remains the complete balance.

The Complete Whole, or the Supreme Absolute Truth, is the complete Personality of Godhead. Realization of impersonal Brahman or of Paramātmā, the Supersoul, is incomplete realization of the Absolute Complete. The Supreme Personality of Godhead is sac-cid-ānanda-vigraha. Realization of impersonal Brahman is realization of His sat feature, or His aspect of eternity, and Paramātmā realization is realization of His sat and cit features, His aspects of eternity and knowledge. But realization of the Personality of Godhead is realization of all the transcendental features – sat, cit and ānanda, bliss. When one realizes the Supreme Person, he realizes these aspects of the Absolute Truth in their completeness. Vigraha means “form.” Thus 

  • CONTAINS BOTH WITHIN AND BEYOND: the Complete Whole is not formless. If He were formless, or if He were less than His creation in any other way, He could not be complete. The Complete Whole must contain everything both within and beyond our experience; otherwise He cannot be complete.
  • EVERYTHING FROM LORD IS COMPLETE IN ITSELF: The Complete Whole, the Personality of Godhead, has immense potencies, all of which are as complete as He is. Thus this phenomenal world is also complete in itself. 
  • NO EFFORTS OF MAINTENANCE & EVERYTHING IS GIVEN TO REALIZE THE COMPLETE WHOLE: The twenty-four elements of which this material universe is a temporary manifestation are arranged to produce everything necessary for the maintenance and subsistence of this universe. No other unit in the universe need make an extraneous effort to try to maintain the universe. The universe functions on its own time scale, which is fixed by the energy of the Complete Whole, and when that schedule is completed, this temporary manifestation will be annihilated by the complete arrangement of the Complete Whole.All facilities are given to the small complete units (namely the living beings) to enable them to realize the Complete Whole. 
  • INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE: All forms of incompleteness are experienced due to incomplete knowledge of the Complete Whole. 
  • The human form of life is a complete manifestation of the consciousness of the living being, and it is obtained after evolving through 8,400,000 species of life in the cycle of birth and death.

The whole system convinced that you are a temp body.. The whole purpose is to enjoy as much as you can when you are in this body.. You can do anything in life as long as you can get away with it.. 

  • If in this human life of full consciousness the living entity does not realize his completeness in relation to the Complete Whole, he loses the chance to realize his completeness and is again put into the evolutionary cycle by the law of material nature.
  • Because we do not know that there is a complete arrangement in nature for our maintenance, we make efforts to utilize the resources of nature to create a so-called complete life of sense enjoyment. 
  • Because the living entity cannot enjoy the life of the senses without being dovetailed with the Complete Whole, the misleading life of sense enjoyment is illusion. The hand of a body is a complete unit only as long as it is attached to the complete body. When the hand is severed from the body, it may appear like a hand, but it actually has none of the potencies of a hand.
  • Similarly, living beings are part and parcel of the Complete Whole, and if they are severed from the Complete Whole, the illusory representation of completeness cannot fully satisfy them. (That is why people Suffering, frustarted, bored.. Can’t get out enough of sense gratification.)
  • The completeness of human life can be realized only when one engages in the service of the Complete Whole. All services in this world – whether social, political, communal, international or even interplanetary – will remain incomplete until they are dovetailed with the Complete Whole. When everything is dovetailed with the Complete Whole, the attached parts and parcels also become complete in themselves.

These 8 points in this purport are enough to go back to Godhead if you understand them. 

Hearing and Serving … I do not need anything else.. I am perfect and complete.. Misled by this system.. 

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SB 2.7.39 Notes – 10/27/21

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM HH HARIVILAS MAHARAJ’S MORNING BHAGAVATAM CLASS ON SB 2.7.39:

  • The material world is created by the energy of the Lord, which is manifested in the beginning of the creation by the penance of Brahmājī, the first living being in the creation, and then there are the nine Prajāpatis, known as great sages.
  • In the stage when the creation is maintained, there are devotional service to Lord Viṣṇu, or factual religion, the different demigods, and the kings of different planets who maintain the world.
  • At last, when the creation is preparing to wind up, there is first the principle of irreligion, then Lord Śiva along with the atheists, full of anger. But all of them are but different manifestations of the Supreme Lord. 
  • Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Mahādeva (Śiva) are different incarnations of the different modes of material nature. Viṣṇu is the Lord of the mode of goodness, Brahmā is the lord of the mode of passion, and Śiva is the lord of the mode of ignorance. 
  • The birth, executed by the sex life of the father and the mother, is called animal birth. But such animal birth and progress of life on the animal principles of eating, sleeping, fearing and mating (without any scientific culture of spiritual life) is called the śūdra life or, to be more explicit, the uncultured life of the lower class of men. 
  • The governmental power of society in the Kali-yuga will be passed over to the uncultured, godless laborer classes of men, and thus the nṛdevas (or the ministers of the government) will be the vṛṣalas, or the uncultured, lower-class men of society.
  • No one can expect any peace and prosperity in a human society full of uncultured, lower classes of men. 
  • The symptoms of such uncultured social animals are already in vogue, and it is the duty of the leaders of men to take note of it and try to reform the social order by introducing the principles of twice-born men trained in the science of God consciousness. 
  • This can be done by expanding the culture of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam all over the world. 
  • Ultimately, the material creation is but a temporary manifestation meant to give the chance of liberation to the conditioned souls, who are entrapped in the material world, and one who develops the mode of goodness under the protection of Lord Viṣṇu has the greatest chance of being liberated by following the Vaiṣṇava principles and thus being promoted to the kingdom of God, no more to return to this miserable material world.

SB 2.7.39 TRANSLATION:

At the beginning of creation there are penance, myself [Brahmā] and the Prajāpatis, the great sages who generate; then, during the maintenance of the creation, there are Lord Viṣṇu, the demigods with controlling powers, and the kings of different planets. But at the end there is irreligion, and then Lord Śiva and the atheists full of anger, etc. All of them are different representative manifestations of the energy of the supreme power, the Lord.

The material world is created by the energy of the Lord, which is manifested in the beginning of the creation by the penance of Brahmājī, the first living being in the creation, and then there are the nine Prajāpatis, known as great sages. In the stage when the creation is maintained, there are devotional service to Lord Viṣṇu, or factual religion, the different demigods, and the kings of different planets who maintain the world. At last, when the creation is preparing to wind up, there is first the principle of irreligion, then Lord Śiva along with the atheists, full of anger. But all of them are but different manifestations of the Supreme Lord. Therefore Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Mahādeva (Śiva) are different incarnations of the different modes of material nature. Viṣṇu is the Lord of the mode of goodness, Brahmā is the lord of the mode of passion, and Śiva is the lord of the mode of ignorance. Ultimately, the material creation is but a temporary manifestation meant to give the chance of liberation to the conditioned souls, who are entrapped in the material world, and one who develops the mode of goodness under the protection of Lord Viṣṇu has the greatest chance of being liberated by following the Vaiṣṇava principles and thus being promoted to the kingdom of God, no more to return to this miserable material world.

All this information we are receiving in 1st and 2nd canto help us understand what is our real position in this material world. 

If we understand the vastness of Krsna we become humbled and through that humility we develop a state of pricelessness, where we don’t falsely puff up that we are the center of the universe. We understand that we are extremely insignificant in this infinite creation and our position is extremely limited. However we can get connect to Krsna who is unlimited, who is the source of everything through bhakti yoga.

Once there was a great saintly woman Shilavati . Her husband was a leper. He was in a very bad state of health. He still had a desire for sense gratification. His wife was willing to sacrifice everything to satisfy him. She was carrying him in a basket.. And passed by the mansion of a prostitute. He tells her that he wants to enjoy the prostitute. Shilavathi cleaned outside the mansion and planted a garden and took care of it everyday and cleaned it every day. The prostitute wanted to see her and ask who she was. Shilavati tells her about her husband’s wish. Prostitute asks her to get him. She decorates him and takes him to the lady. The prostitute served them food but the food was in gold dishes and the same items were in iron dishes. Do you see any difference in the taste because of the dishes. .. The prostitute tells him – your wife sacrificed her dignity and chastity to satisfy you. On the way back he was cursed by a saint – that he will die when the sun rises. Shilavati prays to the lord to stop the sunrise. Due to her chastity the sun did not rise and the universe was in chaos.. The lord sent the woman of same caliber to speak to Shilavati to draw her wish to let the sun rise. Arundati goes to convince her and the sun rises. Her husband and her walked into the fire the next day they both rejuvenated into young and beautiful living entities and go back to Heavenly planets. This story is in CC ADI lila. A very famous stories in vedas of amazing Chastity  and dedication to her husband. This is similar to Sati Savitri.. This principle of chastity, it is very important for man and woman.. If it is violated it causes disturbance in the world. All this will happen at the end of the creation. 

3rd canto – explains the creation of the material world. 

The vision of a pure devotee is he sees everything in relationship with the lord. Thus he is always Krsna Conscious. 

If he sees the tree he does not see the body of the tree, but  he sees the soul in the body of the tree and the super soul. With that spiritual vision the devotee is always in contact with Krsna. 

Creation – Brahma 

Maintenance – Vishnu

Destruction – Shiva

A married couple to maintain the family – should have regulation – if they cultivate mode of goodness (sleeping early, raising early… ), then maintaining family life will become easy. 

Maintenance is the hardest thing, harder than creation and destruction. It requires – regulative principles, steadiness, focus, self control. 

When destruction takes place – it starts with people not following regulations, violating all the divine qualities as discussed in BG 13.8-12 

  • Upward movement – 
    • Follow all the 18 points of knowledge in BG 13.8-12
    • One has to learn the value of DS. 
    • One has to accept and respect the spiritual authorities and follow their instructions and engage as much as possible in the devotional service.
    • Krishna has to be the center of their life. They have to plan their life with Krsna as the center. Then they will be liberated. 
  • Downward movement – 
    • Not training to be self controlled
    • Not having Krsna as the center.. Sense gratification as the center of life
    • This leads to Mode of passion and then Mode of ignorance, anger, violence and destruction

SB 2.7.38 

Because of the lack of training or culture in the upper section of the social orders, they are no more to be designated as the dvija-janas, or the twice-born. The significance of being twice-born has been explained in many places in these great literatures, and again one is reminded herewith that birth, executed by the sex life of the father and the mother, is called animal birth. But such animal birth and progress of life on the animal principles of eating, sleeping, fearing and mating (without any scientific culture of spiritual life) is called the śūdra life or, to be more explicit, the uncultured life of the lower class of men. 

That is what we see today.,, these things are glorified today as if they are the only sources of pleasure.. 

 It is stated herein that the governmental power of society in the Kali-yuga will be passed over to the uncultured, godless laborer classes of men, and thus the nṛdevas (or the ministers of the government) will be the vṛṣalas, or the uncultured, lower-class men of society.

All these symptoms of Kali yuga.. The end time does not happen very soon, 427,000 years and more. Imagine how bad it is going to be. It is only due to the appearance of Lord Caitanya that there is this 10,000 years of golden window that people can get out of this. After that it is going to be very very difficult. Only due to the Sankirtan movement one can be free of this influence. And having a structured life based on the principles of devotional service, one can be liberated from birth and death.. 

No one can expect any peace and prosperity in a human society full of uncultured, lower classes of men. The symptoms of such uncultured social animals are already in vogue, and it is the duty of the leaders of men to take note of it and try to reform the social order by introducing the principles of twice-born men trained in the science of God consciousness. This can be done by expanding the culture of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam all over the world. In the degraded condition of human society, the Lord incarnates as the Kalki avatāra and kills all the demonic without mercy.

Culture of SB – Om namo bhagavate vasudevaya.. It is the whole culture with Vasudeva as the center.. It is not about Indra or mata.. We should take this SB very seriously everyday and preach about it.. 

Opulent days – live frugally – frugal days – love opulently

Live minimalist.. 

Focusing our life in hearing BG and SB 

Real Purpose of material creation – “Ultimately, the material creation is but a temporary manifestation meant to give the chance of liberation to the conditioned souls, who are entrapped in the material world, and one who develops the mode of goodness under the protection of Lord Viṣṇu has the greatest chance of being liberated by following the Vaiṣṇava principles and thus being promoted to the kingdom of God, no more to return to this miserable material world.”

Q – How to see a soul in the tree? First understand intellectually. Then anything that is moving is due to the soul and the super soul. When they are not there everything is static dead.. This person is moving because soul is present and super soul.. When the person is dead – the soul has left but the super soul is still there because the body is decaying.. If you see something moving then there is a soul, at least a super soul..