Bhagavatam, day 110
Srimad Bhagavatam - day 110
Harayē namah
Lord Brahma continued, “O Supreme Lord! As long as the person refuses to seek shelter in Your lotus feet he is always anxious and fearful. He worries about his house, wealth, family, friends and power. He laments a lot when they are lost. Excessive greed, jealously and extreme self-centeredness continue to exist in him. Until he seeks shelter in Your lotus feet the false-ego and pride which cause feelings of ‘me and mine’ in him cannot be destroyed. These feelings are the root for all his fears and anxieties.
Chanting Your holy names and listening to Your divine glories drives away all forms of inauspiciousness. Yet, unfortunate persons who lack the right wisdom lead their lives controlled by their senses, which are opposed towards good deeds. A mind that is completely under the control of desires loses its freedom. Such piteous human beings will eternally strive only for those trivial joys that sensory pleasures bestow. They engage constantly in inauspicious deeds.
O Lord who possesses infinite energy! O Lord Achyuta! These human beings are eternally tormented by extreme hunger and thirst, diseases caused due to the imbalance of vata, pitta and other dośās in the body, the fire called extreme lustful desires, intense heat, severe cold, strong winds, rain and uncontrollable anger. To add to this, they inflict pain upon each other. My mind deeply grieves seeing them suffer.
O Ishwara! The Lord’s pervasive illusory power, which resides within the human being in the form of his senses and within this external visible world in the form of the sound, touch, form, taste and smell pertaining to the objects of desire, entraps the being completely. The individual being who is thus bound, while experiencing the consequences of his earlier deeds, continues to endlessly rotate in the wheel of repeated births and deaths.
This illusory unreal world brings untold suffering to the individual. These worldly bondages do not get destroyed in the being until he realizes his true Self, which is distinct from the body and the senses but which is not distinct from the Supreme Lord.
O Lord! Those persons including great sages, who are not desirous of listening to your divine glories, engage their mind and senses in various activities during the day and they suffer with difficulties. Due to the force of the various desires that are filled in their mind and intellect, at night such persons are unable to sleep. These desires trouble them in the form of their dreams. Hence even for a second they are unable to go into deep sleep.
Such persons eternally put in efforts to earn wealth, vehicles, gold, house and other materialistic objects. Nevertheless, divine will creates obstacles in their path. Those devoid of devotion cannot be happy even in worldly matters. In this way they constantly rotate in this samsara which is nothing but repeated cycle of births and deaths.
tvaṁ bhakti-yoga-paribhāvita-hṛt-saroja
āsse śrutekṣita-patho nanu nātha puṁsām
yad-yad-dhiyā ta urugāya vibhāvayanti
tat-tad-vapuḥ praṇayase sad-anugrahāya
O Lord! You are of pure reputation. By listening to Your divine glories, the path to reach You will be known.
When the devotee due to his devotion purifies his heart, You undoubtedly go and reside therein. In order to bless them, You manifest in those forms in which they eternally contemplate upon You. You, the non-dual Supreme Essence, reside within every being in the form of their inner Self and through this You cause their welfare.
Even if celestials, who seek fulfillment of their desires, worship You ostentatiously with plentiful ingredients You are not pleased. But You are quickly pleased when devotees display feelings of compassion towards all forms of life. Non devotees or evil minded persons can never develop feelings of love and compassion towards all forms of life.
For this reason, human beings should perform yagna and other sacrificial Vedic rituals, intense austerities and participate in charitable deeds with the desire to obtain Your grace. This is the ultimate result of all good meritorious activities. This is because at no point of time dharma that belongs to You will go for a waste.
O Supreme form of knowledge! With your chaitanya shakti, you permanently remove feelings of duality that taint human minds. Creation, sustenance and annihilation which are the transcendental activities of illusory power are nothing but Your sports. You are the Lord of the universe. Again and again I offer my prayerful obeisance to You, O Lord!
yasyāvatāra-guṇa-karma-viḍambanāni
nāmāni ye ’su-vigame vivaśā gṛṇanti
te ’naika-janma-śamalaṁ sahasaiva hitvā
saṁyānty apāvṛtāmṛtaṁ tam ajaṁ prapadye
The sins of innumerable births get destroyed in the person who, although surviving on external support, at the time of death consciously or unconsciously recollects the divine names of the Lord that extol His supremacy, qualities and activities. Their veil of ignorance is totally shred and they attain supreme liberation. In such a Supreme Lord I seek refuge.
The Lord who is beyond comparison has divided the illusory power, which is dependent upon him, into traits of purity (sattva), action (rajas) and inertia (tamo). Using these traits as His carrier He has incarnated in three forms of Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra. In these three forms He handles the tasks of creation, sustenance and annihilation of the worlds.
This illusory power further undergoes transformation and becomes the basis (carrier) for Marichi, Manu and other Prajapatis (leaders). In this way, with the Trinity as the trunk and Prajapatis as its various branches, the Supreme Lord has manifested in the form of the tree called the universe. To such a Lord I offer my obeisance.
The swadharma called ‘worshipping the Almighty’ brings auspiciousness to human beings. However in persons who, due to negligence towards this swadharama, indulge in sinful deeds, the powerful time truncates their plans and their desire for longevity. In other words, such persons will have a short lifespan. Time is supremely powerful. To the Lord who manifests as eternal time, I offer my obeisance.
Brahma-loka is that supreme plane which is revered by all the other planes of existence. This loka has a span of two parārthas. One parārtha is 1000 maha-yugas. One parārtha is the daytime for Brahma. I, who am the leader for this Brahma-loka, also fear this time”.
Haraye namah