Srimad Bhagavatam – day 397
Nārāyana
Prahlāda is explaining to his father that people inclined to this material world consider their house and their belongings to be the end goal of life. Such persons believe that the warmth of the mattress to be Vaikunṭha. They dislike waking up at 5 AM. They remain disconnected with the Sunrise and Sunset times. They eternally sleep. They hesitate to leave the house and step outside. They have no concern for their duties. They are negligent in attending to their official work, due to which at times they lose their jobs. They are filled with laziness. If they remain awake till 12 midnight watching movies or gossiping, how can they ever wake up at 5 in the morning? They remain lethargic. They are eternally late to work. Such people lack control over their senses. At all times they are lazy, sleepy and are yawning. They feel hungry at all times. Fulfilling sensory needs is their only objective.
Prahlāda continued, “Repeatedly falling into this darkness called re-births, they perform the same deeds again and again. They enjoy the same sensory pleasures again and again. Their intellect (buddhi) does not fix upon Srikrishna either through their own efforts, the efforts of others, or through association with holy saints (satsang)”.
For the mind to fix upon Srikrishna, the living entity should obtain a noble birth and a noble mind. They should be able to fix their mind solely upon the Lord. How can those, who consider their body and their house to be everything, scale to this level?
Those who are able to develop dispassion towards their house and other objects will see a spurt in their devotion towards the Lord. As the worldly contents get emptied from the mind, it will begin to be filled with noble virtues from top. The benefits of supreme association (satsang) will never enter a mind filled with traits of passion and darkness (rajas, tamas), which is brimming with sensory desires and their fulfillment. How can such mind be termed healthy? Unless laziness and procrastination are distanced, unless the person distances from sensory needs such as speech and taste, his mind will never be emptied. It will never focus upon Srikrishna. When the senses come under control, traits of darkness begin to deplete. Traits of purity (sattva) fill up this empty place in the mind.
Prahlāda continued, “Living entities whose minds and other inner instruments are impure due to sensory attachments, accept as their role-models only those materially inclined people, who believe this external world as the ultimate goal of life (puruśārtha) and diligently follow their footsteps. It is like one blind man leading another”.
People whose mind is filled with spiritual ignorance (tamo guna) consider materially inclined persons who believe this world to be the ultimate goal of life, as their heroes and abide by their dictates. Such heroes declare that fulfilling sensory pleasures is the mandated duty and that it is the end fruit of life. Sinning and abiding by untruthfulness is a duty according to them. Truthfulness does not even remotely exist in their opinion. The ignorant who get carried away by them, are like the blind who in turn are led by another blind person. All of them join the demonic clan. They are unaware of the simple logic that when the mind is emptied of its bad habits, the Lord will automatically fill up the empty space.
“They are eternally inclined only towards that portion of Vedas which deals with the resultant benefits of fruitive actions. Believing these actions will bestow them with liberation, they get tied to them.”
In general, people are tied to fruitive actions. Even so, such persons have some hope of growth if they have faith in God. ‘God resides within our fruitive actions; He himself is the fruitive action’, – if such belief exists, then the actions get transferred to the Lord and He in turn showers wisdom upon them. Instead if a person has the attitude “I am the performer of this action; I am great; everyone should listen to me”- he is getting trapped.
“Such persons are bound to the ropes called fruitive actions and endlessly rotate in it. Such minds fail to even think of God. Where a person develops love and devotion towards the Lord, there these ropes get automatically destroyed”.
Swamiji explains: People who are trapped in bondages speak endlessly about them. Where is the time for them to even think of God? We doubt if they have any devotion towards the Lord. If such person develops devotion towards the Lord, then automatically the rope called bondages get shred. They place implicit faith in the fruitive activities. Hence they can never focus upon God.
“Only those who believe the Supreme Lord, who resides as the inner Self, to be their ultimate goal reach Him. The dust from the feet of holy saints is absolutely pure. Such saints are freed from worldly karmic bondages. By following them we obtain everything. Until and unless the sadhakas wear the dust from the holy feet of saints upon their head, they will never be able to obtain the feet of that Supreme Lord, who during His incarnation as Vamana covered the entire cosmos with His feet”.
Govindaya namah