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Thursday, April 29, 2010
Prescribed Duties for Mankind.

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Srimad-Bhagavatam, Canto 6: When a devotee is eager to see the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he prays to the Lord:

ayi nanda-tanuja kinkaram
patitam mam visame bhavambudhau
krpaya tava pada-pankaja-
sthita-dhuli-sadrsam vicintaya

“O son of Maharaja Nanda [Krishna], I am Your eternal servitor, yet somehow or other I have fallen into the ocean of birth and death. Please pick me up from this ocean of death and place me as one of the atoms at Your lotus feet.” Being pleased with the devotee, the Lord turns all his material impediments into spiritual service. In this connection Srila Vishvanatha Cakravarti Thakura quotes a verse from the Vishnu Purana:


hladini sandhini samvit
tvayy eka sarva-samsthitau
hlada-tapa-kari misra
tvayi no guna-varjite

In the material world, the spiritual energy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead is manifested as tapa-kari, which means “causing miseries.” Everyone hankers for happiness, but although happiness originally comes from the pleasure potency of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, in the material world, because of material activities, the pleasure potency of the Lord becomes a source of miseries (hlada-tapa-kari). False happiness in the material world is the source of distress, but when one’s endeavors for happiness are redirected toward the satisfaction of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, this tapa-kari element of misery is vanquished. An example given in this connection is that extracting fire from wood is certainly difficult, but when the fire comes out it burns the wood to ashes. In other words, experiencing the Supreme Personality of Godhead is extremely difficult for those devoid of devotional service, but everything becomes easier for a devotee, and thus he can very easily meet the Supreme Lord.

Here the prayers say that the form of the Lord is beyond the jurisdiction of material form and is therefore inconceivable. A devotee prays, however, “My dear Lord, be pleased with me so that I may very easily see Your transcendental form and potency.” Nondevotees try to understand the Supreme Brahman by discussions of neti neti. Nisedha-nirvana-sukhanubhutih: a devotee, however, simply by chanting the holy name of the Lord, avoids such laborious speculations and realizes the existence of the Lord very easily.

SB 6.4.29

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