Srimad Bhagavatham

The people of Vraja also reached Mathura. Rama-Krishna roamed around along with Vraja people enjoying the beauty of Mathura. The residents of Mathura stood outside their house flocking around in order to get a glimpse of Rama-Krishna. The Lord blessed them all by smiling and showering his compassionate grace on them.

Explanation

Here we find the Lord keeping his promise as to showering his grace on those who ardently seek it. Whatever we need to get in the world is achieved only through successively cribbing for it over a long period of time whether it is promotion, marriage, gifts etc. But with respect to the ultimate reality of Lord we just need to have a desire to get the grace of the Lord in our mind and the Lord will fulfill it. Sankara mentions the same in Soundarya Lahari wherein he says that Devi fulfills all desires which are just thought in the mind.

If this is the case, then why aren’t my desires fulfilled?
There could be many aspects to this – one being that if it is worldly pleasure that we seek, there are many factors to it. Farmers pray to the Lord that it should rain so that harvesting is proper. On the same time, people in the cities pray that there shouldn’t be any rain so that they don’t encounter a chaotic day while traveling around. If this is the case, how can the Lord exactly decide whose desires to be fulfilled?

In fact the Lord is just a judge who grants fruits depending on our actions. But when the fruit we seek has to do with many people, the judge will look into each of those people before giving the judgement. Similarly the Lord also will give fruits only after considering all the people involved in the fruit. This is with respect to fruits of the world.

But the difference between temporary fruits of the world and eternal bliss is that eternal bliss of one person doesn’t have any involvement with others. Though our neighbour could still pray to the Lord that we shouldn’t realize, yet it has no bearing on our realization. Hence the neighbours views on our realization will not at all be considered. When it is to do with realization or knowledge or devotion, it has only one factor which is our mental state.

Even when the Lord showers his compassionate grace on a devotee, the Lord is not newly showering the grace. The grace of the Lord is ever present like the rays of the Sun (AMMA gives this illustration). But if we sit inside our house closing all doors and windows claiming that the Lord doesn’t shower his grace, how is to be blamed except us? When we finally decide to open the windows, we will find the rays of Sun falling upon us – though it is fine to say that the rays of Sun came now only, it isn’t completely right as the rays were ever there. Similarly grace of the Lord is ever there. But we have to open our hearts through devotion (total and complete surrender) so that we will be able to apprehend the ever present grace of the Lord.

The people of Mathura came out of their house and hence they were able to get the compassionate grace of the Lord. What we need in order to get the grace is to come out of the houses of our mind – we have to break out of shackles of likes-dislikes of the mind so that we will be able to pervade our mind with only the thought of Lord. When this happens, we will be yearning each and every moment of our life to get the vision of the Lord (realization). This yearning itself will make us realize the Lord when our heart completely opens up and we get the vision of the Lord as the non-duality reality behind the illusory world.

We will continue with the story the next day.

Let us all try to desire nothing but realization of the ultimate reality of Lord so that we will be able to realize through the ever-present grace of the Lord through opening of our hearts.


Rama-Krishna met a person on the way who was taking clothes for Kamsa to wear. They asked for the dress. He not only did not give the dress but mocked at them through words. Krishna thereby killed him and took hold of the dress. After wearing those special dresses, Rama-Krishna progressed in the path along with vraja vasis.

Explanation

In the previous day we learnt about the Lord’s compassion. Today we see the wrath of the Lord befalling the people taking side with Kamsa. We shouldn’t consider that the Lord is unethical as he not only killed a person who was taking clothes for Kamsa but appeased the clothes. Ethical and unethical (dharma and adharma) cannot be defined that easily. One person’s dharma may be another person’s adharma. The only real definition for dharma and adharma that will be valid for everyone is with respect to the ultimate reality of Lord. Dharma is doing anything that helps a person in the spiritual path and leads him towards realization of his own nature of Lord. Anything that obstructs the spiritual path and leads a person away from the ultimate reality of Lord is adharma.

If we analyze this part of Bhagavatham we will find that the Lord always stood for dharma and always destroyed adharma wherever it is. It is this same concept that the Lord propounds in the 4th chapter when saying that “whenever dharma falls down and adharma arises, I will take birth in that place to ensure that dharma is protected and adharma is destroyed”.

Adharma is not just doing things which obstruct our path but standing by people who are doing adharma is also adharma. We all have individuality and are independent to choose as to what we want to do with our life. Nobody really can control our life. People might argue that I have to obey my parents, I have to obey my partner, I am a woman etc. All these are just ways of escaping from deciding our life for ourselves. We have been gifted with the intellect to decide as to where our life must go. Thus when we see adharma happening, we should be able to stay away from adharma. We also cannot escape saying that we don’t know adharma because at least now we know it. If we are so attached to our kith and kin thereby cannot stay away from adharma, then it will end in destruction our entire clan. This is exactly what happened with the Kauravas. The destruction of Kauravas could have been saved by the one person of Dhritharashtra. Dhritharashtra learn the scriptures from Vidura as well as Sage Sanatsujatha. Yet due to his passion, he stood by the adharma caused by his children. As a result of this adharma, the entire Kauravas were destroyed in front of the eyes of Dhritharashtra.

Thus it is not only the person doing adharma who will be destroyed but any person who stands by adharma whether it is because of fear or attachment or any other reason.


Since the person carrying the clothes was not only standing by Kamsa but he was also mocking at Krishna, therefore it became the responsibility of the Lord to take care of the person. This is exactly what the Lord did.

Thus Bhagavatham here is warning us that it is not enough if we don’t do adharma but it is also necessary that we don’t stand by adharma lest we will be destroyed completely.

We will continue with the story the next day.

Let us all try to always stand for dharma so that we may progress in the spiritual path towards realizing the ultimate reality of Lord without getting destroyed in the ocean of samsaara.