Date: February 16, 2009
Verse: Srimad-Bhagavatam 3.23.56
Speaker: Tamohara Prabhu

neha yat karma dharmaya na viragaya kalpate
na tirtha-pada-sevayai jivann api mrto hi sah

TRANSLATION

Anyone whose work is not meant to elevate him to religious life, anyone whose religious ritualistic performances do not raise him to renunciation, and anyone situated in renunciation that does not lead him to devotional service to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, must be considered dead, although he is breathing.

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PURPORT

Devahuti’s statement is that since she was attached to living with her husband for sense gratification, which does not lead to liberation from material entanglement, her life was simply a waste of time. Any work one performs that does not lead to the state of religious life is useless activity. Everyone is by nature inclined to some sort of work, and when that work leads one to religious life and religious life leads one to renunciation and renunciation leads one to devotional service, one attains the perfection of work. As stated in Bhagavad-gita, any work that does not lead ultimately to the standard of devotional service is a cause of bondage in the material world. Yajnarthat karmano ‘nyatra loko ‘yam karma-bandhanah [Bg. 3.9]). Unless one is gradually elevated to the position of devotional service, beginning from his natural activity, he is to be considered a dead body. Work which does not lead one to the understanding of Krsna consciousness is considered useless.

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Tamohara Prabhu

Hare Krishna. I am very honoured to be speaking here in front of you here in Mayapur dhama and also I am very humbled to be speaking in the midst of such senior devotees. So please forgive me for any shortcomings in the Srimad Bhagavatam class.

So Srila Prabhupada has often given this example of material world compared to a prison house. Just as within any particular government there will be citizens who will be rebellious, who violate the laws of the state and therefore the prison is there for those rebellious souls. Similarly in this material world we have come here because of our rebellious nature against Krishna and therefore this place is here for us where we can exercise our independence and our desire to enjoy independently of Krishna. But a good prison house if it’s properly situated is also a place of reformation. So just as when one go to prison house a prisoner should come out being reformed, being a good citizen and giving up the rebellious nature towards the government.

The idea in this material world is that we become purified, we become free from our rebellious nature and we assume our original transcendental position as servants of god. Devahuti is speaking here of the progressive of path by which that is done. Within this material world the path is given to us by the scriptures and by the saintly persons or sadhus, the spiritual masters who come to teach us how to get out of this material world and how to work in such a way that we can progressively become free from the bonds of this material life. Devahuti is specifically talking about a progressive path here. This path goes from karma to dharma to vairagya and eventually tirtha-pada-sevayai , to devotional service to the lotus feet of Krishna. So this is the idea.

Everybody must work in this material world. As Srila Prabhupada is saying, everybody has to be active and just to maintain the body, material activity and work is going to be there. So that is true for all of us who are within these material bodies and are in this material world. But the idea is the work should not be binding but it should be progressive. In other words, that work should be done according to religious principles. So work done in a proper way leads to religion and that religion will ultimately lead to renunciation. In other words, proper teachings, the Vedic teachings will instruct the person properly that work should be offered as a sacrifice to Vishnu, as Bhagavad-gita 3.9 is saying otherwise it has no value. So the work must be done according to religious principles. By working in that way eventually the living entity will reach a point of renunciation where he can understand this is not my real position. I will not be happy and successful trying to enjoy in this material world. Then, be in that position and willingness to renounce that. Then that will lead to devotional service, tirtha-pada-sevayai, service to the lotus feet of Krishna. But the difficulty is that it is easy for the living entity to get hung up on the way along that path.

Often work is done simply as sense gratification without religious principles in mind. Often religion is done simply as a way of incurring the good karma or simply being a religious person leading a life of good character and similarly vairagya, renunciation can be simply for impersonal realisation. So in all of these steps along the path there is opportunity to miss the real point. And what is being stressed in this verse and Srila Prabhupada purport is that none of these things - our work, our karma, our dharma, our religion or any vairagya, renunciation have any value, any real lasting value unless they lead to Bhakti, unless they lead to process of devotional service. Of course this is in Vedic society, this path could be easily followed or at least followed by many people to some degree. But there was a progressive path where even if one do not finish in this lifetime at least one was making an advancement, gradually elevating to the path of pure devotional service. In Kali yuga it’s very difficult.

In Kali yuga most of our work is binding not liberating. Most of our work does not lead us to higher religious principles and religion is more often than not used as a means in conjunction with one’s economic development in sense gratification rather than a further step. Another way that this is described that the goal of life is artha, kama, dharma and moksha. So artha and kama are very popular with most people in this material world. Everyone wants to make advancement, wants economic development and everyone wants to enjoy their senses, enjoy some fruit of that work. But then what is the purpose of religion? Often religion is seen, particularly in the western world simply as an adjunct to increase one’s artha and kama. So we see that this is the problem that we have.

It’s interesting I saw a recent poll that, I think it was New York times poll in America that in august 2008 about 4-5 months ago they did this poll on what issues were most important to people. They could name more than one so the totals add to more than 100%. About 60% of the people then said that economy was very important priority and about 60% also said that environment was an important priority and global warming was right up there with the environment. Many people, majority of people thought it was very important to them, things that the government should give priority to. Now interestingly 4 months later in January, just recently they redid the poll and the results were quiet different. Instead of being 60, 60, now 80% of the people said that economy was the main priority and 40% said environment was the priority and even less, may be30% said global warming was a priority.

So what happened in those 4 months? Global warming stopped being a problem right? What happened, ozone layers mended and everything was fixed. No. All we see what happened was economy collapsed throughout. I imagine that it’s everywhere in the world but particularly it’s there in America. And with economy collapse another thing that happened was the price of gasoline which was 4$ a gallon was now it’s dropped down to 2$ a gallon. So these two things were very, very important and completely skewed the way people look at things. So now no longer were the environmental concerns so present because gasoline was so expensive it was little bit off the raidar. Then everyone was facing economic dislocation and so many lay offs and high rate of unemployment. So therefore this became the looming issue. So what do we learn form this?

Obviously people’s concerns tend to be their immediate economic self-interest so much. Their other goals other priorities quickly vanished when faced with any kind of economic dislocation or any threat to their way of life or ultimately their ability to enjoy their senses. So we can also see this with religion. Religion, as I was saying, often is as adjunct more to our artha and kama, our economic development rather than being a goal in itself or a goal to greater spiritual advancement.

So often religion is based upon economic development and has no connection with renunciation of materialism. We see particularly in west that religion is very highly influenced by karma. Of course it is also in India and another places. This is throughout the world. In other words people are attracted to religion to the degree to it gives them a particular ability to enjoy certain aspects of life, whether it be to feel better about themselves, to feel they are good persons or specifically if it will enhance their economic situation. In the west there is a great increase in a philosophy that is called the prosperity theology or prosperity religion. So there are these mega churches springing up thousands of people and throughout the United States, I don’t know if this is the phenomena in other parts of the world, where the main message is material prosperity. And they are saying that through religion one can achieve material prosperity and in fact a sign that one is a good Christian is that one is materially prosperous. This idea is announced, as Calvanism but the idea of the elect that you can see certain people who are predestined to go back to heaven, you can tell because you can see that they are wealthy people who are favoured by god obviously.

Of course they don’t realise that just they may be favoured karmically but they may be also burning up their karma so who knows what their next life or their next destination will be. At any rate this has become very popular, the idea of connecting religion with material prosperity. And so of course there is a great deal of emphasis on prayers for material benefits giving donations to the church, which obviously will someway help you. Of course as we say also, give some punya and get some benefit. But we are different. Of course we say in Krishna consciousness we say that if you give something to Krishna you get some spiritual benefit. We don’t guarantee that you necessarily have some material benefit. It may or may not come according to the will of the lord. So at any rate all of this is part of the cheating propensity that we see and we see how religion is often misused and not used in this progressive path in bhakti yoga towards self-realisation.

I saw another interesting poll. You have to forgive me I was a statistics professor among other things in my past lifetimes so these things always interest me. This was a poll done by the Pure Research Institute that does its periodic studies about what they call well-being. What is well-being? Simply means that how do people feel that they are doing. Are they happy with their life that they are doing well? Well they do this periodic and they saw that in the same time period during the economic collapse there was his huge drop in the perception of the people who felt they were doing very well. It was specifically interesting that in December they found that 38% of the people felt that they were thriving, 58% were struggling and 4% were suffering. Now that’s very interesting.

Of course these indicators are tied to economics and jobs, it’s not unexpected that there will be drop. That would be natural. But it’s interesting that in America, which is usually called the richest country of the world. I don’t know if it still is, probably not but at least a very wealthy country. 62% of the people say that they are struggling or suffering. That’s very interesting I think. Of course the Vedic literature would say what percentage of people are suffering or struggling? 100% practically speaking! So we know from Bhagavad-gita 15.7, prakrti-sthani karsati, that the living entity is struggling very hard in this material world, struggling hard in material nature. We know that struggle is natural. Nowadays 2/3rd of people are finding it awakened and realised that yes, they are struggling.

So I find this very interesting to see that there is understanding that the things are not all perfect in this material world. And so this actually gives us an excellent opportunity for preaching. Because so many people are seeing that material world is very precarious. The job could be gone tomorrow, their security could be gone tomorrow and so what do they actually have? They are simply struggling. It’s interesting they use the same terminology, which we do. They are struggling and suffering. So we do again have this excellent opportunity and the other thing besides the fact that they are struggling is, I noticed and you couldn’t help it, I mean I don’t watch that much news anymore, but you couldn’t help that every way you turn in America it was like constantly bombarding you. And more and more we heard these terms that people talked about greed. They said that this came about because of greed and cheating. In fact these words were started to be used more and more.

This is another sign, may be they are waking up a little bit. The greed and cheating has always been going on, the cheating is always going on but when it hit home to people sometimes they think, “Oh yes, this is actually happening!” So again very, very good opportunity for devotees to explain to people why you are suffering in this material world and this material world is a place of suffering, that there is not going to be any material solution that’s going to help you and that the answer is actually in devotional service and in spiritual life.

Like Srila Prabhupada is saying very clearly in this purport. He says, “Work that does not lead one to the understanding of Krishna consciousness is considered useless.” So all of this material endeavour, all of this work if it is not connected with bhakti, with devotional service is considered to be useless. So no matter how much they strive, no matter how they try. They may do the stimulus package and they may pump I don’t know how many 100s and billions and trillions of dollars. It keep growing and growing and growing. How much money they think they are going to need to solve the problem but that will not solve the problem because people’s life will always be going to be filled with suffering, with struggling, with disappointment and with distress. This is the nature of the material world. That cannot be changed.

People think that small advancement or meagre profit is considered success. It’s actually rather sad that devotees have compassion on the living entities who accept so little as what they deem to be success in this material world. There used to be sort of an of expression in America at least that sometimes during funeral the minister may not have a lot to say about that person. He was not particularly noted be such a good person, he did not have so many good qualities.

So sometimes he will say at least he was a good provider. This was an ultimate compliment, at least he was a good provider he did his economic development well. He was good at artha and karma. So even the religious leaders they would be acknowledged that at least he did that well. That’s considered success. So there he is at the funeral looking back at his life and it is said well he provided for his family. And of course Srila Prabhupada points out so did animals. So do so many species of life you know. I mean we must provide for our family. That is obviously important. That’s an important part of our religious life, our dharma but that itself is not a particular value or particular success.

And we see that even those who strive for much higher things, our politicians, our scientist, philanthropists, philosophers, who try for something a little higher, a little more advanced perhaps more in the mode of goodness. They struggle for all their life for a better life for people in the world. But what is the end? At the end of their life they often also die miserably with little success. I was thinking what a poignant example that Gandhi is, Mahatma Gandhi’s life is. Or we say a person who led good life and moral high character. He was renounced had some vairagya, particularly later in his life. Srila Prabhupada mentions that it’s renunciation that allowed him and gave him the strength to drive out the English from India. So many many goood qualities! Some religious. He followed some religious principles, he read the Bhagavad-gita. But his political work, that he based it all on wasn’t a success. Well they did get independence but personally what happened to him. After all of this work for independence the result was Hindu Muslim riots, the partition of India and Pakistan and then at the end he was assassinated by his own countrymen. And that’s his success! It was no success!

The story was that he chanted the name of Rama when he died. I don’t know if that’s true or not. That’s the story. If he did then he was successful. But that was what made him successful if that’s true, not his political work. His political work was not successful for him personally. In fact I am sure he was extremely disappointed at the end of his life to see so many things he worked for, fall apart. But this is the way of material life; this is the way of nature. This is going to happen to everyone.

We see that people delude themselves. They try to make the best of their lives. We even hear so many of these slogans they are quite inane actually, ‘like living one day at a time, making the best of the things, stopping and smelling the roses, counting your blessings.’ What are these platitudes? What do they mean? They mean somehow or other despite everything that’s miserable in life, everything that may be unhappy you may be able to find some little drop of goodness, you might find something that can give you some happiness. And yes it is a fact there is a small amount of happiness in this material world there is some happiness which is derived from the sensesand the mind and intelligence but it’s such a small drop compared to of course in our scriptures, to be amount of water in the hoof print of the calf compared to the ocean of devotional service, the amount of bliss available in Krishna consciousness. But this delusion is there. Why is there because otherwise how do people continue.

There has to be a reason, people have to justify this meaningless pursuit of material things, meaningless pursuit of trying to find meaning in life when there is very little meaning in what they are doing. It’s interesting in psychoanalytic psychology they talk about, ego defence mechanism. And some of them are normal things like projections and repression. There are certain things that everybody does, sort of mix into the world and keep their lives together. But it’s also because psychotic ego defence mechanism. One of these is delusion. Obviously if one is delusional then that is considered that one has lost touch with reality and that’s exactly what everyone in this material world has done. They are all in delusion. So in the sense from the spiritual respective 99% of the population of this world is mentally ill because they are in delusion, they are in denial of reality of life.

I remember there was an article in back to godhead magazine and there was a lecture that Srila Prabhupada gave about, ‘Who is Crazy?’ I remember years ago, I don’t know if it’s around now but we always enjoyed that article because in that Srila Prabhupada pointed out that actually anyone in the bodily concept of life is “crazy” or delusional. It’s a fact. In other words who is sane and who is not sane.

I think that came about in the beginning of course in the early days many people in America people thought we were probably a little off balance. And the devotees shaved head, robes, and chanting on the street corners with kartals and drums. So as they were saying these people must be crazy and as Srila Prabhupada pointed out, “No, we are the one who are sane because we understand reality. We understand the suffering in the material world and we understand our real spiritual nature, that is sanity!” What is not sanity is to think that one is the body and to act as though one is going to live forever in this material world without any consequences or any ill to that enjoyment. That is delusion that is actually very sad state of consciousness of most people in this material world.

So the answer is given here that all these processes, whatever one work one does, whatever one’s karmic activity, one’s religious duties forms, even if one try to renounce in some ways, all of this must lead to devotional service to be of value. This is the message of Srimad Bhagavatam, which it gives us over and over and it’s actually a very wonderful message that we are able to keep on hearing and so important to continually hear this, that the goal of all our work, the goal of all our lives is pure devotional service.

So this is so important what is pure devotional service? Of course best description is from the Bhakti-rasamrita Sindhu 1.1.11:

anyabhilasita-sunyam jnana-karmady-anavrtam
anukulyena krsnanu- silanam bhaktir uttama

That devotional service is that which is directed, meant for Krishna exclusively, to no one else and what is interesting about the verse is it’s considered to be one of the seed verses, I don’t know what it is called in Sanskrit is that it’s the seed verse or the most important verse, what’s the word? (Audience answer) Paribhasha sutra.

So it’s like primary verse from which everything sort of builds from and there is the positive and the negative. This is often done in the logic which is used in the scriptures and the positive aspect is its positive, favourable, exclusive devotional service towards Krishna and the negative aspect is the anyabhilasita-sunyam jnana-karmady-anavrtam. That is without this any other desire and free from, Srila Prabhupada defines it as monism, fruitive action or material desires, in other words jnana and karma. Pure devotional service is not mixed with jnana and karma. Now that’s a very important concept for us. That is a critical concept to understand as we perform sadhana bhakti in devotional service.

We hear about this a lot about devotional service mixed with jnana with karma and sometimes it seems like it is something for someone else, it is some esoteric philosophy or jnana must be impersonalist and karma means people worship demigods but we don’t do that, we don’t worship demigods, we are not impersonalist so we don’t have to worry about this. We are on the path of Bhakti. Karma and jnana are insignificant. Actually it’s not a fact. It very much implies to all of our situations. Anything short of our devotional service tends to be karma and jnana, so this is very very important for devotees because this is one of our biggest challenges.

Now we are not interested in karma yoga or jnana yoga. Devotees understand that usually pretty clearly. But yet we still find ourselves confronted with what is called jnana misra bhakti and karma misra bhakti. In other words,bhakti that is mixed with karma or bhakti that is mixed with jnana, either with mental speculation or with material desire and fruitive work. So it’s still bhakti and still has that value of bhakti, yet it may be mixed with these other elements. And it’s important to for us to understand and deal with. Srila Prabhupada actually taught us path of pure devotional service. He taught us pure, suddha bhakti and that path devotional service is completely pure. The goal is very clear directly aimed at the exclusive service of Krishna without any other motivation. So we are performing pure sadhna bhakti.

Now we might think because first of all I am not pure devotee, I have some material desires. How is this? And what this brings us to a very important distinction. There is a very important distinction between a devotee on the path of pure devotion who may have some remaining attachments and devotional service, which is mixed, like we were saying, karma misra bhakti. In other words one is actually a path that leads one to complete purification and the other one is actually a slower path. It is a path where there is a possibility of becoming or actually leaving that path or making slower advancement.

So on the path of pure devotional service, many of us would probably say that we are at anartha nivritti stage where we have some material attachment and we are working to cleanse or clear those attachments to become free of those attachments towards the goal of pure devotional service. So anartha nivritti comes after bhajan kriya or goes along with the process of bhajana kriya, which obviously continues. The bhajan kriya simply means the nine processes of devotional service particularly hearing and chanting the holy names and the glories of the lord.

So this is the process of pure devotional service as given under the order of the spiritual master. So if we are following the orders of spiritual master we are performing this pure devotion or pure sadhana or pure process of sadhana even though we ourselves may not be pure at the moment. So the processes of devotional service are extremely important because they are given directly by the spiritual master as a means of purification, as a means for anartha nivritti, as a means of getting rid of those unwanted things. To rid ourselves of those material attachments which have been there for many, many lifetimes. All of those different impressions that are there within the consciousness, all of those different desires that we have for things other than the service to Krishna and they are there in our heart still.

So particularly the five processes are specifically mentioned in the Bhakti-rasamrita Sindhu and Srila Prabhupada emphasised these and they became core of our temple programs. To worship the deity, to hear Srimad Bhagavatam, chant Hare Krishna, reside in a holy place and to associate with the devotees. That is what we are doing in our temples almost every day. These are the core processes. I found a very wonderful verse and I am going to give a little punt for the Bhakti-rasamrita Sidhu that our Bhanu Swami just translated recently, very very wonderful with the commentaries with Jiva Gosvami, Vishwanath Chakravarti Thakur. In 1.2.238 it is described that these five processes as described by Rupa Gosvami as having inconceivable and astonishing power. I thought that, that was very nice very nice translation by Maharaj, ‘inconceivable and astonishing power’, and the ability to purify the conditioned soul. By these processes - 5 primary elements, the 5 angas of devotional service is exactly what Srila Prabhupada gave us.

So if we are following Srila Prabhupada process’s, his instruction of specifically chanting 16 rounds and 4 regulative principle and the process of hearing and chanting and association with devotees then we are rightly situated. We are situated within the internal potency and it is not ordinary activity that we are doing. It is never ordinary karmic activity that a devotee performs. It’s a very different nature; it’s totally spiritual nature not material nature. So that’s the power of sadhana bhakti, power of following the process of pure devotional service.

Now the other process we are talking about is mixed devotional service. Karma misra bhakti. The positive aspect is it is bhakti, it is devotional service and there are many places in different purports where Srila Prabhupada talks about the value of adding devotional service. In other words where Srila Prabhupada talks about the yogi that if he adds devotional service, he is successful, the fruitive worker if he does it for Krishna he is successful or the jnani if he has some inclination towards bhakti then that progression will happen. And one will reach success in one’s life. So we don’t dismiss that if you are not acting on completely pure platform, forget what you are doing, it is not even worth it, don’t even try! We are not saying that!

There is tremendous power and value is there in devotional service and to whatever degree a living entity can take it up. That’s why we are trying to engage everyone in even as simple an act as taking prasadam, obviously what to say of receiving a book or holy name. These things add tremendous value to the living entity and it will bring them along in their progress of spiritual life. But for the devotees who have deeper understanding and who are very concerned for making great spiritual advancement, finishing off in this life time - going back to godhead then we have to be careful that our own devotional service doesn’t become mixed with these elements.

It’s also described that the problem is that mixed devotional service is a much slower process. In one purport later in the 3rd canto I was reading Srila Prabhupada says, “It may take many lives.” If one is doing mixed devotional service then yes you may achieve result but it may take many lifetimes. And Srila Prabhupada in his mercy on conditioned soul doesn’t want us to take any lives. He wanted to finish off this lifetime or at least..