By Hansadutta das
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As long as one is able to earn
money, his family members will be affectionate towards him. Later on,
however,
when the body he lives in becomes diseased, no one in his household
will
even care to hear about him. As long as the breath of life is present
within
the body, your household will inquire about you well-being. But as soon
as
the life air leaves the body and it begins to decay, your own wife will
fear
that body.
Chanakya Pandit has written in the Niti-shastra:
"As long as one has money, he has friends, and when he has no money, he
has no friends. Therefore, the best friend in this world is money."
Dharma, artha, kama and moksha are the
four stages of the development of human civilization. Dharma
means religion. Artha means economic development. Kama
means sense gratification. Moksha means liberation Generally,
people are religious in order to obtain economic development. In other
words, for improving their comfort, enjoyment and prestige, people pray
to God for money, for
a wife, for name, fame and so on. In the Christian religion they pray:
"Give us this day our daily bread." This type of religion is based on a
desire
for improving material happiness.
America began with the motto "In God we trust." The
early Americans trusted God to provide food, clothing and shelter. When
food,
clothing, shelter and money were provided for, the materialistically
religious
then indulged in sense gratification (kama ). America has now
achieved
the highest standard of economic development in the world and is
enjoying
the highest standard of sense gratification--eating, sleeping,
defending
and sex. Americans eat six times more, sleep more, have more defence
weapons, and they enjoy sex without any restriction. But, since all
these activities are related to the temporary material body and do not
really give any satisfaction to the eternal soul within this body, we
find, especially in America and
Europe, that a section of the population is trying to find moksha
(salvation or liberation), because they have experienced
that a high standard of sense gratification doesn't actually bring any
satisfaction. These are the four stages of developing human
civilization: beginning with religion for economic development, and
economic development for sense gratification, and frustration leading
to moksha (liberation).
Even liberation does not bring the satisfaction
which the soul hankers for, because the living entity is not alone or
independent. The living entity has an eternal relationship with God,
and as such, there are activities in that relationship. Those
activities are known as sanatana-dharma (eternal duties or
activities), better known as bhakti-yoga (devotional service).
Material activities are activities whose aim is to
maintain this body and all others related to the body, such as family
members, relatives, community members and countrymen. We have these
different kind of duties (family responsibility, community
responsibility and national
responsibility), but these activities are all temporary. Only
temporarily
are we the member of a particular family--up until the point when the
body
is disintegrated by the influence of time, old age, disease and death.
As
long as the body is in a healthy condition, then the family
responsibilities continue.
Here Shankaracarya says, "As long as he's healthy…." In
other words, when the body becomes diseased, nobody in the
family
wants to have anything to do with it. As long as one is capable of
earning
money for his family, friends and countrymen, then he will be respected
and
honored. But when we are unable to earn money, then we will very
quickly
be rejected, forgotten and neglected. We can see that in America old
people
are put into an old-age home just so they won't be a disturbance in the
house. There they won't have to be bothered with and won't interfere
with our sense enjoyment. We pay a fee for someone else to take care of
our own father
and mother. Someone else feeds them, clothes them and gives them
medicine,
so that we can continue our sense gratification without any
interruption.
This is a practical example. This means that no one really has any
permanent
affection or relationship with anyone. Only as long as one can provide
sense
gratification in terms of money or other comforts, then he is
considered
with respect. But when he has no capacity to provide sense
gratification,
then he is immediately rejected.
Therefore, instead of becoming absorbed in these
temporary activities for sense gratification in the name of family,
community and
nation, we should rather become engaged in devotional service and try
to
render satisfaction to Vishnu. Na te viduh svartha-gatim hi
vishnum: "The whole world is in darkness, and no one knows that
the real duty
of the human being is to satisfy Vishnu." (Srimad-Bhagavatam
7.5.31 )
Everyone is trying to satisfy his senses. The pursuit of
sense gratification is naturally extended to family members, community
members and countrymen, but ultimately the purpose of all material
activity is to satisfy one's own senses. So-called love, friendship and
society
is just pretense. We do not really love our country. We don't really
love
our family. We don't really love our community. We love to enjoy our
senses. If serving our family helps us to satisfy
our senses, then we shall serve our family. Just like with our mother
and
father--we obey them in a respectful way as long as they earn money and
provide
sense gratification, a place to sleep, food to eat, clothing to wear,
as
long as they pay the bills of our education and so on. But when they
are
unable to satisfy our senses, we put them into an old age home. This is
the
real situation.
Therefore, in Srimad-Bhagavatam it is
advised that before a man becomes old, diseased and feeble, he should
give up his home, wife and children, and he should accept the vanaprastha
(retired) order of life. When the children are grown up, he should hand
over the
family responsibilities, go to the forest and prepare himself to die by
practicing penance and austerity, renunciation and knowledge and
Krishna consciousness--not prepare himself to die by going to Hawaii,
sitting in
the sun, getting tanned and enjoying with some woman. It is not that
kind
of retirement. He must retire from material activities altogether. This
is vanaprastha life. Leaving home for months at
a time and going to a holy place, from the age of fifty to sixty, is
the
preparation for the stage of complete renunciation called sannyasa
.
When a man is accustomed to being away from home, he
then accepts full renunciation (sannyasa) and does not ever
return
home. He remains alone and wanders everywhere, depending completely on
the
mercy of God, preaching the glories of the Lord all over the world.
That
is the parivrajakacharya sannyasa order of life.
Parivrajakacharya means one who is just wandering. By the mercy
of the Lord he gets his food and shelter, and after some years of
wandering
in this way, one actually becomes one hundred percent renounced,
detached
from everything material. That is called the paramahamsa stage
of
life, the topmost perfection of human life. Paramahamsa means
first-class,
perfect human being. Parama means topmost, and hamsa
means swan. The swan is the symbol of perfect
intelligence, because the swan has the unique ability to separate the
essence
of milk from water. There are two things: the cheese and the whey. The
whey
is just water, and the cheese is the essence of milk. The swan knows
how
to extract the cheese and leave behind the whey or the watery part. So
the paramahamsa is the human being who has extracted the
essence of life, which is Krishna consciousness (devotional service).
Every human being is supposed to be trained
systematically to become a paramahamsa and accept the essence
of life, Krishna
consciousness or spiritual life, and reject everything else. One should
reject dharma (religious activities) which aims at artha
(economic development). We should reject kama (sense
gratification). We should also reject moksha, which is another
attempt at sense gratification by means of renunciation and pretending
to annihilate our individual identity by becoming one with God. That is
also a kind of maya, because we cannot annihilate our
individual
existence. We are eternal servants of Krishna. Rejecting dharma,
artha, kama and moksha, we must accept devotional
service to Krishna. Then only can we really experience the nectar for
which
we are hankering.
Shankaracharya's vivid description illuminates the
naked cruelty of material life. There is no kindness, no compassion, no
consideration and no happiness whatsoever in any material situation.
However
gorgeous it may appear externally, essentially it is very vicious. He
warns
that as long as you can earn money, your family members will have
respect
and affection, but as soon as you are unable to earn money, immediately
you will be neglected. Just as when a farmer's cow no longer gives
milk,
he no longer cares for the cow and turns it out to pasture or sends it
to
be slaughtered.
Krishna consciousness is not of that character. We shall
always be accepted by Krishna. We simply have to remain under His lotus
feet, and Krishna will always give us protection, just as he spoke to
Arjuna:
kaunteya pratijanihi
na me bhaktah pranasyati
Declare to the world, O Arjuna, My devotee will
never be vanquished. (Bhagavad-gita 9.31)
In another verse Krishna promises:
For those who are always engaged in My
transcendental loving service, I provide what they need and I protect
what they have.
( Bhagavad-gita 9.22)
Krishna can protect us because He is supreme.
All others are helpless and dependent--our wife, our children and our
friends. They are all subject to death, and therefore they cannot
really protect
us, and we cannot protect them.
We must understand everything without sentimental,
romantic notions of material life. We must regularly practice being
dhira (sober). We should always soberly see things as they are and
not allow our imagination to project some a sentimental, romantic dream
onto the stark naked reality. No one likes reality. No one likes truth,
because truth does not admit to any of our imaginations. It doesn't
allow
for romance and sentiment. It is very unpleasant. But sentiments and
romantic
dreams do not really make us happy. They will only frustrate us when we
come to learn the truth. Krishna consciousness is such a thing--truth.
Our
association is just to help us daily remain in that truth, which is our
constitutional
position.
The illusory energy, or material nature, is so
bewildering that immediately upon seeing, smelling, touching or even
hearing
an object of our desire, we forget everything. As soon as we stop
chanting
the holy name of Krishna, immediately we become bewildered and are put
into
illusion. Therefore we must always establish ourself in devotional
practices
with great determination. Then, when the time of death comes, we shall
be
so rooted that we cannot help but chant and be situated in Krishna
consciousness.
That is the whole purpose of devotional practice: to prepare ourselves
to
give up this material life, this material existence and this material
body
with all its paraphernalia, such as friends, household and so on.
As long as the soul is present, the body is animated
with life and appears very beautiful, and we enjoy very nice dealings
with our friends, family members and countrymen. As soon as the life
air leaves the body, the body reveals its true abominable character. It
is a simple combination of nasty ingredients--blood, mucus, fat,
muscle, bone, bile, urine and stool. When the living force is separated
from the body, it immediately begins to disintegrate and decompose, and
a very obnoxious odor begins
to emanate from it. Rigor mortis sets in, and we have to find a
way
to dispose of the body. It is very embarrassing to have a dead body
about.
No one keeps a dead body, however beautiful it might have been and
however
much affection we might have had for the body while living. That
affection
stops when life leaves the body. At that time, we can understand that
the
body is not really beautiful at all; that the element of beauty within
the
body was actually the soul.
Maya is so strong that even though this
experience takes place not only in the human form of life but at every
moment in all species of life, we still continue to act in the bodily
concept of life.
Our father has died, his father died. Now we are fathers, and we too
shall
die. Our children will become fathers, and they also will die. Still,
we
are stuck on this mistaken concept of life. We are working day and
night
to maintain the body by earning money for sense gratification. This is
maya, and the whole material creation is under the spell of this
maya.
In human life we are supposed to be engaged in the
progressive program to get free from this maya. This is the
essence of human intelligence: to understand our real spiritual nature.
When this is understood, then we shall be released and can go back
home, back to
Godhead for an eternal life of full knowledge and bliss. This Moha-Mudgara-Stotra
is very graphic in drawing
our attention to these naked truths which have to be thoroughly
understood
by an aspiring transcendentalist. These are the most basic and
essential
truths for a spiritualist to understand.
