Srimad Bhagavatam – 11.5.36 | His Holiness Bhanu Swami Maharaj | Auckland | 15 March 2025
ŚB 11.5.36
कलिं सभाजयन्त्यार्या गुणज्ञा: सारभागिन: ।
यत्र सङ्कीर्तनेनैव सर्वस्वार्थोऽभिलभ्यते ॥ ३६ ॥
kaliṁ sabhājayanty āryā
guṇa jñāḥ sāra-bhāginaḥ
yatra saṅkīrtanenaiva
sarva-svārtho ’bhilabhyate
Translation
Those who are actually advanced in knowledge are able to appreciate the essential value of this Age of Kali. Such enlightened persons worship Kali-yuga because in this fallen age all perfection of life can easily be achieved by the performance of saṅkīrtana.
Purport
It is stated here that among the four ages — Satya, Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali — Kali-yuga is actually the best because in this age the Lord mercifully distributes the highest perfection of consciousness, namely Kṛṣṇa consciousness, very freely. The word ārya has been defined by Śrīla Prabhupāda as “one who is advancing spiritually.” The nature of an advanced person is to search for the essence of life. For example, the essence of the material body is not the body itself but the spirit soul that is within the body; therefore an intelligent person gives more attention to the eternal spirit soul than to the temporary body. Similarly, although Kali-yuga is considered to be an ocean of contamination, there is also an ocean of good fortune in Kali-yuga, namely the saṅkīrtana movement. In other words, all of the degraded qualities of this age are completely counteracted by the process of chanting the holy names of the Lord. Thus it is stated in the Vedic language,
dhyāyan kṛte yajan yajñais
tretāyāṁ dvāpare ’rcayan
yad āpnoti tad āpnoti
“Whatever is achieved in Satya-yuga by meditation, in Tretā by offering ritual sacrifices and in Dvāpara by temple worship is achieved in Kali-yuga by chanting the names of Lord Keśava congregationally.”
The Vedic process gradually lifts the conditioned entity out of the darkness of ahaṅkāra, or false identification with the gross material body, and brings him to the platform of self-realization, or ahaṁ brahmāsmi, “I am spirit soul. I am eternal.” One has to make further progress to discover that although one is eternal, there is a superior eternal entity, who is the Lord Himself within one’s own heart and within every atom in the material universe. Beyond this second phase of self-realization there is the third and final stage of perfection, which is realization of Bhagavān, or the Supreme Personality of Godhead, in His own abode.
The Supreme Personality of Godhead is not primarily the superintendent of this world but rather the enjoyer of His own world, which is beyond the most fantastic dreams of the conditioned living entity. In other words, although the king or president of a country is ultimately the controller of the prison department, the king or president derives actual pleasure within his own palace and not in administering justice to the foolish prisoners. Similarly, the Lord appoints the demigods to administer the material creation on His behalf while He Himself personally enjoys the ocean of transcendental bliss in His own transcendental kingdom. Thus, realization of the Lord within His own kingdom is far superior to the primitive understanding that the Lord is the “creator” of the prison of the material world. This realization of Bhagavān begins with understanding that there are innumerable Vaikuṇṭha planets in the spiritual sky and that on each of them a particular expansion of Nārāyaṇa dwells with His innumerable devotees who are attached to that particular form. The central and chief planet in the spiritual sky is called Kṛṣṇaloka, and there the Personality of Godhead exhibits His supreme and original form of Govinda. As confirmed by Lord Brahmā, govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi. Lord Brahmā also states:
īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇaḥ
sac-cid-ānanda-vigrahaḥ
anādir ādir govindaḥ
sarva-kāraṇa-kāraṇam
Thus, love of Kṛṣṇa and entrance into Kṛṣṇa’s planet in the spiritual sky is the most supremely perfect and exalted status of life available anywhere, at any time, throughout the totality of existence. That perfection is available in Kali-yuga simply by chanting the holy names of God: Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/ Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare. Therefore every sane man, woman or child should deeply understand the unprecedented opportunity offered by Caitanya Mahāprabhu and seriously take up this chanting process. Only the most unfortunate and irrational person will neglect this transcendental opportunity.
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj:
So, usually we think of Kali Yuga as a degraded age, it is sometimes called the age of quarrel. In the Greek mythology, it is the age of iron and the first age is the age of gold, the second age is the age of silver, third is the age of bronze, fourth age is the age of iron [Laughs]. That’s the Greek idea, but we have the similar idea in the Vedic literature. Satya Yuga is the best and the purest, full of sattva, full of religiosity etc. and Kali Yuga is the worst, full of corruption and degradation etc. So that is the conception of the different ages – gradual degradation. So instead of evolution we devolute [Laughs], we go backwards we become lesser, less civilised etc as we go to Kali Yuga.
So it is described that, in Kali Yuga people are not very intelligent, they are the most foolish people. In Satya Yuga are the most intelligent and of course that means also they can understand scripture properly. Kali Yuga, very unintelligent. They cannot understand scripture at all. So that is big problem. Furthermore, they have short life spans. So in Satya Yuga very very long, 100,000 years or something like that they live. In Kali Yuga, people struggle to live 100 years. So short life span and thus within that short life span, again you cannot accumulate too much knowledge. Furthermore, the people are always disturbed by material enjoyments. In Satya Yuga very sattvic and they are detached, Kali Yuga they are very attached to enjoyment. So these are causes for criticising Kali Yuga, not a very favourable place for spiritual life.
But this is an arrangement of the Supreme Lord. He makes a very good system for Satya Yuga gradually to declines to Kali Yuga. So we can say, why the Lord does that ? Why don’t we have Satya Yuga all the time ? Actually there is ! If you go to Svarga Loka, there is no Kali Yuga. Kali Yuga only exists here. In fact, even if you go to other Varshas, you go to Hari Varsha, Ketumala Varsha, Yelavarta Varsha which are on our Jambudweep, on Bhumandala, they don’t have Kali Yuga also. So this Bharat Varsha, this is where we get all these different Yugas [Laughs]. But nevertheless, it is an arrangement by the Lord. A specific arrangement by the Lord.
So why would you want to do that, make Bharat Varsha worse in one sense [Laughs]. So it must have a purpose. So the purpose also is there, we see that, the nature of the material world is that everything gets destroyed. If you have a car and you keep it for 20 years, gradually it gets worse and worse and breaks down more and more and then you have to sell it. Because it is useless. It devalues and it gets worse and worse. So everything in the material world degrades. We have big mountains, after millions of years, they get lesser and lesser and lesser they become hills eventually. Bodies start out nice and healthy, they decline they get old and they die. So everything is subject to influence of time and it degrades. So that is illustrated nicely by the degradation of civilisation over time [Laughs].
Of course, we see that with individual nations. Historically speaking, not according to Vedas, that is another thing, but according to modern ideas of history. So we have ancient civilisations like Greek and Roman, Egyptian, Chinese or whatever, very great at one time, they gradually decline and they disappear. So, every great civilisation has gone through this. Recently, we had the British empire spread all over the world and then very quickly it dissolved. After the second world war, it disappeared, it is no longer there. We have one little country Britain there. So everything declines with time. This is the nature of the material world. Nothing can last.
So that is illustrated by the yuga cycles. Repeated yuga cycles in the day of Brahma. But of course, the Lord just doesn’t leave the world in a degraded state. He restores it and then we come back to Satya Yuga [Laughs]. After four million years or so, we get back to a good life and then it declines again, starts all over again, declines again. That is the nature of material world. Of course, if we go on a larger scale, we have these cycles one thousand cycles in one day of Brahma happening – yuga cycles. We get bigger cycles – the day of Brahma. After the day of Brahma, then everything is finished again. And then starts in the morning of Brahma. Everything is created again, reaches noon, starts to decline and then finally night time everything is destroyed again. So we get all these days of Brahma on a larger cycle. Then we have the huge cycle of Brahma’s whole lifetime. And again, everything gets merged into prakrti at the end. Everything disappears, not one universe, all the universes dissolve and then Lord creates again. And everything is restored, everything is nice and new again we have new universes and again they are destroyed. So what this illustrates is, the nature of material world, under the influence of time everything gets destroyed.
We can cover the illusion a little bit, so that’s why if you go to Svargaloka, you can pretend we are not having this degradation. But still after I guess 71 yuga cycles Devatas are finished. They have to leave their place. Indra is no longer Indra. So they have their destruction also, and even Brahmaloka is destroyed finally. That’s on the huge scale.
On the individual scale, we have our own body created and destroyed. Now the interesting thing is, in spite of that, we pretend we don’t know and this is exactly what Yudhisthira said when asked by the Yaksha, the question, “What is the most astonishing ?” and then Yudhisthira, “the most astonishing thing is that, everybody dies everybody marches off to death and we see in our grandparents and our great grandparents and everybody before them we look at history, everybody has died, so the astonishing thing is, though we see this we think I’m not going to die and we continue living as if nothing is wrong. And we continue our life and finally we die”. So this is the illusion, that we are in the material world and even our body is getting old, still we are not thinking we are dying.
So to remind us we have various mechanisms. Of course, scripture reminds us all the time. But even we don’t want to listen to scripture. But we are forced to get that reminder all the time by various things. So of course one is the observation of our own body must get old as we get older forced to accept that it’s going to disappear. Because our senses decline and we become more miserable we get sick, whatever. So it’s a sign that we are not going to last forever. So on a larger scale, we have this cycle of Satya, Treta, Dwarpa, Kali. Going on continuously, even though we cannot see it, but we go to scripture, then we realise this is what is happening.
If we don’t understand scripture, then any civilisation, anytime think, we are the best that we have an eternal empire we are going to last forever. Then it does decline, it gets finished. Everyone is surprised when it happens, it collapses, it happens with everything. If we go to scripture, then we can understand a little bit about this, and we understand all these attempts of human beings are a little bit useless. Because everything gets destroyed. So, this is just a way of reminding us that everything is temporary. And therefore, we shouldn’t get too attached to our civilisation or whatever.
However, we can also criticise the Lord ok, the Lord makes this system to help remind us. But it’s a little bit cruel, why do we have to suffer in Kali Yuga? We all live in Satya Yuga very nice and peaceful we don’t have to struggle. Don’t have to work so much, whatever.. with a minimum of material problems. So the answer is that, the Lord gives remedy for everything if you are intelligent. And the remedy in Kali Yuga is, it’s the worst most miserable age with unqualified people, but then, the Lord gives the best easiest process for everybody. So that’s the compensation [Laughs].
So of course in Satya Yuga, the Lord has given meditation – Jnana, very good. But Jnana is very difficult for us. People cannot meditate. Meditation is defined as continuous concentration on one object, obviously Supreme Lord, continuously. People in the modern world cannot concentrate even on a material object for more than a few seconds. It goes to another object, another object like this. So continuously to concentrate on the Supreme Lord is very very difficult thing to do, and that is why people who are into controlling the mind like yogis, will have to concentrate for a long long time, hundreds of years, thousands of years to get perfection. We have the illustration of the yogi with his long hair which are meditating. So one has to meditate for a long period of time, in order to get perfection of Dhyana. In Satya Yuga, it was not difficult. This was everybody could do it. They didn’t have to go to the forest and look like a yogi and like kumbh mela yogis or whatever. They could just everybody was naturally like a yogi and they could meditate and concentrate on the Lord. So that was the Yuga Dharma, but things have declined and we can’t do that anymore. So in each age, which is slightly declining. Like Treta Yuga, slightly contaminated. Dwapara Yuga, more contaminated. There are alternative processes. So it’s not one process all the time. So we have meditation for Satya Yuga.
With Treta Yuga, there is a slight degradation and the people cannot concentrate so much internally easily on that form of the Supreme Lord in their mind. So the Lord gives another process. Okay, you cannot concentrate so much in mind. We give you external process. So you worship the Lord through fire, external objects are there. Of course, it’s not directly the Supreme Lord. But still the people have enough let’s say.. mental strength that they understand it’s not fire, it’s Supreme Lord. They look at the fire, this is Vishnu. So when they offer the grain and the ghee into the fire, they are making an offering to Vishnu. We like to offer flower to deity. But they don’t have to do that, they just offer it into the fire and the fire consumes it. So there is a direct response from the Supreme Lord to this fire. He burns up the offering. So and of course to do that properly they have to use mantras, Vedic mantras and they have to pronounce them very correctly. But they were capable of doing that. They knew the mantras, they could pronounce them correctly, they knew how to use them, and they could invoke the Lord and they were satisfied in offering to the fire.
But in Dwarpa Yuga, people don’t even have the ability to memorise all the mantras properly. They can’t see the Lord in fire even. So therefore, the Lord makes another arrangement. I’ll give you an actual form of the Lord. of course, then we will say, well that’s a material form. of course even fire is a material form. But through the mantra and through their intelligence, they could understand this is actually embodying Supreme Lord. So in Dwarpa Yuga, yes we are using stone or metal or wood to make a deity form, but we also follow rules. So this becomes the Supreme Lord, how? Through Pratishta, through installation of the deity, using mantra. But not Vedic mantras – Pancharatric mantras. So it becomes a little easier, it’s not Vedic anymore, we have Pancharatric mantras, which are a little easier for people to understand and then you worship again using mantra. But not Vedic mantra, Pancharatric mantra. So we have Diksha, you get Pancharatric mantra to worship the deity. So the mantra is the medium, by which we are able to offer to the Supreme Lord. So when we offer the flower, we have to utter the mantra and the deity accepts it. But it is easier, because we no longer have an abstraction, we no longer have inside, we have outside, we have an actual form. So we don’t have to imagine. In the fire, there is Vishnu there with his four arms we have an actual form of Vishnu or actual form of Krishna. So it is easier for people, because people are not so intelligent anymore. So that was the method in Dwarpa Yuga. So gradually, we get more concessions for people. Their intelligence declines.
So in Kali Yuga, people are more degraded, less intelligent, lazier etc. So even deity worship process is not recommended for everybody. They cannot appreciate deities. And we see in the modern world or even so many years ago, deities have gone out of fashion. We don’t want deities, we don’t want forms and most of the religions of the world say, no form – God has no form. We don’t want any forms [Laughs]. And this has become a major aspect of world religions. No forms for God. Don’t make any statues of God, we don’t want them, break them up, whatever like that. So even the deity is misunderstood nowadays. What is the deity, as they are material. What is the solution for the people of Kali Yuga, who are so less intelligent? So the solution given here as in the verse says, is Sankirtana! So no longer we need a form out of material at all and no longer we need to concentrate internally on a meditational form or on fire, whatever, sound only.
But we have sound in the previous ages also, with mantras – Vedic mantras, Pancharatra mantras etc, what’s the difference ? Difference is, that this sound this Sankirtana, is technically not mantra. So doesn’t require qualification of course. We say Hare Krishna mantra, but technically when we talk about mantra, we may need Vedic mantra or Pancharatric mantra, which require qualification. You cannot get the mantra, unless you’re a certain level. In the Vedas, Of course, Vedic mantra meant first you have to take Upanayanam, then you become qualified and you cannot take Upanayanam, if you’re a Vaisaya, Kshatriya, if you’re a Sudra, you cannot take it. So that’s the qualification for Vedic mantra. Pancharatric mantra – better. It’s open to everybody, that mantra. But still, you have to get the mantra and the guru have to choose, if you’re qualified. So there is still qualification there, so you have to have faith at least. And then you have to learn about the mantra and whatever.
So Sankirtan or chanting the name of the Lord is a little bit different. It does not require any qualification, still it has great effect. And that we see in the case of Ajamila. No faith, not a devotee, no belief in the Supreme Lord, and he named his son Narayana and all of his karmas were automatically destroyed. Which cannot be accomplished by the yogi after a thousand years of meditation even and in one second Ajamila destroyed all of his karmas by naming his son Narayana. So, the name of the Lord is very very powerful, that becomes the method in Kali Yuga. Chanting the name of the Lord only, not even mantras. So it’s open for everybody and it still has power. So this is the compensation for the difficulties of the age to remind us that nothing is permanent, everything is destroyed. Therefore we have Kali Yuga arranged in our particular varsha and the Lord gives us a solution, in spite of the fact that, it is the worst age and there is so much suffering etc. Solution to everything is Namsankirtan.
And it says here, ‘ sarva-svārtho ‘ all goals are attained by Sankirtan. What are all goals ? What is one goal ? Material goal. Everybody has material goal, I got to make money, got to get a house or whatever. So Sankirtan can give you that also. You can chant to get a house, chant to get a good job or whatever. Yeah, but of course, if you’re more intelligent, well material things, not so good, so you can chant for getting out of the material world, you can chant for liberation. So name could also give liberation but the most intelligent person, will go beyond liberation, will go for Prema. So name also gives that. So as the purport explains here, we can realise the Lord is Brahman, I’m not the body, I’m the soul, soul merged in Brahman, very peaceful, this is liberation. So, you can get realisation of Brahman and get liberation by chanting the name of the Lord. Not so difficult. Ajamila destroyed all of his karmas, by simply chanting accidentally even [Laughs]. So Nama-abas or accidental chanting can get you up to liberation, which the yogi may strive for thousands of years. But you can get it accidentally, by chanting the name of the Lord. So liberation also not so difficult.
You can also get realisation of Paramatma, the second stage is described here. Where we understand not just some impersonal Brahman and we understand there is a Supreme Lord who creates the material world. So we can realise that form. This is the form which most religions will accept. God is the creator, creates the world, God destroys the world. Not untrue, it is true. So, this is Paramatma realisation.
Of course, the problem with most religions is, they will accept that, God is the creator, but they don’t want to give him a form. So that’s he is the creator. But we don’t know who he is. So that’s where religions in the modern world stand. So, it is a struggle even to say that, okay there is a creator and he does have a form, even that is controversial in religions. But the Vedic scriptures.. in Bhagavatam go further and say, this is also not the ultimate realisation, even if we say God is the creator and even if we say he has a form, that’s not the ultimate.
Ultimate is Bhagavan. What is the difference between Bhagavan and Paramatma ? Bhagavan also has form. In fact, if you were to realise Bhagavan for worshipping Vishnu, it would look the same as Paramatma, the same form [Laughs]. Four arms – Shankha, Chakra etc, looks the same in form, that’s true. But there’s also a difference. And what is the difference? We realise the Supreme Lord, not just as the creator. That’s a secondary aspect of God as explained here. The man he’s carrying out managing the government, but he goes home in his palace and he’s doing something else completely different [Laughs]. So Supreme Lord also has this Purusha avatars, creating material world, Mahavishnu doing this, Garbodhaksai Vishnu, Kshirodhaksai Vishnu entering material world and doing things, this is Paramatma. The Lord simultaneously exists separate from all of that, not involved in any of the dirty work of material world. So this is Bhagavan. Bhagavan in the spiritual world. So that’s the highest realisation.
Of course, we go a little further than that. So yes, Bhagavan in the spiritual world, with a form, not just creating the material world, doing other activities. What type of activities ? So there are activities, with the devotees. So if we realise Bhagavan, then we participate in the Leela of the Supreme Lord. So we participate with God in the spiritual world and activities. Further than that, we say Bhagavan. Okay, he is a spiritual form in the spiritual world. We say, he’s not only has a form, he has many forms in the spiritual world. So there he’s mentioned you go to Vaikuntha, you realise Vishnu. You go to Krishna, you realise Krishna and Krishna Loka instead [Laughs].
So there’s many forms of God also, many forms of Bhagavan, not just one form. Why ? Because different devotees, prefer different forms. That’s all. So we have Supreme Lord, with many different forms in the spiritual world. This is actually unique feature of the Vedic literature. Not only God has a form, but there are many forms of God. Many extreme forms of God. In fact, God can be an animal. God can be a horse, God can be a fish, or turtle or whatever. God can be lion or God can be human like. God can have two arms, four arms, eight arms, thousand arms also. He can be black and white and blue and yellow and red green [Laughs] you know all sorts of colours. So God is unlimited. So that’s another unique feature of Vedic literature.
But among all the forms we have a supreme form, that is Krishna. So that is what the Bhagavatam establishes, Krishna as the supreme form. Meaning that, of all the different forms of God, actually one God, with many forms, Krishna is supreme, because in His form and through His activities, He manifests more qualities than the others manifest. So therefore, we put Him in the supreme position. So Krishna is the most complete manifestation of Bhagavan. In that sense, He is Swayam Bhagavan. And because of that, if you worship Krishna and realise Krishna, then you also realise and experience the highest bliss of all. Because you realise a more complete form of God. So this is why the Bhagavatam is recommending the people of Kali Yuga, worship only Bhagavan in the form of Krishna. Though there are other forms, fine, worship this one supreme form, Krishna, why ? Because, most attractive and people in Kali Yuga need something attractive, because they are so distracted by material energy [Laughs]. So, we need the most attractive form of God obviously, so therefore Krishna is the most attractive form, easiest to concentrate on.
So we have this formula for Kali Yuga, for the fallen people of Kali Yuga, who are so distracted and not intelligent, chant the name of the Lord. But even more particular is, not just name of the Lord but the name of Krishna because Krishna is the essence of all the different forms. Here it talks about the ‘sāra-bhāginaḥ’ – the essence.. people who enjoy the essence basically ‘sāra-bhāginaḥ’ and people who are Arya, they have higher intelligence etc. So those who know the essence, perform Sankirtan. But not just Sankirtan, using Krishna’s name. Because Krishna is the essence of everything [Laughs].
It’s also said here ‘guṇa jñāḥ’ which means, they know qualities. So what qualities do they know ? Of course in the word for word, it says, they know the value of this age. The quality of this age, there’s a true quality of this age. They know the essence of the age is, everything is bad, but Kirtan is good. And they know the good quality that is Kirtan. So those who are intelligent in Kali, will take up this process of Kirtan. Chanting the name of the Lord. But actually, the name of Krishna in our particular yuga.
So this is of course the whole thing here is to explain the avatar of Kali yuga. So a particular form of God comes and presents Kirtan. Of course Kirtan is already there in the Vedas. Just as meditation is there, and Homa is there, and Deity worship is already there, Kirtan is all in the Vedic literature. But it requires someone to point out, do this in this particular age. So there is a yuga avatar for each age, who propagates that type of activity. So there is.. what’s previously described the yuga avatar for Satya yuga, Treta yuga, Dwarpa yuga and we have similarly for Kali yuga, the avatar who propagates. So the avatar for Kali yuga, of course is in this particular case, with previous verses here describing, he is Krishna varnam, but he is not black like Krishna. He is opposite colour. So there is whole explanation here that this means Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. So for our particular yuga, after Krishna, the person who propagates that Sankirtan is Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. So that’s the blessing for our Kali yuga.
So though there are all the bad qualities of Kali yuga, which are also discussed in Bhagavatam particularly in 12th Canto, we also have a good quality which makes it better than all the other yugas and better than all the other places. So it is that even the Devatas want to come here [Laughs] in our Kali yuga, because of Sankirtan, because it is an easy process to get beyond everything else, and get to the highest realisation of Bhagavan. This makes it very very special. So therefore, we should not lament our position in Kali yuga [Laughs]. We take advantage of chanting the name of Krishna.
Okay any questions ?
Q & A
1) Maharaj, does that mean that the Lord doesn’t appear in other varshas ?
Yuga avatar. Just the yuga avatars. Because we have the Leela avatars, the other avatars, they’re everywhere like Vamana. He is born in Swargaloka, Vamana Dev.
2) Maharaj, does the chanting process is only in kali yuga ? In other yugas, there is no such process ?
Yeah well, just as today now we have the the process is Nama Sankirtan. But we still may meditate, we still may do deity worship, still do homa or whatever. But it’s secondary. So they can do other things in other yugas also, but main process for realising the Lord and going to spiritual world was meditation or homa or deity worship. Main process.
3) Can we realize Brahman, Paramatma or Bhagavan by chanting ?
Yeah, because it is said that, what was achieved in Satya yuga by meditation is achieved in Kali yuga by Kirtan. So you were realising the same Lord, but by different process.
Devotee: Seems homa, meditation etc are mind level processes. Are they able to do bhakti with these processes ?
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Yeah, so all of these processes are devotional processes. The four yuga dharmas, they’re not impersonal. So, through jnana we realise Bhagavan, through homa we realise Bhagavan, through deity worship Bhagavan and through Kirtan now.
At the same time, you can use those processes for other things [Laughs]. So for meditation, you can meditate and realise Paramatma as a yogi or Brahman or by sacrifices commonly they just go to Svarga Loka. They use Karma kanda sacrifices to go to Svarga Loka. So we can use same processes for material things also or even Brahman or whatever.
So similarly with deities. So we can worship deities we can worship Devata deities and get material results also. We can do Kirtan of Ganesha’s name or whatever get material results also. So you can use the same processes for material things or spiritual things.
4) Maharaj, i find hard to balance studying, chanting and sports. So what shall i do to balance these ?
An intelligent person will not just do one thing. So you cannot just study, study, study, study, study, you have to eat, you have to sleep [Laughs], so many things. So generally, we have to do all things.
We have to study for cultivating the mind, we have to take care of the body. So therefore, we have to do exercise and do whatever like that. We also have to take care of the atma, inside the body, because most important thing [Laughs]. So we have to do something for spiritual life. So that’s why we chant. So we have to balance out these different things – the physical, the mental and the spiritual and do some of each, according to the necessity of the time.
We may do more of the study and less of the physical or whatever. So we can balance that out. But nevertheless, we should never give up on any of these. So there has to be a little bit of everything all the time.
5) Maharaj, you mentioned about various Yugas. So how do we understand that Bhagavatam in this Kali yuga ? Obviously, it is just composed before the Kali Yuga, so was there a need for text like Bhagavatam in Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, because the purity was much more in those yugas, the need for Bhagavatam is not required ? the external Bhagavatam ?
Yeah, so actually, not only Bhagavatam, but all the Puranas were written by Veda Vyas just before Kali Yuga[Laughs], to make everything easier. Because before that, they had Vedas and even the Vedas were difficult. So therefore, Vedavyas made four Vedas, instead of one Veda. So previously they just had Veda basically and people could access it. But he understood that Kali Yuga especially people will not understand this at all. So then he wrote these works for everybody. So Bhagavatam and the other Puranas come out just for the people of Kali Yuga.
6) Maharaj, Kali yuga is there for many years, why Yuga Avatara is coming just 500 years ago, why Bhagavan is creating that kind of an arrangement ? If it’s been there thousands of years ago.
Okay. Yeah well of course, Kali Yuga lasts for 432,000 years [Laughs] and Lord Chaitanya appeared 5000 years after the beginning. So it’s like at the beginning [Laughs] it’s near the very beginning [Laughs] actually, not not even in the middle. So we have to wait you know 200,000 years later for the middle. So this is actually at the very beginning. From our point of view, of course 5000 years is a lot of years. But in terms of length of Kali Yuga, it is nothing [Laughs]. It’s not even one percent I think.
7) Maharaj, you were talking about the degradition in ages. So, when we start with such a purity in satya yuga. So how do we degrade, how does the degradation in gunas happen, when everything is so good ?
Well, this degradation is in terms of gunas. So in Satya Yuga, it is prominently Sattvic. It’s not perfect, because even in Satya Yuga, we have demons [Laughs]. Treta Yuga we have demons, in Dvapara Yuga it’s full of demons. Krishna is killing demons all the time. So no age is perfect. But there’s a prominence of Sattva in Satya Yuga. So, most people are Sattvic. They control the mind very easily, whatever. They can do meditation, whatever.
Why it declines is, because nature of time. Time degrades everything. We have the gunas at the very beginning of creation. When Mahavishnu glances over Prakriti and what happens.. Mahatattva arises. That’s the first evolute from Prakriti. And what is Mahatattva ? it’s full of Sattva. Before that, Prakriti is there, but we can’t distinguish any guna at all. When Mahavishnu glances and injects Jiva, suddenly Sattva arises. So a little bit of imbalance, out of the balance state, where nothing is visible, suddenly Sattva arises. But when that happens, once Sattva arises, that creates imbalance and then Sattva starts turning into Rajas and Rajas turns into Tamas and then Tamas creates manifests Ahankara. And then Ahankara manifests material elements and sense objects and all this and then we get universes forming out of that all matter.
So the gunas are in an imbalanced state. So, one time we’ll have Sattva coming then we have Rajas then we have Tamas Sattva like this. So it’s constantly changing in the material world. That’s just the nature of Prakriti. We get this imbalance and one will become prominent the others will be less.
8) Maharaj, thank you for the wonderful class. We see that, for each age, there is yuga dharma. And we see that, both men and women are chanting and they can achieve perfection, in Dwapara Yuga, the deity worship can be performed by both, in Treta Yuga also both of them can do fire sacrifices. But i have never seen a photo of women doing meditation in satya yuga. So, my question is, is it applicable for both of them?
[Laughs] of course generally in the scriptures it just mentions the men. So most of the personalities are men. But we do have women sometimes. We have Kunti Devi and Draupadi and a few others. I think.. Okay, we have Dhruva’s mother, whatever. We have a few women mentioned, not so prominent.
But if we look in the Upanishads, we’ll find actually which are very Vedic and strict in one sense, we do find women Acharyas surprisingly. So Gargi Acharya was a famous Acharya. Gargi who else, there’s another one a few are quite famous and mentioned in Brhad aranyaka Upanishad as Acharyas actually. So they were teaching Vedic knowledge to people. So they were very very elevated, telling them all about Brahman and this and that whatever. So therefore, women were participating to some degree even in Vedic life.
9) Maharaj, thank you for the wonderful class. Maharaj, I have 2 questions. During the lecture you have covered, there are various civilisation even in modern time and how they got degraded and dissipated over time in the age that we live in. And then you get the example of the British Empire. So in our time, if you look at the world around us, you probably still got the remnants of Vedic civilisation, in modern India and you’ve got a government that has a semblance of supporting it. So then as devotees, what should our attitude be towards such a government or any such government – similar government that is supporting the semblance of Vedic civilisation?
Yeah, so anything that is favourable for devotional service, we can support obviously. Not even just in India, any government of the world is a little bit favourable to bhakti, fine or theism whatever. If they are completely atheistic or it’s not unfavourable so, we don’t like. So whatever is favourable, we support that, we can support that.
10) And one more question is, also as the Kali Yuga advances and we see it the point you made around the attention span of people becomes smaller and lower and lower so even now when we live in a digital age, in the last 10 years especially now we’ve had social media and even with social media as we see it advances even the forms of entertainment that they throw at us particularly the content becomes shorter and shorter. There used to be long videos.. now they are short two minute videos.
So if you want to preach outside of the realm of devotees, in the wider society we are aware of the fact that people’s attention span is very low, that is one thing. And the other thing is, they relate to us along with the cultural nuances that we come in, as in the way we dress, the way we present ourselves how do we present ourselves in a way which is attractive and palatable to a normal society and take us slowly ?
So, this is a controversial point, we can go both ways. We can be very strict and you know… whatever was done 50 years ago, 100 years ago and whatever and we can keep doing it for future 1000 years. Same dress, same tilak, same words, whatever. So that’s in one sense, ok fine, it’s traditional.
And people in other sampradayas like Sri Sampradaya probably support that. They don’t want to change at all and Madhva is the same, they really don’t want to change anything from a thousand years ago even. But we also see that the scope, the audience is very limited by doing that in the modern world. So Sri Sampradaya is there, but it’s not really expanding. The only way it exists now is hereditary. Because your parents for that year this or the same with the Madhvas, they don’t really expand at all. And if they were to present their philosophy to people in general in the modern world, nobody is going to understand what it is even.
So therefore, we do have to adapt and that’s exactly what our Sampradaya has done. Starting with Bhakti Vinod Thakur then Bhakti Siddhanta and Srila Prabhupada. We adapt to the modern world. First they got books, printed books, distributed books like anything. Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswathi and Bhakti Vinoda Thakur, that was their mission to publicise through books, the nature of Lord Chaitanya’s movement to everybody. So they were successful doing that. So they borrowed from the British they took the printing press, that the British brought and they used that traditionists may condemn that – You’re taking something from the aggressors, who are trying to conquer us. It was useful in that time. Similarly, Prabhupada also did the same thing and he utilised tape recorders, dicta phones and whatever aeroplanes and whatever. Of course, probably his preaching remained exactly like it was with Bhakti Siddhantha Saraswati Thakur etc, but at least the method, the methods he used were innovative also.
So unfortunately, the modern world since Prabhupada has changed radically, even of course, it changed from Second World War to 20 years later changed a lot (19)48, (19)58, (19)61, Prabhupada’s there, radical changes took place. But then since that time, since the (19)70s to now, we’ve gone through great changes. One of course is innovations in terms of machines and technology and communications and whatever. So we go from tape recorders to little tape recorders to very little tape recorders and we go from computers to they had a floppy disc [Laughs] and things like that that’s unheard of nowadays [Laughs]. You’ve got a little thing you stick in you have a few GBs now, you’ve got gigabytes and terabytes and whatever. So things are advancing very very quickly in the modern world, in terms of communications and all that. Apart from that, which we can utilise also. We can’t get stuck at one level, so we can just print books and distribute books. But then, who’s going to read them in the modern world? Their attention span is two minutes [Laughs] so to get to Bhagavad Gita is going to take them 20 years [Laughs]. They distribute Bhagavad Gita’s everywhere, nobody reads them [Laughs], so that’s why we, so they have audio books now. So even BBT has audio books and things like that for people or we have the digital books as well. So we have to innovate to some degree like that.
So apart from that, then the technological innovations, which are faster and faster we’ll probably have virtual reality books or something like that [Laughs]. So you don’t have to do that for the Bhagavad Gita or something I don’t know how you do it. But you’ll have to have something like that.
But apart from that innovation in technology, you have the social change. And that has radically changed over the last 30 years or so from Prabhupad’s time to now. It’s completely different. We have the counterculture and the hippies at that time, we don’t have any hippies anymore. And we’ve got all sorts of other weird things happening in the modern world. So then we do have to address that also somehow. So this is even more controversial how to accommodate the modern world within the scope of ISKCON [Laughs] and then we have constant arguments among the devotees about what to do, equal rights for women and all this sort of thing like that, or we have to follow Vedic system. Woman has to be obedient to the man, so all sorts of social changes whatever. Psychological changes are there among people and as you said their attention span is getting less and less, so all of these things also we do have to address.
But how much we change, that’s of course debatable. That’s the whole question. How much we can change without changing the whole philosophy and whatever like that. So that’s the basic thing. Somehow we maintain the principles, the philosophy, etc. and the standards, at the same time we should adapt to technological things and even some of the social things we have to preach in a different way, because people won’t listen, if you’re stuck in a different social system, preaching a different system. You have to somehow adapt, but how much we adapt, that’s the whole question.
11) Hare Krsna Maharaj, Dandavat Pranams. Thank you for your association. I understand that the Kali yuga dharma is chanting, so, through the chanting we can attain Krsna prema, but people whom we are seeing mostly do mechanical chanting. So just want to ask the question – will this mechanical chanting can deliver the people ?
Ok, as I said Ajamil didn’t even have mechanical chanting, he just named his son Narayana and he got effect. He got all of his karmas destroyed, which is a big effect for the yogis and the Jnanis, because they strived for thousands of years to do that. He did that in a few seconds. So, chanting in any form is good.
Of course, if we have devotion, at least a little bit of devotion or faith it is better. So we get better effects, the better we can do it. So if we have a little devotion, it’s better than no devotion or accidental we have a little devotion, good we have a little devotion and we have more attentiveness, that’s better. If we have faith, attentiveness and we have some knowledge of what we’re doing and who Krishna is and what is pure bhakti it’s even better. So, name can give various effects, as we get better at doing it [Laughs]. So, it can get rid of your karmas, even if you do it accidentally or whatever or inattentively you can get rid of your karmas.
But, of course, if you get rid of all your karmas, you can get liberation. But we don’t want liberation, we want prema [Laughs]. So, if we want to get prema, then we do have to have some attention. We try to be attentive, but we have to. Of course, that’s gradual. And we have to get some knowledge so, that’s why we have the books so, we can get some basic knowledge about what is proper way of chanting, what is proper conduct of a devotee, who is supreme lord, etc. to get that knowledge we have to have knowledge of scripture.
Ok, Hare Krishna !
Devotees: HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj Ki.. Jai !!