śrīmad bhāgavatam – 11.11.43-45 | HH Bhānu Swāmī Mahāraj | ISKCON Chennai | May 28, 2021
nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale
śrīmate bhaktivedānta-svāmin iti nāmine
namas te sārasvate deve gaura-vāṇī-pracāriṇe
nirviśeṣa-śūnyavādi-pāścātya-deśa-tāriṇe
śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya prabhu-nityānanda
śrī-advaita gadādhara śrīvāsādi-gaura-bhakta-vṛnda
Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Hare Hare
Hare Rāma Hare Rāma Rāma Rāma Hare Hare
Reading from śrīmad bhāgavatam Canto 11 Chapter 11 Verse 43-45.
सूर्ये तु विद्यया त्रय्या हविषाग्नौ यजेत माम् ।
आतिथ्येन तु विप्राग्र्ये गोष्वङ्ग यवसादिना ॥ ४३ ॥
वैष्णवे बन्धुसत्कृत्या हृदि खे ध्याननिष्ठया ।
वायौ मुख्यधिया तोये द्रव्यैस्तोयपुर:सरै: ॥ ४४ ॥
स्थण्डिले मन्त्रहृदयैर्भोगैरात्मानमात्मनि ।
क्षेत्रज्ञं सर्वभूतेषु समत्वेन यजेत माम् ॥ ४५ ॥
sūrye tu vidyayā trayyā
haviṣāgnau yajeta mām
ātithyena tu viprāgrye
goṣv aṅga yavasādinā
vaiṣṇave bandhu-sat-kṛtyā
hṛdi khe dhyāna-niṣṭhayā
vāyau mukhya-dhiyā toye
dravyais toya-puraḥsaraiḥ
sthaṇḍile mantra-hṛdayair
bhogair ātmānam ātmani
kṣetra-jñaṁ sarva-bhūteṣu
samatvena yajeta mām
Synonyms
sūrye — in the sun; tu — indeed; vidyayā trayyā — by offering selected Vedic hymns of praise, worship and obeisances; haviṣā — with offerings of clarified butter; agnau — in the fire; yajeta — one should worship; mām — Me; ātithyena — by respectfully receiving them as guests even when uninvited; tu — indeed; vipra — of brāhmaṇas; agrye — in the best; goṣu — in the cows; aṅga — O Uddhava; yavasa–ādinā — by offering grass and other paraphernalia for their maintenance; vaiṣṇave — in the Vaiṣṇava; bandhu — with loving friendship; sat–kṛtyā — by honoring; hṛdi — within the heart; khe — within the inner space; dhyāna — in meditation; niṣṭhayā — by being fixed; vāyau — in the air; mukhya — the most important; dhiyā — considering by intelligence; toye — in water; dravyaiḥ — by material elements; toya–puraḥ–saraiḥ — by water, etc.; sthaṇḍile — in the earth; mantra–hṛdayaiḥ — by application of confidential mantras; bhogaiḥ — by offering of materially enjoyable objects; ātmānam — the jīva soul; ātmani — within the body; kṣetra–jñam — the Supersoul; sarva–bhūteṣu — within all living beings; samatvena — seeing Him equally everywhere; yajeta — one should worship; mām — Me.
Translation
My dear Uddhava, one should worship Me within the sun by chanting selected Vedic mantras and by performing worship and offering obeisances. One may worship Me within fire by offering oblations of ghee, and one may worship Me among the brāhmaṇas by respectfully receiving them as guests, even when uninvited. I can be worshiped within the cows by offerings of grass and other suitable grains and paraphernalia for the pleasure and health of the cows, and one may worship Me within the Vaiṣṇavas by offering loving friendship to them and honoring them in all respects. Through steady meditation I am worshiped within the inner space of the heart, and within the air I can be worshiped by knowledge that prāṇa, the life air, is the chief among elements. I am worshiped within water by offerings of water itself, along with other elements such as flowers and tulasī leaves, and one may worship Me within the earth by proper application of confidential seed mantras. One may worship Me within the individual living entity by offering food and other enjoyable substances, and one may worship Me within all living entities by seeing the Supersoul within all of them, thus maintaining equal vision.
Purport
Significantly, the Lord emphasizes in these three verses that one should worship the Supreme Personality of Godhead who is expanded within all living beings. It is not recommended that one accept any material or spiritual object other than the Lord as supreme. By maintaining steady consciousness of the Lord in His all-pervading feature, one can remain in a worshipful mood twenty-four hours a day. Thus, one will naturally try to engage all material and spiritual elements in the loving service of Lord Kṛṣṇa. If because of ignorance one forgets the Supreme Personality of Godhead, one may become inclined to worship powerful material phenomena independent of the Supreme Lord, or one may foolishly consider oneself to be supreme. One should remain sane and accept the worshipable presence of the Supreme Lord within everything.
HH Bhānu Swāmī Mahārāj
So the previous verse talked about how one can worship the Lord in various items such as Sun, and then the fire, and the Earth, and the water etc. This verse gives a little more detail on how to do that. Some of these are easy to perform. For instance, we can worship the Lord and the cow by offering grass. That’s easy. Or we can offer food to the Brāhmaṇa. Or we can respect and worship the Vaiṣṇavas. Other ones are little more complicated. So, we make offerings using secret mantras into the earth. Or we think of the Lord within the air and meditate. But the ultimate purpose of all this is to show that somehow or other we should engage our mind and our senses in serving the Lord. And we should understand that the Lord is in all beings and He is in all elements.
There is a hint of this in the Nectar of Devotion. In the first 10 items of Angas of Bhakti, one of the items is to give respect to the Brāhmaṇas and things like that. And it also mentions the Aśvatthā tree. In other words, we should give respect to all living entities. And in the verses to support that from the scriptures, there are verses about worshipping the cow and the Vaiṣṇava as well. So generally of course, the devotees understand that the Lord is in all beings. But in these verses here we also see the Lord present in elements. The Lord is in fire, He is in air, He is in water, He is in earth, He is in ether. So, in other words, the Lord is in everything in the material world. And He is also in all of the living entities. Therefore we have to give respect to matter and living entities.
So, in the sikṣaṣṭaka of Caitanya Mahāprabhu, Lod Caitanya says that you have to give respect to all others and not expect respect back. Because we realize the Lord is equally merciful to all living entities and He is in all living entities. And He is also within everything in this material world. So apart from the living entities, we also have to give respect to matter. So, we see that the tree is very tolerant and if there is wind or sun or whatever, it tolerates. So sometimes the material elements may not be comfortable for us. Too much heat or too little heat, too much water, too little water. But we have to tolerate all of that. The reason is of course is that behind all the arrangements in the material world is the Lord. There is of course a little principle involved here. And that of course is one of the law of karma. If we treat other living entities badly, then we will get karma for that. So, this is an arrangement so that we give respect to all living entities. However, this rule also applies not only to living entities, even with material nature. So we cannot exploit material nature, violence to material nature.
Of course, we can think of behind all the material elements there is a devata, so behind the earth there is Bhūmidevī. And we see in the first canto when Parikṣit meets the cow and the bull, the cow represents earth. And the bull represents dharma. And when people don’t follow dharma, then the earth suffers. So, in other words, by doing sinful activities, the earth suffers. Not only we commit actions against other living entities, we also do violence to the earth itself. And the result is, if the cow suffers, the cow does not give milk. So, if the earth gets the violence of the human being, it will not yield proper food, water, etc. And that is what we see in the modern world. People are concerned about environment. When we misuse or destroy the material elements, then we get all sorts of shortages and the human being has to suffer. So this is also we can say, another form of karma. We do violence to the earth, air, water, etc. Then we get suffering. So the Vaiṣṇava in these verses, he worships the Lord in all these elements. And therefore, we should give respect to these elements and not commit violence.
On a lesser level of course, we will find this also practiced by more primitive types of worship. So, in many tribes, those people worship different elements. And if the element gets angry, then we get some bad results like storms or floods, etc. But they realize there is some person there. This becomes a little more sophisticated. We have the Devatas in charge of the elements and then we worship Indra in order to get proper rain for the crops. Or we worship Sun so that we get proper energy. So, in this way, we have in the Vedas a prescription for worshipping different Devatas so that we can respect them and then we get proper material facilities.
However, the Vaiṣṇava understands that higher than the Devata is the Supreme Lord. So the Supreme Lord is also in the elements. The Supreme Lord is in the elements and also in the Devatas with the elements and He is also beyond everything. So, we should worship the Lord but then we have to respect the Lord in all these different elements. And the result of course one is that we increase our bhakti. But the other result is by giving respect to the wind and the water and the earth etc. that we can say we get good karma. We don’t get harassed by the elements. So in this way, the devotee can practice his devotion without too much disturbance from the material world.
However, the material world is not perfect, and everything is temporary. So, at a certain point, each Jīva has to give up his material body. So, all the arrangements we have for the body, even if it’s for serving, we have to give that up a bit. However, this is not a problem for the devotee. If he is not perfected, then he takes another body and he serves the Lord again. If he is perfected, then he gets a spiritual body and he serves the Lord eternally with that. So, at that stage, he does not have to worry about the material elements. He simply worships the Lord and eternally he exists in bliss with the Lord.
Of course, we all find that in the material world, the devotees in the Lord’s pastimes does this worship also. So we find that Kṛṣṇa in Dvāraka every day gets up and in the morning, he is doing fire sacrifice. And he meditates. And of course, we see in the pastimes in Vṛṇdāvan, the Gopīs are worshipping Surya Deva, the Sun God. So, this doesn’t mean that they are worshipping material entities because they don’t have material bodies. But even in their spiritual bodies, they carry on activities that resemble the worship of the material world. So in other words, these activities are carried on simply for pastimes.
However, in the material world, the devotees may carry out these activities of worshipping the Lord in these different forms but ultimately, they prefer to simply worship the Lord directly. And therefore, we chant his name and worship the deity. And when we do worship indirectly, it is by worshipping the devotees. So these are the principal items we concentrate on, but we should also be aware of giving respects to material elements.
Hare Krsna !
Q&A
1.) Maharaj, I was just wondering when you were actually explaining this verse very nicely. Is this verse basically recommended for those who are probably not involved in the direct worship of the Lord? And for them, this process of indirect worship is recommended to those community of people?
Well, these types of worship are mentioned in the scriptures and apparently, I don’t know how far back, some people would be involved in this type of worship. And on certain occasions, this type of worship may be carried out. For instance, we do deity installation, so there we have some elaborate types of worship.
But it does not appear that people would do all of these activities as a daily activity. According to Sampradāya, they may be taught one type of worship, not all of them. So, as I said, on special occasions, a lot of these worships may be done.
So, in Hari Bhakti Vilāsa, I believe there is also a mention of worshipping the Lord and the earth, etc. But it doesn’t give any detail. So, if you are being taught by your Guru a certain type of worship, okay, you do that worship but don’t worry about it too much because the main worship that is mentioned in the Hari Bhakti Vilāsa is the worship of the deity.
2.) Maharaj, in the context of today’s verse is it the same as pañcamahāyajña where we worship living entities, brāhmaṇas etc?
Not exactly. Of course, there we chant the vedas, you worship guest not necessarily brāhmaṇas, you feed other living entity, worship pitṛas, devatas. We can say that kind of covered but obviously we don’t have air and ether elements there. This is much more of general and in pañcamahāyajña, the particular activity is to free you from accidental sins daily.
3.) Those who have some relationship with us, out of concern we are forced to check their sinful acts and as a result they get offended. Does it involve any karma upon us because they are getting offended by our action?
Well, just like the king has to punish people, he doesn’t get karma because he punishes the criminal.
4.) Prabhupāda had mentioned that he sees everything as energy of Kṛṣṇa and that should be used in the service of the Lord. However, the premi bhaktas mentioned in Bhāgavatam see Kṛṣṇa everywhere rather than seeing everything as energy of Kṛṣṇa. How to understand this difference ?
The vision in prema is born from the emotional point of view. The devotee sees everything in terms of prema. Therefore, everybody is a devotee. Of course, on a lower level, we think that kamsa is asura, this person is asura but from prem bhakta this is all part of prem activities of Lord. so, they are all devotees.
If we approach everything in terms of philosophy – tattva, then we can understand that this is the śakti and it belongs to the Lord.
5.) Hare Krishna Maharaj, when the Gopīs worshipped the Sun God and likewise other worships, should we understand that they were worshipping the Lord only in them and not the demigods?
Well, we can also think of it that in the spiritual world, there are also devatas who don’t have material bodies. And people will worship those deities. But nobody in spiritual world actually has material desires, so they worship these deities in terms of increasing prema to Kṛṣṇa. And there, the devatas are also great devotees of the Lord.
So it’s only worship of devotees and in the devotees, of course, there is the Lord. So there is no offence in that type of worship. But we can also worship the devatas of the material world if we understand that ultimately they are the servants of the Lord. But we don’t worship them separately.
6.) Hare Krishna Maharaj, this verse have clarified such worship are part of pure bhakti by Kṛṣṇa himself. While we hear and read about importance of these worship and respect, devotees sooner slip to the idea that chanting alone is enough and do not engage in any of these activities and the strength of chanting like Bābāji’s. Does this laxity not cause erosion of worship culture and also slow process of bhakti? Neither are these part of current Gauḍiya tradition to learn and perform. How to avoid this laxity and escape mentality of ignoring this kind of worships? Thank you.
Bhāgavatam mentions many things that devotees can do as part of bhakti. But that doesn’t mean that we have to do every single activity. In Nectar of devotion there, it mentions 64 angas of bhakti, that doesn’t mean we have to do all 64 angas everyday. So it is up to the ācāryas and the sampradāya to choose those which we concentrate on. And of course, Caitanya Mahāprabhu has emphasized chanting of the holy name. And in fact he has emphasized it to a profound degree. Therefore, he said “harer nāma harer nāma harer nāma eva kevalam” only the holy name. No karma yoga, no jñāna yoga, aṣṭāṇga yoga. So in bhakti of course we can do many of the activities but everybody has a certain capacity. But the main element for the devotees in Gauḍiya Sampradaya is to chant the holy name.
And if they have been instructed by their guru then they do other activities. But they should not detract from the main activity which is kirtan. So therefore, the instruction given by Jīva Goswāmi is even if you do other activities, always have to chant the holy name.
7.) The demigods in the material world transferred to spiritual world when they get prema or how to understand demigods in spiritual world ?
Well the devata in the material world may be some jīva. He might not be one of the devata in spiritual world. So not necessarily that the devata here becomes a devata there.
8.) Practicing devotees often have to depend on material objects and materialistic people, such as medicines, doctors, etc. Instead, is it not possible to worship demigods for material benefits, just as worshipping Ganeśa is one of the items mentioned in the Nectar of Devotion?
If we worship the devatas and we think they give something independently of Kṛṣṇa, then this becomes aparādh. If we worship Kṛṣṇa and then we ask the same material things to Kṛṣṇa, then this is mixed bhakti.
So, if we are doing pure bhakti, then we have to worship without request for anything material. So, in the material world, the body may depend on food, water, medicine, etc. But the jīva does not. So, the jīva depends on Kṛṣṇa. So, dependence on material things is only in terms of the body. The more we identify with the body, the more dependent we become on material things, medicine, etc. So, the more we depend on things, the more we may worship demigods, etc. But then this will interfere with bhakti.
So therefore, the devotee who will take care of his body and he may take medicines, food, whatever, still he remains detached from all. And he practices pure bhakti.
9.) In Bhagavad Gītā, Lord says “nāhaṁ teṣu avasthitā” that he is not situated in this material world. How do we understand today’s words where the Lord says he is present in everything?
Well, the Lord says both things. I am in everything and I am not in everything. I am inside everything and outside everything. So in other words, the Lord says the contrary. So that is the acintya śakti.
Devotees: Grantharaj Srimad Bhagavatam ki jai!!! HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj ki jai!!! His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada ki jai!!! Nitai Gaura premanande Hari Haribol!!!