Srimad Bhagavatam – 10.76.28-33 | HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj| ISKCON Japan | November 2, 2025 |
jaya rādhā-mādhava kuñja-vihārī
gopījana-vallabha giri-vara-dhārī
yaśodā-nandana vraja-jana-rañjana
yamunā-tīra-vana-cārī
Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Hare Hare
Hare Rāma Hare Rāma Rāma Rāma Hare Hare
Jaya Prabhupāda Jaya Prabhupāda
Prabhupāda Jaya Prabhupāda
Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevaya
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
jaya 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 Srimad Bhagavatam Canto 10 Chapter 76 Verse 28.
ŚB 10.76.28
labdha-samjño muhūrtena
kārṣṇiḥ sārathim abravīt
aho asādhv idaṁ sūta
yad raṇān me ’pasarpaṇam
Synonyms
labdha — attaining; saṁjñaḥ — consciousness; muhūrtena — in a moment; kārṣṇiḥ — the son of Lord Kṛṣṇa; sārathim — to His chariot driver; abravīt — said; aho — ah; asādhu — improper; idam — this; sūta — O driver; yat — which; raṇāt — from the battlefield; me — My; apasarpaṇam — being taken away.
Translation
Quickly regaining consciousness, Lord Kṛṣṇa’s son Pradyumna said to His charioteer, “O driver, this is abominable — for Me to have been removed from the battlefield!
Text 29
“Except for Me, no one born in the Yadu dynasty has ever been known to abandon the battlefield. My reputation has now been stained by a driver who thinks like a eunuch.
Text 30
“What shall I say to My fathers, Rāma and Keśava, when I return to Them after having simply fled the battle? What can I tell Them that will befit My honor?
Purport
Śrī Pradyumna here uses the word pitarau, “fathers,” loosely. Lord Balarāma was of course His uncle.
Text 31
“Certainly My sisters-in-law will laugh at Me and say, ‘O hero, tell us how in the world Your enemies turned You into such a coward in battle.’”
Text 32
The driver replied: O long-lived one, I have done this knowing full well my prescribed duty. O my Lord, the chariot driver must protect the master of the chariot when he is in danger, and the master must also protect his driver.
Text 33
With this rule in mind, I removed You from the battlefield, since You had been struck unconscious by Your enemy’s club and I thought You were seriously injured.
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj:
So here we have Pradyumna showing his nature as a kshatriya. So, the nature of a kshatriya is to be eager to fight and not to flee from the battlefield. But we also know that Pradyumna is actually an expansion of the Supreme Lord. In the pastimes in Dvaraka, Pradyumna is Krishna’s son. However, in the spiritual world, he’s also like a form of the Lord. So though Pradyumna here is acting like a kshatriya, he’s also the Supreme Lord. Similarly, Krishna, He acts like a kshatriya in Dvaraka. When He is in Vrindavana, He acts like a vaisya. So actually, all these different roles like kshatriya, brahmana, vaisya, and sudra are material. And although Lord of course, isn’t material, so He is not a kshatriya or a brahmana or a vaisya, or sudra. However, when the Lord manifests, He manifests with a form. And He manifests that form in a certain place, and He does activities. So, these different classes of people in the varnasrama system are suitable backgrounds, we can say, for Krishna to act in. But, He is not obligated to follow all those rules.
We often see the Lord appears as a kshatriya. For instance, He appears as Rama, who is a kshatriya, a king. Sometimes, of course, He may appear as a brahmana. For instance, Vyasadeva [Laughs]. And, of course, Krishna is a vaisya [Laughs]. There also is a few times Krishna appears as a sudra [Laughs]. So, Krishna can appear in any form, but He is not bound by those rules, he just does it for pastimes. Of course, Krishna can also appear as an animal [Laughs] or half animal, Narasimha Deva, half lion, half human [Laughs] or He can appear as a bird or He can appear as a fish [Laughs] or even a snake [Laughs]. So, Lord can appear in any form and it’s not material and it’s not subject to, you know, material laws. So, by appearing in these various forms, the Lord shows that actually, He is not material and for us, of course, it may look material, but it’s not.
When the Lord took the form of Varaha, He appeared from the nostril of Brahma. Nose [Laughs]. So, not a normal birth [Laughs]. And He was very small, but immediately He started expanding, expanding, expanding, he filled the whole sky [Laughs]. And when the devatas saw this, they said, oh, this is Supreme Lord [Laughs]. But He had an extraordinary form. He had the form of a pig. But this form was very beautiful. So though He was this pig form, which usually we say, you look at a pig and you look disgusted, but they saw the pig and they were again praising Him [Laughs]. So, no matter what form the Lord takes, that form is most beautiful, most attractive, full of all wonderful qualities. But when the Lord assumes the form of Varaha, then He acts like a boar. He runs around the forest and He digs up the Earth in His tusks and gets roots [Laughs]. So this is what Varaha did. He dove into the Garbhodaka ocean and then He dug around there and He pulled out the Earth with His tusks [Laughs]. So similarly, when the Lord appears as a kshatriya, then He acts like a kshatriya and He will kill demons [Laughs]. When He appears as a brahmana like Kapila or Vyasadeva, He doesn’t kill anybody, He teaches [Laughs]. When He appears as a vaisya, He herds cows [Laughs]. And ploughs the fields, we see Balarama with a plough.
So people born in certain varnas, like kshatriya or vaisya, then they’re more or less bound by the rules of that varna. But Lord is not bound by those rules. So He follows it as part of His pastimes. And if He breaks the rule, it’s not a fault [Laughs]. Of course, usually, He doesn’t break the rules. In Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, that the people follow what the leader does, so a kshatriya acts like a good kshatriya then people respect that, and they follow after him. So, generally, of course, the Lord follows these rules, and this is what Pradyumna is doing here, he says, I shouldn’t be taken from the battlefield because that means I’m coward and people criticize [Laughs].
Of course, even the material world is complicated. And though we have rules, sometimes it’s little difficult to apply the rules. That’s why in the material world, we also have law codes, we have lawyers and they argue which rule to follow [Laughs]. So in the scriptures also, there are rules and then there are exceptions of the rules and exceptions of the exceptions of the rule also [Laughs]. For instance, it says no violence. But then it also says, it is not a sin, if you are violent when somebody attacks you, when they set fire to your house etc etc [Laughs]. So therefore, we also need people who are expert at interpreting the laws to figure out which law is applicable to certain situations [Laughs]. So, in chapter 2 of Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna and Krishna are discussing back and forth, Arjuna says I don’t want to fight, Krishna says you have to fight and then they give, you know, reasons why he have to fight, reasons why he don’t want to fight etc [Laughs]. And similarly here, we see Pradyumna and his chariot driver having discussion, who’s right [Laughs].
So, for the material world, all of these rules are practical and useful. But they don’t always apply to spiritual life. So, that the ultimate rules in spiritual world are a little different. The rules in the material world have a purpose. The rules are for controlling people because they cannot control their senses [Laughs]. And when they have uncontrolled mind and senses, then their consciousness gets lower and lower. In the spiritual world, the consciousness is on the highest level. There’s no fault at all. So, those rules don’t apply. Just as in the material world, we have all the rules in varnasrama and smriti sastras, it’s basically karma yoga, rules of karma yoga for people in general. If you get to Jnana or become a sannyasi, you don’t need those rules anymore. Why? Because already you control your senses [Laughs].
So, if one is in the spiritual world, no more material goals, no more necessity of controlling the mind because everybody has prema [Laughs]. So, therefore the rules in the material world are just relative things, used for pastimes. And everything operates on prema. Krishna expresses love for his devotee. Devotee expresses love for Krishna. So, that is the rule in the spiritual world. And they may follow what look like the rules for kshatriya or vaisya or brahmana or whatever, that’s only to increase the prema [Laughs]. At certain times, those rules may obstruct the prema. And that’s the case with the Gopis [Laughs]. So, the Gopis are restricted by their families and their husbands, but they have prema for Krishna, so that overrides all those rules [Laughs]. So, therefore, Krishna in relation to His devotees have a different set of rules [Laughs]. Sometimes the rules look like the material rules, sometimes they are opposite [Laughs]. For that reason, people in the material world often have difficulty in understanding God and especially Krishna [Laughs]. And thus we say, you can’t read scriptures unless you are qualified. You can’t read Bhagavad Gita unless you have great faith. If we don’t have that faith, then we cannot appreciate the teachings.
Okay, Hare Krishna.
Q & A:
1.) Maharaj, these all avatars, like we are in Kali Yuga of this cycle, so, Lord Rama appeared in Treta Yuga. So, which cycle was that ?
We are in the 28th Yuga cycle of Vaivasvata Manvantara, which is the 7th out of 14 Manvantaras in one day of Brahma. And Rama appeared in the 24th cycle of Vaivasvata Manvantara. So, that means each Yuga cycle is about 4 million years. So, that means 16 million years ago in Treta Yuga [Laughs] was when Rama appeared.
Devotee: So Caitanya Mahaprabhu appeared in this cycle ?
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Yes right after Krishna, 28th cycle.
Narashimadeva doesn’t even appeared in this Manvantara, that is in the previous Chaksusa Manvatara, so that was millions and millions and millions and millions of years ago [Laughs]. Yeah, more than 100 million years ago [Laughs].
Devotee: Hare Krsna Maharaj, thank you for the wonderful class. Maharaj, you mentioned that the spiritual rules and material rules, it is an important topic. Because conditioned souls like myself try to see Krishna’s pastimes with material reasoning. But i understand that, it is above that, so we cannot understand Krishna’s pastimes with material reasoning. Thank you so much for that.
2.) Maharaj you mentioned that pure devotees are always in Prema, but if we see the Pandavas, even though Krishna explained Gita to Arjuna in the first Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, we see that Arjuna forget that again. And when Krishna left that, he said that I am remembering this Krishna’s teaching again. So, how a pure devotee can forget Krishna’s teachings that way? And that is first question.
And also, the Gaudia Vaishnava, their behavior is quite different compared to the Pandavas and the pure devotees that time. When you see that the Pandavas, they left home for leaving their body, they went to North. And they are doing some sort of Ashtanga Yoga process. And in Mahabharata, if we see that, there it is mentioned that Yudhishthira Maharaj went to Svarga with his own body. So, there it is mentioned about Svarga. But in Srimad Bhagavatam, Prabhupada mentioned that he went to the spiritual world with his current body. So, how to understand this behavior of these pure devotees during Krishna’s pastimes and during the Mahaprabhu’s pastimes, like the pure devotees, like Haridas Thakur and other devotees ? So, their behavior is quite different. So, that makes me sometimes a little confused. So, we would request you to, kindly clear this point, Maharaj.
In any case, in the spiritual world, everybody is full of knowledge, and there is no ignorance, like in the material world. However, in the spiritual world, there’s something called spiritual ignorance. And we call this yoga maya. So, this yoga maya is different from material ignorance, because it’s a means to increase prema. Material ignorance increases suffering. And that spiritual ignorance is directly under the Supreme Lord. So the Jivas in the spiritual world are full of knowledge. Krishna can take away their knowledge. He can give them knowledge [Laughs].
So, in the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna says, I’m confused about my duty. I don’t know what to do. He is bewildered. So, it looks like material ignorance. But he’s eternal associate of the Lord, he cannot have material ignorance. So, this is an ignorance produced by Krishna so that Bhagavad Gita can be spoken. Similarly, Pariksit falls into ignorance and insults a brahmana because he’s thirsty and was not respected properly. It’s not Pariksit’s fault. It’s an arrangement, so Bhagavatam gets spoken [Laughs]. And because of that, Sukadeva Goswami spoke Bhagavatam to Pariksit.
The pastimes may be different in different yuga cycles, in different days of Brahma. Bhagavatam is generally speaking of our particular day of Brahma. Sometimes other scriptures like Mahabharata may be referring to details from another day of Brahma even. So, the details may be different.
And disappearances may differ according to different circumstances. So, the Pandavas are Kshatriyas, so their disappearance may also be in a Kshatriya manner. Lord Caitanya is acting not as Supreme Lord, but like a devotee of the Lord. So, all the disappearances of Lord Caitanya’s devotees will appear more human-like.
Devotee: We understand Maharaj, thank you so much.
Devotees: Hare Krsna !! HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj Ki.. Jai !!