Srila Prabhupada Vani #384

#384-Srila Prabhupada explains-Krishna is cent percent Bhagvan-in his lecture-NOD 01 VRN 1972-10-20 The Complete Science of Bhakti-Yoga
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1z6CVcrsC979nBzmIN_5D-eI86a-5qDsW

Srila Prabhupada pass times :54- Lord Narasimha dev painting

From a BTG article By Yadurani Devi Dasi

IN NEW YORK CITY, 1967, in Srila Prabhupada's Second Avenue apartment, heasked me to paint a picture of Lord Nrsimha-deva, the half-man, half-lionincarnation of Lord Krsna who appeared many millennia ago. In a print Prabhupada's disciple Hayagriva Dasa had brought from India, Lord Nrsimha-deva had about ten arms, and He was ripping apart the demon Hiranyakasipu in His lap, tearing out the demon's intestines. Prabhupada told me to paint only four arms, and he told me the story of Lord
Nrsimha-deva.

I was already somewhat familiar with the story because Prabhupada had been giving lectures on Lord Nrsimha-deva and Prahlada, the Lord's pure devotee, whom the Lord had come to protect. Prabhupada asked me to do a big painting
of the killing scene. In fact, he posed for me to demonstrate the proper postures for the action. Imitating Lord Nrsimha-deva, Prabhupada stretched out his hands and then drew them back, spreading his fingers straight a little apart from one another, like delicate claws. I could almost see long
lotus nails protruding from his hands. As Prabhupada drew back his hands in a mock menacing way, he glorified Nrsimha-deva: "Your lotus hands have lotus
nails with which You rip apart the demon Hiranyakasipu."

As Prabhupada was pulling his arms back, he opened his eyes wide and crossed them in an inimitable way. I could feel Nrsimha-deva manifesting through His pure devotee. Srila Prabhupada then dropped his arms, and his face at once
gained its former composure.

In order to remember his expression for the painting, I asked Prabhupada, "Could you do that again?" He did it again, exactly as before.

Prabhupada then had Gargamuni (the temple treasure) and Brahmananda (the temple president) act out the death scene to show me the essence of the composition. Prabhupada was the director. He had one of them lie across the other's lap to mimic the way Hiranyakasipu was pulled into the Lord's lap
and torn apart. I studied the scene and then set about to paint it.

I painted the blood sparingly, applying only a little on the floor and on Hiranyakasipu's body. Prabhupada looked at the painting and told me, "Paint blood everywhere." He saw the look of surprise on my face and posed a hypothetical question: "If God is not ferocious, then from where does
ferocity come?"

Daily Reading: Caitanya Caritamrita page-48

CC Ādi 2.11

vadanti tat tattva-vidas

tattvaṁ yaj jñānam advayam

brahmeti paramātmeti

bhagavān iti śabdyate

Translation

“Learned transcendentalists who know the Absolute Truth say that it is nondual knowledge and is called impersonal Brahman, the localized Paramātmā and the Personality of Godhead.”

Purport

This Sanskrit verse appears as the eleventh verse of the First Canto, second chapter, of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, where Sūta Gosvāmī answers the questions of the sages headed by Śaunaka Ṛṣi concerning the essence of all scriptural instructions. Tattva-vidaḥ refers to persons who have knowledge of the Absolute Truth. They can certainly understand knowledge without duality because they are on the spiritual platform. The Absolute Truth is known sometimes as Brahman, sometimes as Paramātmā and sometimes as Bhagavān. Persons who are in knowledge of the truth know that one who tries to approach the Absolute simply by mental speculation will ultimately realize the impersonal Brahman, and one who tries to approach the Absolute through yoga practice will be able to realize Paramātmā, but one who has complete knowledge and spiritual understanding realizes the spiritual form of Bhagavān, the Personality of Godhead.

Devotees of the Personality of Godhead know that Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the son of the King of Vraja, is the Absolute Truth. They do not discriminate between Śrī Kṛṣṇa’s name, form, qualities and pastimes. One who wants to separate the Lord’s absolute name, form and qualities from the Lord Himself must be understood to be lacking in absolute knowledge. A pure devotee knows that when he chants the transcendental name “Kṛṣṇa,” Śrī Kṛṣṇa is present as transcendental sound. He therefore chants with full respect and veneration. When he sees the forms of Śrī Kṛṣṇa, he does not see anything different from the Lord. If one sees otherwise, he must be considered untrained in absolute knowledge. This lack of absolute knowledge is called māyā. One who is not Kṛṣṇa conscious is ruled by the spell of māyā under the control of a duality in knowledge. In the Absolute, all manifestations of the Supreme Lord are nondual, just as the multifarious forms of Viṣṇu, the controller of māyā, are nondual. Empiric philosophers who pursue the impersonal Brahman accept only the knowledge that the personality of the living entity is not different from the personality of the Supreme Lord, and mystic yogīs who try to locate the Paramātmā accept only the knowledge that the pure soul is not different from the Supersoul. The absolute conception of a pure devotee, however, includes all others. A devotee does not see anything except in its relationship with Kṛṣṇa, and therefore his realization is the most perfect of all.

Srila Prabhupada vani #383

#383-Srila Prabhupada explains-Goswamis are floating in the ocean of Loving affairs of Krishna and Gopis-in his lecture-NOD 01 VRN 1972-10-20 The Complete Science of Bhakti-Yoga

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1paWJs02mqVvW4H8coLJ_I2z3ow8qTu6r

Daily Reading: Srimad Bhagavatam page-49

ŚB 1.2.34

bhāvayaty eṣa sattvena

lokān vai loka-bhāvanaḥ

līlāvatārānurato

deva-tiryaṅ-narādiṣu

Translation

Thus the Lord of the universes maintains all planets inhabited by demigods, men and lower animals. Assuming the roles of incarnations, He performs pastimes to reclaim those in the mode of pure goodness.

Purport

There are innumerable material universes, and in each and every universe there are innumerable planets inhabited by different grades of living entities in different modes of nature. The Lord (Viṣṇu) incarnates Himself in each and every one of them and in each and every type of living society. He manifests His transcendental pastimes amongst them just to create the desire to go back to Godhead. The Lord does not change His original transcendental position, but He appears to be differently manifested according to the particular time, circumstances and society.

Sometimes He incarnates Himself or empowers a suitable living being to act for Him, but in either case the purpose is the same: the Lord wants the suffering living beings to go back home, back to Godhead. The happiness which the living beings are hankering for is not to be found within any corner of the innumerable universes and material planets. The eternal happiness which the living being wants is obtainable in the kingdom of God, but the forgetful living beings under the influence of the material modes have no information of the kingdom of God. The Lord, therefore, comes to propagate the message of the kingdom of God, either personally as an incarnation or through His bona fide representative as the good son of God. Such incarnations or sons of God are not making propaganda for going back to Godhead only within the human society. Their work is also going on in all types of societies, amongst demigods and those other than human beings.

Thus end the Bhaktivedanta purports of the First Canto, Second Chapter, of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, entitled “Divinity and Divine Service.”

Daily Reading: Bhagvad Gita As it is- Page-48

Bg. 2.1

sañjaya uvāca

taṁ tathā kṛpayāviṣṭam

aśru-pūrṇākulekṣaṇam

viṣīdantam idaṁ vākyam

uvāca madhusūdanaḥ

Translation

Sañjaya said: Seeing Arjuna full of compassion, his mind depressed, his eyes full of tears, Madhusūdana, Kṛṣṇa, spoke the following words.

Purport

Material compassion, lamentation and tears are all signs of ignorance of the real self. Compassion for the eternal soul is self-realization. The word “Madhusūdana” is significant in this verse. Lord Kṛṣṇa killed the demon Madhu, and now Arjuna wanted Kṛṣṇa to kill the demon of misunderstanding that had overtaken him in the discharge of his duty. No one knows where compassion should be applied. Compassion for the dress of a drowning man is senseless. A man fallen in the ocean of nescience cannot be saved simply by rescuing his outward dress – the gross material body. One who does not know this and laments for the outward dress is called a śūdra, or one who laments unnecessarily. Arjuna was a kṣatriya, and this conduct was not expected from him. Lord Kṛṣṇa, however, can dissipate the lamentation of the ignorant man, and for this purpose the Bhagavad-gītā was sung by Him. This chapter instructs us in self-realization by an analytical study of the material body and the spirit soul, as explained by the supreme authority, Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa. This realization is possible when one works without attachment to fruitive results and is situated in the fixed conception of the real self.

Daily Reading: Caitanya Caritamrita page-47

CC Ādi 2.10

prakāśa-viśeṣe teṅha dhare tina nāma

brahma, paramātmā āra svayaṁ-bhagavān

Translation

In terms of His various manifestations, He is known in three features, called the impersonal Brahman, the localized Paramātmā and the original Personality of Godhead.

Purport

Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī has explained the word bhagavān in his Bhagavat-sandarbha. The Personality of Godhead, being full of all conceivable and inconceivable potencies, is the absolute Supreme Whole. Impersonal Brahman is a partial manifestation of the Absolute Truth realized in the absence of such complete potencies. The first syllable of the word bhagavān is bha, which means “sustainer” and “protector.” The next letter, ga, means “leader,” “pusher” and “creator.” Va means “dwelling” (all living beings dwell in the Supreme Lord, and the Supreme Lord dwells within the heart of every living being). Combining all these concepts, the word bhagavān carries the import of inconceivable potency in knowledge, energy, strength, opulence, power and influence, devoid of all varieties of inferiority. Without such inconceivable potencies, one cannot fully sustain or protect. Our modern civilization is sustained by scientific arrangements devised by many great scientific brains. We can just imagine, therefore, the gigantic brain whose arrangements sustain the gravity of the unlimited number of planets and satellites and who creates the unlimited space in which they float. If one considers the intelligence needed to orbit man-made satellites, one cannot be fooled into thinking that there is not a gigantic intelligence responsible for the arrangements of the various planetary systems. There is no reason to believe that all the gigantic planets float in space without the superior arrangement of a superior intelligence. This subject is clearly dealt with in the Bhagavad-gītā (15.13), where the Personality of Godhead says, “I enter into each planet, and by My energy they stay in orbit.” Were the planets not held in the grip of the Personality of Godhead, they would all scatter like dust in the air. Modern scientists can only impractically explain this inconceivable strength of the Personality of Godhead.

The potencies of the syllables bha, ga and va apply in terms of many different meanings. Through His different potent agents, the Lord protects and sustains everything, but He Himself personally protects and sustains only His devotees, just as a king personally sustains and protects his own children, while entrusting the protection and sustenance of the state to various administrative agents. The Lord is the leader of His devotees, as we learn from the Bhagavad-gītā, which mentions that the Personality of Godhead personally instructs His loving devotees how to make certain progress on the path of devotion and thus surely approach the kingdom of God. The Lord is also the recipient of all the adoration offered by His devotees, for whom He is the objective and the goal. For His devotees the Lord creates a favorable condition for developing a sense of transcendental love of Godhead. Sometimes He does this by taking away a devotee’s material attachments by force and baffling all his material protective agents, for thus the devotee must completely depend on the Lord’s protection. In this way the Lord proves Himself the leader of His devotees.

The Lord is not directly attached to the creation, maintenance and destruction of the material world, for He is eternally busy in the enjoyment of transcendental bliss with paraphernalia composed of His internal potencies. Yet as the initiator of the material energy as well as the marginal potency (the living beings), He expands Himself as the puruṣa-avatāras,who are invested with potencies similar to His. The puruṣa-avatāras are also in the category of bhagavat-tattva because each and every one of them is identical with the original form of the Personality of Godhead. The living entities are His infinitesimal particles and are qualitatively one with Him. They are sent into this material world for material enjoyment, to fulfill their desires to be independent individuals, but still they are subject to the supreme will of the Lord. The Lord deputes Himself in the state of Supersoul to supervise the arrangements for such material enjoyment. The example of a temporary fair is quite appropriate in this connection. If the citizens of a state assemble in a fair to enjoy for a short period, the government deputes a special officer to supervise it. Such an officer is invested with all governmental power, and therefore he is identical with the government. When the fair is over, there is no need for such an officer, and he returns home. The Paramātmā is compared to such an officer.

The living beings are not all in all. They are undoubtedly parts of the Supreme Lord and are qualitatively one with Him, yet they are subject to His control. Thus they are never equal to the Lord or one with Him. The Lord who associates with the living being is the Paramātmā, or supreme living being. No one, therefore, should view the tiny living beings and supreme living being to be on an equal level.

The all-pervading truth that exists eternally during the creation, maintenance and annihilation of the material world and in which the living beings rest in trance is called the impersonal Brahman.

Daily Reading: Srimad Bhagavatam page-47

ŚB 1.2.32

yathā hy avahito vahnir

dāruṣv ekaḥ sva-yoniṣu

nāneva bhāti viśvātmā

bhūteṣu ca tathā pumān

Translation

The Lord, as Supersoul, pervades all things, just as fire permeates wood, and so He appears to be of many varieties, though He is the absolute one without a second.

Purport

Lord Vāsudeva, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, by one of His plenary parts expands Himself all over the material world, and His existence can be perceived even within the atomic energy. Matter, antimatter, proton, neutron, etc., are all different effects of the Paramātmā feature of the Lord. As from wood, fire can be manifested, or as butter can be churned out of milk, so also the presence of the Lord as Paramātmā can be felt by the process of legitimate hearing and chanting of the transcendental subjects which are especially treated in the Vedic literatures like the Upaniṣads and Vedānta. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is the bona fide explanation of these Vedic literatures. The Lord can be realized through the aural reception of the transcendental message, and that is the only way to experience the transcendental subject. As fire is kindled from wood by another fire, the divine consciousness of man can similarly be kindled by another divine grace. His Divine Grace the spiritual master can kindle the spiritual fire from the woodlike living entity by imparting proper spiritual messages injected through the receptive ear. Therefore one is required to approach the proper spiritual master with receptive ears only, and thus divine existence is gradually realized. The difference between animality and humanity lies in this process only. A human being can hear properly, whereas an animal cannot.

Daily Reading: Bhagvad Gita As it is- Page-47

Bg. 1.43

utsanna-kula-dharmāṇāṁ

manuṣyāṇāṁ janārdana

narake niyataṁ vāso

bhavatīty anuśuśruma

Translation

O Kṛṣṇa, maintainer of the people, I have heard by disciplic succession that those whose family traditions are destroyed dwell always in hell.

Purport

Arjuna bases his argument not on his own personal experience, but on what he has heard from the authorities. That is the way of receiving real knowledge. One cannot reach the real point of factual knowledge without being helped by the right person who is already established in that knowledge. There is a system in the varṇāśrama institution by which before death one has to undergo the process of atonement for his sinful activities. One who is always engaged in sinful activities must utilize the process of atonement, called prāyaścitta. Without doing so, one surely will be transferred to hellish planets to undergo miserable lives as the result of sinful activities.

Bg. 1.44

aho bata mahat pāpaṁ

kartuṁ vyavasitā vayam

yad rājya-sukha-lobhena

hantuṁ sva-janam udyatāḥ

Translation

Alas, how strange it is that we are preparing to commit greatly sinful acts. Driven by the desire to enjoy royal happiness, we are intent on killing our own kinsmen.

Purport

Driven by selfish motives, one may be inclined to such sinful acts as the killing of one’s own brother, father or mother. There are many such instances in the history of the world. But Arjuna, being a saintly devotee of the Lord, is always conscious of moral principles and therefore takes care to avoid such activities.

Bg. 1.45

yadi mām apratīkāram

aśastraṁ śastra-pāṇayaḥ

dhārtarāṣṭrā raṇe hanyus

tan me kṣema-taraṁ bhavet

Translation

Better for me if the sons of Dhṛtarāṣṭra, weapons in hand, were to kill me unarmed and unresisting on the battlefield.

Purport

It is the custom – according to kṣatriya fighting principles – that an unarmed and unwilling foe should not be attacked. Arjuna, however, decided that even if attacked by the enemy in such an awkward position, he would not fight. He did not consider how much the other party was bent upon fighting. All these symptoms are due to soft-heartedness resulting from his being a great devotee of the Lord.

Bg. 1.46

sañjaya uvāca

evam uktvārjunaḥ saṅkhye

rathopastha upāviśat

visṛjya sa-śaraṁ cāpaṁ

śoka-saṁvigna-mānasaḥ

Translation

Sañjaya said: Arjuna, having thus spoken on the battlefield, cast aside his bow and arrows and sat down on the chariot, his mind overwhelmed with grief.

Purport

While observing the situation of his enemy, Arjuna stood up on the chariot, but he was so afflicted with lamentation that he sat down again, setting aside his bow and arrows. Such a kind and soft-hearted person, in the devotional service of the Lord, is fit to receive self-knowledge.


Thus end the Bhaktivedanta Purports to the First Chapter of the Śrīmad Bhagavad-gītā in the matter of Observing the Armies on the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra.

Srila Prabhupada vani #382

#382- Srila Prabhupada explains-No pleasure in brahman effulgence-NOD 01 VRN 1972-10-20 The Complete Science of Bhakti-Yoga
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fyiqcUE9V8jLhVVnAnZaUqbbVIGI2fQz/view?usp=drivesdk