Noida, India
Vanity Reference
I was asked to give the class from the Bhagavatam. I was happy to extract some details from the life of Ajamil (from Canto Six) wherein he abandons irresponsibly wife and family for an existence of rajas (passion) and tamas (ignorance). His story is tragic in a way but gradually transitions back to a track of wholesomeness.
Ajamil, like most of us, had a fairly stable situation. In his case his parents raised him in a sattvic (goodness) environment. Urges within, however, encouraged him to dabble in the lower modes as mentioned above. The story comes to a happy ending leaving us with hope. He took shelter of Narayana before passing. In the course of the entire day, after the class, we spent in drama preparation. I did manage to squeeze in a few minutes to read Jayadvaita Swami's book "Vanity Karma". I had to admire his description of the world as we know it, a description in one passage which far exceeds my grim outline of the world in the class this morning.
Allow me to share Jayadvaita's words:
"Finally there are the miseries caused by other living beings : flies, rats, mosquitoes, viruses, poisonous plants, howling dogs, and worst of all our fellow human beings - in the words of Jonathan Swift : 'the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the face of the Earth.'"
He goes on:
"Oppressors with power : the fist, the whip, the blade, the gun; the fear, the threats, the curfews, and barbed wire, the boot in your face; the tanks, cruise missiles, and supersonic bombers; and when things are just quietly humming along, the governmental bleed-you-dry suction machine of tax."
May the source be with you!
3 KM
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