Suniti's Success as a mother

From Srila Prabhupada's purport to SB 4.12.34:

"It should be noted also that while Sunīti was going to Vaikuṇṭhaloka she also changed her body into a spiritual form. Like Śrī Sunīti, every mother should train her child to become a devotee like Dhruva Mahārāja. Sunīti instructed her son, even at the age of five years, to be unattached to worldly affairs and to go to the forest to search out the Supreme Lord. She never desired that her son remain at home comfortably without ever undertaking austerities and penances to achieve the favor of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Every mother, like Sunīti, must take care of her son and train him to become a brahmacārī from the age of five years and to undergo austerities and penances for spiritual realization. The benefit will be that if her son becomes a strong devotee like Dhruva, certainly not only will he be transferred back home, back to Godhead, but she will also be transferred with him to the spiritual world, even though she may be unable to undergo austerities and penances in executing devotional service."

Sukadeva Goswami's prayers to the Lord before explaining the science of creation to Mahara Pariksit

From 2nd Canto 4th Chapter:

Sukadeva Goswami offers respectful obeisances unto the Supreme Personality of Godhead and glorifies Him. His prayers can be categorized as follows:

Lord’s relation with the material world, Lord’s role as the Supersoul, Lord’s unparalled opulence, Lord’s dealings with the conditioned souls, Lord’s devotional service and finally prayers requesting Lord’s mercy upon his service of explaining about creation.

Lord’s relation with the material world:

• 1.      For the creation of the material world, the Lord accepts the three modes of nature – three purushavataras namely Brahma, Vishnu and Siva.
• 2.      Lord Himself first entered the vaccum of the material universe, and thus all things gradually developed one after another. The sixteen principal creative elements are first developed by the Lord Himself and were thereby shared by all living entities.

Lord’s role as the Supersoul:

• 1.      He is complete whole residing within everyone – as Ksirodakasayi Vishnu He enters into the body of every living being and is the complete whole.
• 2.      Lord as Supersoul awards intelligence to living entities according to their previous activities. Hence is called as dhiyam-pati or the Lord of intelligence.

Lord’s unparalled opulence:

• 1.      He is the complete form of all existence, both material and spiritual.
• 2.      He has a transcendental form - not impersonal, not a material form
• 3.      In the spiritual sky His opulence is immeasurable, therefore no one is equal to Him – Lord resides in all the innumerable Vaikuntha planets by expanding His plenary portions.
• 4.      He is the supreme enjoyer of both the material and spiritual worlds, yet He enjoys His own abode in the spiritual sky.
• 5.      Lord Sri Krsna is the beloved husband of all goddesses of fortune. As all favors of sacrifices are given by goddess of fortune, Lord being her husband, is the Lord of all sacrifices. He is enjoyer of all sacrifices as well. Lord is maintainer of all living beings.
• 6.      Lord is proprietor of all planets – material or spiritual. Everything is but the creation of the Lord.

Lord’s dealings with the conditioned souls:

• 1.      Lord delivers His devotees from all distresses. He also protects pious men who follow vedas.
• 2.      Lord is an associate of His devotees esp members of yadu dynasty. For mundaners / nondevotees however Lord and His abode will always remain a myth or a mysterious problem.
• 3.      Although, He is the Lord of all followers of different paths of self-realization (i.e results are awarded by Him only), is knowable only by those who are above all pretensions i.e only by pure devotees who alone are desireless.
• 4.      The Lord never reveals Himself to mental speculators who endeavor on their own to realize the Absolute truth. The pure devotee however following the ways of previous acaryas can see the Supreme Lord through the transparent medium of a bona fide spiritual master. Being satisfied by the devotee’s service attitude, Lord reveals Himself to the devotee.
• 5.      Lord descends by His own energy to reestablish the eternal relation of the conditioned souls with Him.
• 6.      Nondevotees who do not follow vedas are checked in their progress of demoniac activities.
• 7.      Lord awards specific destinations to both impersonalists and devotees, they are brahmajyoti and the Lord’s abode respectively.

Lord’s devotional service:

• 1.      Lords glorification, remembrance, audience, prayers, hearing and worship can at once cleanse the effects of all sins of the performer. However these devotional services need to be performed offenselessly (without willfully performing sins) and under expert guidance.
• 2.      Intelligent simply surrender to the Lord’s lotus feet and by dint of pure devotional service, at once attain perfection of human life, which is spiritual existence (form as good as the Lord and service in the eternal Vaikuntha planets)
• 3.      The Lord, being all-powerful, can, under any and every circumstance, accept anyone from any part of the world (Kirata, Huna, Andhra etc), either personally or through His bona fide manifestation as the spiritual master. Though they are addicted to sinful acts, Lord purifies them.
• 4.      His ways are inconceivable – Empiric philosophers and mystic yogis cannot conceive of the Personality of Godhead. One can approach the Lord only through bhakti-yoga.
• 5.      Advancement of learning, a charitable disposition, political, social or religious leadership of human society, philosophical speculations, the practice of the yoga system, expertise in the Vedic rituals, and all similar high qualities in man serve one in the attainment of perfection only when they are employed in the service of the Lord for His pleasure. Without such dovetailing, all such qualities become sources of trouble for people in general.

Prayers requesting Lord’s mercy upon his service of explaining about creation:

• 1.      Knowledge is revealed to one from within by the Lord as Lord Brahma was inspired with full knowledge at the beginning of the creation. Sukhadeva Goswami is praying to the Lord so he may be able to explain the facts and figures of creation as inquired by Maharaja Parikshit.
• 2.      Sukhadeva Goswami invokes the pleasure of the Lord so that his statements may be successful and be appreciated by the hearers. Realizing he is an instrument, he wants to move by the direction of the Supreme Lord, who inspired Brahma to speak the Vedic wisdom.
• 3.      All material manifestations are made possible only by Lord’s energy, and the living entity can only pray to the Lord to understand it properly. Sukhadeva Goswami therefore prays to the Lord to help others to whom he would like to speak.
• Sukhadeva Goswami offers his obeisances unto Srila Vyasadeva, who compiled Vedic literatures to revive the lost memory of the conditioned souls with respect to their eternal relation with the Lord.

Analogies Saunaka Rsi uses to condemn those averse to devotional service

1.     Do the trees not live

1.    Saunaka Rsi compares the long lives that the materialists aspire for with the long lives the trees live. A prolonged life without any devotional service is useless as Sankaracarya lived for 32 years and Lord Caitanya was on this planet for 48 years, on the other hand a materialist may try everything to prolong his life but his life is useless as it is not used for devotional service.

2.    do the beasts not eat and discharge semen?

1.    Saunaka Rsi indicates that persons who are simply engaged in planning a better type of animal life consisting of eating, breathing and mating are also animals in the shape of human beings. A society of such polished animals cannot benefit suffering humanity, for an animal can easily harm another animal but rarely do good.

3.    Men who are like dogs, hogs, camels and asses praise those men who never listen to the transcendental pastimes of Lord Sri Krsna, the deliverer from evils 

1.    As dogs are negligible animals and serve the master faithfully for bits of bread, a man serves a master faithfully without sufficient rewards. 

2.    Persons who have no discrimination in the matter of foodstuff and who eat all sorts of rubbish are compared to hogs. Hogs are very much attached to eating stools.

3.     The camel also sucks its own blood while chewing thorny twigs. The thorns the camel eats cut the tongue of the camel, and so blood begins to flow within the camel’s mouth. The thorns, mixed with fresh blood, create a taste for the foolish camel, and so he enjoys the thorn-eating business with false pleasure.

4.     Similarly, the great business magnates, industrialists who work very hard to earn money by different ways and questionable means, eat the thorny results of their actions mixed with their own blood.

5.     The central point of attraction for material enjoyment is sex life. To enjoy sex life is to suck one’s own blood. The ass works very hard and carries burdens of the maximum weight without making profit for itself.* When the ass begs for sexual intercourse, he is kicked by the fair sex, yet he still follows the female for such sexual pleasure. 

6.    The laborers in great factories and workshops are also engaged in such burdensome work, and after working hard during the day, the poor laborer has to be again kicked by the fair sex, not only for sex enjoyment but also for so many household affairs. In other words, such godless leaders of dogs and hoglike men are bigger animals with the qualities of animals in greater proportion.

4.    earholes like the holes of snakes, tongue like the tongue of a frog.

1.    If the tongue is not engaged in chanting the glories of the Lord then it is considered like the croaking of the frog because such a tongue is just engaged in speaking nonsense which has no value in one’s spiritual advancement for the speaker and the receiver.

2.     If the ear is not engaged in hearing about the Lord then the ears are to be considered like the holes of the snakes. Rats and mice make holes in agricultural fields; however the snakes eat the rat and mouse and live in those holes. Similarly if the ear is not used to hear the message of the Lord, then they are not being utilized properly. the senses and the action of the senses are to be considered impure or materialistic as long as they are employed only in sense gratification.

5.    Head crowned with a heavy silk turban.

1.    The common man who is puffed up with his material position and does not bow down before the Deity of the Lord in the temple, or who defies temple worship without any knowledge of the science, must know that his so-called turban or crown will only succeed in further drowning him in the water of the ocean of material existence. A drowning man with a heavy weight on his head is sure to go down more swiftly than those who have no heavy weight. 

2.    A foolish, puffed-up man defies the science of God and says that God has no meaning for him, but when he is in the grip of God’s law and is caught by some disease like cerebral thrombosis, that godless man sinks into the ocean of nescience by the weight of his material acquisition. 

3.    Advancement of material science without God consciousness is a heavy load on the head of human society, and so one must take heed of this great warning.

4 regulative principles of freedom

From SB 1.17.38
The basic principles of irreligiosity, such as pride, prostitution, intoxication and falsehood, counteract the four principles of religion, namely austerity, cleanliness, mercy and truthfulness.

Pride>>>>>>> Austerity>>> No Meat Eating
Prostitution>>> Cleanliness>>No Illicit Connections
Intoxication>>> Mercy>>>>>No Intoxication
Falsehood>>>> Truthfulness>No Gambling

Difficulties: What prevented the bull from seeing Krsna's grace as the cause of his suffering?

Post continued from : 

Difficulties: Opportunity for introspection or opportunity for blame?

Srila Prabhupada's purport to 1.17.22:
"A devotee’s conclusion is that no one is directly responsible for being a benefactor or mischief-monger without the sanction of the Lord; therefore he does not consider anyone to be directly responsible for such action. But in both the cases he takes it for granted that either benefit or loss is God-sent, and thus it is His grace. In case of benefit, no one will deny that it is God-sent, but in case of loss or reverses one becomes doubtful about how the Lord could be so unkind to His devotee as to put him in great difficulty. Jesus Christ was seemingly put into such great difficulty, being crucified by the ignorant, but he was never angry at the mischief-mongers. That is the way of accepting a thing, either favorable or unfavorable. Thus for a devotee the identifier is equally a sinner, like the mischief-monger. By God’s grace, the devotee tolerates all reverses. Mahārāja Parīkṣit observed this, and therefore he could understand that the bull was no other than the personality of religion himself. In other words, a devotee has no suffering at all because so-called suffering is also God’s grace for a devotee who sees God in everything. The cow and bull never placed any complaint before the King for being tortured by the personality of Kali, although everyone lodges such complaints before the state authorities. The extraordinary behavior of the bull made the King conclude that the bull was certainly the personality of religion, for no one else could understand the finer intricacies of the codes of religion."

Why did Dharma not say it was God's grace? What prevents one from seeing Krsna and His mercy in all things?(From the purport to 1.17.23)

1. The personality of religion knew perfectly well that nothing can take place without the sanction of the Supreme Lord, and still he was put into doubts by the deluding energy, and thus he refrained from mentioning the supreme cause.
2. This doubtfulness was due to the contamination of both Kali and the material energy. The whole atmosphere of the Age of Kali is magnified by the deluding energy, and the proportion of measurement is inexplicable.

Should we just tolerate and not protect ourselves?

1. An accurate understanding of what occurs , therefore exists on more than one level. If one is being unreasonably beaten by a man with a stick, he will be injured and must defend himself or suffer great pain.
2. Despite the beating being ultimately "God's grace", the "beater" may not have one's best interest in mind. Dealing on this level demands prompt and practical action.
3. While acting practically, however one should nevertheless remember Krsna's ultimate control, because Krsna is the ultimate "doer".
4. Maintaining this awareness while acting will free one from envy, anxiety, and anger, and will carry one the Krsna's Lotus Feet
5. Seeing all that occurs as Krsna's will, a devotee understands that "not a blade of grass" moves without the will of Krsna.
6. Such a person remains free from anxiety amid even the greatest difficulties. 
7. Still along with maintaining this vision one must act practically while simultaneously remaining detached from the results of his action.

At another level, Krsna's desires cause our circumstances:

Because He desires that the living entities fully surrender to Him, become His devotees, and return to Him in the spiritual world.

Difficulties: Opportunity for introspection or opportunity for blame?

In the conversation between the Personality of Religion and Maharaja Pariksit where Dharma is asked to identify the cause of his suffering Dharma gives a very wonderful understanding:

1. Some philosophers claim it is one's own karma
2. Some say it is caused by Brahman- The Lord's Supreme Effulgence
3. Atheists say no cause exists beyond material nature

So based on these he advises the kin to reach his own conclusion.

How would I respond when asked this question?

1. Generally on reflecting on the cause of one's difficulty, one would answer with less philosophy and more accusation.
2. By identifying someone as a doer and viewing the person as an enemy, one comes to seek vengeance than practice introspection.
3. While one tends to justify thoughts of retaliation and the ensuing plan of action, one may not realize that those actions will implicate him/her in painful exchanges birth after birth
4. In addition by meditating on another's bad qualities , one will develop those bad qualities themselves. One's mentality is formed by the object of one's meditation
5. SB 7.1.28: A grassworm confined in a hole of a wall by a bee always thinks of the bee in fear and enmity and later becomes a bee simply because of such remembrance.

Therefore on hearing the bull's extraordinary and philosophical reply to his simple question, Maharaja Pariksit concluded that this bull must be religion personified.

The king thus pondered Dharma's words:

SB 1.17.22: The King said: O you, who are in the form of a bull! You know the truth of religion, and you are speaking according to the principle that the destination intended for the perpetrator of irreligious acts is also intended for one who identifies the perpetrator. You are no other than the personality of religion.

Post continued at 

Difficulties: What prevented the bull from seeing Krsna's grace as the cause of his suffering?

The Chief Function of the False Ego is Godlessness

SB 1.17.1 — Sūta Gosvāmī said: After reaching that place, Mahārāja Parīkṣit observed that a lower-caste śūdra, dressed like a king, was beating a cow and a bull with a club, as if they had no owner.

SB 1.17.2 — The bull was as white as a white lotus flower. He was terrified of the śūdra who was beating him, and he was so afraid that he was standing on one leg, trembling and urinating.

SB 1.17.3 — Although the cow is beneficial because one can draw religious principles from her, she was now rendered poor and calfless. Her legs were being beaten by a śūdra. There were tears in her eyes, and she was distressed and weak. She was hankering after some grass in the field.

From unveiling His Lotus Feet Pg 229:

1. It is a cornerstone of Kali's mission to undermine authority, for Krsna is the ultimate authority and Kali's job is to induce irreligion
2. Kali therefore corrupts authorities and then revelas them as inept and hypocritical.
3. Husband and Wife, parent and child, priest and congregation, government leader and citizen- these natural relationships that combine authorities with their dependents prove unreliable and untrustworthy in Kali Yuga.
4. Kali cries: "See how authorities exploit their dependents! Let there be independence for every man and woman! Think for yourself, care for yourself. Who else will care for you? Be your own authority!
5. Pet theory of evolution:
1. Kali also propagates his theory or evolution, because if people think they are ever evolving