SB 02 06 36 - Romapada Swami - India 2007-02-18.mp3	13.7 MB
SB 02 06 36 - Subhag Swami - New Mumbai 2011-01-23.mp3	24.4 MB

nato ’smy aham tac-caranam samiyusam

bhavac-chidam svasty-ayanam sumangalam

yo hy atma-maya-vibhavam sma paryagad

yatha nabhah svantam athapare kutah

 

Translation by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada: 

 

Therefore it is best for me to surrender unto His feet, which alone can deliver one from the miseries of repeated birth and death. Such surrender is all-auspicious and allows one to perceive all happiness. Even the sky cannot estimate the limits of its own expansion. So what can others do when the Lord Himself is unable to estimate His own limits?

 

Purport by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada: 

 

Lord Brahma, the greatest of all learned living beings, the greatest sacrificer, the greatest observer of the austere life, and the greatest self-realized mystic, advises us, as the supreme spiritual master of all living beings, that one should simply surrender unto the lotus feet of the Lord in order to achieve all success, even up to the limit of being liberated from the miseries of material life and being endowed with all-auspicious spiritual existence. Lord Brahma is known as the pitamaha, or the father’s father. A young man consults his experienced father about discharging his duties. So the father is naturally a good advisor. But Lord Brahma is the father of all fathers. He is the father of the father of Manu, who is the father of mankind all over the universal planets. Therefore the men of this insignificant planet should kindly accept the instruction of Brahmaji and would do well to surrender unto the lotus feet of the Lord rather than try to estimate the length and breadth of the Lord’s potencies. His potencies are immeasurable, as confirmed in the Vedas. Parasya saktir vividhaiva sruyate svabhaviki jñana-bala-kriya ca (Svetasvatara Upanisad 6.8). He is the greatest of all, and all others, even the greatest of all living beings, namely Brahmaji, admits that the best thing for us is to surrender unto Him. Therefore only those persons with a very poor fund of knowledge claim that they themselves are lords of all that they survey. And what can they survey? They cannot survey even the length and breadth of a small sky in one small universe. The so-called material scientist says that he would need to live forty thousand years to reach the highest planet of the universe, being carried by a sputnik. This is also utopian because no one can be expected to live forty thousand years. Besides, when the space pilot returned from his travel, none of his friends would be present to receive him back as the greatest astronaut, as has become fashionable for modern bewildered scientific men. One scientific man, who had no belief in God, was very much enthusiastic in making plans for his material existence and therefore opened a hospital to save the living. But after opening the hospital, he himself died within six months. So one should not spoil his human life, which is obtained after many, many changes of bodies in 8,400,000 species of life, simply for the concocted material happiness of life through increasing artificial needs in the name of advancement of economic development and scientific knowledge. Rather, one should simply surrender unto the feet of the Lord to make a solution to all miseries of life. That is the instruction of Lord Krsna directly in the Bhagavad-gita, and that is the instruction of Srimad-Bhagavatam by Brahmaji, the supreme father of all living beings.

 

Anyone denying this surrendering process as recommended both in the Bhagavad-gita and in the Srimad-Bhagavatam — and, for that matter, in all authorized scriptures — will be forced to surrender unto the laws of material nature. The living entity, by his constitutional position, is not independent. He must surrender, either unto the Lord or unto material nature. Material nature is also not independent of the Lord, since the Lord Himself has claimed material nature as mama maya, or “My energy” (Bg. 7.14), and as me bhinna prakrtir astadha, or “My separated energy in eight divisions” (Bg. 7.4). Therefore material nature is also controlled by the Lord, as He has claimed in Bhagavad-gita (9.10). Mayadhyaksena prakrtih suyate sacaracaram: “Under My direction only is material nature working, and thus are all things moving.” And the living entities, being superior energy to matter, have choice and discrimination either to surrender unto the Lord or to surrender unto material nature. By surrendering unto the Lord, one is happy and liberated, but by surrendering unto material nature the living entity suffers. So the end of all suffering means surrendering unto the Lord because the surrendering process itself is bhava-cchidam (liberation from all material miseries), svasty-ayanam (perception of all happiness), and sumangalam (the source of everything auspicious).

 

Therefore liberty, happiness and all good fortune can be attained only by surrendering unto the Lord because He is full liberty, full happiness and full auspiciousness. Such liberation and happiness are also unlimited, and they have been compared to the sky, although such liberation and happiness are infinitely greater than the sky. In our present position we can simply understand the magnitude of greatness when it is compared to the sky. We fail to measure the sky, but the happiness and liberty obtained in association with the Lord are far greater than the sky. That spiritual happiness is so great that it cannot be measured, even by the Lord Himself, not to speak of others.

 

It is said in the scriptures, brahma-saukhyam tv anantam: spiritual happiness is unlimited. Here it is said that even the Lord cannot measure such happiness. This does not mean that the Lord cannot measure it and is therefore imperfect in that sense. The actual position is that the Lord can measure it, but the happiness in the Lord is also identical with the Lord on account of absolute knowledge. So the happiness derived from the Lord may be measured by the Lord, but the happiness increases again, and the Lord measures it again, and then again the happiness increases more and more, and the Lord measures it more and more, and as such, there is eternally a competition between increment and measurement, so much so that the competition is never stopped, but goes on unlimitedly ad infinitum. Spiritual happiness is anandambudhi-vardhanam, or the ocean of happiness which increases. The material ocean is stagnant, but the spiritual ocean is dynamic. In the Caitanya-caritamrta (Adi-lila, Fourth Chapter), Kaviraja Gosvami has very nicely described this dynamic increment of the ocean of spiritual happiness in the transcendental person of Srimati Radharani, the pleasure potency of Lord Krsna.