No more upadhis-material designations
May 20, 2012 in Articles, Damaghosa Dasa
Jaya Srila Prabhupada
Na Jayate Mriyate va kadacin—For the soul, there is never birth nor death, Nor having once been does he ever cease to be. (Bhagavad Gita 2.20)
Self realization means to be able to see the soul. I look at you and see your body, you look at me and see my body. This is not self realization.
Aham brahmasmi means I am soul, not this body. ..”Dehino’ smin yatha dehi… Deha and dehi means this body and the owner of this body. When we are able too see the soul we are on the brahma bhuta platform. This is self realization.
If we want to be free of this material bondage and see ourselves as we are, then we must purify our self of all the upadhis or material designations.
Prabhupada writes…”Krishna consciousness is actually a purificatory process. Its purpose is to make people free from all designations. When our consciousness becomes purified of all designations, the activities we carry out with our purified senses make us perfect. Eventually, we reach the ideal perfection of human life. Krishna consciousness is also a very simple process. It is not necessary to become a great philosopher, scientist, or whatever. We need only chant the holy name of the Lord, understanding that His personality, His name, and His qualities are all absolute.”
Most everyone thinks that if he or she gets a nice birth in a nice family, has good looks, education and some wealth, then all this has been Divinely bestowed upon him by God. But from the spiritual perspective all these things are no more than gifts of the illusory energy, Maya. These things keep us trapped in the bodily conception of life. We see that is true when we hear the story of Nalakuvera and Manigriva, the sons of Kuvera. They were both devas or demigods, and they were devotees of some sort of the Supreme Lord, but because of the easy life their material benedictions gave them, they condemned themselves to a life of debauchery. They misused their material assets which is quite natural for one in that position.This is what naturally happens for most if one takes to the field of material piety instead of trying to purify the heart, thru bhakti yoga, of all the (unwanted) anarthas present.
Most everyone thinks that if he or she gets a nice birth in a nice family, has good looks, education and some wealth, then all this has been Divinely bestowed upon him by God. But from the spiritual perspective all these things are no more than gifts of the illusory energy, Maya. These things keep us trapped in the bodily conception of life. We see that is true when we hear the story of Nalakuvera and Manigriva, the sons of Kuvera. They were both devas or demigods, and they were devotees of some sort of the Supreme Lord, but because of the easy life their material benedictions gave them, they condemned themselves to a life of debauchery. They misused their material assets which is quite natural for one in that position.This is what naturally happens for most if one takes to the field of material piety instead of trying to purify the heart, thru bhakti yoga, of all the (unwanted) anarthas present.
Prabhupada gives an example-when we are sitting comfortably in our easy chair, we have the remote in one hand, our cell phone in the other, some chips and fizz nearby , and we think , now I am comfortable!
But then somebody comes along and tells us NO, you have to come with me. You MUST come with me dragging you off, and then your comfortable position is now ruined. This is called Death. Nobody wants it, but it has to come to us all. Yet how many of us are ready for this? How many of us are ready to get ripped out of our comfortable situation and not even complain about it? Only one who knows without any doubting that he or she is not this material body.
He gave another nice example-once while on a train ride somewhere in India, a few others were fighting over their train seat. He mentioned that even though they know they will only be there a couple of hours, they are taking that seat as some permanent arrangement and that is why it is worth fighting over. And we as kids, also had a similar situation while traveling with parents in the family car. We would all fight over who got the window seat !.
So how is this child like fighting different than what we do as adults on a daily basis fighting with others over some meager material gains? Like the childs game of musical chairs whereby a group of kids will circle a row of chairs which are one short of the number of participating kids. When the music stops, everyone has to grab a chair. One kid is always out of a chair ! This is how material life works. Its always a struggle for everything. Nothing in this material world comes without some sort of struggle-either with others or with our own limitations to accomplish something.
Self realization means this material struggle for things related to this body is over- because we realize without any doubt, that we are not matter, not this body, not connected to any so called material family or race, do not belong to some country and in fact have absolutely nothing to do with this material world. Unfortunately for most of us we think we are free to do what we like, but at any moment, if the Devas disagree, we could lose motion in our arms hands or legs and become paralyzed. Yet we all will say, this is MY body. If its our body then why cant we make it do what WE want it to do?
This conditional life always will be a source of problems to us. In this verse from BG it says we are never born and we never die, so if we are eternal and believe it, why do we then bother so much- with the temporary? BG says we dont take birth, yet all of us will say we were born on such and such a date, and if we consult astrologers, they say we will die at such and such time as well. This is body consciousness only- because according to BG we dont take birth and we do not die.
So the next question would be, then if we were originally with Krsna in the spiritual world, how did we get ourselves into this present predicament? How did we become so fallen?
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