Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare,
Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare,
Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare,
And now, Chapter
18 / Lord Krsna Returns to the City of Hastinapura
The kings and the princes released by Lord Krsna after the death of
Jarasandha were rulers of different parts of the world. Jarasandha was so
powerful in military strength that he had conquered all these princes and
kings, numbering 20,800. They were all incarcerated within a mountain cave
especially constructed as a fort, and for a long time they were kept in
that situation. When they were released by the grace of Lord Krsna, they
all looked very unhappy, their garments were niggardly, and their faces
were almost dried up for want of proper bodily care. They were very weak
due to hunger, and their faces had lost all beauty and luster. Because of
the kings' long imprisonment, every part of their bodies had become
slackened and invalid. But although suffering in that miserable condition
of life, they had the opportunity to think about the Supreme Personality
of Godhead, Visnu.
Now before them they saw the color of the transcendental body of Lord
Krsna, exactly like the hue of a newly arrived cloud in the sky. He
appeared before them nicely covered by yellow colored silken garments,
with four hands like Visnu, and carrying the different symbols of the
club, the conchshell, the disc and the lotus flower. There were marks of
golden lines on His chest, and the nipples of His breast appeared to be
like the whorl of a lotus flower. His eyes appeared to be spread like the
petals of a lotus flower, and His smiling face exhibited the symbol of
eternal peace and prosperity. His glittering earrings were set
beautifully, and His helmet was bedecked with valuable jewels. The Lord's
necklace of pearls and the bangles and bracelets nicely situated on His
body all shone with a transcendental beauty. The Kaustubha jewel hanging
on His chest glittered with great luster, and the Lord wore a beautiful
flower garland. After so much distress, when the kings and princes saw
Lord Krsna, with His beautiful transcendental features, they looked upon
Him to their hearts' content, as if they were drinking nectar through
their eyes, licking His body with their tongues, smelling the aroma of His
body with their noses, and embracing Him with their arms. Just by dint of
their being in front of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, all reactions
to their sinful activities were washed away. Therefore, without
reservation, they surrendered themselves at the lotus feet of the Lord. It
is stated in the Bhagavad-gita that unless one is freed from all kinds of
sinful reactions, one cannot fully surrender unto the lotus feet of the
Lord. All the princes who saw Lord Krsna forgot all their past
tribulations. With folded hands and with great devotion, they began to
offer prayers to Lord Krsna, as follows.
"Dear Lord, O Supreme Personality of Godhead, master of all demigods, You
can immediately remove all Your devotees' pangs because Your devotees are
fully surrendered unto You. O dear Lord Krsna, O eternal Deity of
transcendental bliss and knowledge, You are imperishable, and we offer our
respectful obeisances unto Your lotus feet. It is by Your causeless mercy
that we have been released from the imprisonment of Jarasandha, but now we
pray unto You to release us from the imprisonment with the illusory energy
of this material existence. Please, therefore, stop our continuous cycle
of birth and death. We now have sufficient experience of the miserable
material condition of life in which we are fully absorbed, and having
tasted its bitterness, we have come to take shelter under Your lotus feet.
Dear Lord, O killer of the demon Madhu, we can now clearly see that
Jarasandha was not at fault in the least; it is actually by Your causeless
mercy that we were bereft of our kingdoms because we were very proud of
calling ourselves rulers and kings. Any ruler or king who becomes too
puffed up with false prestige and power does not get the opportunity to
understand his real constitutional position and eternal life. Such foolish
so-called rulers and kings become falsely proud of there position under
the influence of Your illusory energy; they are just like a foolish person
who considers a mirage in the desert to be a reservoir of water. Foolish
persons think that their material possessions will give them protection,
and those who are engaged in sense gratification falsely accept this
material world as a place of eternal enjoyment. O Lord, O Supreme
Personality of Godhead, we must admit that, before this, we were puffed up
with our material opulences. Because we were all envious of each other and
wanted to conquer one another, we all engaged in fighting for supremacy,
even at the cost of sacrificing the lives of many citizens."
This is the disease of political power. As soon as a king or a nation
becomes rich in material opulences, he wants to dominate other nations by
military aggression. Similarly, mercantile men want to monopolize a
certain type of business and control other mercantile groups. Degraded by
false prestige and infatuated by material opulences, human society,
instead of striving for Krsna consciousness, creates havoc and disrupts
peaceful living. Thus men naturally forget the real purpose of life: to
attain the favor of Lord Visnu, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
The kings continued: "O Lord, we were simply engaged in the abominable task
of killing citizens and alluring them to be unnecessarily killed, just to
satisfy our political whims. We did not consider that Your Lordship is
always present before us in the form of cruel death. We were so fooled
that we became the cause of death for others, forgetting our own impending
death. But, dear Lord, the retaliation of the time element, which is Your
representative, is certainly insurmountable. The time element is so strong
that no one can escape its influence; therefore we have received the
reactions of our atrocious activities, and we are now bereft of all
opulences and stand before You like street beggars. We consider our
position to be Your causeless, unalloyed mercy upon us because now we can
understand that we were falsely proud and that our material opulences
could be withdrawn from us within a second by Your will. By Your causeless
mercy only, we are now able to think of Your lotus feet. This is our
greatest gain. Dear Lord, it is known to everyone that the body is a
breeding ground of diseases. Now we are sufficiently aged, and instead of
being proud of our bodily strength, we are getting weaker day by day. We
are no longer interested in sense gratification or the false happiness
derived through the material body. By Your grace, we have now come to the
conclusion that hankering after such material happiness is just like
searching for water in a desert mirage. We are no longer interested in the
results of our pious activities, such as performing great sacrifices in
order to be elevated to the heavenly planets. We now understand that such
elevation to a higher material standard of life in the heavenly planets
may sound very relishable, but actually there cannot be any happiness
within this material world. We pray for Your Lordship to favor us by
instructing us how to engage in the transcendental loving service of Your
lotus feet so that we may never forget our eternal relationship with Your
Lordship. We do not want liberation from the entanglement of material
existence. By Your will we may take birth in any species of life; it does
not matter. We simply pray that we may never forget Your lotus feet under
any circumstances. Dear Lord, we now surrender unto Your lotus feet by
offering our respectful obeisances unto You because You are the Supreme
Lord, the Personality of Godhead, Krsna, the son of Vasudeva. You are the
Supersoul in everyone's heart, and You are Lord Hari, who can take away
all miserable conditions of material existence. Dear Lord, Your name is
Govinda, the reservoir of all pleasure. One who is engaged in satisfying
Your senses automatically satisfies his own senses also, and therefore You
are known as Govinda. Dear Lord, You are ever famous, for You can put an
end to all the miseries of Your devotees. Please, therefore, accept us as
Your surrendered servants."
After hearing the prayers of the kings released from the prison of
Jarasandha, Lord Krsna, who is always the protector of surrendered souls
and the ocean of mercy for the devotees, replied to them as follows in His
sweetly transcendental voice, which was grave and full of meaning. "My
dear kings," He said, "I bestow upon you My blessings. From this day forth
you will be attached to My devotional service without fail. I give you
this benediction, as you have desired. You may know from Me that I am
always sitting within your hearts as Supersoul, and because you have now
turned your faces towards Me, I, as master of everyone, shall always give
you good counsel so that you may never forget Me and so that gradually you
will come back home, back to Godhead. My dear kings, your decision to give
up all conceptions of material enjoyment and turn instead toward My
devotional service is factually the symptom of your good fortune.
Henceforward you will always be blessed with blissful life. I confirm that
all you have spoken about Me in your prayers is factual. It is a fact that
the materially opulent position of one who is not fully Krsna conscious is
the cause of his downfall and of his becoming a victim of the illusory
energy. In the past, there were many rebellious kings, such as Haihaya,
Nahusa, Vena, Ravana and Narakasura. Some of them were demigods, and some
of them were demons, but because of their false perception of their
positions, they fell from their exalted posts, and thus they no longer
remained the kings of their respective kingdoms.
"While lost in the violence of conditional life, every one of you must
understand that anything material has its starting point, growth,
expansion, deterioration, and, finally, disappearance. All material bodies
are subjected to these six conditions, and any relative acquisitions which
are accumulated by this body are definitely subject to final destruction.
Therefore, no one should be attached to perishable things. As long as one
is within this material body, he should be very cautious in worldly
dealings. The most perfect way of life in this material world is simply to
be devoted to My transcendental loving service and to honestly execute the
prescribed duties of one's particular position of life. As far as you are
concerned, you all belong to ksatriya families. Therefore, you should live
honestly, according to the prescribed duties befitting the royal order,
and you should make your citizens happy in all respects. Keep to the
standard of ksatriya life. Do not beget children out of sense
gratification, but simply take charge of the welfare of the people in
general. Everyone takes birth in this material world because of the
contaminated desires of his previous life, and thus he is subjected to the
stringent laws of nature, such as birth and death, distress and happiness,
profit and loss. One should not be disturbed by duality, but should always
be fixed in My service and thus remain balanced in mind and satisfied in
all circumstances, considering all things to be given by Me, and one
should remain undeviated from engagement in devotional service. Thus one
can live a very happy and peaceful life, even within this material
condition. In other words, one should actually be callous to this material
body and its by-products and should remain unaffected by them. He should
remain fully satisfied in the interests of the spirit soul and be engaged
in the service of the Supersoul. One should engage his mind only on Me,
one should simply become My devotee, one should simply Worship Me, and one
should offer his respectful obeisances unto Me alone. In this way, one can
cross over this ocean of nescience very easily and at the end come back to
Me. In conclusion, your lives should constantly be engaged in My service."
After delivering His instructions to the kings and princes, Lord Krsna
immediately arranged for their comfort and asked many servants and
maidservants to take care of them. Lord Krsna requested Sahadeva, the son
of King Jarasandha, to supply all necessities to the kings and also asked
him to show them all respect and honor. In pursuance of the order of Lord
Krsna, Sahadeva offered them all honor, and presented them with ornaments,
garments, garlands, and other paraphernalia. After taking their baths and
dressing very nicely, the kings appeared happy and gentle. Then they were
supplied nice foodstuffs. Lord Krsna supplied everything for their
comfort, as was befitting their royal positions. Since the kings were so
mercifully treated by Lord Krsna, they felt great happiness, and all their
bright faces appeared just like the stars in the sky after the end of the
rainy season. They were all nicely dressed and ornamented, and their
earrings glittered. Each one was then seated on a chariot bedecked with
gold and jewels and drawn by decorated horses. After seeing that each was
taken care of, Lord Krsna, in a sweet voice, asked them to return to their
respective kingdoms. By His very liberal behavior, unparalleled in the
history of the world, Lord Krsna released all the kings who had been in
the clutches of Jarasandha, and being fully satisfied, the kings began to
engage in chanting His holy name, thinking of His holy form, and
glorifying His transcendental pastimes as the Supreme Personality of
Godhead. So engaged, they returned to their respective kingdoms. The
citizens of their kingdoms were very greatly pleased to see them return,
and when they heard of the kind dealings of Lord Krsna, they all became
very happy. The kings began to manage the affairs of their kingdoms in
accordance with the instructions of Lord Krsna, and all those kings and
their subjects passed their days very happily. This is the vivid example
of the Krsna conscious society. If the people of the world divide the
whole society, in terms of their respective material qualities, into four
orders for material and spiritual progress, centering around Krsna and
following the instructions of Krsna as stated in Bhagavad-gita, the entire
human society will undoubtedly be happy. This is the lesson that we have
to take from this incident.
After thus causing the annihilation of Jarasandha by Bhimasena and after
being properly honored by Sahadeva, the son of Jarasandha, Lord Krsna,
accompanied by Bhimasena and Arjuna, returned to the city of Hastinapura.
When they reached the precincts of Hastinapura, they blew their respective
conchshells, and by hearing the sound vibrations and understanding who was
arriving, everyone immediately became cheerful. But upon hearing the
conchshells, the enemies of Krsna became very sorry. The citizens of
Indraprastha felt their hearts become joyful simply by hearing the
vibration of Krsna's conchshell because they could understand that
Jarasandha had been killed. Now the performance of the Rajasuya sacrifice
by King Yudhisthira was almost certain. Bhimasena, Arjuna, and Krsna, the
Supreme Personality of Godhead, arrived before King Yudhisthira and
offered their respects to the King. King Yudhisthira attentively heard the
narration of the killing of Jarasandha and the setting free of the kings.
He also heard of the tactics which were adopted by Krsna to kill
Jarasandha. The King was naturally affectionate toward Krsna, but after
hearing the story, he became even more bound in love for Krsna; tears of
ecstasy glided from his eyes, and he became so stunned that he was almost
unable to speak.
Thus ends the Bhaktivedanta purport of the Second Volume, Eighteenth
Chapter, of Krsna, "Lord Krsna Returns to the City of Hastinapura."