The Essence of Shreemad Bhagavatam - A Seven-Day Journey to Love

THE GLORY OF THE SUPREME LORD NARAYANA

Canto 1, Chapter 1, Verse 1

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
janmādy asya yato ’nvayād
itarataś cārtheṣv abhijñaḥ svarāṭ
tene brahma hṛdā ya ādi-kavaye
muhyanti yat sūrayaḥ
tejo-vāri-mṛdāṁ yathā vinimayo
yatra tri-sargo ’mṛṣā
dhāmnā svena sadā nirasta-kuhakaṁ
satyaṁ paraṁ dhīmahi

O my Lord Narayana, the Supreme Lord of all, I offer my humble obeisances unto You, I praise You, I bow down to You. Please Lord accept my obeisances. I meditate upon Lord Narayana, because He is the Ultimate Truth. He is the one who creates, sustains and destroys the manifested universes. He is indirectly and directly conscious of all manifestations, and because there is no other cause beyond Him, He is independent. It is only He who first imparted the Vedic knowledge unto the heart of Brahma, the first living being. By Him even the demigods and great sages are placed into illusion, as one is bewildered by the illusory images of water seen in fire, or land seen on water. Only because of Him do the physical universes, temporarily manifested by the reactions of the three modes of nature, appear real, although they are unreal. I therefore meditate upon Him, Lord Sri Hari, who is eternally present in Vaikunta and who is forever free from the illusions of the material world. I meditate upon Him, for He is the Absolute Truth and the only Supreme Lord.

This verse is a praise of the Bhagavatam dedicated to Sri Hari, Narayana Himself. He is Bhagavan, the Ultimate Himself, who is doing the creation as Brahma. He is sustaining the universe as Vishnu, and it is Himself also doing the destruction as Shiva. There is no difference between them! The Lord manifests Himself in different aspects, in different qualities of Himself. But beyond the form, beyond the reality which the mind understands, it is the Supreme Lord Himself who is doing everything.

Looking at ourselves from an outward perspective, we will say that we are Shaktas, we are Saivites, we are Vaishnavas, we are Ganapathas, we are this and that. We are from different Sampradayas, different lineages, and we tend to say, “We are the best.” The Bhagavatam itself starts with ‘oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya janmādy asya yato ’nvayād’, which means that Sri Hari is the one who is doing everything: creation, preservation and destruction. Beyond the external material reality that you see, beyond Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, it is only Lord Narayana Himself who is manifesting Himself in this universe, doing His creation. And it is the same Lord Himself who is manifested in every human being as his or her essence. Your Atma is the essence of Him. It’s a small part of Him, but it doesn’t mean that it is different from Him. It is Him doing it all.

What you see outside comes and goes. How many births have you taken? How much merit have you earned to sit here and listen to the Bhagavatam? Do you think this happens just by chance? Why there is always only a handful of people who can hear the glories of the Lord? Why has God chosen you in this whole universe of seven billion people? Because of your punya. Because you have earned that merit to hear about His glory, to swim in His ocean. Narayana is always on the Milky Ocean, sitting on Adishesh. Maha Lakshmi is at the Feet of the Lord, and all these Jivas are around them. Everybody is part of that ocean; everybody is a drop of that ocean. However, you should look towards the Lord. That’s why in this verse it says, “I meditate upon the Absolute Truth. I meditate upon Narayana. There is nothing beyond Him, because everything comes from Him. It is only Him who is sustaining everything, and everything will dissolve by His own power.”

As He is part of the whole creation, He is in everything. There is nothing which is not Him. From the tiniest particle that exists to the mightiest elephant, the largest whale or the highest mountain, everything is Him. Each one of you seated here, it’s only Him. So there’s nothing which is not the Lord. Hell, Heaven, Earth – everything is a manifestation of His Will and He infused Himself into that manifestation, into His creation. It’s like when you create something. You also put part of yourself into that, don’t you? Have you ever seen a painter painting or have you ever painted? While painting, you let part of yourself go into what you are painting. In the same way, when the Lord creates, part of Himself is in everything that He creates; from the smallest of His creations to the biggest one. That’s why Ramanuja Acharya himself said, “Even if I have to go to Hell, I will encounter His face there. Tell me where the Lord is not present, and I shall be there.”

So everything is Him. He adds a certain Leela, a certain drama to everything He manifests, but in the end it is only Him that stays. That’s what the realised souls realise: that they are not present, it’s only the Lord Himself. In the Ramacharitamanas, Tulsidas Goswami said, “It’s not me who is writing the Ramacharitamanas. It is Sri Rama Himself who is writing it.” All the scholars have acknowledged that it was not Tulsidas, but Sri Rama Himself who wrote the Ramacharitamanas through him, as His own manifestation. That’s why when people realise themselves, what do they realise? Is your identity separated from the Lord? No, your identity is not separated from the Lord. You are part of the Lord. And when you realise that you are part of the Lord, you become part of everything. This is where the secret of the Supreme is revealed to the one who is realised, because then there is no ‘you’ as the mind, or ‘you’ as an identity separated from the Lord, but it is only the Supreme Lord Himself inside of you.

As Kabir said, “Whatever I do, it’s the Lord who is doing it through me.” He had realised that it was Rama who was doing everything inside of him. Of course, in our daily language, sometimes we use the words ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘mine’. But when the mind is completely submitted to the Lord the ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘mine’ don’t exist; one becomes only Narayana. So that’s why in this verse it says, “He is directly and indirectly conscious of all manifestation, and He is independent because there is no other cause beyond Him.”

Here you have to understand that when we talk about God, the mind of man is limited, so we also create a certain limitation to God. People think, “God has to be like this or like that!” Why? Because you create a God that is suited to you! The same thing happens when people love. People say, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” But, what do you love? You love only the external appearance. You think, “Yeah, I am loving.” But, you love what suits you. True Love is beyond that. There is nothing higher than true Love. That’s why it says in this verse that the Lord is independent of all creation, because He is ever-existing, and there is nothing beyond Him. Who else would you meet beyond Him? Before the creation He existed, through creation He existed, and beyond the creation He will always exist. So who is beyond Him? Nobody. There is no one else.

Pure Love is not the love which is limited to a short-term relationship. In the Bible, Jesus said that Love is God. This is not just a command which we have to follow. No, Love is God because He is the supreme form of Love inside of you. And that supreme Love is your true aspect. The love which you understand with the mind must reach to that level; it must be transformed into that supreme state. Then you can say, “Yes, I have loved somebody.” Otherwise, you are not loving anything. You are just playing a game to make yourself feel happy and to fool yourself, but you are still in illusion and are deluding yourself. That’s why you have misery and only short-term happiness. If you were truly loving, you would be beyond the drama. And that’s what pure Love does. That’s what supreme Love is, the essence of who you are. Pure Love keeps increasing. There is no limit to it. And there is nothing beyond that. This is supreme Love and that’s what Bhagavan Himself stands for.

He said that He is manifested in everything. Everything is His Maya. Everything is His creation. He has infused Himself fully into His creation, but He stays always full. Even in His creation He is full, although He is beyond and independent of creation.

Whether you believe or not that He is God, doesn’t bother Him, because He is God. He is eternal and your belief will not change Him. Whether you love Him or not, He is ever-loving. On the other hand, when people love, they always have expectations. So, you become miserable or you become happy when the love is corresponding to your expectations. Parents may love their children, but for how long? Can you keep loving them after you die? No, when you die it’s finished! What happens afterwards? Next life, you don’t remember. How many times have you taken birth? How many parents have you had? Many! Then, who are your parents? Which ones will you say are your parents? Only the ones which you can now remember.

Sometimes in life you come across people and have the feeling that you know them. You may feel motherly love towards a certain person, yet you think, “But, I already have my mother.” Or sometimes you may feel that a person is like your child. Of course you feel it, because in many lives you had many parents, many fathers, many sons, many daughters, many husbands, many wives. So how can it be only one? However, you identify yourself more to the ones related to your present body. But this lasts...