The Rasa Panchadhyayi of the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana: 1. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Sunday 13, April 2025, 13:15.
Article
Scriptures
The Rasa Panchadhyayi of the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana: 1.
Swami Krishnananda.
(Spoken on April 28, 1985)

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The Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana is said to be the concluding writing of Bhagavan Sri Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa, who is renowned as the original classifier of the Vedas into their present recensions, due to which he goes by the name of Veda Vyasa. He is also the author of the Mahabharata, the great epic with its heroic and didactic poems, picturing before us the entire culture of not only a nation but, we may say, of entire humanity.

In the commencing chapters of the Srimad Bhagavata we are told that one day Vyasa, the great master, a sage par excellence, was seated in a pensive mood in an ashrama called Shamyaprasa on the bank of the holy river Saraswati near sacred Badrinath, at which time the sage Narada descended and inquired as to the cause of his present mood, engrossed in which he did not appear to be satisfied.

Asked what could be the cause of this mood, Vyasa recounted his own experience. “To my satisfaction I have done all my work. The editing and the classifying of the Vedas in their proper form has been done. I have written the long poem called the Mahabharata, in which I have left nothing unsaid. In a verse of the Mahabharata its own glory is recounted. In respect of the Mahabharata's content it is said: Whatever is here is anywhere else, and whatever is not here is not anywhere. Such is the comprehensiveness of the presentation of every kind of theme of human value majestically written in excellent Sanskrit poetry in the Mahabharata. But I am yet unsatisfied, for reasons I cannot explain to myself.”

Narada said, “Your dissatisfaction is due to a single reason. You have not adequately glorified God as you have dexterously explained the principles of dharma, virtue, righteousness, the principles of morality, ethics, and political acumen. You have exhaustively described everything through your masterly pen, but not so adequately the glory of God the Almighty. Therefore, do something to glorify God. You have glorified enough dharma, artha, kama, political science, and perhaps even the majesty of God, but God is something more than magnificence and majesty. There is something in God which we cannot easily discover. In all the scriptures of religions throughout the world, God is pictured as a magnificence, a mighty ruler, and His name is veritably Almighty. We call God almighty, great power. It may be that God is great power; nobody can deny that. He is capable of executing anything. He can do, undo, and do otherwise. Such a power God has, and this has been well described in the Mahabharata. Then what remains to be described? What aspect, what principle essence of God have you missed which makes you feel that you are inadequately placed in the context of God's presence?”

The Bhagavata is said to be a rectification of this inadequacy which was pointed out as being present in the earlier mighty epic poems and writings, in the Puranas and the like, and even in the Vedas, associated with Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa, the master. There is something in God which religious scriptures do not emphasise in necessary proportion. The Jewish God is a legal God who administers justice like a judiciary in the court, a great terror who compels people to obey the law. God does that, of course. It is certainly true that God does this. He administers justice, and He forces His law upon everyone relentlessly, inexorability. Conceded. But is there anything else in God except that He is a judge?

The great teachers, the acharyas of ancient India such as Acharya Ramanuja and Madhva, propounded devotion to God. They were indeed very great exponents of divine devotion, but they again lay special emphasis on the grandeur, the magnificence, the power and the towering expansiveness of God's omnipotence. But with all this endowment, we can be unsatisfied because what we seek is not power and authority. We dread it and, therefore, are forced to deify it and foist it upon God as the supreme ruling principle. Though we may be justified from one point of view, one angle of vision and one aspect of the demands of our personality, what we lack basically is not the capacity to exercise authority or power—not the power of money, not the power of social position, not political power, not the power of police and military, not even omnipotence. There is a sweetness that permeates human life, and if that sweetness which is hiddenly present at the root of things is absent, the greatest authority will look bitter. Minus this sweetness that is to be associated with it, it becomes an apothecary's mixture—necessary, but not palatable, finally.

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Continued

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