No Goal Is Impossible With Lord’s Mercy

A concise summary of Srimad Bhagavatam Canto 3 Chapter 4

Uddhava was taught the process of Yoga and Bhakti (devotion) directly by Lord Krishna. He understands that yoga and devotion are not two different paths but rather a state of evolution in the purification of the soul during the course of spiritual practice. The Lord told Uddhava that this was his last birth. After hearing about the true process of self-realization from the Lord, Uddhava bowed to the Lord’s feet and circumambulated him.

Uddhava tells Vidura that all the four goals of life (dharma, artha, kama and moksha) can be easily achieved by:

• Surrendering to the Lord

• Being able to discriminate the act of the Lord's illusory energy from the Lord’s divine play.

Act of Surrender

When a soul surrenders to the Super Soul, the Lord becomes merciful and takes personal care of the progress of the soul. The challenge is that human beings under the influence of Maya (the Lord’s illusory energy) find it hard to surrender. Surrender means “cease resistance and submit to the authority”. Our false ego wants us to continue our attempts to control the situations and circumstances in our lives, which is fighting with the mighty material energy. Our false ego also sometimes makes us believe that we can control the material energy if we can lift our chakras, uplift Kundalini energy and realize that our true nature is spirit.

A true surrender is:

• Prepare yourself well so that are unaffected by the challenges by your situations and circumstances

• Accept that we are not the controllers of the mighty material energy

• Seek Lord’s help in our journey to realize our spiritual nature

• Accept success and failure as the will of the Lord; as the lessons for our growth

Lord Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita “The illusory energy of Mine is difficult to overcome but those who surrender unto Me, they are able to conquer this mighty energy”.

Intelligence of Discrimination

Uddhava says that the divine play of the Lord can bewilder even the learned ones. A self-realized sage situated in a perfect state of devotion is however able to segregate the Lord’s divine play from the Lord’s illusory act. An intelligent person should focus on the divine play while realizing that the Lord’s illusory act is to discourage us from our surrender.

He gives few examples of the paradoxical nature of the Lord’s divine play:

• The Lord appears to take birth although he is unborn (aja)

• The Lord performs duties although he doesn’t need to perform any duties

• The Lord tries to avoid wars although god Yama is his representative

• The Lord appears to enjoy with thousands of queens although he is self-blissful

Lord Krishna says in Bhagavad-Gita that he is covered by his illusory energy to the ignorant and such people can’t understand his unborn and imperishable nature.

Let us take a look at the paradoxical nature of the Lord’s divine play:

The Yadavas, who are the relatives of Lord Krishna, under the influence of alcohol insulted each other and killed each other. It is said in Mahabharatha that around 500,000 of them died.

This is a divine play of the Lord that he didn’t want his relatives to continue after his disappearance from this world. He made arrangements in such a way that they were cursed in the past for their improper behavior by the sages including with sage Narada. Just before this incident, they served Brahmanas by donating their wealth, gold, silver, cows, etc. and took their blessings to drink liquor. If we carefully analyze these situations, then we realize that this is a willful act of the Lord. The Yadavas are the incarnations of various gods of nature who took birth to accompany the Lord’s complete incarnation. How can someone of that quality, who had a constant association of the Lord, go from the state of the goodness of serving Brahmanas to the state of illusion where they go to the extent of killing under the influence of alcohol? It is not just that they killed a few but rather they destroyed their entire community.

Although Uddhava was Lord’s relative, he wasn’t killed in this incident. The Lord considers Uddhava as a realized soul who has attained him and he kept him alive to spread the spiritual knowledge that he imparted to the world, after his disappearance from this world.

The Lord goes to the banks of river Sarasvati where he appears to die from being shot by an arrow on his foot.

In order to understand the divine play of the Lord, we need to analyze the situation at the time of the incident. The Lord leaned against a banyan tree with his right foot on the left thigh. It is also described that the Lord had four arms, a beautiful blue complexion, a yellow silk garment, and composed of the spiritual body. The four arms and spiritual body is significant here. The Lord wanted to show his Lord Narayana’s form (darshan) to his killer. Why would the Lord want to show his Vaikuntha form to an ordinary hunter? How come the Lord who could bring the son of his Guru back from death possibly die an ordinary death? How can the Lord who absorbed astronomical weapons into his body during the war die from a simple arrow that too that touched his foot (not even his heart region)? Most importantly, the Lord wasn’t wounded by the arrow. Instead, he gave his blessings to the hunter and disappeared from the world. There was no cremation or rotten body.

Uddhava left for Badrinath after his conversation with Vidura. There he worshipped Lord Hari in deep meditation. He also spread the knowledge he received from the Lord to the rest of the world.

Vidura left for Hardwar from Vrindavan where he met sage Maitreya. The sage was present for a short while when the conversation between Vidura and Uddhava took place.