Offerings-Hot pepper rasam(on a cold snow winter day) , rice, colocasia/arbi

Deities of Srila Narottama Dāsa Thakur

This is the idea of the people of the modern world who are basically passionate. One who has beautiful body is considered having higher levels of consciousness. But it is not always true. Material advancement means how best I can exploit my senses and be sensual. In today's world, a person is considered advanced when he is able to enjoy his senses without limits. But in reality it's not so. We can see  the reality through the eyes of the scriptures in the below verses, 

One sees different types of living entity in different type of body is not intelligent

In the Mahabharata there are two beautiful characters Arjuna and Abhimanyu, they were father and son. When Abhimanyu was in the mother's womb, Subhadra, who was Abhimanyu's mother and the wife of Arjuna, asked her husband a question about the strategies in warfare. Arjuna started explaining about a special impregnable arrangement of soldiers on the battlefield, which one has to penetrate and come out successfully or one could get trapped and killed. The particular arrangement he was describing was known as chakra vyuha. Subhadra listened only up to the point when one can enter the arrangement and fell asleep. Abhimanyu was also listening from the womb up to the point where the mother slept.

The baby was born and grew up to become a brave warrior. In the battle of Mahabharata Kauravas formed the chakra vyuha and Arjuna, the only one who had the skill of going in and coming out successfully was away at another place. In his absence Abhimanyu volunteered to go in as he remembered what he had heard from the mother's womb. He went in but could not come out successfully as he had heard only up until the time the mother slept. The other warriors who wanted to help could not follow as the vyuha closed before they could enter.

The world is a chakra vyuha. Most people know how to get in but cannot come out. Arjuna knew how to go in and come out. This world is a river full of alligators, which we have to cross. It is infested with many wild animals like the ego, anger, jealousy and judgmental attitude. At every footstep there is temptation.

The shield of discipline: There is a belief that if you smear the body with turmeric paste and then enter the waters the alligators do not come to you. Yellow color indicates satttva, red rajas and black tamas. The rajasic mind is restless and entertains anger and pride. The tamasic mind is clouded with pramada and alasya

Excerpt from Mahabharata - Chakra Vyuha

THE MISERABLE FERRIS WHEEL GAME

The nature of the spirit soul is Sat-Cit-Ananda i.e. the soul is eternal, full of knowledge and full of bliss. In contrast, the body is temporary and full of ignorance and suffering. Because of this incompatibility between the two, the soul, who is meant to be happy in an eternal blissful atmosphere, is never happy in this temporary miserable body. The soul has to repeatedly ex­perience birth, old age, disease and death in different bodies.

Hence Shankaracarya has sung:

punar api jananam punar api maranam,

punar api janani jatare sayanam

iha samsare bahu dustare kripaya pare pahi murare

"O Murari, Lord Krishna, I am repeatedly tossed in the waves of birth and death. I am forced to be born again and again and forced to die again and again. In this way I have been occupying the wombs of millions of mothers. Please kindly shower your merciful glance upon me and deliver me from this ocean of nescience."

In this way, the soul sometimes is damned to occupy a dog's body or blessed to get a human body, depending on his past de­sires and activities. This cycle of birth and death is like a Ferris  wheel where sometimes you are at the top and sometimes at the bottom. Similarly the soul keeps on taking one body after another until he becomes completely purified and becomes a surrendered devotee of God.

Excerpt from 

ART OF MIND CONTROL

Compiled By Radheshyam Das M. Tech. (IIT)

Director, BACE Pune.

THE MISERABLE FERRIS WHEEL GAME