Slokam 9

Yashoda manages to tie Him to the wooden mortar and also lets Him know that she intends to keep Him tied to the mortar for a long time. She calls Him the “Mischievous One”!!!!!!! He who is ever trying to keep us, His Bhaktas from falling into the traps created by our own mischievous outlook which is fueled by desires!!!!

Our false identity seems to turn the tables on the Paramathma everytime. 

We blame Him for all the obstacles that we face in life.

We tie Him up so that He cannot get to us to help.  Then we also blame Him for not responding to our calls for help.

We blame Him for our limitations. But we always pat ourselves on the back when things seem to go right.

We do exactly what Yashoda does.  We take credit for producing the curd and the butter and performing all our daily activities, without ever acknowledging  that it is the Paramathma who is moving us around like a puppet.

In fact, we treat the Paramathma as a hinderance in our daily activity!!!! We don’t trust Him.  We think we not only know everything, but we also think no one else, including the Paramthma knows any better than us!!! 

This is the delusion that we have to shake off at all costs.   Many of us are aware of the truth that we are only puppets in the material world.   We are moved and shaken by events that are not even remotely in our control.  The delusion comes into play because we have to keep moving forward with limited ability in an ever changing environment.  We cannot let our apparent ignorance and our failures pull us down.  So we delude ourselves into a state of mind in which we place ourself at the center of the universe and try to make a judgement call on all that happens. We raise our own status in our minds to assure ourselves that we doing the right thing and there is nothing that can pull us down. This delusion helps insulate our minds from the shocks of failure and disappointment.

We seek the joys of this world that are His creations.  We take ownership and possession of all that gives us transient pleasure.  We do not own even an iota of what we experience.  Yet we take complete pleasure in the experience and make a demand for more and more of the same.  Instead of using that experience to gain knowledge and awareness of the Paramathma, we delude ourselves into thinking that we have, by our own effort, gained the worldly rewards.  We tell ourselves to continue with the same worldly pursuit, to get more of the transient pleasures of life.

All of life’s experiences are wonders that must induce us towards taking steps for realization.  These are not meant for us to wallow in sense pleasures.  This is why the Paramathma has made sure that experience of pleasure is followed by pain. This relationship is established to ensure that we recognize that pleasure is transient and is not an abode of permanence. 

The Paramathma puts Yashoda through all the stressful feeling of having lost the fruit of all her hardwork only to enable her to ascend in stature and grow out of being regretful and angry over something that she never owned or possessed!!!! 

The slokam beautifully concludes by saying that the Paramathma begins tasting the butter that He had  “surreptitiously” stored in the mortar already.  This is a very subtle point, the implication of which must be clearly understood.

The Parmathma can “surreptitiously” take away everything from us in this world. None of us will ever know that we have lost everything that we though we had.  Consciousness is His supreme gift to us. He can take it away without anyone know what happens. 

Yet He chooses to illuminate us and make us tread the path of permanence consciously.   This is His compassion and eternal and unshakable love for each one of His children.  He wants us to gain inner control of ourselves and prepare us to independently be able to tread the path of liberation from ignorance. 

The Parmamthma in the Bhagavath Gita, asks Arjuna that if he cannot take on the battle of Kurukshetra (with the Paramathma standing beside Him to give Him all the help that He needs),  how is he going to transcend the next world and the world after that? 

So it is clear that once we imbibe the lessons from the Paramathma, in this life, and pass them with flying colors, there are many worlds that we have to transcend in which it is possible that we have to do it on our own.  Life is not a game of dice (although the entire Kurukshetra war was perpetrated by a game of dice), nor is it something to be taken lightly.

We have been created with great concern and care by the supreme.  We have not been created to ultimately perish into oblivion. It is not our mandate to frivolously throw this treasure away.  What has been lovingly entrusted to us must be protected with care and concern and nurtured to its full potential.  Any doubts on the value of what we have must be dispensed right upfront.  The journey does not begin unless this doubt is cast away and the requirements of the journey ahead are clearly understood.

The progress that Yashoda makes is manifested as the butter that the Paramathma manages to store in the mortar. 

The Paramathma’s butter is the satisfaction that He gets through the progress that we make towards dharma and moksham.

Sri Bhattadri addresses There should be no doubt in our minds that ownership for creation, sustenance and finally destruction of this life is not with us.  From the tiniest component to the entire universe,  and all the interlinks in between,  the Paramathma alone is the driving and motivating force.  There should never be any hesitation in surrendering to the supreme. 

May we ever understand that the events of our life are the doing of the Paramathma and the Paramathma alone, for the sole purpose of elevating our existence.