There Are Always Strings Attached With Material Desires | HG Vaisesika Dasa | ISV | 06 Dec 2025

"How could this happen to me? I'm so powerful. I have everything." This is one of the inevitable, startling moments in the life of every soul in this world who identifies with the body and thinks, "I've got it made. I went to the best school," or not, whatever it may be. "Everything's lined up." And then the crocodile comes. And then there's this reckoning point in Gajendra's struggle with the crocodile, which I've mentioned many times: that he realizes, "I can't win and I'm helpless." Then he prays.

There is a way in which the Bhāgavatam shows us: if you feel delight when you walk and the underbrush crackles under your feet, if you feel leisurely happy, the happy of the leisure you have gotten by your material advancement, watch out! Because Padam Padaṁ yad vipadam na teṣām... When we hear that story, where else are you going to hear it? Well, of course, you hear it every day—people coming into mishaps. But there's a sense of, "Well, at least it wasn't me." And, of course, people have empathy. They feel sorry, try to help out in some way. But ultimately, the Bhāgavatam frames this in such a way that it instills in our heart a sense of, "Let's not get comfortable here in the material world and think that 'I've got it made' and everything's going to be okay."

Better to preemptively take the mood of Gajendra after the crocodile gets on his leg. Better to preemptively, says the intelligent person who hears these stories, take the position of Citraketu after he surrendered and took the mantra and began to chant sincerely. This instills in us both a sense of detachment from the material world, sufferings of which are categorically applied, even to the richest people, the most advantaged people with the most advantageous situations, as well as poor people; everyone. It's an equal opportunity — suffering agent, this material world. And then one comes to this sense of, "Let me surrender to Kṛṣṇa," removing from our heart, by hearing story after story, this sense of rāga or intense attachment to the material world.
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