Always Remember - Part 4

Date: 2014-09-20 Author: Sudarshana dasi

Hare Krishna Prabhujis and Matajis, Please accept my humble obeisances! All glories to Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudev!

This is in continuation of the previous offerings titled, Always" Remember Krishna" wherein we were meditating on 's experiences once Krishna returned to Goloka. We saw the below points.

1. With Krishna we are heroes, without Him we are zeroes. 2. Count your blessings.

In previous offerings we meditated on the first two blessings recollected by Arjuna. Now we shall continue to hear further. c. Blessing 3: In Srimad Bhagavatam verse 1.15.9 Arjuna says to Maharaja Yudhishtira,

yat-tejasā nṛpa-śiro-’ṅghrim ahan makhārtham āryo ’nujas tava gajāyuta-sattva-vīryaḥ tenāhṛtāḥ pramatha-nātha-makhāya bhūpā yan-mocitās tad-anayan balim adhvare te

Your respectable younger brother, who possesses the strength of ten thousand elephants, killed,by His grace, Jarasandha, whose feet were worshiped by many kings. These kings had been brought for sacrifice in Jarasandha's Mahabhairava-yajna, but they were thus released. Later they paid tribute to Your Majesty.

His Divine Grace very nicely explains in the purport as to how Jarasandha who was the demon Vipracitti in the previous birth, was born in parts to the two queens of King Brhadratha. Since the child was born in parts, the king and queens left it in the forest. But later demon Jara united the two parts and to her surprise found that child became alive. Since the king had been childless for a long time, Jara was merciful enough to return the child to the king and requested her to name the child after her and so the child was named Jarasandha. Since he had demoniac qualities from previous birth itself, Jarasandha used to arrest kings and give them as sacrifice to Mahabairava. Krishna wanted to kill Jarasandha, but He did not want to kill any of his army. So He chalked out a plan by which Arjuna, and Krishna went in disguise of brahmana. Since Jarasandha never refused to give charity to a brahmana, they asked Jarasandha for a facility to fight and it was settled that Jarasandha will fight with Bhima only. So they remained as guests also at the same time Bhima kept fighting with him for several days. Srila Prabhupada says, Bhima" became disappointed, but Krishna gave him hints about Jarasandha's being joined together as an infant, and thus Bhima dissected him again and so killed him. All the kings who were detained in the concentration camp to be killed before Mahabhairava were thus released by Bhima. Feeling thus obliged to the , they paid tribute to King Yudhishtira".

In both the verses 1.15.8 and 9 we find that the lines are ending withbalim ' adhvare te' - meaning the kings paid tributes to Maharaja Yudhishtira. Although gave a unfair share of barren land to Pandavas, Lord was particular to show the greatness of His devotees to the world and so somehow He made them very opulent, powerful than others, so much so the other kings automatically surrendered and paid tributes to Maharaj Yudhishtira. This pastime shows how magnanimous the Lord is.Even though He does everything, He never reveals to anyone that He has done it. But rather He feels happy to give the credit to His devotees. Whether it is fight with Jarasandha or war, Krishna is the one who is killing the enemies. But He always lets the credit to go to His devotees Pandavas. We can never imitate the Lord, but one nice lesson which we can learn from this pastime is that whenever we help someone, we should do so silently and always remain in the background. We should not take any credit for the help or expect anything in return. It is not right for us to take credit because anyways we were just instruments for that help also and ultimately the good Lord is the ultimate doer of everything.

Krishna willing let us continue to hear more from Arjuna on the other blessings that the Pandavas received, in subsequent offerings.

Thank you very much. Yours in service of Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudeva, Sudarshana devi dasi.