Bhagavatam (Skanda 1, Chapter 6, Slokas 9-14)

By Gopinath (Recap given by Sujatha on 26 Dec ‘02)

We all know that this Bhagavatam is ‘Muktidayaka Shastra’. It is in our hands, so it is now our turn to take its teachings and absorb it. This is the only Shastra where there is so many glorifications about the Lord. When the Lord is glorified simultaneously devotees are also glorified. In the names of the devotees, the first and foremost name is our Naradji.


As we have seen in previous Slokas, he was also like all of us. He was tied up in the so called ‘Pasham’, the chiord of love, where there is no escape and was pulled by his mother. This is just exactly the normal day-to-day love, worldly love, what we are all now enjoying, chewing and tasting it. If the Lord comes and stands in front of us and says ‘I will give you mukti’. We don’t want because we are very happy with this very colourful and very cordial atmosphere.

We go to different temples but we don’t know that the Lord is behind us. Here through the Bhagavatam, Vyasa explains more and more taking the history of Bhaktas. Naradji is one among the choicest of the devotees. His mother doesn’t want him to go but he wants to go. These attachments are nothing but a block in our way. To remove this block, the Lord sends his messenger. In the case of Naradji, his mother was a block and the Lord sent a serpent. It bites his mother, when she was going to milk the cow at night and that poor and pitiable woman dies on the spot.

Naradji didn’t feel unhappy since he knew that the Lord did this; that he had so engineered it that he would get his freedom. Naradji took it as the Lord’s blessing in disguise. A true devotee of the Lord takes everything as prasad. After the death of his mother, he left the ashram and proceeded towards the North. This Northerly direction is very important. Even compass shows the North direction. People go to Kasi but we need not to go to Kasi. We don’t want any compass to show us the North direction because our compass is our Guruji, who is always showing us the right direction.

When we are more and more closer to the Lord, he guides and guards us. Man proposes and God disposes. We have seen 14K, 18K, 21K, 22K and 24K golds. Our Naradji is 24K gold and that is our goal to achieve. In order to achieve this, our goals and objectives should match together. The Lord gives us both problems and strength to bear and once we have the strength, what else we need? As Guruji says, ‘each day, every time, everywhere one has to progress’, this is the way Bhagavatam is to be taken.