The most popular flower used in Sanatana Dharma is the lotus flower. There are many paintings depicting Bhagavan Vishnu as Padmanabha, with a lotus growing out of his navel. The word Nabha means space, and Nabhi is where space is focused. Where is God? God is everywhere, so why should we go to a temple or attend Satsang? We believe God is everywhere, but since we don’t have faith, we need that focused space where we can feel God, like a temple or a classroom. That’s why Nabhi is showcased to tune into Nabha.

Another word for lotus is kamala. Ka means Kham, good space or Brahman and mala is dirt. So Brahman or Infinity is the space above the dirt as well as the dirt itself. So here Kamala is teaching us that we should feel Bhagavan in our own homes, in our own cars, in our own relationships. Where you don’t feel Bhagavan, there is agitation and impurity, but within that is Infinity or Bhagavan. So Nabhi and Kamala have a lot of significance.

This course is a course in seeing the big picture. Through such examples and details we should tune into the big picture. One who sees the small picture only sees the My and I. Once we start seeing the big picture, My and I is substituted with His and He. And we should feel that He am I and I am He.

As we complete the fourth skanda and a year of Shrimad Bhagavata, our gauge should be that we should be taking My and Mine less seriously and His and He more seriously. We should reorient what we think is ours and who we think we are.

Raja Prthu is one who followed Dharma, initiated Dharma and appreciated Dharma. This can be compared with the three generations in a family where the grandparents follow Dharma, then they initiate their children to do the same, and eventually appreciate their grandchildren following Dharma. Because Raja Prthu and Devi Archich lived in such a holistic way, they are both freed once and for all. On the other hand, we have Prachinabarhi who is engaged in so many rituals and yajnas which involved animal sacrifices and wastage. Rishi Narada comes to Prachinabarhi and tells him a story of a king named Puranjana.

Puranjana has an unnamed friend who no one else knew. He searches the world for a pura, an ideal place to live and eventually finds a city with nine gates and there lives a beautiful maiden with ten maidservants and Ahi, a five-headed serpent, who is her personal bodyguard. Puranjana is infatuated with this maiden and they get married. The maiden tells Puranjana that there are only three purposes in life — dharma, artha and kama. She only emphasizes on pleasure, possession and position and never mentions moksha.

As time passes Puranjana becomes so attached to his wife that he loses his capability to think, almost like her pet, a mrigayatha. He does whatever the maiden does — he eats when she eats, drinks when she drinks, sleeps when she sleeps — behaving more like an animal than a human. We can relate this to our own lives when we behave like a machine on extremely busy days and eat while we are driving, forget to drink water for a long time — we forget who we are and do not even think about our day behaving like a robot throughout the day.

Puranjana and his wife have lots and lots of kids and grandkids and continue to enjoy all the pleasures and possessions of life. In the process of expansion, he engages in several yajnas that involve a lot of wastage and animal slaughter. He is totally wasteful and inconsiderate of the environment. At such a time of careless living, one day the Gandharvas attack the city and both Puranjana and his wife are killed. Because of his intense infatuation with a devi, Puranjana is reborn as a woman, Puranjani, in his next birth. This teaches us that there should be no disparity in gender as we don’t know what gender we were in our previous birth.

Puranjani marries a very noble king and upon his death, she sets up a funeral pyre for him. She is then very lost as she doesn’t know what to do with herself. So a brahmana comes and asks her. “Why are you grieving? Do you know who you are? Do you know who I am?”

This is where Rishi Narada explains the symbolism of this story to Prachinabarhi and in this case relating to us –

• Puranjana is the jiva, the ego. We are Puranjana in this story.
• The nine-gated city or pura is the human body or deha, with seven gates on our face and two gates in our lower body. The jiva lives in this deha.
• The ten Sakhis of this devi represent the ten sense organs — our five organs of perception and five organs of action.
• The special friend or Ahi with five heads represents the five pranas or breath.
• The maiden is budhi or intellect that is filled with ignorance or parmada. It is the intellect of someone who is full of mada or arrogance. Such a budhi is controlling just like the devi was. The more controlling we are, the more we have this kind of budhi, and the more surrendering we are, the less we have this kind of budhi.
• The unnamed friend whom Puranjana always ignores, is Ishwara, always there for him. The Brahmana who comes to see Puranjani is the Guru who asks her the questions.
• Yavana who is death, attacks Puranjana’s city and Kalaputri, or the daughter of time, is one of death’s greatest assassins. Grey hair or old age is the daughter of time.

Yavana and Kalaputri use the help of Gandharvas to attack the city, during the day and the night, representing disease and suffering that attack our body.

This is a story for us to not get lost in delaying Moksha.

Prachinabarhi is engaged in a lot of karma or ritualism thinking it’s the way to moksha. We are the same way as some of us are ultra-dedicated to our families thinking that we are indulging in karma leading to moksha. But if we are only focused on the My & I and not the His and He, then we are no different from Prachinabarhi. Karma is like a cloud and we can’t think clearly as the cloudiness enters our heads. As a result, we feel a perpetual feeling of tiredness in whatever we do.

Prachinabarhi, hit hard with the story, asks Rishi Narada what happens if he died and didn’t attain moksha. Rishi Narada answers this question by sharing what Bhagavan Narayana shares with the Prachetas, the ten children of Prachinabarhi — Those house holders that remember Me, their homes never become a prison. They are always free.

Rishi Narada explains that the typical jiva is infirm, insecure. If left alone, a jiva will not cultivate love for God. He fills in that insecurity by indulging in more worldly distractions. Our fundamental purpose in life is to learn about and love God as nothing else will complete us. It is through Satsanga that we begin to learn about Bhagavan and cultivate our love for Bhagavan and that is what leads to Moksha. Rishi Narada advises Prachina to engage in satsanga at every stage in life.

Some more insights by Rishi Narada –

• Whatever we feel is I, we become attached to. And whatever we are attached to, we act for it. Thus we become the I again. So I — attachment — action — new I, in this lifetime or next.
• When this body dies, the memories are carried into another body. That is why when we dream, we experience people and places strange to us, that we may have experienced in our previous lifetime.
• None has experienced death. None can experience death. We are like caterpillars that hold onto a blade of grass and don’t let go till they attach to another blade of grass. We too move from body to body, but we will not leave this body until we have moved on to another body. So why fear death?
• So we shouldn’t wait for the next lifetime to get moksha. We only live once so start acting for moksha now, in this lifetime.

When the Prachetas are engaged in tapa, Bhagavan Narayana shares with them two things so that one doesn’t feel trapped:

1. Be independent and then expand.

In Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 11, when Bhagavan shows his Vishvarupa to Arjuna, there are beings caught in Bhagavan Krishna’s teeth. The teeth represent Yama and the beings represent raga or dependency. We become dependent on likes and dislikes and are pushed around as if being ground by teeth. So we should keep on listening to Bhagavan’s Katha, be in satsanga and become independent.

2. There is a hunter always after us, and that hunter is Death. And that hunter has help in the form of wolves who are Time.

The Prachetas then say that they are not concerned about karma. Whenever they are born, they would like to be born in close association with Bhagavan’s bhaktas. They know that as long as they are in satsanga, they will always be in balance, no elation, no depression. They say that they were taught the Rudra Gita by Bhagavan Shiva, and through that minor interaction, they have now met Bhagavan Narayana and are free once and for all.

In Shrimad Bhagavata, the first dialogue is between Vivekji and us, and the second dialogue is between Raja Parikshita and Rishi Shuka. Rishi Shuka says that this dialogue has happened before between Rishi Vidura and Rishi Maitreya. And Rishi Maitreya says that this dialogue has happened before between Rishi Narada and Prachinabarhi, and between Bhagavan Narayana and the Prachetas.

At this point, Rishi Vidura, his mind over-flowing with devotion, takes leave of Rishi Maitreya, and goes back to Hastinapuram as he finds out that Bhagavan Krishna has passed. He has to meet his relatives and take over his responsibilities. Rishi Shuka tells Raja Parikshita that those who hear of this kingly line devoted to the Lord with faith and devotion will attain longevity, wealth, fame, good luck, prosperity and final release or Moksha.

And that is the end of Skanda four.