Live the Bhāgavatam · SB 11.23.55
Mukti· LiberationFix Consciousness on the Transcendental Lord
“If we accept time as the cause of happiness and distress, that experience still cannot apply to the spirit soul, since time is a manifestation of the Lord’s spiritual potency and the living entities are also expansions of the Lord’s spiritual potency manifesting through time. Certainly a fire does not burn its own flames or sparks, nor does the cold harm its own snowflakes or hail. In fact, the spirit soul is transcendental and beyond the experience of material happiness and distress. At whom, therefore, should one become angry?”
What the purport teaches
- Even if time is accepted as the cause of happiness and distress, these experiences do not belong to the transcendental soul. Fire does not burn its own flames or sparks.
- The living entity imagines material enjoyment and suffering when consciousness falsely identifies with dull matter. This identification is called false ego and causes material existence.
- Because the spirit soul is transcendental, he should fix his consciousness on the transcendental Lord. The Lord is beyond material happiness and distress.
Try this today
Set aside one quiet minute today to think of the Lord as beyond material happiness and distress.
Ask yourself
When happiness or distress occupies your mind, how can you turn your consciousness toward the Lord?
Carry the question through the day, then answer it in your own words before sleep.
From Canto 10, chapter 14 onward, the translation and purports were completed by Śrīla Prabhupāda's disciples after his departure, and published by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust.