Study a Verse

• To satisfy their greed for power, determined politicians, dictators and military leaders undergo severe austerities and sacrifice, with much self-discipline.
• Then they lead their great nations in a struggle to control the sea, land, air and space.
• Although the politicians and their followers will soon be dead — since birth and death are all inevitable in this world — they persist in their frenetic struggle for ephemeral glory.

The purport's own sentences, chosen from the purport as its central points. Read the full purport on Vedabase to see them in place.

Civilizational dread → Dispassion. Social and cosmic impermanence expose the limits of worldly plans.

Chapters 1–4 of Canto 12: The deterioration of Kali and universal dissolution. An editorial reading of the story's mood, not the text itself. See the emotional arc

Chapter 3: The Bhūmi-gītā

From the chapter summary, the lines nearest this verse:

Great kings, who are actually just playthings of death, desire to subdue their six internal enemies — the five senses and the mind — and afterward they imagine they will go on to conquer the earth and all its oceans. Seeing their false hopes, the earth simply laughs, for eventually they all must leave this planet and go elsewhere, as have all the great kings and monarchs of the past.