Study a Verse

• This verse describes with brilliant clarity the mundane political mentality that provokes innumerable conflicts in the world.
• Of course, even in a God-conscious world political boundaries exist.
• But in such a God-conscious atmosphere political tensions are greatly eased, and people of all lands welcome each other and respect each other’s right to live in peace.

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.