Study a Verse

• Due to his stringent execution of devotional service, Mahārāja Bharata could remember the activities of his past life and how he was raised to the spiritual platform.
• If we misuse our position and think that we are fully engaged in devotional service and can do whatever we like, we have to suffer like Bharata Mahārāja and be condemned to accept the type of body that impairs our devotional service.
• Through the medium of Bharata Mahārāja, Kṛṣṇa teaches us that we must be careful in the discharge of devotional service.

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

Compassion and attachment → Regret and vigilance. Affection becomes binding when it displaces devotion.

Chapters 7–9 of Canto 5: Bharata, the deer and the birth of Jaḍa Bharata. An editorial reading of the story's mood, not the text itself. See the emotional arc

Chapter 8: A Description of the Character of Bharata Mahārāja

From the chapter summary, the lines nearest this verse:

He could understand how he had fallen down from his exalted position, and remembering this, he left his mother deer and again went to Pulaha-āśrama. He finally ended his fruitive activities in the form of a deer, and when he died he was released from the deer’s body.