Learning from Indra: How a self-centered attitude blocks our progress in devotional service
When we see ourselves as the enjoyers of a position, we become envious of others who may become prominent and challenge our rule. This self-centered attitude blocks our progress in devotional service.
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When Pṛthu Maharaja appeared, the inhabitants of Earth were perishing due to the lack of sufficient food grains. Because of the sinful reign of Vena, the planet had stopped producing food grains, creating a dangerous famine. By his piety, Pṛthu Maharaja not only reestablished agriculture, but he was able to extract all kinds of desirable things from Earth, allowing all inhabitants of the universe to obtain everything they wanted.
“Earth” in this pastime can be taken both as our planet and as the whole Bhu-Mandala. Many passages connected with descriptions of the universe are ambiguous, but in the deeper meaning, Pṛthu Maharaja reigned over the whole Bhu-Mandala, of which our planet is just a small part.
After that, Pṛthu started performing horse sacrifices, firmly establishing his rule. In fact, he performed 99 of such sacrifices, approaching the 100 sacrifices that gave Indra the necessary merits to ascend to his post. This led to a less noble example, in which Indra tried by all means to stop his performance of 100 aśvamedha yajñas by introducing all sorts of irreligious doctrines.
Indra is also considered an empowered incarnation of the Lord, a qualified soul who receives the power to control the rain and rule the heavenly realm. The difference between Indra and Pṛthu is that Pṛthu Maharaja was in full agreement with the desires of the Lord, acting as His instrument, while Indra misused his independence as an individual soul to disturb the performance of sacrifices by the king, just as when he used his powers to attack Vṛndāvana because the cowherds had stopped his sacrifice to worship Govardhana.
In the Bhagavad-gita (10.40), Kṛṣṇa explains that, “O mighty conqueror of enemies, there is no end to My divine manifestations. What I have spoken to you is but a mere indication of My infinite opulences.” When a living entity is empowered with extraordinary power, it is called śaktyāveśa, and when the empowerment is smaller, it is called vibhūti. In the Gītā, Kṛṣṇa explains how even powerful animals such as the lion and the shark are his representatives. They are examples of vibhūtis. Since all intelligence, power, opulence, etc., come from Kṛṣṇa, we are ultimately all empowered by Him. However, just as Indra, we have our free will as individual souls, and consequently, the choice of dovetailing our actions with the desires of the Lord, or misusing our small dependence and acting sinfully.
How is it that a great personality, such as Indra, can become envious? This comes from his devotional service being mixed with a self-centered spirit of enjoyment. Most of the time, the propensity to serve the Lord wins, and Indra remains as a faithful servant of the Lord, but sometimes the self-centered attitude wins, and he becomes envious of the Lord or His pure devotees.
Reading the pages of the Srimad Bhagavatam, we may have the impression that Indra constantly commits mistakes, but this is not exactly true. The post of Indra is occupied by a different person in each Manvantara. The Indra who offended his spiritual master and fought Vṛtrāsura, for example, is Mantradruma, the 6th Indra, while the Indra who attacked Vṛndāvana is Purandara, the 7th. Considering each Indra rules for 306.72 million years, these mistakes are not so frequent as it may seem at first, but this doesn’t make them any less instructive.
The fact that Indra occupies such an elevated post is actually an impediment to his devotional service, because it is the source of the enjoying spirit that makes him sometimes envious of others. The central principle of Vaishnava philosophy is to try to become small instead of bigger. Srila Prabhupada explains that humility means to act boldly for Kṛṣṇa, and in this spirit, a Vaishnava may perform any kind of wonderful activity and occupy any elevated post, just like in the case of King Pṛthu. In this case, the goal of all actions is the glorification of the Lord, and thus, if another devotee can do something even greater, a Vaishnava will glorify him. However, when we see ourselves as the enjoyers of a certain position, we become fearful of losing it and therefore envious of others who may become prominent and challenge our rule, as in the case of Indra. This self-centered attitude blocks our progress in devotional service.
Horse sacrifices are called aśvameda. The aśvamedha yajña is a grand Vedic ritual performed by emperors to assert their supreme authority and attract divine blessings by worshiping the Lord. A horse is let to roam free throughout all the lands ruled by him, followed by the emperor’s warriors, and all other kings have the choice of either accepting his authority or restraining the horse and challenging him to a fight. After all the kings had submitted or been defeated, the sacrifice in itself would be performed, with the horse being sacrificed and then revived by the chanting of mantras. The entire sacrifice was dependent on the horse; therefore, if the horse was somehow lost or captured, the sacrifice couldn’t continue until it was recovered.
Maharaja Yudhiṣṭhira performed an aśvamedha yajña after the battle of Kurukṣetra, but Pṛthu Maharaja was performing them one after another, totaling 99. This attracted the envy of Indra. He had ascended to his position as the king of heaven after performing 100 horse sacrifices, and now, seeing Pṛthu Maharaja performing one sacrifice after the other, he felt that his position was threatened by him. He feared that if Pṛthu Maharaja was also able to complete 100 horse sacrifices, he could take away his position, even though that was not Pṛthu’s goal.
What did he do? Apparently, King Pṛthu was too powerful to be challenged even by the king of the heavens; therefore, Indra opted to stop his 100th sacrifice by stealing the horse.
For this, he became invisible and dressed himself in saffron robes to look like a sadhu. Why both things? The question is that although he became invisible to common people, he could still be seen by elevated personalities like Atri Muni and Vijitāśva, the son of King Pṛthu; therefore, he also dressed like a sannyāsī to cheat them.
This partially worked. When Vijitāśva was alerted to the theft by Atri Muni, he first chased Indra, but when he saw him dressed as a saintly person, he thought he was a religious man, and thus didn’t attack him. However, when he returned without the horse, Atri Muni explained Indra’s cheating and instructed the son of Pṛthu to kill him. Chased again, Indra gave up his false dress and left the horse, who was thus returned to the sacrificial arena.
Indra then used his powers to create darkness around the arena, obstructing everyone’s vision. He thus captured the horse again. The same trick was repeated, with Indra adapting another style of sannyāsī dress. Again, Vijitāśva was instructed by Atri Muni, and again the horse was recovered, just for Indra to dress as a different type of sannyāsa and try again, repeatedly.
In this way, Indra introduced many irregular forms of sannyāsa, which were later adopted by different types of atheistic groups. These irregular forms of sannyāsa later would create havoc, being used by unscrupulous persons to cheat the innocent public. This pastime explains that Indra was the one who introduced all of this.
Pṛthu Maharaja was tolerant about the stealing of the horse, but he was alarmed by the introduction of all these irregular sannyāsa orders, and thus he took his bow and prepared to kill Indra. He was, however, prevented from doing so by the priests and saintly persons present. They argued that the sastras prohibit the killing of anyone during a sacrifice to the Lord. How then could Indra be killed when he is one of the demigods worshiped in the yajña, accepted as part and parcel of the Lord?
Instead of having Pṛthu Maharaja kill Indra with weapons, the sages proposed that they would kill Indra themselves by casting him into the sacrificial fire through the chanting of secret Vedic mantras. Normally, Indra would be protected from such an attempt by his vast pious merits, but the sages reasoned that in stealing the horse by such deceptive tactics, he had already been diminished in his powers.
Indra was thus in a very precarious position, threatened by the powerful Pṛthu Maharaja on one side and the enraged Brāhmaṇas on the other. He was, however, saved by Lord Brahma, who appeared at the scene to offer a diplomatic solution.
Brahma argued that Indra is a representative of the Lord, and he is in charge of all the demigods. The purpose of the yajña the king was trying to perform was to please the Lord and all his servants, the demigods. How could the priests expect to achieve that by killing a person who was simultaneously the assistant of the Lord and the leader of the demigods?
If Indra were killed, the sacrifice would be meaningless, and if they continued opposing his actions without killing him, he would continue introducing more and more irreligious orders. Brahma thus proposed that Pṛthu Maharaja would be content with just 99 sacrifices, since in any case, he had already attained the ultimate purpose of all sacrifices, being already an unalloyed devotee of the Lord.
Sacrifices should be executed when the result will be positive, guiding society on the right path. If the result will be further degradation, why should one bother trying to perform sacrifices? Better to do something else. Brahma also remembered Pṛthu that his original purpose as an empowered incarnation was to establish good government and set things in the right order. By insisting on performing more sacrifices, he would obtain just the opposite, making Indra introduce even more irreligious systems.
Having achieved a compromise, Brahma then proceeded to make peace between Pṛthu and Indra, arguing that both of them are not only individual souls, parts and parcels of the Lord, but that both are also empowered incarnations of the Supreme Personality of Godhead; therefore, there should be no disagreement between them.
This is a very important instruction for all of us. Because of differences in tastes, personal preferences, and different ideas on how to best satisfy the Lord, there may be many disagreements with other devotees, but it is always important to remember that we must somehow find ways to cooperate in the service of the Lord. Despite any disagreement, our goal is the same, and thus, some kind of compromise must be reached.
Another point made by Lord Brahma is that the very nature of the material world is that we always meet with reversals in life, and they should be tolerated as sent by providence. The more we become agitated, the more we fall into material ignorance. Instead of becoming agitated and employing all our energy to rectify such reversals, the best course of action is to tolerate and adjust, keeping focus on what is really important.
In this way, after making peace with Indra, Pṛthu Maharaja took his ceremonial bath, marking the end of his sacrificial performances, remunerated the Brāhmaṇa priests, and received their heartfelt blessings in return. He reigned for thousands of years more, setting the perfect example of a pious kind, which is still remembered in the pages of Srimad Bhagavatam.
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