A Summary of the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapuranam-5.3

11/04/2017.

5: Narada Instructs Yudhisthira on Ashrama Dharmam-3.


Good company—the tutelage of good parents, good teachers, good guides, good Gurus—and a thorough study of good scriptures and textbooks that are contributory to increasing one’s mental, intellectual and physical energy, are what is required during one’s youth. It is called Brahmacharya Ashrama. These days, Brahmacharya Ashrama does not exist at all, due to the trouble into which one is cast right from the beginning itself through the web of problems of life arising from the very inception of one’s existence.

But anyone who is interested in the welfare of their own being, and knows what is good for them, has to remember that the pleasant is not always the good. We always like pleasant things, sweet things, and they attract our senses perpetually, so that the senses gather our energies and pour them outwards on the conditions of life outside; and if this is the habit that we form right from the beginning of life, we will have to reap the fruit of this misbehaviour towards the end of our life. It is not necessary that we must be bedridden in old age. That condition is imposed on us by the circumstances into which we are born and which we have introduced into our own selves by the desire for dissipation.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued ...