: Description of Bhabatab (Ocear of Samsara)

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Namaste to all members of Advaitin, following is taken from the concise

srimad BHAGAVATEM by Swami Venkatesananda.

 

Requested by king Pariksit to explain the parable, sage Suka continued:

The world of sense-experiences is like the forest path into which , on

account of maya, the individual strays. He busies himself in different

activities, even as merchants engage themselves in business to earn wealth.

Though he meets with repeated failures, he fails to see that he is on the

wrong path and to turn to the right one. On this path he is waylaid by robbers

(i.e., the senses, which in fact rob him of his dharma which involves worship

of the Lord. Only such dharma is conducive to happiness in this world.However,

worldly men are led in a contrary direction by the senses which rob them of

this wealth (dharma).

In the forest called worldly life, even they whom a man regards as wife and

children prove to be robbers: they rob him of his wealth. Even the religious

actions of a householder are powerless to secure lasting peace of happiness,

for the weeds of evil grow on the field of his life again and again (like the

weeds growing on a field. even though it is ploughed) until the roots are

destroyed. He pursues sense-pleasures as an ingnorant man runs about blindly

in this fleeting and perishable world, thus wasting a precious humab birth.

Embraced by a woman, he gives way to lust, totally oblivious of the fact that

the all-seeing eye is watching him from all directions.

Occasionally, he realises for a moment in ingnorance once again and he

pursues the same pleasures. When the merits of his past births come to an end,

and there is an end even to this transitory happiness, he seeks the

protections and help of other men instead of turning to God and to dharma. He

even embraces a heretic creed, misled in his own deluded state by these vile

men and thus suffers untold misery here and hereafter.

He clings to wealth. When it is lost, he is ready to rob his own parents of

children. Stripped of its affluence, his home appears to be a burning forest.

And, when the king levies taxes and thus deprives him of his dear wealth, he

despairs and behaves as if he is dead.