Le Cow Quote Du Jour # 124

[Guest guest]

TRANSLATION

You may narrate also about the auspicious characteristics of the Lord in His

different incarnations for the welfare of the twice-born, the cows and the

demigods. Our minds are never satisfied completely, although we continuously

hear of His transcendental activities.

 

PURPORT

The Lord appears in this universe in different incarnations like Matsya,

Kurma, Varaha and Nrsimha, and He manifests His different transcendental

activities for the welfare of the twice-born, the cows and the demigods. The

Lord is directly concerned with the twice-born or civilized men. A civilized

man is one who has taken his birth twice. A living entity takes birth in

this mundane world due to the union of male and female. A human being is

born due to union of the father and mother, but a civilized human being has

another birth by contact with a spiritual master, who becomes the actual

father. The father and mother of the material body are so only in one birth,

and in the next birth the father and mother may be a different couple. But

the bona fide spiritual master, as the representative of the Lord, is the

eternal father because the spiritual master has the responsibility to lead

the disciple to spiritual salvation, or the ultimate goal of life.

Therefore, a civilized man must be twice-born, otherwise he is no more than

the lower animals.

 

The cow is the most important animal for developing the human body to

perfection. The body can be maintained by any kind of foodstuff, but cow's

milk is particularly essential for developing the finer tissues of the human

brain so that one can understand the intricacies of transcendental

knowledge. A civilized man is expected to live on foodstuffs comprising

fruits, vegetables, grains, sugar and milk. The bull helps in the

agricultural process of producing grain, etc., and thus in one sense the

bull is the father of humankind, whereas the cow is the mother, for she

supplies milk to human society. A civilized man is therefore expected to

give all protection to the bulls and cows.

 

The demigods, or the living entities who live in the higher planets, are far

superior to human beings. Since they have better arrangements for living

conditions, they live far more luxuriously than human beings, yet they are

all devotees of the Lord. The Lord incarnates in different forms, such as

those of a fish, a tortoise, a hog, and a combined lion and man, just to

give protection to civilized man, the cow and the demigods, who are directly

responsible for the regulative life of progressive self-realization. The

whole system of the material creation is planned so that the conditioned

souls may have the opportunity for self-realization. One who takes advantage

of such an arrangement is called a demigod or civilized man. The cow is

meant to help maintain such a high standard of living.

 

The Lord's pastimes for the protection of the twice-born civilized men, the

cows and the demigods are all transcendental. A human being is inclined to

hear good narrations and stories, and therefore there are so many books,

magazines and newspapers on the market to satisfy the interests of the

developed soul. But the pleasure in such literature, after it is read once,

becomes stale, and people do not take any interest in reading such

literature repeatedly. In fact, newspapers are read for less than an hour

and then thrown in the dustbins as rubbish. The case is similar with all

other mundane literatures. But the beauty of transcendental literatures like

Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam is that they never become old. They have

been read in the world by civilized man for the last five thousand years,

and they have never become old. They are ever fresh to the learned scholars

and devotees, and even by daily repetition of the verses of Bhagavad-gita

and Srimad-Bhagavatam, there is no satiation for devotees like Vidura.

Vidura might have heard the pastimes of the Lord many, many times before he

met Maitreya, but still he wanted the same narrations to be repeated because

he was never satiated by hearing them. That is the transcendental nature of

the Lord's glorious pastimes.

 

>>> Ref. VedaBase => SB 3.5.7