SRIMAD BHAGAVATAM: CANTO 5

The brahmin [Jada Bharata] said: 'Lacking in experience do you, using the terms of the experienced ones, not speak of the most important; these matters of mundane and social behavior one should in fact discuss with the intelligent who do have such a refined sense of truth.

The brâhmana Jada Bharata said: My dear King, although you are not at all experienced, you are trying to speak like a very experienced man. Consequently you cannot be considered an experienced person. An experienced person does not speak the way you are speaking about the relationship between a master and a servant or about material pains and pleasures. These are simply external activities. Any advanced, experienced man, considering the Absolute Truth, does not talk in this way. (Vedabase)

Text 2

Because of this, o King, is indeed among those, who notably by the Vedas [veda-vâdî], take interest in the endlessly increasing concern with the rituals of a material household, as good as never the actual spiritual science [tattva-vâda] found that manifests itself so clearly with the advanced of purity.

My dear King, talks of the relationship between the master and the servant, the king and the subject and so forth are simply talks about material activities. People interested in material activities, which are expounded in the Vedas, are intent on performing material sacrifices and placing faith in their material activities. For such people, spiritual advancement is definitely not manifest. (Vedabase)

Text 3

Although sufficiently known with the words, is the very exalted vision of the real purpose of the Veda not directly theirs, because the happiness of a worldly life compares to a dream of which one naturally later on realizes that it is unreal.

A dream becomes automatically known to a person as false and immaterial, and similarly one eventually realizes that material happiness in this life or the next, on this planet or a higher planet, is insignificant. When one realizes this, the Vedas, although an excellent source, are insufficient to bring about direct knowledge of the truth. (Vedabase)

Text 4

As long as the mind of someone is under the control of the mode of passion, of goodness or of darkness, are actions, auspicious or otherwise, by the power of the senses of action and perception, automatically the result, just like it is with an elephant that is roaming unchecked.

As long as the mind of the living entity is contaminated by the three modes of material nature. (goodness, passion and ignorance), his mind is exactly like an independent, uncontrolled elephant. It simply expands its jurisdiction of pious and impious activities by using the senses. The result is that the living entity remains in the material world to enjoy and suffer pleasures and pains due to material activity. (Vedabase)

Text 5

That mind endowed with many a desire is, driven by the modes of nature, attached to material happiness; as the chief of the sixteen elements of a material existence [the physical, the active and the perceptual ones plus the mind] does the mind, estranged, wander around in names [in upâdhis - representations] and does it manifest with bodies of a higher or lower quality in different forms [compare B.G. 3: 27].

Because the mind is absorbed in desires for pious and impious activities, it is naturally subjected to the transformations of lust and anger. In this way, it becomes attracted to material sense enjoyment. In other words, the mind is conducted by the modes of goodness, passion and ignorance. There are eleven senses and five material elements, and out of these sixteen items, the mind is the chief. Therefore the mind brings about birth in different types of bodies among demigods, human beings, animals and birds. When the mind is situated in a higher or lower position, it accepts a higher or lower material body. (Vedabase)

Text 6

With the unhappiness, happiness and severe immoderation obtained in the course of time as a consequence, creates the indwelling mind, by which the original living being embraces the created nature, for itself the vicious circle of material actions and reactions.

The materialistic mind covering the living entity's soul carries it to different species of life. This is called continued material existence. Due to the mind, the living entity suffers or enjoys material distress and happiness. Being thus illusioned, the mind further creates pious and impious activities and their karma, and thus the soul becomes conditioned. (Vedabase)

Text 7

For that reason speak the learned ones of the mind as the cause of, the in higher or lower conditions of life, being absorbed in the natural modes to which one then misses the qualities, and of that are the for that time manifested outer symptoms of the living entity - of being fat or skinny e.g. - the proof.

The mind makes the living entity within this material world wander through different species of life, and thus the living entity experiences mundane affairs in different forms as a human being, demigod, fat person, skinny person and so forth. Learned scholars say that bodily appearance, bondage and liberation are caused by the mind. (Vedabase)

Text 8

The attraction to the modes makes for the conditionings to the material world, but when the mind of the living entity is there for the ultimate good of transcending them is it as a lamp; a wick enjoying clarified butter burning improperly no doubt leads to a flame with smoke, but doing so properly in bondage to the fuel of karma is the flaming, wayward mind to the contrary evidence of the clear reality.

When the living entity's mind becomes absorbed in the sense gratification of the material world, it brings about his conditioned life and suffering within the material situation. However, when the mind becomes unattached to material enjoyment, it becomes the cause of liberation. When the flame in a lamp burns the wick improperly, the lamp is blackened, but when the lamp is filled with ghee and is burning properly, there is bright illumination. Similarly, when the mind is absorbed in material sense gratification, it causes suffering, and when detached from material sense gratification, it brings about the original brightness of Krishna consciousness. (Vedabase)

Text 9

For sure there are the eleven of the mind of the five senses of action, the five senses of knowing and the insidiousness [or the falsehood of the ego, the identification with them]; of the different actions, the different objects of the senses and the places in town where they occur - of those eleven functions say the learned, o hero, that they are the fields of action [see B.G. 13: 1-4].

There are five working senses and five knowledge-acquiring senses. There is also the false ego. In this way, there are eleven items for the mind's functions. O hero, the objects of the senses [such as sound and touch], the organic activities [such as evacuation] and the different types of bodies, society, friendship and personality are considered by learned scholars the fields of activity for the functions of the mind. (Vedabase)

Text 10

Smell, form, touch, taste and hearing [the knowing senses]; evacuation, sexual intercourse, movement, speech and manual control [the senses of action] with the eleventh element of accepting the idea of 'mine', thus gives the 'I' to this body of which some have said that it is the twelfth element.

Sound, touch, form, taste and smell are the objects of the five knowledge-acquiring senses. Speech, touch, movement, evacuation and sexual intercourse are the objects of the working senses. Besides this, there is another conception by which one thinks, "This is my body, this is my society, this is my family, this is my nation," and so forth. This eleventh function, that of the mind, is called the false ego. According to some philosophers, this is the twelfth function, and its field of activity is the body. (Vedabase)

Text 11

By the elements, by nature itself, by the culture, by the karma and by time are all these eleven of the mind modified into the hundreds, thousands and millions who do not follow from one another nor from themselves, but from the knower of the field.

The physical elements, nature, the original cause, culture, destiny and the time element are all material causes. Agitated by these material causes, the eleven functions transform into hundreds of functions and then into thousands and then into millions. But all these transformations do not take place automatically by mutual combination. Rather, they are under the direction of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. (Vedabase)

Text 12

The knower of the field purified sees all these different activities of the mind of the unpurified individual entity in action, that from time immemorial are created by the external energy; sometimes manifest [as in waking] and sometimes not manifested [as in dreams].

The individual soul bereft of Krishna consciousness has many ideas and activities created in the mind by the external energy. They have been existing from time immemorial. Sometimes they are manifest in the wakening state and in the dream state, but during deep sleep [unconsciousness] or trance, they disappear. A person who is liberated in this life [jîvan-mukta] can see all these things vividly. (Vedabase)

Text 13-14:

The knower of the field is [then] the all-pervading, omnipresent, authentic person; the original one, who is seen and heard of as existing by His own light; He who is never born, who is the transcendental one, the One Nârâyana wherein all beings rest, the Supreme Lord, the One Vâsudeva harbour of consciousness; He who by His own potency in the soul exists as the controller, of just as well the air as the nonmoving and moving entities; He is the Supersoul of expansion that entered and thus controls as the One of Fortune in the beyond who is the shelter and knower of everyone in every field; He, the vital itself that appeared in this material world [see also B.G 9: 10 & 15: 15].

There are two kinds of kshetrajña--the living entity, as explained above, and the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is explained as follows. He is the all-pervading cause of creation. He is full in Himself and is not dependent on others. He is perceived by hearing and direct perception. He is self-effulgent and does not experience birth, death, old age or disease. He is the controller of all the demigods, beginning with Lord Brahmâ. He is called Nârâyana, and He is the shelter of living entities after the annihilation of this material world. He is full of all opulences, and He is the resting place of everything material. He is therefore known as Vâsudeva, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. By His own potency, He is present within the hearts of all living entities, just as the air or vital force is within the bodies of all beings, moving and nonmoving. In this way He controls the body. In His partial feature, the Supreme Personality of Godhead enters all bodies and controls them. (Vedabase)

Text 15

As long as the embodied one, o King, is not free from this influence of the material world, by means of the, in freedom from attachments, being awakened to the order of knowing the spiritual truth and conquering the six enemies [the mind and the senses of perception], will he till that time wander around in this material world.

My dear King Rahûgana, as long as the conditioned soul accepts the material body and is not freed from the contamination of material enjoyment, and as long as he does not conquer his six enemies and comes to the platform of self-realization by awakening his spiritual knowledge, he has to wander among different places and different species of life in this material world. (Vedabase)