The Twenty-fifth Chapter contains thirty-three verses. As described in this chapter, because the indra-yajña was stopped, King Indra was very angry, and to kill the inhabitants of Vṛndāvana, Vraja, he flooded the entire area with rain. Kṛṣṇa, however, accepted King Indra's challenge by lifting Govardhana Hill as an umbrella to protect Vṛndāvana and all the cows. The Twenty-sixth Chapter contains twenty-five verses, describing how Nanda Mahārāja, seeing the extraordinary activities of Kṛṣṇa, was struck with wonder and how he thus narrated for all the cowherd men the whole story of Kṛṣṇa's opulence, as foretold by Gargamuni. Chapter Twenty-seven, which contains twenty-eight verses, describes how King Indra, upon seeing Kṛṣṇa's unlimited power, worshiped Lord Kṛṣṇa, who was fully washed with milk supplied by the surabhi and who thus became known as Govinda. The Twenty-eighth Chapter contains seventeen verses. In this chapter Kṛṣṇa saves His father, Nanda Mahārāja, from the custody of Varuṇa and shows the cowherd men how Vaikuṇṭhaloka is situated.
Flood (Books)
Bhagavad-gita As It Is
BG Chapters 1 - 6
As children are very prone to be misled, women are similarly very prone to degradation. Therefore, both children and women require protection by the elder members of the family. By being engaged in various religious practices, women will not be misled into adultery. According to Cāṇakya Paṇḍita, women are generally not very intelligent and therefore not trustworthy. So the different family traditions of religious activities should always engage them, and thus their chastity and devotion will give birth to a good population eligible for participating in the varṇāśrama system. On the failure of such varṇāśrama-dharma, naturally the women become free to act and mix with men, and thus adultery is indulged in at the risk of unwanted population. Irresponsible men also provoke adultery in society, and thus unwanted children flood the human race at the risk of war and pestilence.
Srimad-Bhagavatam
SB Canto 1
The female relatives, whose eyes were flooded with tears out of anxiety for Kṛṣṇa, came out of the palace. They could stop their tears only with great difficulty. They feared that tears would cause misfortune at the time of departure.
Therefore, during the personal presence of the Lord on the earth, all paraphernalia for our peace and prosperity, especially religion and knowledge, were in full display because of the Lord's presence, just as there is a full flood of light in the presence of the glowing sun. Mahārāja Yudhiṣṭhira observed some discrepancies in his kingdom, and therefore he became very anxious about Arjuna, who was long absent, and there was also no news about Dvārakā's well-being. He suspected the disappearance of Lord Kṛṣṇa, otherwise there would have been no possibility of fearful omens.
SB Canto 3
The holy Lake Bindu-sarovara, flooded by the waters of the River Sarasvatī, was resorted to by hosts of eminent sages. Its holy water was not only auspicious but as sweet as nectar. It was called Bindu-sarovara because drops of tears had fallen there from the eyes of the Lord, who was overwhelmed by extreme compassion for the sage who had sought His protection.
SB Canto 4
The process of tax exaction is very nicely explained in this verse. Tax exaction is not meant for the sense gratification of the so-called administrative heads. Tax revenues should be distributed to the citizens in times of need, during emergencies such as famine or flood. Tax revenues should never be distributed amongst governmental servants in the form of high salaries and various other allowances. In Kali-yuga, however, the position of the citizens is very horrible because taxes are exacted in so many forms and are spent for the personal comforts of the administrators.
If rivers are not polluted and are allowed to flow in their own way, or sometimes allowed to flood the land, the land will become very fertile and able to produce all kinds of vegetables, trees and plants. The word rasa means "taste." Actually all rasas are tastes within the earth, and as soon as seeds are sown in the ground, various trees sprout up to satisfy our different tastes. For instance, sugarcane provides its juices to satisfy our taste for sweetness, and oranges provide their juices to satisfy our taste for a mixture of the sour and the sweet. Similarly, there are pineapples and other fruits. At the same time, there are chilies to satisfy our taste for pungency. Although the earth's ground is the same, different tastes arise due to different kinds of seeds. As Kṛṣṇa says in Bhagavad-gītā (7.10), bījaṁ māṁ sarva-bhūtānām: "I am the original seed of all existences." Therefore all arrangements are there. And as stated in Īśopaniṣad: pūrṇam idam (Īśopaniṣad, Invocation). Complete arrangements for the production of all the necessities of life are made by the Supreme Personality of Godhead. People should therefore learn how to satisfy the yajña-puruṣa, Lord Viṣṇu. Indeed, the living entity's prime business is to satisfy the Lord because the living entity is part and parcel of the Lord.
SB Canto 5
Similarly, the fruits of the jambū tree, which are full of pulp and have very small seeds, fall from a great height and break to pieces. Those fruits are the size of elephants, and the juice gliding from them becomes a river named Jambū-nadī. This river falls a distance of 10,000 yojanas, from the summit of Merumandara to the southern side of Ilāvṛta, and floods the entire land of Ilāvṛta with juice.
We can only imagine how much juice there might be in a fruit that is the size of an elephant but has a very tiny seed. Naturally the juice from the broken jambū fruits forms waterfalls and floods the entire land of Ilāvṛta. That juice produces an immense quantity of gold, as will be explained in the next verses.
SB Canto 6
The Manu named King Satyavrata formerly saved himself by tying the small boat of the entire world to the horn of the Matsya avatāra, the fish incarnation. By the grace of the Matsya avatāra, Manu saved himself from the great danger of the flood. May that same fish incarnation save us from the great and fearful danger caused by the son of Tvaṣṭā.
SB Canto 7
The lion is very fearsome for other animals, but its cubs are not at all afraid of the lion. The water of the sea is certainly dreadful for all living entities on the land, but within the sea even the small fish is unafraid. Why? Because the small fish has taken shelter of the big ocean. It is said that although great elephants are taken away by the flooding waters of the river, the small fish swim opposite the current. Therefore although the Lord sometimes assumes a fierce appearance to kill the duṣkṛtīs, the devotees worship Him. Keśava dhṛta-nara-hari-rūpa jaya jagadīśa hare. The devotee always takes pleasure in worshiping the Lord and glorifying the Lord in any form, either pleasing or fierce.
My dear King, if an agricultural field is cultivated again and again, the power of its production decreases, and whatever seeds are sown there are lost. Just as drops of ghee on a fire never extinguish the fire but a flood of ghee will, similarly, overindulgence in lusty desires mitigates such desires entirely.
No one can escape the threefold miseries of materialistic life, namely miseries pertaining to the body and mind, miseries pertaining to the difficulties imposed by society, community, nation and other living entities, and miseries inflicted upon us by natural disturbances from earthquakes, famines, droughts, floods, epidemics, and so on. If one works very hard, suffering the threefold miseries, and then is successful in getting some small benefit, what is the value of this benefit? Besides that, even if a karmī is successful in accumulating some material wealth, he still cannot enjoy it, for he must die in bereavement. I have even seen a dying man begging a medical attendant to increase his life by four years so that he could complete his material plans. Of course, the medical man was unsuccessful in expanding the life of the man, who therefore died in great bereavement.
SB Canto 8
Thereafter, whirlpools and sea waves, agitated by fierce blasts of wind, appeared everywhere, before everyone's vision, in a furious flood.
SB Canto 10.1 to 10.13
SB Cantos 10.14 to 12 (Translations Only)
When the Supreme Personality of Godhead landed in the serpent's lake, the snakes there became extremely agitated and began breathing heavily, further polluting it with volumes of poison. The force of the Lord's entrance into the lake caused it to overflow on all sides, and poisonous, fearsome waves flooded the surrounding lands up to a distance of one hundred bow-lengths. This is not at all amazing, however, for the Supreme Lord possesses infinite strength.
Although the elder gopīs were feeling just as much distress as she and were pouring forth a flood of sorrowful tears, they had to forcibly hold back Kṛṣṇa's mother, whose consciousness was totally absorbed in her son. Standing like corpses, with their eyes fixed upon His face, these gopīs each took turns recounting the pastimes of the darling of Vraja.
As the clouds released torrents of rain as thick as massive columns, the earth was submerged in the flood, and high ground could no longer be distinguished from low.
The joy of seeing the Supreme Lord flooded Akrūra's eyes with tears and decorated his limbs with eruptions of ecstasy. He felt such eagerness that he could not speak to present himself, O King.
Lord Kārtikeya was distressed by the flood of Pradyumna's arrows raining down from all sides, and thus he fled the battlefield on his peacock as blood poured from his limbs.
The wind carried to Balarāma the fragrance of that flood of sweet liquor, and when He smelled it He went (to the tree). There He and His female companions drank.
O Lord, please give me Your leave. I will wander about the worlds, which are flooded with Your fame, loudly singing about Your pastimes, which purify the universe.
Lord Kṛṣṇa then pierced Śālva with sixteen arrows and struck the Saubha airship with a deluge of arrows as it darted about the sky. Firing His arrows, the Lord appeared like the sun flooding the heavens with its rays.
Then, as the sun set, the forest was covered by darkness in every direction, and with all the flooding we could not distinguish high land from low.
Constantly besieged by the powerful wind and rain, we lost our way amidst the flooding waters. We simply held each other's hands and, in great distress, wandered aimlessly about the forest.
Hordes of clouds called Saṁvartaka pour torrents of rain for one hundred years. Flooding down in raindrops as long as the trunk of an elephant, the deadly rainfall submerges the entire universe in water.
As soon as Dvārakā was abandoned by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the ocean flooded it on all sides, O King, sparing only His palace.
After that, O King, groups of multicolored clouds will gather, roaring terribly with thunder, and will pour down floods of rain for one hundred years.
As the entire universe is flooded, the water will rob the earth of its unique quality of fragrance, and the element earth, deprived of its distinguishing quality, will be dissolved.
Authorities say that Mārkaṇḍeya Ṛṣi, the son of Mṛkaṇḍu, was an exceptionally long-lived sage who was the only survivor at the end of Brahmā's day, when the entire universe was merged in the flood of annihilation. But this same Mārkaṇḍeya Ṛṣi, the foremost descendant of Bhṛgu, took birth in my own family during the current day of Brahmā, and we have not yet seen any total annihilation in this day of Brahmā. Also, it is well known that Mārkaṇḍeya while wandering helplessly in the great ocean of annihilation, saw in those fearful waters a wonderful personality—an infant boy lying alone within the fold of a banyan leaf. O Sūta, I am most bewildered and curious about this great sage, Mārkaṇḍeya Ṛṣi. O great yogī, you are universally accepted as the authority on all the Purāṇas. Therefore kindly dispel my confusion.
The sage saw all the inhabitants of the universe, including himself, tormented within and without by the harsh winds, the bolts of lightning, and the great waves rising beyond the sky. As the whole earth flooded, he grew perplexed and fearful.
The water inundated the earth, outer space, heaven and the celestial region. Indeed, the entire expanse of the universe was flooded in all directions, and out of all its inhabitants only Mārkaṇḍeya remained. His matted hair scattered, the great sage wandered about alone in the water as if dumb and blind.
Sri Caitanya-caritamrta
CC Adi-lila
In His early pastimes He is known as Viśvambhara because He floods the world with the nectar of devotion and thus saves the living beings.
Raising His arms, chanting the holy name and looking upon all with deep love, He drives away all sins and floods everyone with love of Godhead.
The flood of love of Godhead swelled in all directions, and thus young men, old men, women and children were all immersed in that inundation.
When the contents of the storehouse of love of Godhead is thus distributed, there is a powerful inundation that covers the entire land. In Śrīdhāma Māyāpur there is sometimes a great flood after the rainy season. This is an indication that from the birthplace of Lord Caitanya the inundation of love of Godhead should be spread all over the world, for this will help everyone, including old men, young men, women and children. The Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu is so powerful that it can inundate the entire world and interest all classes of men in the subject of love of Godhead.
The seed of material enjoyment, watered by the course of material nature, fructifies to become a tree of material entanglement that endows the living entity with all kinds of material enjoyment. To enjoy such material facilities is to be afflicted with the three material miseries. However, when by nature's law there is a flood, the seeds within the earth become inactive. Similarly, as the inundation of love of Godhead spreads all over the world, the seeds of material enjoyment become impotent. Thus the more the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement spreads, the more the desire for material enjoyment decreases. The seed of material enjoyment automatically becomes impotent with the increase of the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement.
All these branches, the devotees of Lord Nityānanda Prabhu, being full of ripened fruits of love of Kṛṣṇa, distributed these fruits to all they met, flooding them with love of Kṛṣṇa.
The fruits of love of Godhead that grew on those branches of the Caitanya tree were so large that they flooded the entire world with love of Kṛṣṇa.
For the remaining eighteen years He continuously stayed in Jagannātha Purī. Chanting the nectarean Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra, He inundated everyone there in a flood of love of Kṛṣṇa.
CC Madhya-lila
While Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu was chanting and dancing, He was overwhelmed with ecstatic love, and all the people who saw Him were also flooded in the ocean of love of Godhead.
The village of Saptagrāma is located on the Eastern Railway from Calcutta to Burdwan, and presently the railway station is called Triśabighā. In those days there was a large river there known as the Sarasvatī, and present-day Triśabighā is a great port. In 1592, the Pāṭhānas invaded, and due to a flooding of the Sarasvatī River in the year 1632, this great port was partially destroyed. It is said that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Portuguese businessmen used to come aboard their ships. In those days, Saptagrāma, situated on the southern side of Bengal, was very rich and popular. The merchants, who were the principal residents, were called Saptagrāma suvarṇa-vaṇiks. There were very many rich people there, and Hiraṇya Majumadāra and Govardhana Majumadāra belonged to the kāyastha community. They also were very rich, so much so that it is mentioned in this verse that their annual income as landlords amounted to 1,200,000 rupees. In this connection, one may refer to Ādi-līlā (Chapter Eleven, verse 41), which describes Uddhāraṇa Datta, who also belonged to the Saptagrāmī suvarṇa-vaṇik community.
Prayāga is located at the confluence of two rivers—the Ganges and the Yamunā. Although these rivers were not able to flood Prayāga with water, Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu inundated the whole area with waves of ecstatic love for Kṛṣṇa.
CC Antya-lila
“There is now a flood of the eternal nectar of love of Godhead due to the incarnation of Lord Caitanya. All living entities are floating in that flood. The entire world is now thankful to the Lord.
"Please give me the holy name of Kṛṣṇa and thus make me fortunate, so that I also may float in the flood of love of Godhead inaugurated by Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu."
The innumerable, glorious followers of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu brought a constant flood to the desertlike hearts of the unfortunate with an inundation of ecstatic love.
“The consciousness of each woman within the three worlds is certainly like a high hill, but the sweetness of Kṛṣṇa's beauty is like an ocean. Even a drop of water from that ocean can flood the entire world and submerge all the high hills of consciousness.
Other Books by Srila Prabhupada
Teachings of Lord Caitanya
Some were crying and some were laughing, some were dancing and some were singing, and some were falling on the ground, offering obeisances to the Lord. And all of them were roaring the holy name: "Kṛṣṇa! Kṛṣṇa!" It is said that in spite of being at the confluence of the rivers Ganges and Yamunā, Prayāga was never flooded until the appearance of Caitanya Mahāprabhu, at which time the city was overflooded by love of Kṛṣṇa.
The two brothers, Rūpa Gosvāmī and Vallabha, stayed aloof in an uncrowded place and witnessed the great crowd and wonderful scene. When the Lord danced, He raised His arms and shouted, "Haribol! Haribol!" The people all about Him were astonished to see His activities. Indeed, the wonderful scene is difficult to describe.
After visiting the temple, the Lord accepted prasādam (food offered to the Deity) at the house of a Deccanist (southern) brāhmaṇa with whom He was acquainted. While sitting alone at the brāhmaṇa's home, the Lord was visited by Rūpa Gosvāmī and Vallabha.
The desire for material enjoyment is just like a seed sown in the earth. If a seed is inundated by too much water, there is no possibility of its fructifying. Similarly, if a conditioned soul is captivated by material enjoyment because the seed of such enjoyment is within his heart, he can be overwhelmed and overpowered by a flood of transcendental activities performed in love of God. In this way his seed of material enjoyment cannot fructify into a conditioned life of material existence. The conditioned living entities in the present Age of Kali are being overpowered by the flood of love of God inaugurated by Lord Caitanya and His associates.
In this connection there is a verse written by His Holiness Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī in his book Śrī Caitanya-candrāmṛta.
One who thinks that there is a possibility of arguing about transcendence is called an agnostic, and one who thinks that there is a possibility of criticizing transcendence is called an atheist. Lord Caitanya wanted to accept all kinds of agnostics, atheists, skeptics and unfaithfuls and swallow them in the flood of love of God. Therefore He accepted the renounced order of life to attract all these forces.
Lord Caitanya remained a householder until His twenty-fourth year, and in the twenty-fifth year of His life He accepted the renounced order. After accepting the renounced order (sannyāsa), He attracted many other sannyāsīs. When He had been spreading the saṅkīrtana movement as a family man, many Māyāvādī sannyāsīs did not take His movement very seriously, but after the Lord accepted the sannyāsa order of life, He delivered not only Māyāvādī sannyāsīs but speculative students, atheists and those who were attached to fruitive activities and unnecessary criticism. The Lord was so kind that He accepted all these people and delivered to them the most important factor in life: love of God.
Krsna, The Supreme Personality of Godhead
As the director of different kinds of clouds, Indra called for the Sāṁvartaka. This cloud is invited when there is a need to devastate the whole cosmic manifestation. The Sāṁvartaka was ordered by Indra to go over Vṛndāvana and inundate the whole area with an extensive flood. Demonically, Indra thought himself to be the all-powerful supreme personality. When demons become very powerful, they defy the supreme controller, the Personality of Godhead. Indra, though not a demon, was puffed up by his material position, and he wanted to challenge the supreme controller. He thought himself, at least for the time being, as powerful as Kṛṣṇa. Indra said, "Just see the impudence of the inhabitants of Vṛndāvana! They are simply inhabitants of the forest, but being infatuated with their friend Kṛṣṇa, who is nothing but an ordinary human being, they have dared to defy the demigods."
Dvivida was as powerful as ten thousand elephants. Sometimes he would go to the seashore, and with his powerful hands he would create so much disturbance in the sea that he would flood the neighboring cities and villages. Often he would go to the hermitages of great saintly persons and sages and cause a great disturbance by smashing their beautiful gardens and orchards. Not only did he create disturbances in that way, but sometimes he would pass urine and stool on their sacred sacrificial arenas. He would thus pollute the whole atmosphere. He also kidnapped both men and women, taking them away from their residential places to the caves of the mountains. After putting them within the caves, he would close the entrances with large chunks of stone, like the bhṛṅgī insect, which arrests and carries away many flies and other insects and puts them within the holes of the trees where it lives.
Renunciation Through Wisdom
And now it is our ill fate that after the passing away of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, the exemplar of patita-pāvana, we have returned to our lowly, fallen ways. Is there a glimmer of hope for our deliverance?
From the ocean of loving compassion, which had been completely dammed up, Lord Nityānanda cut a canal of love of Godhead and flooded the entire world. And then some persons called caste Gosvāmīs, claiming to be the Lord's descendants, again dammed up that ocean of mercy with their malpractices of fruitive activities and rituals. Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura once more cut open the canal of love of Godhead and brought in the flood waters. And now are we, of all persons, trying once more to dam it up like the caste Gosvāmīs? By the influence of the good association of the Lord's devotees, even a fool and rascal like me, possessed of a destructive, demoniac mentality, can accumulate enough piety to become inspired to serve the Supreme Lord.
Without understanding that the Supreme Lord is a transcendental personality, the monists make futile and grossly mundane attempts at restraining their senses, meditating on the Lord's impersonal aspect as the ultimate and original Absolute Truth. As it is impossible to dam a flooding river, so it is impossible to control the senses by meditating on the impersonal Brahman. As the great sage Sanat Kumāra says in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (4.22.39):
- yat-pāda-paṅkaja-palāśa-vilāsa-bhaktyā
- karmāśayaṁ grathitam udgrathayanti santaḥ
- tadvan na rikta-matayo yatayo 'pi ruddha-
- sroto-gaṇās tam araṇaṁ bhaja vāsudevam
The devotees, who are always engaged in the service of the toes of the lotus feet of the Lord, can easily overcome hard-knotted desires for fruitive activities. Because this is very difficult, the nondevotees—the jñānīs and yogīs—although trying to stop the waves of sense gratification, cannot do so. Therefore you are advised to engage in the devotional service of Kṛṣṇa, the son of Vasudeva.
At least for some time, we must create Satya-yuga, the age of reason and piety. We can easily accomplish this Herculean task simply by reintroducing Lord Caitanya's saṅkīrtana movement of the congregational chanting of Lord Kṛṣṇa's name and thus flooding the world with kṛṣṇa-prema. All living entities—the human beings, who are afflicted by Kali-yuga, as well as sub-human beings—must be drowned in the floodwaters of kṛṣṇa-prema.
By studying the Vedas, the Vedānta-sūtra, and the Upaniṣads, one may find processes for purifying the consciousness and elevating oneself to the transcendental platform. But for the conditioned souls of Kali-yuga, such means are beyond reach. Lord Caitanya alone can liberate the conditioned souls of this age. In His younger days Lord Caitanya was known as Nimāi Paṇḍita because He was an erudite scholar. Indeed, He became famous as a master of logic.
Light of the Bhagavata
Salty water does not decompose, and that is the arrangement of providence. The Lord has engaged the powerful sun to evaporate the water of planets like earth and distill it into clear water in the clouds and then stock it on the peaks of mountains, as we stock water in overhead tanks for later distribution. part of the stock of water is refrigerated into ice, so that it will not flood the earth for no good purpose. The ice melts gradually throughout the year, flows down through the great rivers, and glides down to the sea again for preservation.
Therefore the laws of God's nature are neither blind nor accidental, as men with a poor fund of knowledge conclude. Behind the laws of nature is the living brain of God, just as there is always a lawmaker behind all the laws of the state. It does not matter whether or not we see the lawmaker behind the common laws; we must admit that there is a lawmaker. Matter can never work automatically, without a living hand, and therefore we must admit the existence of God, the supreme living being, behind the laws of nature. The Lord says in Bhagavad-gītā that nature works under His superintendence.
Material assets are like seasonal flowers only. Either the flowers wither, or the gardener himself leaves. This is the law of nature. Therefore, if we want permanent life, knowledge, and bliss, we must seek them somewhere else, not in the changeable, temporary rainy season, which is flooded with so many varieties of pleasing sights that vanish when the season ends.
Material manifestations of things are but shadowy representations of reality. They are compared to mirages in the desert. In the desert there is no water, but the foolish deer runs after illusory water in the desert to quench his thirsty heart. Water is not unreal, but the place where we seek it is misleading. The advancement of materialistic civilization is just like a mirage in the desert. The deer runs after water in the desert with full speed, and the illusion of water moves ahead at the same speed as the foolish deer. Water is not false, but we must not seek it in the desert.
By His personal example Lord Kṛṣṇa wanted to teach us the value of protecting cows. Nanda Mahārāja is said to have possessed nine hundred thousand cows, and at the time of Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa (about five thousand years ago) the tract of land known as Vṛndāvana was flooded with milk and butter. Therefore God's gifted professions for mankind are agriculture and cow protection.
Trade is meant only for transporting surplus produce to places where the produce is scanty. But when traders become too greedy and materialistic they take to large-scale commerce and industry and allure the poor agriculturalist to unsanitary industrial towns with a false hope of earning more money. The industrialist and the capitalist do not want the farmer to remain at home, satisfied with his agricultural produce. When the farmers are satisfied by a luxuriant growth of food grains, the capitalist becomes gloomy at heart.
| Page Title: | Flood (Books) |
| Compiler: | Visnu Murti, RupaManjari |
| Created: | 27 of Jun, 2012 |
| Totals by Section: | BG=1, SB=30, CC=15, OB=11, Lec=0, Con=0, Let=0 |
| No. of Quotes: | 57 |