Has the Lord come under Maya in Kali-yuga that he is not able to protect Deities
From Ajay Gauranga Prabhu
During Moghal empire the kings broke many temples as well as beautiful deities. Few Sultans kept those deities as stepping stone of their Mosques so that people would trample it. It gives chance to impious people or Mayavadis to say that Lord is not able to protect Himself because He is currently under influence of Maya. So He will not be able to protect His devotees also. Hence what should be our answer to them?
Transcribed by: Argha Maji
Question: Has the Lord come under Maya in Kali-yuga that he is not able to protect Deities?
Answer: No, Krishna never comes under maya. Krishna says that mamā maya, it is always his maya, it is under his subordination.
vedāham samatītāni
vartamānāni cārjuna (BG 7.26)
Krishna says my omniscience is not affected anytime, past, present or future. And mamāvyayam anuttamam, he is uttama, transcendental and that is avyayam. In 7.24, Krishna says this. So from philosophical point of view, the Kali Yuga affects human beings, it does not affect God. What to speak of the Supreme Lord, Kali yuga doesn’t affect even the heavenly planets. Kali it may affect in the sense that the lack of performance of yajña on Earth may cause some concerns for the heavenly planets. But it’s not that they come under Kali. Kali has jurisdiction not on heavenly planets and certainly not on Vaikuntha where the Lord resides. So, Kali has limited jurisdiction on Earth and related planets. So, certainly Krishna has not come under maya and as far as the features of religious cultures being desiccated and destroyed by demoniac people, that is not unique to Kali Yuga.
It is not unique to recent historical times. We see that in Ramayana, Mahabharata it is described, especially in Ramayana it is described how raksasas were terrorizing the sages. And what were they doing? They were defiling the sacred arena of yajña where people were not supposed to enter unless they were bathed properly and they were going and passing urine and stool over there. And not only that, we see that when Lord Rama came to Ramtek, he saw a pile of bones. And these were the bones of brahmins, rsis, sages who had come to the forest for doing austerities and sacrifices and they had been devoured by the raksasas. How horrendous it is! Somebody is being eaten alive like being consumed by a cannibal. Whatever atrocities the invading rulers may have done in India, there are practically no account of them being cannibals. That means the scriptures do document depravities far worse than what history has documented or what recent history has documented. And while documenting these sort of things in the Bhagavatam or Ramayana, neither Vyasa deva nor Valmiki said,” Oh, now it is Krishna who have come under maya.” Since adharma has come up and Lord will make an arrangement to reestablish dharma. The Lord incarnates or sends his representatives and those representative fight to establish dharma. So we understand that never there is lack of protection and there is destruction of the religious artifact and religious paraphernalia, that is sign of prevalence of dharma. That is not the sign of subordination of God. Just like the sun is never covered by clouds but people not the earth are covered. So maya covers people not God.
So is it that God is not protecting? An important fact to realise is that Krishna’s protection is not always conceivable to human conception. So how he protects does vary according to time, place and circumstance. And one way he protects is, he lets adharma go on for sometime so that people realise how terrible adharma is and they desperately feel the need for him. Of course its not just to realise that, Krishna also allows some people to get their karmic reactions through that. They are many factors involved in why Krishna allows certain things. But from our perspective we need to recognise that making arrangements for protection and depending on Krishna’s protection are not contradictory. They are complimentary.
When we talk about surrender, the first two elements of surrender are dynamic, anukulyasya sankalpah pratikulyasya varjanam. So accepting the favorable and rejecting the unfavorable are both aspects of surrender. So we see that in a society there has to be kshatriyas. And kshatriyas, for them surrender to Krishna’s will means fighting and making proper arrangements for fighting. We see the Pandavas, when they fought the Kurukshetra war, they knew they were fighting on the side of dharma but that did not mean that they didn’t prepare. Everyday in the morning they would make exhaustive plans about how their military was going to be formed and what formation would be best to counter the enemies’ formation. They not only made plans, they had spies who would inform what the Kauravas plans were, what formation they were going to have. Then they would change the plans depending on what news the spies gave. So, that means they were competent in their own way in making arrangements. So , we have to also make arrangements for protection and that’s why a government that is favourable to dharma is essential in its own way. And when that is there, then devotees are protected better. So as we share Krishna Consciousness, we know that always Krishna is going to protect. But that does not mean Krishna will protect in the ways which we expect. That also doesn’t mean that we don’t make arrangements for protection, we use the intelligence given by Krishna to make arrangements for protection and also share spiritual culture more and more so that people with influence will also join the cause of protecting Krishna’s culture. And in that way when we see Krishna’s message being protected and propagated, that also we understand is the way Krishna is protecting. So Krishna’s protection is inconceivable and it is our responsibility also to do what we can to protect. That is not lack of dependence rather that is use of intelligence in our determined devotional service. Thank you. Hare Krishna.
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