A Victim of affection

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Humble Pranams at the divine lotus feet Of our beloved Bhagawan, continued............ By his constant meditation upon the personality of Godhead, King Bharata began to experience symptoms of spiritual ecstasy.His heart was like a lake filled with the water of ecstatic love,and when his mind bathed itself in that lake tears of joy flowed from his eyes. One day while Bharata was meditating near the bank of the river, a doe came there to drink.While she drank a lion roared

loudly.The doe was pregnant,and she jumped in great fear and ran from the river,a baby deer fell from her womb into the swiftly flowing waters.The doe,shivering in fright and weak from the miscarriage,entered a cave,where she soon died. As the sage observed the fawn floating down the river,he felt great compassion.Bharata lifted the animal from the water and,knowing it to be the mother-less,brought to his own ashrama.Bodily differences are meaningless from the view point of a learned transcendentalist: because Bharata was self realised,he saw all lving beings with equal vision,knowing that both the soul and the Supersoul(Supreme Lord) are present with in the bodies of all.He daily fed the deer with fresh green grass and tried to make it comfortable. Soon,how ever ,he began to develop great attatchment for the deer;he lay down with it,walked with it,bathed with it,and even ate with it.When he wanted to enter the

forest to coolect fruits,flowers,and roots,he would take the deer with him,fearing that if he left it behind,it would be killed by dogs,jackals,or tigers. Bharata took great pleasure seeing the deer leap and frolic in the forest like a child.Sometimes he would carry the Fawn on his shoulders.His heart was so filled with love for the deer that he would keep it on his lap during the day,and when he slept,the deer would rest upon his chest.He was forever petting the deer.Thus his heart became bound to the deer in affection. Being attatched to raising the deer,Bharat gradually became neglectful of his meditation upon the supreme LORD.He thus became distracted from the path of self realization,which is the actual goal of human life. The VEDAS remind us that the human form is obtained only after the soul undergoes millions

of births in lower species of life.This material world is sometimes compared to an ocean of birth and death,and the human body is compared to a solid boat designed to cross this ocean.The vedic scriptures and the saintly teachers,or spiritual masters,are compared to expert boatmen,and the facilities of the human body are compared to favorable breezes that help the boat ply smoothly to its desired destination.If,with all these facilities, a person does not fully utilize his life for self realization,then he commits spiritual suicide and risks taking his next birth in an animal body. How ever,even though Bharata was aware of these considerations,he thought to himself,"Because this deer has taken shelter of me,how can I neglect it?even though it is disturbing my spiritual life,I can not ignore it.To neglect a helpless person who has taken shelter of mewould be a great fault". One day as Bharata was

meditating,he began,as usual,to think of the deer instead of the LORD, breaking his concentration,he glanced around to see where the deer was,and when he could not discover it,his mind became agitated,like that of a miser who has lost his money.He got up and searched the area around his ashrama,but the deer was no where to be found. To be continued............. Jai Sai Ram