Verse 2.1.226

Bengali text, Devanagari and Unicode transliteration of verse 2.1.226:

সে দুঃখ-বিপদ্ প্রভু, রহু বারে বার যদি তোর স্মৃতি থাকে সর্ব-বেদ-সার ॥ ২২৬ ॥

से दुःख-विपद् प्रभु, रहु बारे बार यदि तोर स्मृति थाके सर्व-वेद-सार ॥ २२६ ॥

se duḥkha-vipad prabhu, rahu bāre bāra yadi tora smṛti thāke sarva-veda-sāra || 226 ||

se duhkha-vipad prabhu, rahu bare bara yadi tora smrti thake sarva-veda-sara (226)

English translation:

(226) “O Lord, may those miseries and dangers come again and again as long as Your remembrance, which is the essence of all Vedas, remains intact.

Commentary: Gauḍīya-bhāṣya by Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura:

“The essence of all the Vedas is that if a living entity constantly

remembers Kṛṣṇa, he will never face any kind of inauspiciousness. O Lord, even after falling into a miserable condition of life in this world as a result of my previous misdeeds, if Your remembrance constantly remains awake within my heart, it will be most auspicious for me.”

To liberate the forgetful materialistic living entities from their absorption in matter and arouse their inclination towards Him, the Lord has provided them innumerable threefold tribulations and miseries, which from the external point of view appear to be punishment but from the internal point of view are evidence of great compassion. At every step we are bewildered by the false ego of proudly identifying ourselves as the doers of our activities, and we remain constantly attached to sense gratification; but the bewildering illusory energy of the Lord turns all our material enjoyment into an ocean of misery. Yet behind the severe prescription of being afflicted by oppression, punishment, and threefold miseries, the incomparable mercy of the Lord flows like the Phalgu River, which flows underground. Since in this material world we face innumerable varieties of inconveniences like obstacles, disturbances, dangers, and misfortune, when our sense gratification is disturbed as a result, we condemn the misuse of our independence as godlessness, which is the root cause of our threefold miseries, and we simultaneously develop a distaste for absorption in matter. At that time we endeavor to search out our eternal benefit and freedom from material enjoyment, which is full of misery, and we remember the unlimited mercy of the lotus feet of our eternal Lord, Madhusūdana, the deliverer from sins and calamities. The lesson we get from this is that to endeavor to enjoy or lord it over material nature is an extremely foolish proposition. Remembrance of Kṛṣṇa, who is sac-cid-ānanda-vigraha and the cause of all causes, and engagement in His service based on remembrance is our eternal wealth and source of supreme benefit.

In the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam (2.1.6) Śrī Śukadeva Gosvāmī speaks to Mahārāja Parīkṣit as follows:

etāvān sāṅkhya-yogābhyāṃ

sva-dharma-pariniṣṭhayā janma-lābhaḥ paraḥ puṃsām ante nārāyaṇa-smṛtiḥ

“The highest perfection of human life, achieved either by complete knowledge of matter and spirit, by practice of mystic powers, or by perfect discharge of occupational duty, is to remember the Personality of Godhead at the end of life.”