Envy

This morning, for some reason I was thinking about envy, and how it is the enemy of the soul. Srila Prabhupada once described the Atheist as someone who is so envious of God, that they deny His existence. (ie. don’t believe in God)

I did a search on Vanipedia search and came up with just a few of the many things Srila Prabhupada had to say about envy.

The venomous snake. I mean, by nature they are so angry and so envious that they feel pleasure if somebody is bitten and immediately die. That is their nature.

And the Cāṇakya Paṇḍita says that a person who has envious nature, he’s more dangerous than the serpent. Cāṇakya Paṇḍita has enunciated that sarpaḥ krūraḥ khalaḥ krūraḥ (Cāṇakya Paṇḍita). There are two envious creatures: one is the snake, and another, a man envious, unnecessarily envious of others. So sarpāt krūrataraḥ khalaḥ. That man, envious, he’s dangerous, more dangerous than the snake. Why more dangerous? Now, mantrauśādhi-vaśaḥ sarpaḥ khalaḥ kena nivāryate. You can subdue a snake by herbs and by chanting particular type of mantra. There are many snake charmers in India, by mantra they can charm the snakes.

But a person who is envious, you cannot pacify him in any way. Therefore sarpaḥ krūrataraḥ khalaḥ. Just like Jesus Christ was crucified by some envious persons. Even the Roman judge denied that “This man should not be . . . there is no such fault.” But because they were envious, they were persistent, “Yes, he should be crucified.”

So this is the nature of envious person.

So, yadṛcchā-lābha-santuṣṭaḥ dvandvātīta. Dvandvātīta means he should avoid quarreling. Because this world is full of—especially this age—people are seeking how to quarrel. You see? So we have to avoid quarrel. You see? Dvandvātīta vimatsaraḥ: and we should not be envious. Sometimes we are faced with persons who are envious to us, but we should not be envious. Just like the best example is Lord Jesus Christ. His enemies who crucified him, they are envious of Jesus Christ. (Lecture SB 07.09.13-14 – Montreal)

But Lord Jesus Christ, he was not envious to them. When he was being crucified, he prayed God, “O Lord, they do not know what they are doing. Please excuse them.” Just see how much, I mean to say, noble he was. Vimatsaraḥ. He was not envious to anyone, even to his enemy. So Kṛṣṇa consciousness teaches us that they are not envious even to the enemies. (Lecture BG 04.19-22 – New York)