conditioned living entities | The Hare Krishna Movement

Yesterday I was reading from the Srimad Bhagavatam, and there was something from the purport that caught my attention, and had me read and re-read the purport many times.

As a cow, bound through the nose by a long rope, is conditioned, so also human beings are bound by different Vedic injunctions and are conditioned to obey the orders of the Supreme. (SB 1.13.42)

Every living being, whether a man or an animal or a bird, thinks that he is free by himself, but actually no one is free from the severe laws of the Lord. The laws of the Lord are severe because they cannot be disobeyed in any circumstance. The man-made laws may be evaded by cunning outlaws, but in the codes of the supreme lawmaker there is not the slightest possibility of neglecting the laws…

… The statutory laws of the state are imperfect imitation replicas of religious codes. The secular state, or the godless state, allows the citizens to break the laws of God, but restricts them from disobeying the laws of the state; the result is that the people in general suffer more by breaking the laws of God than by obeying the imperfect laws made by man…

…The factual position of the living being is, however, that he is the eternal servitor of the Supreme Lord…

…But in the conditioned material world, every living being wants to be the Lord of other living beings, and thus by the illusion of māyā this mentality of lording it over becomes a cause of further extension of conditional life. (from Purport)

I think of the sad state of the world today, where Gods laws are being broken. There are slaughter houses for animals, where billions of living creatures are cruelly murdered every day, there is mass genocide taking place in the Middle East and other parts of the world where humans are killed or left homeless. Where people are controlled by dictators, warlords, and unscrupulous leaders. Again I am reminded of “Mans inhumanity to man and beast”. Breaking the laws of God, can only result in more suffering for the living conditioned souls.

Full text and Purport

The Sankirtana Movement is the Pastime of Lord Caitanya

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…The saṅkīrtana movement inaugurated by Lord Caitanya is a transcendental pastime of the Lord. “By it I live simultaneously to preach and popularize this movement in the material world.” In that saṅkīrtana movement of Lord Caitanya, Nityānanda and Advaita are His expansions, and Gadādhara and Śrīvāsa are His internal and marginal potencies. The living entities are also called marginal potency because they have, potentially, two attitudes-namely the tendency to surrender unto Kṛṣṇa and the tendency to become independent of Him. Due to the propensity for material enjoyment, the living entity becomes contaminated by the material world. When a living entity is dominated by a desire for material enjoyment and becomes entangled in material life, he is subjected to the threefold miseries of material existence. He is just like a seed sown in the earth. If a seed is overpowered by too much water, there is no possibility of its fructifying. Similarly, if a man is captivated by material enjoyment, and even if the seed of such enjoyment is within the heart of the conditioned soul, he can be overpowered by a flood of transcendental activities performed in love of God. In this way his potential seed cannot fructify into a conditional life of material existence. The conditioned living entities in the material world, especially in the present age of Kali, are overpowered by the flood of love of God inaugurated by Lord Caitanya and His associates. (from Teachings of Lord Caitanya Chapter 17)