How would you feel if you were cursed to die in seven days? Not very good. But Parīkṣit Mahārāj said, ‘Let the snake-bird, or whatever magical creature this boy has conjured, bite me at once. All I want is to go on hearing the transcendental vibration about Kṛṣṇa.’ He wasn’t disturbed by it. In fact, there’s a list of symptoms given in the Madhya-līlā of the Śrī Caitanya Caritāmṛta, which is the teachings and pastimes of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. That’s another book besides the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam. It's a must-have, by the way.

And within that, Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu teaches Sanātana Gosvāmī the tenets of bhakti-yoga. In one section, he describes what symptoms one would have when one becomes spiritually advanced. He gives Parīkṣit Mahārāj as an example of a highly advanced person. The first symptom of the heart being spiritually enlivened, otherwise known as bhāva, is that he didn’t mind being cursed. It was called kṣāntir, a kind of immediate forgiveness of the situation. He said, ‘You’re cursed.’ A little boy cursed you, and it’s effective. So it's coming. There's a snake-bird coming for you. And he said, ‘Let it come. It’s the arrangement of the Lord.’ In fact, his opinion was that this is Kṛṣṇa’s arrangement for me. He said, "I was a king. I was so attached to all my things. How else would I have given them up? But now I have an excuse. A perfect excuse." Who else got an excuse in the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam to walk out on his family? Vidura.

Vidura was not cursed, but he was insulted severely by Duryodhana. You remember this? Vidura was trying to stand up for the Pāṇḍavas, and Duryodhana said, ‘Who is this guy, anyway? He’s not even full-blooded, part of our family. He’s a mutt. Get him out of here! I'll beat him up! I'll beat him out of here!’ In that very moment, Vidura felt, ‘This is Kṛṣṇa's opening for me to go out and just be absorbed and go on pilgrimage.’ This is what you do when nothing else works out. You just go to the Dhām. He went on pilgrimage for many years. He walked outside that palace, laid down his bow and arrow right on the doorstep, and then he was unrecognizable after that. No one could tell where he was, or they couldn’t see him anymore.

So, the times in which we’re tested most deeply in this world are the times when we can understand, 'How spiritually advanced am I?' One of the first symptoms is called kṣāntir. It means the heart is forgiving. It's like, 'Okay, it's Kṛṣṇa's arrangement.' This is embodied in one of the most famous verses that we’re going to visit today, in the 14th chapter of the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam.

“Prabhupada Picks” refers to a selection of verses from the 10th Canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam that Srila Prabhupada memorized himself and quoted very frequently in his teachings.

List of verses are in the description here: https://youtu.be/8teL06bAL1o

Verse for discussion: https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/10/1/16

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