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TEXT 12 kanksantah karmanam siddhim
SYNONYMS  kanksantah--desiring;
karmanam--of
fruitive activities; siddhim--perfection; yajante--worship
by sacrifices; iha--in the material world; devatah--the demigods;
ksipram--very
quickly; hi--certainly; manuse--in human society; loke--within
this world; siddhih bhavati--becomes successful; karma-ja--the
fruitive worker.
TRANSLATION Men in this
world desire success in fruitive activities, and therefore they worship
the demigods. Quickly, of course, men get results from fruitive work in
this world.
PURPORT There is a great
misconception about the gods or demigods of this material world, and men
of less intelligence, although passing as great scholars, take these demigods
to be various forms of the Supreme Lord. Actually, the demigods are not
different forms of God, but they are God's different parts and parcels.
God is one, and the parts and parcels are many. The Vedas say, nityo
nityanam: God is one. Isvarah paramah krsnah. The Supreme God
is one--Krsna--and the demigods are delegated with powers to manage this
material world. These demigods are all living entities (nityanam)
with different grades of material power. They cannot be equal to the Supreme
God--Narayana, Visnu, or Krsna. Anyone who thinks that God and the demigods
are on the same level is called an atheist, or pasandi. Even the
great demigods like Brahma and Siva cannot be compared to the Supreme Lord.
In fact, the Lord is worshiped by demigods such as Brahma and Siva (siva-virinci-nutam).
Yet curiously enough there are many human leaders who are worshiped by
foolish men under the misunderstanding of anthropomorphism or zoomorphism.
Iha
devatah denotes a powerful man or demigod of this material world. But
Narayana, Visnu, or Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, does not
belong to this world. He is above, or transcendental to, material creation.
Even Sripada Sankaracarya, the leader of the impersonalists, maintains
that Narayana, or Krsna, is beyond this material creation. However, foolish
people (hrt-ajnana) worship the demigods because they want immediate
results. They get the results, but do not know that results so obtained
are temporary and are meant for less intelligent persons. The intelligent
person is in Krsna consciousness, and he has no need to worship the paltry
demigods for some immediate, temporary benefit. The demigods of this material
world, as well as their worshipers, will vanish with the annihilation of
this material world. The boons of the demigods are material and temporary.
Both the material worlds and their inhabitants, including the demigods,
and their worshipers, are bubbles in the cosmic ocean. In this world, however,
human society is mad after temporary things such as the material opulence
of possessing land, family and enjoyable paraphernalia. To achieve such
temporary things, they worship the demigods or powerful men in human society.
If a man gets some ministership in the government by worshiping a political
leader, he considers that he has achieved a great boon. All of them are
therefore kowtowing to the so-called leaders or "big guns" in order to
achieve temporary boons, and they indeed achieve such things. Such foolish
men are not interested in Krsna consciousness for the permanent solution
to the hardships of material existence. They are all after sense enjoyment,
and to get a little facility for sense enjoyment they are attracted to
worship empowered living entities known as demigods. This verse indicates
that people are rarely interested in Krsna consciousness. They are mostly
interested in material enjoyment, and therefore they worship some powerful
living entity.
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