Sri Isopanisad - Mantra 18

Mantra Eighteen of The Sri Isopanisad

agni naya supatha raye asman
visvani deva vayunani vidvan
yuyodhy asmaj juhuranam eno
bhuyistham te nama-uktim vidhema

Srila Prabhupada’s Translation

O my Lord, as powerful as fire, O omnipotent one, now I offer You all obeisances, falling on the ground at Your feet. O my Lord, please lead me on the right path to reach You, and since You know all that I have done in the past, please free me from the reactions to my past sins so that there will be no hindrance to my progress.

My Notes

• "By surrendering to the Lord and praying for His causeless mercy, the devotee can progress on the path of complete self realization."
• Karma-kanda is a gradual path of self-realization which, if even slightly deviated from, can cause ones actions to be transformed into vikarma, keeping him in this material world.
• "To err is human. A conditioned soul is very often apt to commit mistakes,and the only remedial measure to take against such unintentional sins is to give oneself up to the lotus feet of the Lord so that he may guide one to avoid such pitfalls."

As stated in a lecture by HG. Bhakti Vidya Purna Maharaja, one cannot understand the scriptures without bhakti. He then used the example of the one and the zero; one can be a scholar with the biggest brain around but without bhakti his intelligence will still only add up to zero. Like this, a devotee can never be completely self realized without surrendering first to Krishna. On the other hand, someone following the karma-kanda path of self-realization, a path layed out in previous yugas when people had longer lives and attention spans, will progress very slowly and become bored with the path, so he will fall back into maya. This can be expected, as Srila Prabhupada says above: "to err is human." Materially conditioned souls will make mistakes and therefore fall down unless they surrender to Krishna's mercy.

Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada ends his purports on the Sri Isopanisad by saying

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"By hearing and chanting the glories of the Lord, one becomes cleansed of all undesirable things, and then one's devotion becomes fixed upon the lord. At this stage the devotee acquires brahminical qualifications, and the effects of the lower modes of nature (passion and ignorance) completely vanish. The devotee becomes fully enlightened by virtue of his devotional service, and thus he comes to know the path of the Lord and how to attain Him. As all doubts diminish, he becomes a pure devotee."