SB 3.5.2 · Srimad-Bhagavatam

Devanagari

विदुर उवाच सुखाय कर्माणि करोति लोको न तै: सुखं वान्यदुपारमं वा । विन्देत भूयस्तत एव दु:खं यदत्र युक्तं भगवान् वदेन्न: ॥ २ ॥

Verse text

vidura uvāca sukhāya karmāṇi karoti loko na taiḥ sukhaṁ vānyad-upāramaṁ vā vindeta bhūyas tata eva duḥkhaṁ yad atra yuktaṁ bhagavān vaden naḥ

Synonyms

viduraḥ uvāca — Vidura said ; sukhāya — for attaining happiness ; karmāṇi — fruitive activities ; karoti — everyone does so ; lokaḥ — in this world ; na — never ; taiḥ — by those activities ; sukham — any happiness ; vā — or ; anyat — differently ; upāramam — satiation ; vā — either ; vindeta — achieves ; bhūyaḥ — on the contrary ; tataḥ — by such activities ; eva — certainly ; duḥkham — miseries ; yat — that which ; atra — under the circumstances ; yuktam — right course ; bhagavān — O great one ; vadet — may kindly enlighten ; naḥ — us .

Translation

Vidura said: O great sage, everyone in this world engages in fruitive activities to attain happiness, but one finds neither satiation nor the mitigation of distress. On the contrary, one is only aggravated by such activities. Please, therefore, give us directions on how one should live for real happiness.

Translation (Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura)

Vidura said: O sage! Men in this world engage in action for material happiness, but do not attain happiness and do not destroy distress. Nor do they become detached. Rather by this, they increase their suffering. You know everything. Therefore please tell my about this. Having received secret knowledge from Uddhava who had been taught by the Lord, Vidura considered himself unqualified. Being despondent, he considered in his mind. Uddhava has said: tasyānuraktasya muner mukundaḥ pramoda-bhāvānata-kandharasya āśṛṇvato mām anurāga-hāsa- samīkṣayā viśramayann uvāca Kṛṣṇa spoke to the sage Maitreya, who was attached to the Lord, attentive to listening, with head bowed out of love and joy, while glancing at me with affection and smiling, which relieved me of fatigue. SB 3.4.10 The Lord taught the secret knowledge to Uddhava, the greatest and most intimate among Kṛṣṇa’s devotees, not to Maitreya who was listening. But that cannot be! To understand if Maitreya heard that knowledge or not, in the beginning I will not ask that great soul in case he does not know. I will ask only some of my own questions. If he knows that knowledge then he will say, “O Vidura! I was taught by the Lord just for giving this knowledge to you. Please understand this knowledge about the Lord who has no birth but takes birth, in which the contradictions are resolved, which the Lord explained to me.” On his own, he will explain this. In this way he begins speaking to Maitreya. By these activities man does not get happiness and does not get relief from distress (anyad). Nor does he become detached (uparamam). Rather, again and again, by doing actions, he experiences suffering only. Please give an answer to this question.

Purport

Vidura asked Maitreya some common questions, which was not originally his intention. Uddhava asked Vidura to approach Maitreya Muni and inquire into all the truths concerning the Lord — His name, fame, qualities, form, pastimes, entourage, etc. — and thus when Vidura approached Maitreya, he should have asked only about the Lord. But out of natural humility he did not immediately ask about the Lord, but inquired into a subject which would be of great importance to the common man. A common man cannot understand the Lord. He must first know the real position of his life under the influence of the illusory energy. In illusion one thinks that he can be happy only by fruitive activities, but what actually happens is that one becomes more and more entangled in the network of action and reaction and does not find any solution to the problem of life. There is a nice song in this connection: “Because of a great desire to have all happiness in life, I built this house. But unfortunately the whole scheme has turned to ashes because the house was unexpectedly set on fire.” The law of nature is like that. Everyone tries to become happy by planning in the material world, but the law of nature is so cruel that it sets fire to one’s schemes; the fruitive worker is not happy in his schemes, nor is there any satiation of his continuous hankering for happiness.