Memento mori. Remember you will die.

That's an excellent question, a few things come to mind. In literature, art, there’s a theme, I believe it’s Latin, it’s called Memento Mori, which translates loosely as “Remember You will Die”. So, it’s not only a  focal point, as you point out, for those engaged in theistic culture, but even in the secular world, this sort of remembrance has been used to bring about focus. Otherwise, we have a tendency to be seduced by the dailyness of ordinary life, and really this is the beginning of spiritual culture.

When Sukadeva Goswami begins his response Maharaj Pariksit, who asks him “What is the duty of one in life, specifically for one who is about to die. What does he say, “varīyān eṣa te praśnaḥ, kṛto loka-hitaṁ nṛpa…” (Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 2.1.1) He’s saying, this question you’re asking, it’s not just good for you, it’s good for everyone, loka-hitaṁ, it’s beneficial for everybody to hear this answer.

And then, “nidrayā hriyate naktaṁ, vyavāyena cha vā vayaḥ,” (Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 2.1.3). I forget the Sanskrit, but he starts him about how generally people are lost in everyday life, in the dailyness of living… and even more specifically, in family life, family affairs.

So, family relationships , jobs, occupation, and he says, “āyur harati vai puṁsām,” (Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 2.3.17) talking about the rising and the setting of the sun, saying that both with the rising and setting of the sun, it’s another day wasted for those that don’t use their time engaged in spiritual culture. Srila Gurudeva also liked the Moha-mudgara-stotram of Sankaracharya, because there’s a similar sloka there beginning with dina-jamino…, cause Sankaracharya , he took sannyas when he was like 6 or 8. Imagine that! He was writing his Vedanta commentary when he was 9.

Being an incarnation of Lord Siva, Sankara. He was the personification of a brahmachari, sannyasi, he had no conception of male/female relationship, but he could understand from literature, or what he’d read in Scriptures that this would be important to understand. He’s saying, it’s appearing in different places, but he couldn’t really what they were talking about. So, he thought that he needs to experience this.

So, a king was dying nearby, and Sankaracharya though, “Oh, I’ll inhabit the body of that king. When his soul is leaving that body, I’ll enter there and keep the body maintained for sometime”, but he told his disciples, anticipating how absorbing this male/female relationship and all the things that expand from that, for strī… The sanskrit word for women is strī, and this means “who expands”, so he thought, “On the basis of what’s described in scriptures, I could get totally lost there, so he brought this Moha-mudgara-stotram, Moha means “hammer”, so it’s the hammer for smashing illusion. He’s saying, “If I won’t come out of it, then these verses here, just read them, pour them into my ears and that will awaken my consciousness.”

So, the king died, and he took the body of that king and enjoyed conjugal relations in a kingly way, and that time came, where his followers had to speak the Moha-mudgara-stotram, and the famous ending is,

bhaja govindaṁ bhaja govindaṁ
bhaja govindaṁ mūḍha mate
prāpte sannihite kāle maraṇe
na hi na hi rakṣati ḍukṛñ-karaṇe

But earlier, there are many slokas there, but one is the dina jamino sloka, which is parallel to the Bhagavatam, and someone at the math, saw that we put this sloka on the samadhi and said “Sankaracharya!!!”, and I said “Yes, Sankaracharya! We’re bring him this, Gurudeva liked this very much and he’s that great Sankaracharya; he’ll also have some position here.” They thought it was objectionable.

But, the parallel is saying that by the rising and the setting of the sun, we mark another day wasted… or, as someone else put it, more and more of less and less, as time goes on… And whenever someone gets a disease, its very popular in the modern world, under the influence of Secular Humanism, they’ll talk about someone who’s ‘battling cancer’. They’ll announce that someone has it, but they’ll go “but he’s a fighter, he’s going to fight this thing, he’s going to beat it!”, well, Im betting on cancer. I know there’s some place in Ireland where you can bet on anything… Even one writer who passed away recently, who’s an atheist, he saw the humour in this, and he said “it’s like saying that, “after a long battle with mortality”, so what are we fighting? We’re fighting mortality… we’re not going to win that fight. So, we have to acknowledge that. It’s mentioned in Bhagavad-gita, “janma-mṛtyu-jarā-vyādhi-duḥkha-doṣānudarśanam,” (Bhagavad-gītā 13.9) whats the darshan, the perspective, the view of material existence? These four things: janma, mṛtyu, jarā, vyādhi, birth , death, old age and disease.

Duḥkha means suffering. Everyone here will have to suffer from that. So, this theme of mortality is there in fine art and literature, and whenever they’re dealing with this, a little bit of reality is creeping in. There are no stories  that are just about happiness. We know the fairytale , they always have the ending ‘they lived happily ever after’, but everyone knows intuitively that’s sorta not true. First of all, they didn’t live forever, and they probably weren’t happy all the time. So, as people say, ‘that’s just in the movie’ or ‘that’s in the story’, but even in literature, the themes are loss, mortality… many things. Books that hold the imagination and capture the attention deal with these themes, the temporal nature of existence, and the more qualified the writer, is in their presentation.

I’ve mentioned that Chekov was the master of short stories. He’s telling a story about a man whose…, and this will parallel what we’re talking about…, this man is interested in this girl, it’s a Petersburg story..not only a Petersburg, but I think that’s where it takes place… At some party the girl he’s interested in hands him a note saying to meet her in the graveyard at midnight. So, this is like life a little bit… he’s thinking, “This is a joke, she’s playing some kind of mind games with me. I’m not so foolish to respond to something like that.” That was around 10:30, but by around 11:15, he’s starting to think, “But, what if it’s for real?”. He’s looking at the note, and around 11:30 he calls his driver, and tells him, “Get the horses and carriage ready!”, and they go out to the graveyard for midnight… and this is the mastery of the story: you think the story is the guy going to meet the girl. It seems like an ordinary enough…, but that’s not his.., …he wants to draw your attention to something else, so, while that man is in the graveyard waiting for the girl, who never arrives: she doesn’t come. So we think, “What, end of story? That big build up for nothing?” No! while he’s there in the graveyard, he start looking on all the gravestones, and he sees the names of so many girls with their birth date and their death date, and he’s thinking, “Oh, they were also beautiful, young girls, lost in romantic embraces, and this is their position. How brief that was”. Like the Shakespeare line “Out, out brief candle!”…about life.

Again the Gita..”anityam asukhaṁ lokam” (Bhagavad-gītā 9.33)…What is this world? It’s not only is it full of suffering… asukhaṁ, but anityam… it’s temporary. So, even if you get some good arrangement; it can’t last. This is our night for literature.

Shelley has a poem called Ozymandius, it’s about one of the ancient Egyptian kings. So, in the poem, this man out in the middle of the desert finds the remains of a giant statue, and it’s broken at the knees and the head part is lying in the sand, half covered in sand. He said, you can still see the arrogant sneer on the face, and at the base of the statue is an inscription that says, “I am Ozymandius , King of Kings, look upon my kingdom in envy and despair!“ And the man says, that when you look , you don’t see any kingdom. All you see is endless sand and nothingness. So, yes, at one time he had a kingdom that was so great, it would be the envy of anyone. He was the king of the world. Now he’s sitting there a half broken, broken statue, buried in the desert sand…a barren wasteland.

So this theme is in literature, and is also in the Scriptures . We hear that Yudisthira Maharaj, he met Yamaraja, the lord of death. So, you think, if you had the opportunity to meet the lord of death, you might have some questions, He’s saying, “In the world of the living, what’s the most wonderful thing?”.  

ahany ahani bhūtāni gachchantīha yamālayam
śeṣāḥ sthāvaram ichchanti kim āścharyam ataḥ param

The answer he says is, “I don’t think theres anything more wonderful or astonishing than this; that everyone before us has died”, …Everyday the news is primarily about death, who died. Famous people who’ve died, or people who’ve died by some kind of disease that’s scaring hell out of everybody, or masses of people who’ve died. Just go online, and check the headlines and tell me how many references to deaths of world leaders, authors, famous people, musicians, not famous people, brutal murders on christmas… He’s saying, “Everyone before us has died, we’re surrounded by death, the news everyday is about death, and still we’re thinking I won’t die”.

When they say that 40% of people… we’re thinking, “We won’t be that person.” We won’t be that person. He said ‘I can’t think of anything more wonderful than that. That in the world of mortality, where everything must die, people are thinking they will live forever.”

Until, as you say, you get some indication, a reminder.. Memento Mori can come in different ways. We heard the story of this Lalu Babu, who’s a rich man in India, who went to the market at the end of the day and he’s buying some fruit or some vegetables, and the seller is telling him, “It’s the end of the day, the sun’s setting, it’s time to go home, make your mind up, please choose.” But that simple voicing from the fruit/vegetable seller, struck him differently this particular day. It struck his heart, some sympathetic quarter and he thought, “Yes, right, my life…., I’m running out of time, everyday, sun up, sun down”….

Being indecisive about doing what is substantial, where to dedicate myself, where to put my maximum focus, my maximum energy. This is called patha-pradarśaka-guru. Some divine revelation, descended through an agent, unknown by the agent, that type of divine instruction can be there too.

So, that sort of awakening came to him. There’s also something described in the Scriptures as śmaśāna-vairāgya. Śmaśāna means the cremation ground, it means… just like at the time of a funeral we can say… at that time people become aware how brief life is, and the opportunities that come with it… “labdhvā su-durlabham idaṁ bahu-sambhavānte,” (Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 11.9.29) it’s mentioned in the Bhagavatam, that human life so rarely achieved, but unlike other lifeforms there’s some opportunity for spiritual culture, for liberation…

So we have Kunti-devi realising that adversity can be an impetus for focus and spiritual culture.

vipadaḥ santu tāḥ śaśvat
tatra tatra jagad-guro
bhavato darśanaṁ yat syād
apunar bhava-darśanam
(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 1.8.25)

She’s telling Krishna that “When everything’s going nicely, there is a tendency to forget you, but when I’m put into difficulty, the force of that adversity, centres me, gives focus to my mind and then I realise the necessity of remembrance of you, so in retrospect, maybe adversity is good for me.

So, we’ll from time to time be thoughtful. It’s not like we’re going to wake up in morning and go, “I’m going to die!! Maharaj said in the class, we’re going to die, we’re all going to die!!!” Not all the time, but from time to time. Of course Sankaracharaya, he was very intense. One of his statements was, “How should you approach spiritual culture, with what sort of attitude or intensity”, he said, “What would you do if your hair was on fire?, you’d find water and you’d go jump in it, dunk your head in it immediately”. He can say that.

So, there are different things that bring that about. Like age, age is a…, it’s one of the four, right? …Janma-mṛtyu-jarā, but it’s very deceptive, you don’t wake up one morning and all your hair is grey. You start with, “Oh I think I have a grey hair… Oh, …. I got 3”. Then sometime later, half of your hair is grey, and half of it isn’t… and then after sometime you go, “I only have three black hairs.. all the rest are grey”.

It comes wrinkle by wrinkle, grey hair by grey hair, everything, little bit, little bit, little bit, so you can be lulled into complacency. Otherwise, it’s a…, really in once sense a gentle warning… a little coaxing… But, that’s on the negative side, what about the positive side. We’ve said, yes, it’s a waste of time for those that do not engage in some sort of spiritual culture. That means,

śrotavyaḥ kīrtitavyaś cha
smartavyaś chechchatābhayam
(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 2.1.5)

Hearing , remembering, chanting about the Personality of Godhead.

tava kathāmṛtaṁ tapta-jīvanaṁ
kavibhir īḍitaṁ kalmaṣāpaham
śravaṇa-maṅgalaṁ śrīmad ātataṁ
bhuvi gṛṇanti ye bhūri-dā janāḥ
(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.31.9)

Hearing about the Pastimes of Krishna, is something substantial to do with one’s time, otherwise, we’re endlessly hearing… śrotā vyadini… I can’t remember these slokas.. sahasra. There’s thousands of things you can hear about other than Krishna-kathā.

So, there are parallel stories, parallel narratives in the Scriptures that we should become familiar with. Otherwise, we’re left…. meditating on the persons, places, things of this world, and hearing those stories… doesn’t have a liberating effect. So, Srila Guru Maharaj says, Srila Saraswati Thakur used to say, “When you wake up in the morning, to beat your mind, like a hundred times, with a broomstick”, or any other type of simmilar… Āmāra jīvana… selecting on your life saying, “Oh, I’m wasting my time…, wasting my time meditating on so many frivolous things, let me today do something valuable”. So, we set aside at least some of our time to engage in spiritual culture, to hear, to chant, to remember.

What does it say in the Bhagavatam? Narada to Vyasa… tasyaiva hetoḥ prayateta kovido, na labhyate yad bhramatām upary adhaḥ… (Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 1.5.18) It’s saying try for that one thing that’s not available..wondering the length and breadth of the universe, going through all the species of life, going through all the situations. What is that? – actual substantial, spiritual culture, Krishna Conception.

Saying, karmically speaking, you’re allotted a certain amount of happiness and certain amount of suffering, so why spend your time, trying to marginally increase the amount of happiness and decrease you’re suffering?

Oh, it’s the fish, I know, I always think we’re leaking water or something, like in India where it’s overflowing, but actually it’s the fish.. an aquarium.

That reminds me of Gurudeva talking about the fish in Govinda Kunda, and at one point being sold, and someone objected, but Gurudeva’s response was, he said, “This end result is going to happen to them one way or another, in a tank, or in a pond in India, but these fish will think, “Oh!…”, they are like celebrating because, what they are sold for, is going to be used for seva of Guru, Gaunranga, Radha Govinda, Vaishnava, and they’re like celebrating.” Very advanced Fish.

The tree that produces the flower, if the devotee takes the flower and offers to Giriraj, then how much the tree is benefitted? Patraṁ puṣpaṁ phalaṁ toyaṁ, yo me bhaktyā prayaccchati, (Bhagavad-gītā 9.26). Before Krishna approached the yajñik-brāhmaṇs…, just before that he’s pointing out to Balaram and other cowherd boys, he’s saying, “Look at these trees, they’re so magnanimous, they’re so wonderful, so beautiful; they’re full of fruits. Flowers, fruits, there it’s so hot, they’re bearing the heat of the hot sun above them, and what do they do? Provide shade for everybody else.” That’s taror api sahiṣṇunā… It’s blazing hot sun, they’re taking all that on the top, and beneath them they’re giving shade, fruits…he’s saying, “These are magnanimous souls… and whatever is asked of them, they give that.” And that’s the hint.

He’s going to send the cowherd boys to ask the yajñik-brāhmaṇs to ask them for something, and they’re going to deny him. So before, he’s saying, “Look at these trees, they’re so full of fruit, they’re tolerant, and at same time giving shelter and nourishment, like the great souls that they are…, “vaikuṇṭhera pṛthivy-ādi sakala chinmaya… (Chaitanya-charitāmṛta, Ādi 5.53) To be a tree in spiritual world, is an exalted position.

Then he turns to cowherd boys nearby, and say, ”Oh, there’s some brāhmaṇs nearby, they should know better, they do yajñā, they were brahmacharīs in the gurukula, they study the Vedas, they have the upavīta, they’re austere, their senses are controlled; they’re everyone you could want and then some. They’re Bhūdeva,… Bhūdeva, they’re the earthly Gods. Ask them, ask in Balaram’s name, because I’m just a lowly cowherd boy, and Balaram is a kṣatriya …by birth, so they’re brāhmaṇs, they have that brahminic ego, maybe for a kṣatriya, they’ll be …what’s the word?… munificent. Ask in his name.

And the cow herd boys ask on behalf of Krishna and Balaram, and the brāhmaṇs are going, “Svāhā… huh? We’re not done yet, nobody can take, first the brāhmaṇs take, do you know how this works? Have you read the Vedas? brāhmaṇs will take, then the other classes”…

And they come back to Krishna empty handed, they are ashamed and sorrowful. Krishna is smiling , “Go ask their wives…, their wives haven’t read the Vedas, gone to gurukula etc, they’re brāhmaṇs, but they’re wives… housewives.” Can’t say that anymore. Like they used to say, “What’s your occupation?”… “Housewife”. Now you’d have to say executive assistant or something, or “I have my own company, and I’m executive household assistant in my spare time… I have my own website”, as if raising children wasn’t something dignified to do, but anyway, the brahmin’s wives…, it’s mentioned here in the Bhagavatam how perplexing is Krishna Conception, the aprākṛta-līlā of Krishna. The goddess of fortune, Laksmi-devi, she’s always at the lotus feet of Vishnu, and by extension Krishna, she wanted entrance into Krishna-lila.. What is it Swarupa Damodhar tells Srivas Thakur? She doesn’t have the adhikār to be participating in that way in Krishna-lila”, so śrī-vatsa, she appears, or śrī-lekhā, different golden line on Krishna… however you want to take it.

So, the question posed here, or the thought or the concept is, the goddess of fortune is attending the lotus feet of Krishna, and yet, he’s begging, that is His Pastime. Why? What is the underlying…, why is the Supreme entity put into the position of a beggar, he owns everything, he controls everything. Satya-saṅkalpa, whatever he wills, is.  Why? Always shining a spotlighting on devotion. He wants to highlight the devotion of these brāhmaṇ’s wives, and to reciprocate with them at same time. Their hearts. So, they go and approach the brāhmaṇ’s wives, and they’re ecstatic to have this opportunity to serve. Why? They’d not seen Krishna before, they’d only heard of him, but who did their hear of him from? Fruitsellers… ladies selling fruits or flowers. What are Vedic brāhmaṇs going to talk about, as Guru Maharaj said Brahma with some paramātma and a hint of Bhagavan… Śrutibhir vimṛgyām (Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.47.61) pointing in the direction, but nothing clear, palpable, tangible that you could wrap your arms around.

So, they heard from fruit sellers, just like Rukmini heard,
śrutvā guṇān bhuvana-sundara śṛṇvatāṁ te
nirviśya karṇa-vivarair harato ’ṅga-tāpam
rūpaṁ dṛśāṁ dṛśimatām akhilārtha-lābhaṁ
tvayy achyutāviśati chittam apatrapaṁ me
(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.52)

Rukmini said, “Bhuvana-sundara, hearing about you I understand now… the most beautiful thing in the world.” But as Brahma says, “This is not beauty created by me, Brahma the creator, this is beyond, vismāpayan vedhasam (Vidagdha-mādhava 1.27), beyond what I conceive.” “Śrutvā guṇān bhuvana-sundara śṛṇvatāṁ te”, and she says, “Now I understand why there’s hearing”.

It’s not that well, we use hearing for this and for that, she says, “No!, hearing is for Krishna, it allows Krishna Conception to enter the heart, that’s purpose of hearing, that’s why we have ears”. This comes in the auditory sense, to hear the sweet descriptions of Krishna, the sweet sound of krishna’s flute, all of these things… it’s mentioned in the Veda-stuti in the tenth canto of Srimad-Bhagavatam… the prayers of the personified Vedas, they say, “How is it possible with the tongue is mundane physical thing and with your tongue and vocal chords you’re vibrating some sound to describe God? How’s that possible? You’re going to vibrate the name of God with a fleshy tongue and voice box?”

Wittgenstein, who is arguably the greatest linguistic philosopher of the twentieth century… he wrote these indecipherable books about language and philosophy,… but whilst writing them in Vienna he lived above a gas station, or benzene station… whatever…, and whilst he is writing these books, the guys in the gas station, they’d make coffee every day, and so Wittgenstein would be there writing or however he was doing it, and then the smell of coffee would come wafting up the stairs and he’d go… and then he suddenly realised that with all my linguistic abilities and skills, I can’t convey to you through language, the aroma of coffee. He’s the greatest linguistic philosopher of 20th Century and he’s saying, “With all my linguistic power, I can’t convey to you the aroma of coffee with words”. So here, what I’m saying is… Lets have a discussion about God… I’ll say some words and you’ll get some idea about what God is… I can’t convey the aroma of coffee, but let’s have a talk about God.

How’s that going to work? That’s their question (personified Vedas), it’s a good question…. It’s THE question in one sense… another one of THE questions. And the answer they give there is very interesting as well. They say, “This is why we gave you the power to speak, hear, see, touch, taste, smell, feel, this is why you have senses, so that you can hear the name of God, hear the Pastimes of God, vibrate the name of God, vibrate the Pastimes of God… smell the aroma of Tulasi offered to divinity, taste the mahāprasādam, all of these things, all... sensory activities are given mercifully for this purpose.

So, this goes back to your original question. So, if this is really what they’re meant for, can’t we find like fifteen minutes in our day, to do that with them? Or we want to babble… I was going say babble some nonsense, but that would be redundant right?…

So really, that is what Sukadeva Goswami is saying when he says, “The eyes that don’t see the beautiful form of the Lord, they’re like the eyes on a peacock plume, they’re not real eyes”. People will think, “This is like very fanatical”…. Yeah!… right, it’s a very intense point of view, but try to see beyond what it’s saying superficially. There’s a plane where someone can legitimately feel like that. Even in this world too, I don’t know if they say it so much anymore, but when I was growing up you’d hear these older people mention something, whatever it was, either something you had to have heard, seen, touched or tasted, and they’d say, “Until you’ve done X, you haven’t lived”. They’d say things like that, ”Until you’ve done X”, that’s the variable X, fill in whatever it is, “you haven’t lived, you haven’t fully experienced life”. It’s a particular sentiment they’re sharing, that having had that experience, they’re saying it’s so wonderful, if you haven’t had this experience, then you your life’s useless… or you haven’t really lived…. or you should curse the day you were born, many, many things like that. They can say that in relation to mundane experience, so here we have an experienced transcendentalist, as they’re sometimes called… they’re sharing their experience, and saying, “Once you’ve seen the beauty of Krishna , all other forms are disappointing and unacceptable.”

What is that, govindākhyāṁ sloka, keṣī tīrthopakaṇṭe (Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu 1.2.39) of Rupa Goswami, where he’s saying in the inverse, “If you want to maintain your attachment, to the person, places, things of this world, don’t go and see Govinda on banks of Yamuna at Keśīghāṭ, so beautiful, you will forget all these things, so, if you want to maintain your attachment to all these things, don’t go see that”. That type of beauty…

Kandarpa-koṭi-kamanīya-viśeṣa-śobhaṁ (Brahma-saṁhitā 5.30), everyone in this world is under the influence of Cupid, so, what are we told? Kandarpa-koṭi, kandarpa means Cupid, ten million Cupids personified point to the beauty of Krishna. Ten million Cupids, that power concentrated in one person, that sort of seductive, irresistible charm. “Ahaituky apratihatā,” (Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 1.2)… Guru Maharaj liked to use this word... Irresistable… not  by force, not out of fear of suffering the reactions of karmic circumstances, but out of being irresistibly drawn by the beauty , charm and sweetness of Krishna, that one automatically wants to offer themselves in service .

I used to think when I heard the statements of Sukadeva Goswami, sometimes I’d think, “Jeez sounds like a fanatical devotee”. I realised, he is…

pariniṣṭhito ’pi nairguṇya
uttama-śloka-līlayā
gṛhīta-chetā rājarṣe
ākhyānaṁ yad adhītavān
(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 2.1.9)

He was liberated in the womb of his mother, sometimes you hear he’s like 16, but he’s like 16 in his mothers womb… came out fully developed, wasn’t like a baby and grew up. And didn’t distinguish between male and female, that’s why he’s the loudspeaker for Srimad-Bhagavatam and the aprākṛta-līlā  of Krishna, and Krishna’s Pastimes with Radharani and the Braja-gopis. It had to come from someone with that type of qualification, who had no interest in the, back to Sankaracharya, who had no interest in the mundane relationship between men and women… saying, “‘gṛhīta-chetā rājarṣe, ākhyānaṁ yad adhītavān,’ but hearing the Pastimes of Krishna, my mind heart and soul are carried away to another plane that I didn’t know existed previously”.

Āmṛta means life giving nectar. Mṛtyu means death, āmṛta is the opposite, what’s that life giving substance?

kṛṣṇa-līlā amṛta-sāra,     tāra śata śata dhāra,
daśa-dike vahe yāhā haite
se chaitanya-līlā haya,     sarovara akṣaya,
mano-haṁsa charāha’ tāhāte
(Chaitanya-charitāmṛta, Madhya 25.271)

Kṛṣṇa-līlā amṛta-sāra, and of all these nectarine substances, Krishna-lila, the Pastimes of Krishna, they’re the ‘creme de la creme’ of all nectarine substances… Life giving means immortal life giving substance.

When I asked Srila Guru Maharaj why in the 12th Canto, when the Bhagavatam is concluding, this sloka is there,
“pṛṣṭhe bhrāmyad amanda-mandara-giri-grāvāgra-kaṇḍūyanān, nidrāloḥ kamaṭhākṛter” (Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 12.13.2) etc… About Kurma-avatar. So I was thinking, the Kurma-avatar… wonderful, I don’t understand, this is the resounding, concluding chapter of the Maha-purana, Bhagavat-purana, the 18,000 slokas, there’s a crescendo here, why is the Kurma-avatar being mentioned?… The tortoise incarnation… Guru Maharaj said, “What was their object, here in the kṣir-sāgar?”…, in the milk ocean, where the devas and the asuras… they actually have this at the Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok, when you leave, it’s the churning of the milk ocean Pastimes, one side asuras, other side devas, with the serpent Vasuki wrapped around the Mundara mountain, and Vishnu is on top, that’s Kurmadeva… in a Vishnu form. So, they’re churning, and their idea is to achieve āmṛta , nectar, immortality in the general sense, …and many wonderful things are being generated from that like the moon and Laksmi-devi, Indra’s elephant, different things, but their goal is āmṛta, nectar. So Guru Maharaj said, “The reason this sloka is mentioned in the concluding part of the Bhagavatam is that the madhura-rasa of Krishna, these Pastimes with Radharani and the Braj-gopis, are the ‘creme de la creme’, they’re the ultimate nectarine substance, that’s the nectar that they’re really trying to come into connection with, and that’s what’s being presented of the pages of Srimad-Bhagavatam.

Hare Krishna