258
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam
[Canto 7, Ch. 9]
PURPORT
Throughout the entire world, everyone is making big, big plans to adjust the miseries of the material world, and this is true at present, in the past and in the future. Nonetheless, although they make elaborate political, social and cultural plans, they have all been described herein as  vimūḍha —fools. The material world has been described in  Bhagavad-gītā  as  duḥkhālayam aśāśvatam —temporary and miserable—but these fools are trying to turn the material world into  sukhālayam , a place of happiness, not knowing how everything acts by the arrangement of material nature, which works in her own way.
prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā kartāham iti manyate
“The bewildered spirit soul, under the influence of the three modes of material nature, thinks himself to be the doer of activities that are in actuality carried out by nature.” (Bg. 3.27)
There is a plan for material nature, personally known as Durgā, to punish the demons. Although the  asuras , the godless demons, struggle for existence, they are directly attacked by the goddess Durgā, who is well equipped with ten hands with different types of weapons to punish them. She is carried by her lion carrier, or the modes of passion and ignorance. Everyone struggles very hard to fight through the modes of passion and ignorance and conquer material nature, but at the end everyone is vanquished by nature’s laws.
There is a river known as Vaitaraṇī between the material and spiritual worlds, and one must cross this river to reach the other side, or the spiritual world. This is an extremely difficult task. As the Lord says in  Bhagavad-gītā  (7.14),  daivī hy eṣā guṇamayī mama māyā duratyayā : “This divine energy of Mine, consisting of the three modes of material nature, is difficult to overcome.” The same word  duratyaya , meaning “very difficult,” is used here. Therefore one cannot surpass the stringent laws of material nature except by the mercy of the Supreme Lord. Nonetheless, although all materialists are baffled in their plans, they try again and again to become happy in this material world. Therefore they have