342 Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead

fall into a dark well and meet death. Similarly, foolish persons, without
knowing the importance of the human form of life, spoil it simply for
sense gratification and die unnecessarily, without any useful purpose.

“My dear Lord, I am not an exception to this universal law of material
nature. I am also one of those foolish persons who has wasted his time for
nothing. And my position is especially difficult. On account of my being
situated in the royal order, I was more puffed up than ordinary persons.
An ordinary man thinks of becoming the proprietor of his body or of his
family, but I began to think in that way on a larger scale. I wanted to be
the master of the whole world, and as I became puffed up with ideas of
sense gratification, my bodily concept of life became stronger and stronger.
My attachment for home, wife and children, for money and for supremacy
over the world, became more and more acute; in fact, it was limitless. So I
remained always attached to thoughts of my material living conditions.

‘* Therefore , my dear Lord, I wasted so much of my valuable lifetime
without any benefit. My misconception of life having been intensified, I
began to think of this material body, which is just a bag of flesh and bones,
as the all in all, and in my vanity I was like a dog who believes that he has
become the king of human society. In this misconception of bodily life, I
began to travel all over the world, accompanied by my military strength—
soldiers, charioteers, elephants and horses. Assisted by many commanders
and puffed up by power, I could not trace out Your Lordship, who is
always sitting within my heart as the most intimate friend. I did not care
for You, and this was the fault of my so-called exalted material condition.
I think that, like me, all living creatures are careless about spiritual realiza-
tion and are always full of anxieties, thinking, ‘What is to be done?’ ‘What
is next?’ But because we are strongly bound by material desires, we
continue to remain in craziness.

“Yet in spite of our being so absorbed in material thought, inevitable
time, which is only a form of Yourself, is always careful about its duty,
and as soon as the alloted time is over, Your Lordship immediately ends
all the activities of our material dreams. As the time factor, You end all
our activities, as the hungry blacksnake swiftly swallows up a small rat
without any leniency. Due to the action of cruel time, the royal body
which was always decorated with gold ornaments during life and which
moved on a chariot drawn by beautiful horses or on the back of an
elephant nicely decorated with golden ornaments, and which was adver-
tised as the king of human society—that same royal body decomposes
under the influence of inevitable time and becomes fit for being eaten by
worms and insects or being turned into ashes or the stool of an animal.
