Link to purport by A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada

Transcript of Bhakti-Shastri class on this verse by Chaitanya Charan

Bg 16.9

etāṁ dṛṣṭim avaṣṭabhya
naṣṭātmāno ’lpa-buddhayaḥ
prabhavanty ugra-karmāṇaḥ
kṣayāya jagato ’hitāḥ

Synonyms: 

etām — this; dṛṣṭim — vision; avaṣṭabhya — accepting; naṣṭa — having lost; ātmānaḥ — themselves; alpa–buddhayaḥ — the less intelligent; prabhavanti — flourish; ugra–karmāṇaḥ — engaged in painful activities; kṣayāya — for destruction; jagataḥ — of the world; ahitāḥ — unbeneficial.

Translation: 

Following such conclusions, the demoniac, who are lost to themselves and who have no intelligence, engage in unbeneficial, horrible works meant to destroy the world.

etāṁ dṛṣṭim, this dristi this vision, this understanding, what is the understanding? kim anyat kāma-haitukam, there is no God and there is no purpose other than lust, 

etāṁ dṛṣṭim avaṣṭabhya, once they have accepted such a vision, 

naṣṭātmāno ’lpa-buddhayaḥ, the soul is lost, ’lpa-buddhayaḥ, these people are less intelligent, 

prabhavanty ugra-karmāṇaḥ, so they flourish in doing ugra-karmā, these terrible activities, painful for them painful for others, 

kṣayāya jagato ’hitāḥ, kṣayāya is destructive and ahitāḥ is unbeneficial. So at best they are unbeneficial at worst they are devastating destructive. 

naṣṭātmāno, souls inclination towards spirituality is lost because of excessive material attachments. 

alpa-buddhayaḥ, means they have very less intelligence, so they may have material intelligence which is restricted in the realm of matter. So they think this is where we have to live and this is where we have to enjoy. There is nothing more to do in life. So the earthbound are dearth bound. 

Fundamentals of economics are the resources are limited, so how can limited resources fulfill unlimited desires. 

So there are haves and have nots and have nots feel dearth bound that we don’t have the desired things. 

And haves have greed and greed makes the wealthy needy. So one fill do all kinds of terrible works to fulfill their desires. One just can’t fulfill all of their desires. Because the desires are so complex and entangling and increasing.

So what will happen is person will be in Ugra Karma and he will never be satisfied. 

Today’s world is doing WWS, World Wide Stupidity, people work for 8-10-12 hours come home and watch primarily TV in which advertisement comes which tell buy this product and tells that your hair style is wrong your watch is wrong your shoes are wrong your house is wrong and you should change it. 

So people watch TV and they have to go and shop, purchase this and that, there is a whole addiction called shop holism, which means addiction to shopping, and if you don’t have money to shop you have credit card, and take further loans, and if we have to spend more money we have to work more and if work more we feel more tired and when we feel more tired and then I think I need a break and when we come home we watch more TV. And then feel I need to go and shop more, and this cycle of entanglement continues. So this is WWS. ugra-karmāṇaḥ.

kṣayāya jagato ’hitāḥ, Srila Prabhupada talks here about weapons of mass destruction. So human intelligence should be used to benefit other living entities but here human intelligence is used to make such weapons. The amount of weapons of mass destruction is there it can wipe out the whole population of earth. It is terrible. Human creativity is used for such a purpose is a great tragedy. Now someone can say in past also there were weapons of mass destruction like Brahmastra but it was not a weapon of mass destruction it was such a precious weapon that it can kill embryo without killing mother. Also most of weapons in those days were in the hand of self-controlled man only when it went to the hand of not self-controlled, self-realized person it caused problem. Sometimes yes when both Brahmashra were colliding then mass destruction can happen but Arjuna / Veda Vyasa was having power to withdraw both the brahmastra. But today’s weapons are indiscriminate destruction anyone and everyone may be destroyed. 

And terrorism is opposite of Kshetriya mentality. Kshatriya will fight with opponent who are equal, equipped and engaged and alert. Today terrorist attack people who are not equals they attack civilians who are not equipped and they are also not alert. So there were always people who were destructive but in Kaliyuga such people got chance so that just by clicking one button they can destroy mass, these weapons are so destructive that they are not destroyable easily, so often it is difficult to destroy them also. If you burry them under ground it will poison the soil, if you burn them they will poison the atmosphere, if you throw them in ocean then it will poison the water and aquatic life and eco system will get disrupted so there was some proposal that these weapons should be put in rocket and thrown in outer space. So we are not satisfied by just polluting the earth so pollute the outer space now, of course there are devatas who will send it down again as trishanku was send down. kṣayāya jagato ’hitāḥ.

So demoniac creates such things, so human intelligence should be used to do good for others and not harm for other and unfortunately best human beings are used to do such harmful things today. E.g. was Enistin e=mc2 which leads to development of atom bomb. Initially Eniestine promoted development of atom bomb as Germany was having it but later when Japan was bombed it was his biggest repent. So there were always such people but today such people are having terrible power so that they can create havoc. 

Srila Prabhupada writes about animal killing also. 

Purport: Such materialistic inventions are considered to be advancement of human civilization, but the result is that people grow more and more violent and more and more cruel, cruel to animals and cruel to other human beings.

End of transcription.