View source for The path of fruitive work (karma-kanda), even when decorated by religious ceremonies meant to elevate one’s material condition, is a cheating process because it can never enable one to gain relief from material existence and achieve the highest goal

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{{terms|"The path of fruitive work"|"karma-kanda"|"even when decorated by religious ceremonies meant to elevate one's material condition, is a cheating process"}}
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{{compiler|TariniKalindi}}
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[[Category:Path Of...]]
[[Category:Fruitive Work]]
[[Category:Even When]]
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[[Category:Religious Ceremony]]
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[[Category:Elevated]]
[[Category:One]]
[[Category:Material Condition]]
[[Category:Cheating]]
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<h2>Sri Caitanya-caritamrta</h2>
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<h3>CC Adi-lila</h3>
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The path of fruitive work (karma-kanda), even when decorated by religious ceremonies meant to elevate one's material condition, is a cheating process because it can never enable one to gain relief from material existence and achieve the highest goal.
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[[Vanisource:CC Adi 1.91|CC Adi 1.91, Translation and Purport]]
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The great scripture Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, compiled by Mahā-muni Vyāsadeva from four original verses, describes the most elevated and kindhearted devotees and completely rejects the cheating ways of materially motivated religiosity. It propounds the highest principle of eternal religion, which can factually mitigate the threefold miseries of a living being and award the highest benediction of full prosperity and knowledge. Those willing to hear the message of this scripture in a submissive attitude of service can at once capture the Supreme Lord in their hearts. Therefore there is no need for any scripture other than Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.
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The path of fruitive work (karma-kāṇḍa), even when decorated by religious ceremonies meant to elevate one’s material condition, is a cheating process because it can never enable one to gain relief from material existence and achieve the highest goal. A living entity perpetually struggles hard to rid himself of the pangs of material existence, but the path of fruitive work leads him to either temporary happiness or temporary distress in material existence. By pious fruitive work one is placed in a position where he can temporarily feel material happiness, whereas vicious activities lead him to a distressful position of material want and scarcity. However, even if one is put into the most perfect situation of material happiness, he cannot in that way become free from the pangs of birth, death, old age and disease. A materially happy person is therefore in need of the eternal relief that mundane religiosity in terms of fruitive work can never award.

The paths of the culture of knowledge (jñāna-mārga) and of mystic powers (yoga-mārga) are equally hazardous, for one does not know where one will go by following these uncertain methods. An empiric philosopher in search of spiritual knowledge may endeavor most laboriously for many, many births in mental speculation, but unless and until he reaches the stage of the purest quality of goodness—in other words, until he transcends the plane of material speculation—it is not possible for him to know that everything emanates from the Personality of Godhead Vāsudeva. His attachment to the impersonal feature of the Supreme Lord makes him unfit to rise to that transcendental stage of vasudeva understanding, and therefore because of his unclean state of mind he glides down again into material existence, even after having ascended to the highest stage of liberation. This falldown takes place due to his want of a locus standi in the service of the Supreme Lord.
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