The Perfect Unfailing Medicine

Another point is that the conditioned souls are all diseased. They are suffering from various kinds of material ills, bhava-rogé, a chronic disease. Some people have taken many medicines; allopathic, homeopathic and Ayurvedic medicines but their disease is not cured. It has become chronic, incurable. They have lost their vitality. Because of this, they cannot digest any food. They have tried many medicines but taking so much medicine produces a bad effect. We see that many people are taking so many strong drugs, but what is the effect? Their disease becomes chronic; it becomes incurable. Although they eat, they cannot digest; the digestive fire has become very low. A person in such a condition cannot survive; he will die. He cannot digest anything. He has already lost his vitality, so what can be done? Once this condition is present, the kaviräja advises that there is only one thing he can eat: padma-madhu, that special type of honey. By taking that padma-madhu, he will regain his vitality. When a person is dying, he cannot eat food, but by administering that special type of honey, he can regain his vitality.

Similarly, a jéva who is wandering throughout innumerable universes is getting only suffering and pain, and so many material ills, bhava-rogé. That jéva has already lost his vitality, jévana-çakti, and has now become completely hopeless. He is afflicted with an incurable disease.

At last, disappointed by every side, he has the fortune to come to the lotus feet of çré-guru, who is a vaidya, a physician as he knows the perfect unfailing medicine to cure bhava-roga, material ills. Çré-guru knows why this person has been suffering and he knows the disease that is causing his suffering. From innumerable lives that jéva has been suffering the material ills of the material world. He is without hope of survival. No medicine will act except one: the honey emanating from the lotus feet of guru, guru-päda-padma-madhu. In the same way that a lotus flower allows the bumblebee whose wings are torn by the thorns of the ketaké flower, to take its shelter, çré guru-päda-padma, the lotus feet of guru allow a hopeless, wandering soul to take shelter there and suck the honey. That suffering soul is thus revitalised, gets nourishment and regains life. This is why it is said ‘çré guru-caraëapadma’.