“My dear father,” Lord Krishna said, “there is no need to worship the demigod Indra. Everyone has to achieve the result of his own work. We can actually see that one becomes busy according to the natural tendency of his work; and according to that natural tendency, all living entities—either human beings or demigods—achieve their respective results.
All living entities achieve higher or lower bodies and create enemies, friends or neutral parties only because of their different kinds of work. One should be careful to discharge duties according to his natural instinct and not divert attention to the worship of various demigods. The demigods will be satisfied by proper execution of all duties, so there is no need to worship them. Let us, rather, perform our prescribed duties very nicely.
Actually, one cannot be happy without executing his proper prescribed duty. One who does not, therefore, properly discharge his prescribed duties is compared to an unchaste wife. The proper prescribed duty of the brahmanas is the study of the Vedas; the proper duty of the royal order, the kshatriyas, is engagement in protecting the citizens; the proper duty of the vaisya community is agriculture, trade and protection of the cows; and the proper duty of the sudras is service to the higher classes, namely the brahmanas, kshatriyas and vaisyas. We belong to the vaisya community, and our proper duty is to farm, to trade with the agricultural produce, to protect cows or to take to banking.”
Krishna identified Himself with the vaisya community because Nanda Maharaja was protecting many cows and Krishna was taking care of them. He enumerated four kinds of business engagements for the vaisya community, namely agriculture, trade, protection of cows and banking. Although the vaisyas can take to any of these occupations, the men of Vrindavana were engaged primarily in the protection of cows.
This is a section of the book “Vrindavana Lila”.
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