empires are temporary

So in the previous verse, Kuntidevi prayed to Krsna, sneha-pasam imam chindhi [SB 1.8.41]: "Please cut off my attraction, the rope." Just like rope is cut. If your hands and legs are tied up with rope, and if you want to be free, then the knot is cut into pieces. So our affection for this material world has to be cut into pieces. That is the aim of human life. The living being, nobody knows when he dropped into this ocean of material existence. Bhaktivinoda Thakura has sung, anadi karama-phale, paḍi' bhavarnava-jale. Anadi. Adi means the beginning of creation, and anadi means before that. This creation, this material world, it is created and annihilated, as is the nature of anything material. We have got experience from our body, or any body-everything here is created and annihilated. Even big, big empires like the Roman Empire, the Carthaginian Empire, the Moghul Empire, and so many empires, they came, and they were annihilated. This is the nature. Therefore Vidyapati has sung, kata caturananam, mari mari yavat, na tuya adi avasana. Caturanana means the Brahma. So Brahma, his life, duration of life, is very, very long. We know from Bhagavad-gita that sahasra-yuga-paryantam ahar yad brahmano viduḥ [Bg 8.17].    (More...)