SB 3.29.10

The four classes of men in the human society, namely the brahmanas, the ksatriyas, the vaisyas, the sūdras, or the brahmacaris, or the vanaprasthas, or grhasthas and sannyasis, they are called eight divisions of varnas and asramas, and they have got their respective duties to function for the satisfaction of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So when such activities are done and the result is offered to the Supreme Personality of God, it is called: karmarpanam (k-a-r-m-a-r-p-a-n-a-m), karmarpanam. That means the duties performed for the satisfaction of the Lord; and if there is any inebriety or if there is any fault, that it forgiven or that is atoned by such offering process. But this offering process is in the modes of goodness, but it is not pure devotion. In this mode of worship of the Lord, there is different interest. The four asramas and the four varnas, they act for some benefit of their personal interest. Therefore, such activities may be in the modes of goodness, but that cannot be counted in the category of pure devotion. Pure devotional service is described by Rūpa Gosvami that it should be freed from all kinds of material desires. Anyabhilasita-sūnyam (a-n-y-a-b-h-i, anyabhil, l-a-s-i-t-a, sūnyam s-u-n-y-a-m), anyabhilasita-sūnyam [Cc. Madhya 19.167]. So there can…, there can be no excuse for personal or material interest, and such activities should be transcendental to fruitive activities or empiric philosophical speculation. Such pure devotional service is transcendental to all the material qualities.

This mixed devotional service, either in the modes of ignorance or in the modes of passion or in the modes of goodness, can be divided into eighty-one divisions because there are nine different devotional activities: hearing, chanting, remembering, worshiping, offering prayer, rendering service, rendering..., surrendering everything, and so on. There are nine kinds of different devotional services, and each one of them can be divided into three qualitative division-namely hearing in the modes of passion, in the modes of ignorance, in the modes of goodness. Similarly, chanting in the modes of ignorance, in the modes of passion, in the modes of goodness, and so on. So three multiplied by nine is equal to twenty-seven, again if that is mixed, I mean to say, multiplied to three, then it becomes eighty-one. So this eighty-one kinds of mixed devotional service can be calculated, and one has to transcend such mixed materialistic devotional service in order to reach to the standard of pure devotional service, as it will be explained from the next verse.