In plain words
Bhā-ga-va-ta-mu: these five letters are always manifest in us as the five vital airs, the five sheaths, the five senses. The chief principle of these five letters is Bhakti, Jñāna, Vairāgya and Mokṣa. The letter bha is the sign of Bhakti. The letter ga is the sign of Jñāna. The letter va is the sign of Vairāgya. The letter ta is the sign of tattva-Jñāna. The letter ma is the sign of Mukti. The Bhāgavatam has not merely taught matters that concern God alone; it has gone on teaching the devotee’s conduct and the wonders of His play and His host of qualities, so that they touch the heart and can be lived in daily life. It is the Bhāgavatam that set forth the Divinity that makes God and the devotee one. In the Bhāgavatam itself everything lies contained. Bhāgavatam means ‘bāgavutām’, ‘we shall be well’. That is, by Bhakti, Jñāna, Vairāgya and tattva alone do we come to good.
Now if we inquire well into this, for what purpose human life has come, what its ideal is, what its inner meaning is, what its goal is, what does Prahlāda, a student himself, say together with his fellow students?
There is no good in this, no divine glory either: being born and born in the world, dying and dying, why should we toss about so? The road of no birth and no death for us: to seek out that road is the noble intellect.
So he said. Ah, we die; we are born again. Again we die. Dying and being born: is this alone the aim of our life? This may be the nature of the body. But it is not this. Trō-va-ve-tu-ku-ko-nu-ṭa do-ḍḍa-bu-ddhi. These are twelve syllables. This is a mantra of twelve syllables. This is what comes after Ekādaśī. When we say the road, which road! Is it the road home! Or the road we take to the hostel? The road we take to College, or the road we take to the cinema? It is to seek out the road by which we came, and go back by it. We must seek out the road that goes back to where we came from. That is what the Bhāgavatam too has said. ‘It is the nature of every living being to go back to the place where it was born.’ From wherever we came to College, there we must go back, to our home. In the same way, we must seek out the road by which to go back and reach that place of our own from which we came. Why did we have to seek it? Only because we forgot it did we have to seek it. Sunk in these pleasures and riches, in these joys, in these passing comforts of life, in these swings of delight, in worldly ties, we have forgotten the Divinity that is eternal Satya.
You all know this. The moment it is born the baby cries, “Kvā, kvā!” It does not cry, “Ko’haṃ, ko’haṃ.” I have told you this before. Ko’haṃ means “Who am I?” But before that, what is the inner meaning of the cry “Kvā, kvā, kvā”? Kvā means “where?”