Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 1.15.40

visṛjya tatra tat sarvaḿ

dukūla-valayādikam

nirmamo nirahańkāraḥ

sañchinnāśeṣa-bandhanaḥ

SYNONYMS

visṛjya — relinquishing; tatra — all those; tat — that; sarvam — everything; dukūla — belt; valaya-ādikam — and bangles; nirmamaḥ — uninterested; nirahańkāraḥ — unattached; sañchinna — perfectly cut off; aśeṣa-bandhanaḥ — unlimited attachment.

TRANSLATION

Mahārāja Yudhiṣṭhira at once relinquished all his garments, belt and ornaments of the royal order and became completely disinterested and unattached to everything.

PURPORT

To become purified of material contamination is the necessary qualification for becoming one of the associates of the Lord. No one can become an associate of the Lord or can go back to Godhead without such purification. Mahārāja Yudhiṣṭhira, therefore, to become spiritually pure, at once gave up his royal opulence, relinquishing his royal dress and garments. The kaṣāya, or saffron loincloth of a sannyāsī, indicates freedom from all attractive material garments, and thus he changed his dress accordingly. He became disinterested in his kingdom and family and thus became free from all material contamination, or material designation. People are generally attached to various kinds of designations — the designations of family, society, country, occupation, wealth, position and many others. As long as one is attached to such designations, he is considered materially impure. The so-called leaders of men in the modern age are attached by national consciousness, but they do not know that such false consciousness is also another designation of the materially conditioned soul; one has to relinquish such designations before one can become eligible to go back to Godhead. Foolish people adore such men who die in national consciousness, but here is an example of Mahārāja Yudhiṣṭhira, a royal king who prepared himself to leave this world without such national consciousness. And yet he is remembered even today because he was a great pious king, almost on the same level with the Personality of Godhead Śrī Rāma. And because people of the world were dominated by such pious kings, they were happy in all respects, and it was quite possible for such great emperors to rule the world.