Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.85.16
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
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nṛtām
—
human form
Accusative abstract: 'human-ness'. Among the 8.4 million species, the human form alone has the structural capacity for jñāna, vairāgya, and bhakti. To waste it is the single greatest tragedy in Bhāgavata cosmology.
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durlabhām
—
rarely obtained
Compound of dur (difficult) + labh (to obtain). The Bhāgavatam returns to this word again and again. Caitanya tradition: nṛ-deha + sad-guru + Kṛṣṇa-bhakti is the triple durlabha-prāpti.
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pramattasya
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of one who is mad with intoxication
Genitive present participle from pra + √mad. Pramāda means crazed inattention. The technical name for the disease the human birth was meant to cure — and which the human, drunk on his own birth, becomes.
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māyayā
—
by Your illusory potency
Instrumental of māyā. Vasudeva is careful: even the deluded use of human life happens by Bhagavān's own māyā — not outside His sovereignty. This is the doctrinal foundation of śaraṇāgati.
He laments for he who, having the possibility to attain such knowledge by devotion to you in the human form of life, does not attain it. Having somehow attained the rare human form of life with sharp senses (sukalpam), if the person madly pursues his pleasure by your maya, his life is wasted.
Vasudeva laments particularly for the person who is caught in saṁsāra. Without effort, because of attaining at this time the effects of previous karma, one may attain human form, suitable for attaining all goals (sukalpām). Another version has sukalpyām. Inattentive to you, the goal of life, his life is spent uselessly. O Lord! This happens because it is difficult to overcome your māyā.
Though I am intelligent, my life has been wasted because of absence of bhakti to you, because of your māyā. One attains human life without effort (yadṛcchayā), by previous karmas. That life has great capacity (sukalpām), or is skillful or healthy. It has sharp senses. Not concerned with the goal, bhakti to you, I waste my life. O Lord, though I am yours, I am foolish. Or because of your māyā, O Lord, hard to overcome, I have wasted my life.
Imagine being handed a winning lottery ticket and using it to wrap fish. Human birth is exactly such a ticket — durlabha, rare — and Bhagavān's māyā ensures that without His mercy, the holder spends the asset on sense-gratification and dies still holding the unused paper.
Bharata Mahārāja (SB 5.7–14) attained the rarest of human births — a king who renounced the kingdom for sādhana. Yet in the forest his heart attached to a single fawn, and at death his mind was on the deer, not on Bhagavān. He took a deer's birth next.
Vasudeva's warning is exactly Bharata's lesson: durlabhā nṛ-deha is wasted the instant the mind catches on viṣaya. Only sustained kṛṣṇa-smṛti redeems the asset.
My note
Source: vedabase.io