The eyes which do not look at the symbolic representations of the Personality of Godhead Viṣṇu [His forms, name, quality, etc.] are like those printed on the plumes of the peacock, and the legs which do not move to the holy places [where the Lord is remembered] are considered to be like tree trunks.
Being prayed for by the demigods, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the Absolute Truth Himself, directly appeared with His expansion and expansions of the expansion. Their holy names were Rama, Lakṣmaṇa, Bharata and Satrughna. These celebrated incarnations thus appeared in four forms as the sons of Maharaja Dasaratha.
Srila Bhakti Vinod Thakur is one of the great compassionate servants of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. In fact he is an eternal associate of the Lord. He personally descended to this world of birth and death to teach all of us how we could overcome the toils and the sufferings of this material world. And here in this most wonderful song Bhaktivinoda Thakur is appealing to everyone to just take the names of Krishna. Whether you are a grihasta or whether you are a sannyasi, you can become free from all the happiness and sorrows of this world only by this process of Hari Nama, the chanting of Krishna’s holy Names. He is explaining that we are all bound up in this ocean of maya and we are forced to toil ruthlessly.
This is verse 34 of 3rd Chapter of Bhagavad-Gita. Wherein Sri Krsna is explaining the great importance of regulating our lives, in this world which is a place of duality there is attachment which our mind and senses develop to those things which gives us pleasure and there is aversion to those objects of material existence which cause us distress and we spend our whole life trying to develop deeper, deeper attachments to the sources of pleasure and trying to somehow or other by any means escape the causes of distress.
The whole world is enchanted by three modes of material nature. Those who are bewildered by these three modes cannot understand that transcendental to this material nature is the Supreme Lord, Kṛṣṇa. Every living entity under the influence of material nature has a particular type of body and a particular type of psychological and biological activities accordingly. There are four classes of men functioning in the three modes of material nature.
Respectable superiors like Bhishma the grandfather and Dronācārya the teacher are always worshipable. Even if they attack, they should not be counterattacked. It is general etiquette that superiors are not to be offered even a verbal fight. Even if they are sometimes harsh in behavior, they should not be harshly treated. Then, how is it possible for Arjuna to counterattack them? Would Krishna ever attack His own grandfather, Ugrasena, or His teacher, Sāndīpani Muni? These were some of the arguments offered by Arjuna to Krishna.
Today we are reading from Srimad Bhagvatam, eleventh canto, chapter two. Herein Narada Muni is explaining to Vasudeva, the father of Lord Krishna, a beautiful narration in which the essential truths of spirituality are revealed. It describes how Maharaj Rishabdev who is the great incarnation of the Supreme Lord, took his birth in this world as a son of king Nabhi, who was the descendant of Ägnédhra, who was a descendent of Priyavrat and he ruled this world as a great king and spread the glories of devotional service in all directions.
This phenomenal world is impersonally the representation of Vasudeva because the ingredients of its creation, their interaction and the enjoyer of the resultant action, the living being, are all produced by the external and internal energies of Lord Krsna. This is confirmed in the Bhagavad-gita (7.4-5). The ingredients, namely earth, water, fire, air and sky, as well as the conception of material identity, intelligence and the mind, are produced of the external energy of the Lord.
