Devanagari
श्रीभगवानुवाच
एतौ सुरेतरगतिं प्रतिपद्य सद्य:
संरम्भसम्भृतसमाध्यनुबद्धयोगौ ।
भूय: सकाशमुपयास्यत आशु यो व:
शापो मयैव निमितस्तदवेत विप्रा: ॥ २६ ॥
Verse text
śrī-bhagavān uvāca
etau suretara-gatiṁ pratipadya sadyaḥ
saṁrambha-sambhṛta-samādhy-anubaddha-yogau
bhūyaḥ sakāśam upayāsyata āśu yo vaḥ
śāpo mayaiva nimitas tad aveta viprāḥ
Synonyms
śrī
—
bhagavān uvāca — the Supreme Personality of Godhead replied
;
etau
—
these two doorkeepers
;
sura
—
itara — demoniac
;
gatim
—
the womb
;
pratipadya
—
obtaining
;
sadyaḥ
—
quickly
;
saṁrambha
—
by anger
;
sambhṛta
—
intensified
;
samādhi
—
concentration of mind
;
anubaddha
—
firmly
;
yogau
—
united with Me
;
bhūyaḥ
—
again
;
sakāśam
—
to My presence
;
upayāsyataḥ
—
shall return
;
āśu
—
shortly
;
yaḥ
—
which
;
vaḥ
—
of you
;
śāpaḥ
—
curse
;
mayā
—
by Me
;
eva
—
alone
;
nimitaḥ
—
ordained
;
tat
—
that
;
aveta
—
know
;
viprāḥ
—
O brāhmaṇas. .
Translation
The Lord replied: O brāhmaṇas, know that the punishment you inflicted on them was originally ordained by Me, and therefore they will fall to a birth in a demoniac family. But they will be firmly united with Me in thought through mental concentration intensified by anger, and they will return to My presence shortly.
Translation (Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura)
The Lord said: These two will immediately become demons, but they will quickly return to me since they will be absorbed in meditation on me in anger. Understand that the curse of yours was made by me.
Lord speaks to the Kumāras, pacifying them by saying “Do not fear.” They will be united with me by continuous practice of meditation touched with anger (saṁrambha). O brāhmaṇas! Your curse was produced by me. In order to have my two servants, the greatest devotees, take on the nature of demons, though they have bodies of pure sattva and are the best devotees and brāhmaṇas, they acted unfavorably towards you, and made you, the best of ātmārāmas, angry. And then you cursed them. All this has been done by me only. It is not an offense of my door keepers or an offense committed by you. “But what is the cause of giving such suffering to these two devotees, since you are affectionate to your devotees?” O brāhmaṇas! Know the cause. Reflecting carefully, understand, since you are omniscient. What more can I reveal?
Here is the cause. Jaya and Vijaya had a desire arising from prema. “O best Lord! O Lord of lords! Lord of Vaikuṇṭha! If your fighting instinct is not satisfied because everyone else is so weak, and because we are not your enemies, then make us two guards unfriendly towards you, and you can have pleasure in fighting us. Since we servants cannot tolerate even a small degree of decrease in your full happiness, we pray that this should be done, by necessarily ignoring your quality of affection for your devotee.” This is how they thought.
The śrutis show the presence of rasa in the Lord:
raso vai saḥ
The Lord is rasa itself. Taittirīya Upanisad 2.7
anandamayaḥ
The Lord is filled with bliss.
saiṣā ānandamayasya mīmāṁsā bhavati
This concludes the examination of bliss. Taittirīya Upanisad 8.2
It should be understood that there are secondary emotions (such as the desire to fight or to please his devotees in unconventional ways) within this broad category of bliss when considering the perfection of rasas of the Lord such as madhura-rasa. The Lord performs various actions for the pleasure of his devotees according the following statement:
asyāpi deva vapuṣo mad-anugrahasya
svecchā-mayasya na tu bhūta-mayasya ko ’pi
neśe mahi tv avasituṁ manasāntareṇa
sākṣāt tavaiva kim utātma-sukhānubhūteḥ
My dear Lord, neither I nor anyone else can estimate the potency of this transcendental body of yours, which has shown such mercy to me and which appears just to fulfill the desires of your pure devotees. Although my mind is completely withdrawn from material affairs, I cannot understand your personal form. How, then, could I possibly understand the happiness you experience within yourself? SB 10.14.2
In fulfilling the desires of his devotees, the Lord developed another desire, and thus he did not directly reveal the secret to the Kumāras. They then thought, “Even the greatest devotees can fall from Vaikuṇṭha because of great offense! What then to speak of where we, who are just dull reflections of sādhakas, can fall from this earth planet!” Thus, it is should be understood that the Lord desired to warn the sādhakas to be careful of committing great offenses.
Purport
The Lord stated that the punishment inflicted by the sages upon the doorkeepers Jaya and Vijaya was conceived by the Lord Himself. Without the Lord’s sanction, nothing can happen. It is to be understood that there was a plan in the cursing of the Lord’s devotees in Vaikuṇṭha, and His plan is explained by many stalwart authorities. The Lord sometimes desires to fight. The fighting spirit also exists in the Supreme Lord; otherwise how could fighting be manifested at all? Because the Lord is the source of everything, anger and fighting are also inherent in His personality. When He desires to fight with someone, He has to find an enemy, but in the Vaikuṇṭha world there is no enemy because everyone is engaged fully in His service. Therefore He sometimes comes to the material world as an incarnation in order to manifest His fighting spirit.
In
Bhagavad-gītā
(4.8)
also it is said that the Lord appears just to give protection to the devotees and to annihilate the nondevotees. The nondevotees are found in the material world, not in the spiritual world; therefore, when the Lord wants to fight, He has to come to this world. But who will fight with the Supreme Lord? No one is able to fight with Him! Therefore, because the Lord’s pastimes in the material world are always performed with His associates, not with others, He has to find some devotee who will play the part of an enemy. In
Bhagavad-gītā
the Lord says to Arjuna, “My dear Arjuna, both you and I have appeared many, many times in this material world, but you have forgotten, whereas I remember.” Thus Jaya and Vijaya were selected by the Lord to fight with Him in the material world, and that was the reason the sages came to see Him and accidentally the doorkeepers were cursed. It was the Lord’s desire to send them to the material world, not perpetually, but for some time. Therefore, just as on a theatrical stage someone takes the part of enemy to the proprietor of the stage, although the play is for a short time and there is no permanent enmity between the servant and the proprietor, so the
sura-janas
(devotees) were cursed by the sages to go to the
asura-janas,
or atheistic families. That a devotee should come into an atheistic family is surprising, but it is simply a show. After finishing their mock fighting, both the devotee and the Lord are again associated in the spiritual planets. That is very explicitly explained here. The conclusion is that no one falls from the spiritual world, or Vaikuṇṭha planet, for it is the eternal abode. But sometimes, as the Lord desires, devotees come into this material world as preachers or as atheists. In each case we must understand that there is a plan of the Lord. Lord Buddha, for example, was an incarnation, yet he preached atheism: “There is no God.” But actually there was a plan behind this, as explained in the
Bhāgavatam.