Devanagari
मैत्रेय उवाच
सेयं भगवतो माया यन्नयेन विरुध्यते ।
ईश्वरस्य विमुक्तस्य कार्पण्यमुत बन्धनम् ॥ ९ ॥
Verse text
maitreya uvāca
seyaṁ bhagavato māyā
yan nayena virudhyate
īśvarasya vimuktasya
kārpaṇyam uta bandhanam
Synonyms
maitreyaḥ uvāca
—
Maitreya said
;
sā iyam
—
such a statement
;
bhagavataḥ
—
of the Personality of Godhead
;
māyā
—
illusion
;
yat
—
that which
;
nayena
—
by logic
;
virudhyate
—
becomes contradictory
;
īśvarasya
—
of the Supreme Personality of Godhead
;
vimuktasya
—
of the ever liberated
;
kārpaṇyam
—
insufficiency
;
uta
—
as also, what to speak of
;
bandhanam
—
bondage .
Translation
Śrī Maitreya said: Certain conditioned souls put forward the theory that the Supreme Brahman, or the Personality of Godhead, is overcome by illusion, or māyā, and at the same time they maintain that He is unconditioned. This is against all logic.
Translation (Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura)
Maitreya said: This māyā which cannot be understood by logic, belonging to the Supreme Lord but not his svarūpa, is the cause of deprivation and ignorance for the jīva who has the possibility of realizing the form, knowledge and bliss of the Lord.
This is māyā which belongs to the Lord with inconceivable powers (bhagavataḥ), and which cannot be known by logic (nayena). This energy, being acit by nature, belongs to the Lord who is purely spiritual or cit. The guṇas such as sattva also belong to the Lord. But Bhagavān, in his svarūpa, is without these guṇas. Similarly the sun, though pure light, possesses clouds, darkness and snow, which are unfavorable to the light or fire.
yathaiva sūryāt prabhavanti vāraḥ
punaś ca tasmin praviśanti kāle
bhūtāni bhūmau sthira-jaṅgamāni
tathā harāv eva guṇa-pravāhaḥ
Just as water arises from the sun and enters the sun, and just as animals and plants arise from the earth and enter the earth, the world made of guṇas arises from the Lord and enters him. SB 4.31.15
yathā nabhasy abhra-tamaḥ-prakāśā
bhavanti bhūpā na bhavanty anukramāt
evaṁ pare brahmaṇi śaktayas tv amū
rajas tamaḥ sattvam iti pravāhaḥ
O King! Just as clouds, darkness and light appear and disappear in the sky in succession, the energies of rajas, tamas and sattva appear and disappear in the Supreme Lord. SB 4.31.17
taṁ kleśa-karma-paripāka-guṇa-pravāhair
avyāhatānubhavam īśvaram advitīyam
prāṇādibhiḥ sva-vibhavair upagūḍham anyo
manyeta sūryam iva megha-himoparāgaiḥ
But although the consciousness of the Lord, who is the supreme one without a second, is never affected by material distress, by the reactions of material work or by the constant flow of nature’s modes, ordinary persons nonetheless think that the Lord is covered by his own creations of prāṇa and other material elements, just as one may think that the sun is covered by clouds, snow or an eclipse. SB 10.84.33
These verses show that this is beyond logic. Thus, the action of creating the universe takes place by māyā, an energy of the Lord, whereas the Lord is without change in his svarūpa. Because of non-difference between the possessor of the śakti and the śakti, it can be said that the Lord creates the universe.
prakṛtir yasyopādānam ādhāraḥ puruṣaḥ paraḥ
sato ’bhivyaṣjakaḥ kālo brahma tat tritayaṁ tv aham
Prakrṭi is the material cause, the puruṣa is the foundational cause. Time, the indirect cause, is agitator of prakṛti. I am all three. SB 11.24.19
Thus the doubt concerning the Lord has been resolved. The second line and the next verse resolve the doubt concerning the jīva. Though the jīva has the capacity (īṣvarasya) for realizing his form of knowledge and bliss, and thus can be called free of contamination (vimuktasya), he is in a condition of deprivation (kārpaṇyam) or durbhagatvam. Thus the jīva is in a state of bondage. This is because of māyā, which here means avidyā or ignorance, a function of māyā. These two, ignorance and bondage are mentioned as the cause.
The meaning is this. You have asked how the jīva loses knowledge because of māyā. If it is true that there is actual destruction of knowledge by māyā, then māyā, the Lord’s energy, should be punished by the Lord. But this is not the case. One may forget that one has a jewel locket hanging over one’s chest, and lament that one has lost the jewel. Or perhaps it is like this: I get accused of theft by mistake, though it is not my fault and get punished by the state officials. Because of jīva’s association with beginningless ignorance, the jīva forgets his knowledge and bliss, identifies with the body and the body’s qualities, and thus becomes durbhagatvam. If he suffers, whose fault is that? Losing his powers by the association of ignorance, he wanders around, like a man with a bad wife. Because the jīva has possibility of some small amount of power he is called īśvara in the verse.
Others explain the verse as follows. Verse 5 refers to the Paramātmā, a form of pure consciousness, whose knowledge is unaffected by place and time. Why does he associate with ignorance? If this is the question, the answer is also found in this verse. This māyā is only the bewildering potency of the Lord. If it did not have the power to bewilder, there would be no question asked (since no one would be bewildered). This is because (yat) it is contrary by its behavior (nītyā virudhayte). The contrary conduct is explained. There is a mistake (kārpaṇyam) in thinking that the Paramātmā is bewildered, that he is a jīva. The one Paramātmā of pure consciousness cannot be bewildered by māyā, but the jīva always is. It is proper to say that Paramātmā is never bewildered. And who can be simultaneously bewildered and unbewildered by his own māyā? Whoever asks such questions or concludes this by extreme imagination is bewildered by māyā.
The paramātmā and jīvātmā are like the sun and the sun’s ray, which have the same qualities, but are also different. One is conscious and the other is a conscious particle. This is the correct conclusion. Reflection and light rays arise from the sun and are particles similar to the sun, They are not distinguished from the sun and are also distinguished from the sun. Similarly though māyā-śakti and jīva-śakti arise from the Lord, and without beginning are not separate from the Lord, by svarūpa they are different from the Lord.
puṁso ’sti prakṛtir nityā praticchāyaiva bhāsvate
Prakṛti of the Lord is eternal, and shines as a reflection of the Lord. From a text of Āyurveda
Jīva-śakti is described in the śruti:
yathāgneḥ kṣudrā visphuliṅgā vyuccarantīty evam evātmanaḥ
Just as a small spark from the fire wanders about, the jīva also wanders. Bṛhad-āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.2.20
Gītā also says:
apareyam itastvanyāṁ prakṛtiṁ viddhi me parām.
jīvabhūtāṁ mahāvāho yayedaṁ dhāryyate jagad
This is my inferior energy. Understand my superior energy which is different from this inferior energy. It is the jīvas, by whom the inferior energy is employed for their enjoyment. BG 7.5
Purport
Sometimes it appears that the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is one-hundred-percent spiritual, cannot be the cause of the illusory potency which covers the knowledge of the individual soul. But factually there is no doubt that the illusory, external energy is also part and parcel of the Supreme Lord. When Vyāsadeva realized the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he saw the Lord along with His external potency, which covers the pure knowledge of the individual living entities. Why the external energy acts in this way may be considered as follows, as analyzed by great commentators like Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura and Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī. Although the material, illusory energy is distinct from the spiritual energy, it is one of the many energies of the Lord, and thus the material modes of nature (the mode of goodness, etc.) are surely qualities of the Lord. The energy and the energetic Personality of Godhead are not different, and although such energy is one with the Lord, He is never overpowered by it. Although the living entities are also parts and parcels of the Lord, they are overcome by the material energy. The inconceivable
yogam aiśvaram
of the Lord, as mentioned in
Bhagavad-gītā
(9.5)
, is misunderstood by the froggish philosophers. In order to support a theory that Nārāyaṇa (the Lord Himself) becomes a
daridra-nārāyaṇa,
a poor man, they propose that the material energy overcomes the Supreme Lord. Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī and Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura, however, offer a very nice example in explanation. They say that although the sun is all light, the clouds, darkness and snowfall are all part and parcel of the sun. Without the sun there is no possibility of the sky’s being overcast with clouds or darkness, nor can there be snowfall on the earth. Although life is sustained by the sun, life is also disturbed by darkness and snowfall produced by the sun. But it is also a fact that the sun itself is never overcome by darkness, clouds or snowfall; the sun is far, far away from such disturbances. Only those who have a poor fund of knowledge say that the sun is covered by a cloud or by darkness. Similarly, the Supreme Brahman, or the Parabrahman, the Personality of Godhead, is always unaffected by the influence of the material energy, although it is one of His energies (
parāsya śaktir vividhaiva śrūyate
).
There is no reason to assert that the Supreme Brahman is overpowered by the illusory energy. The clouds, darkness and snowfall can cover only a very insignificant portion of the sun’s rays. Similarly, the modes of material nature may react upon the raylike living entities. It is the misfortune of the living entity, certainly not without reason, that the influence of the material energy acts on his pure consciousness and eternal bliss. This covering up of pure consciousness and eternal bliss is due to
avidyā-karmā-saṁjṣā,
the energy which acts on the infinitesimal living entities who misuse their minute independence. According to
Viṣṇu Purāṇa, Bhagavad-gītā
and all other Vedic literatures, the living entities are generated from the
taṭasthā
energy of the Lord, and thus they are always the energy of the Lord and are not the energetic. The living entities are like the sun’s rays. Although, as explained above, there is no qualitative difference between the sun and its rays, the sun’s rays are sometimes overpowered by another energy of the sun, namely by clouds or by snowfall. Similarly, although the living entities are qualitatively one with the superior energy of the Lord, they have the tendency to be overpowered by the inferior, material energy. In the Vedic hymns it is said that the living entities are like the sparks of a fire. The sparks of fire also are fire, but the burning potency of the sparks is different from that of the original fire. When the sparks fly out of touch with the original fire, they come under the influence of a nonfiery atmosphere; thus they maintain the potency to be again one with the fire as sparks, but not as the original fire. The sparks can everlastingly remain within the original fire as its parts and parcels, but the moment the sparks become separated from the original fire, their misfortunes and miseries begin. The clear conclusion is that the Supreme Lord, who is the original fire, is never overpowered, but the infinitesimal sparks of the fire can become overpowered by the illusory effect of
māyā.
It is a most ludicrous argument to say that the Supreme Lord is overpowered by His own material energy. The Lord is the master of the material energy, but the living entities are in the conditioned state, controlled by the material energy. That is the version of
Bhagavad-gītā.
The froggish philosophers who put forward the argument that the Supreme Lord is overpowered by the material mode of goodness are themselves illusioned by the same material energy, although they think of themselves as liberated souls. They support their arguments by a false and laborious jugglery of words, which is a gift of the same illusory energy of the Lord. But the poor froggish philosophers, due to a false sense of knowledge, cannot understand the situation.
In the Sixth Canto, Ninth Chapter, thirty-fourth verse, of the
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam
it is stated:
duravabodha iva tavāyaṁ vihāra-yogo yad aśaraṇo ’śarīra idam anavekṣitāsmat-samavāya ātmanaivāvikriyamāṇena saguṇam aguṇaḥ sṛjasi pāsi harasi.
Thus the demigods prayed to the Supreme Lord that although His activities are very difficult to understand, they can still be understood to some extent by those who sincerely engage in the transcendental loving service of the Lord. The demigods admitted that although the Lord is apart from the material influence or creation, He nevertheless creates, maintains and annihilates the complete cosmic manifestation by the agency of the demigods.