Devanagari
ब्रह्मोवाच
ज्ञातोऽसि मेऽद्य सुचिरान्ननु देहभाजां
न ज्ञायते भगवतो गतिरित्यवद्यम् ।
नान्यत्त्वदस्ति भगवन्नपि तन्न शुद्धं
मायागुणव्यतिकराद्यदुरुर्विभासि ॥ १ ॥
Verse text
brahmovāca
jṣāto ’si me ’dya sucirān nanu deha-bhājāṁ
na jṣāyate bhagavato gatir ity avadyam
nānyat tvad asti bhagavann api tan na śuddhaṁ
māyā-guṇa-vyatikarād yad urur vibhāsi
Synonyms
brahmā uvāca
—
Lord Brahmā said
;
jṣātaḥ
—
known
;
asi
—
You are
;
me
—
by me
;
adya
—
today
;
sucirāt
—
after a long time
;
nanu
—
but
;
deha
—
bhājām — of one who has a material body
;
na
—
not
;
jṣāyate
—
is known
;
bhagavataḥ
—
of the Personality of Godhead
;
gatiḥ
—
course
;
iti
—
so it is
;
avadyam
—
great offense
;
na anyat
—
none beyond
;
tvat
—
You
;
asti
—
there is
;
bhagavan
—
O my Lord
;
api
—
even though there is
;
tat
—
anything that may be
;
na
—
never
;
śuddham
—
absolute
;
māyā
—
material energy
;
guṇa
—
vyatikarāt — because of the mixture of the modes of
;
yat
—
to which
;
uruḥ
—
transcendental
;
vibhāsi
—
You are .
Translation
Lord Brahmā said: O my Lord, today, after many, many years of penance, I have come to know about You. Oh, how unfortunate the embodied living entities are that they are unable to know Your personality! My Lord, You are the only knowable object because there is nothing supreme beyond You. If there is anything supposedly superior to You, it is not the Absolute. You exist as the Supreme by exhibiting the creative energy of matter.
Translation (Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura)
Brahmā said: Today I have understood you, after meditating for a long time. Persons with material bodies are worthless, since they do not know the truth about the Lord. There is nothing to compare with you, O Lord! Everything else is impure, but appears great because it is a transformation of the guṇas of your māyā-śakti.
In the Ninth Chapter, after praising Garbhodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, the soul of the universe, Brahmā gains power to create the universe by the Lord’s mercy.
This verse shows that after attaining mercy one can meet the Lord and know the Lord. Today, you are known by me, after meditating on you for a long time. I was thinking that I will meditate on the form I had understood through previous meditation, because I had never meditated on such a beautiful form before. My pretense of knowledge was useless. I expected to see the Lord in the form upon which I meditated. That was futile, since a particle of your beauty cannot be compared to the beauty of a huge emerald, a blue lotus or a fresh cloud. But even meditating on the form I knew, you became visible in this beautiful form. The greatness of your mercy cannot be expressed in words. One who personally experiences your sweetness laments for others. Those who have bodies are full of fault (avadyam)—they do not know the true nature (gatiḥ) of the Supreme Lord. They do not experience the Lord’s sweetness and beauty. For the embodied being, worship of you is the goal, since it is possible to realize your beautiful form in that body.
“Is there not some object with similar sweetness in this variegated world, since you are saying that without realizing the Lord life is a waste of time?” There is nothing other than you that is a worthy object of knowledge. There is nothing other than Bhagavān at all. There is no object to be relished by the eye or ear except the spiritual beauty and glories indicated by the word bhaga in Bhagavān, the possessor of bhaga.
“But does not the happiness of Svarga give pleasure to the senses?” That happiness is not pure. Being temporary, it is not eternal, and is disagreeable because of change. It is limited and low. But it is also impure, endowed with a taste for association with lusty crows--not to be seen in the followers of the Lord who are like swans, unattached to worldly enjoyment. Because this is the effect of your māyā-śakti, it is not different from you. Because of transformation of the guṇas of māyā, it appears great (uru), ruling over Svarga and other places.
Purport
The highest peak of the ignorance of the living entities who are conditioned by material bodies is that they are unaware of the supreme cause of the cosmic manifestation. Different people have different theories regarding the supreme cause, but none of them are genuine. The only supreme cause is Viṣṇu, and the intervening impediment is the illusory energy of the Lord. The Lord has employed His wonderful material energy in manifesting many, many wonderful distractions in the material world, and the conditioned souls, illusioned by the same energy, are thus unable to know the supreme cause. The most stalwart scientists and philosophers, therefore, cannot be accepted as wonderful. They only appear wonderful because they are instruments in the hands of the illusory energy of the Lord. Under illusion, the general mass of people deny the existence of the Supreme Lord and accept the foolish products of illusory energy as supreme.
One can know the supreme cause, the Personality of Godhead, by the causeless mercy of the Lord, which is bestowed upon the Lord’s pure devotees like Brahmā and those in his disciplic succession. By acts of penance only was Lord Brahmā able to see the Garbhodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, and by realization only could he understand the Lord as He is. Brahmā was extremely satisfied upon observing the magnificent beauty and opulence of the Lord, and he admitted that nothing can be comparable to Him. Only by penance can one appreciate the beauty and opulence of the Lord, and when one is acquainted with that beauty and opulence, he is no longer attracted by any other. This is confirmed in
Bhagavad-gītā
(2.59)
:
paraṁ dṛṣṭvā nivartate.
Foolish human beings who do not endeavor to investigate the supreme beauty and opulence of the Lord are here condemned by Brahmā. It is imperative that every human being try for such knowledge, and if anyone does not do so, his life is spoiled. Anything that is beautiful and opulent in the material sense is enjoyed by those living entities who are like crows. Crows always engage in picking at rejected garbage, whereas the white ducks do not mix with the crows. Rather, they take pleasure in transparent lakes with lotus flowers, surrounded by beautiful orchards. Both crows and ducks are undoubtedly birds by birth, but they are not of the same feather.