Skip to main content

ŚB 10.16.38

Devanagari

तदेष नाथाप दुरापमन्यै-
स्तमोजनि: क्रोधवशोऽप्यहीश: ।
संसारचक्रे भ्रमत: शरीरिणो
यदिच्छत: स्याद् विभव: समक्ष: ॥ ३८ ॥

Text

tad eṣa nāthāpa durāpam anyais
tamo-janiḥ krodha-vaśo ’py ahīśaḥ
saṁsāra-cakre bhramataḥ śarīriṇo
yad-icchataḥ syād vibhavaḥ samakṣaḥ

Synonyms

tat — that; eṣaḥ — this Kāliya; nātha — O Lord; āpa — has achieved; durāpam — difficult to achieve; anyaiḥ — by others; tamaḥ-janiḥ — who was born in the mode of ignorance; krodha-vaśaḥ — who was under the sway of anger; api — even; ahi-īśaḥ — the king of serpents; saṁsāra-cakre — within the cycle of material existence; bhramataḥ — wandering; śarīriṇaḥ — for the embodied living entity; yat — by which (dust of Your lotus feet); icchataḥ — who has material desires; syāt — manifests; vibhavaḥ — all opulences; samakṣaḥ — before his eyes.

Translation

O Lord, although this Kāliya, the king of the serpents, has taken birth in the mode of ignorance and is controlled by anger, he has achieved that which is difficult for others to achieve. Embodied souls, who are full of desires and are thus wandering in the cycle of birth and death, can have all benedictions manifested before their eyes simply by receiving the dust of Your lotus feet.

Purport

It is very rare for a conditioned soul to free himself from the contamination of illusion and thus become established in perfect consciousness of the Absolute Truth. And yet this benediction was achieved by the serpent Kāliya because the Lord personally danced upon the serpent’s hoods with His lotus feet. Although we conditioned souls may not receive the mercy of having the Lord dance on our head, we can receive the dust of the lotus feet of the Absolute through the Lord’s representative, the bona fide spiritual master, and thus go back home, back to Godhead, forever freed from the misery and ignorance of the mundane universe.