4.1 Causelessly you bless, let me not desire it less

tabe jadi taba kṛpā 

hoy ahaitukī

Choose, O Lord, to bless

With your mercy causeless

My dear Lord, when faced with a formidable challenge, a devotee naturally remembers you—as does Srila Prabhupada on seeing the spiritually barren landscape before him. When he seeks your causeless mercy, is his seeking not one cause for that mercy? 

Free me, O supreme enlightener, from two misconceptions about causeless mercy. Let me not think of it as completely arbitrary, as if the dispensing of grace were like a divine lottery based solely on your mood or whim. Let me also not go to the other extreme, imagining that nothing I do has any effect in attracting your grace—that my initiative, intelligence, and creativity are of no value, even when I try to offer them earnestly to you.

O supremely merciful Lord, help me understand that causeless doesn’t mean that there is no cause; it means the cause is too less. Whatever endeavor I make to attract your mercy neither entitles me to it nor obliges you to give it. Yet you are so compassionate that when I take one step toward you, you may take a thousand steps toward me. Bless me with your causeless mercy and carry me from barrenness to blossoming, from illusion to illumination, from separation to shelter in you.