Animate meditation with the warmth of recognition – Govinda Damodara Stotra 15

Mandaramule Vatanabhiramam Vimbadhare Poortaverunatham Gopagopi Janamathasamstham Govindadamodarmadravithi Mandaramule This is a beautiful verse That gives That meditates On a darshan of Krishna In Vrindavan Mandaramule Under the shade Of a Mandara tree Near its root Krishna is standing Vatanabhiramam Vatana Vatana is his face Abhiramam Vatanabhiramam His face is Full of joy Vatanabhiramam Is the giver of joy Vatanabhiramam Vimbadhare Poortaverunatham Vimbadhare With his lips Which are like bimba fruits Adhare Venunatham He is producing The sound of The flute Gogopagopi Janamathasamstham Gogopagopi He is surrounded by Cows Gogopagopi Cows Gopas and Gopis Madhyasamstham He is situated in the middle And such a lord Govindadamodarmadravithi On that lord Let me chant his name Let me meditate by Chanting his name Govindadamodarmadravithi Normally When we Go to the temple We take darshan of Krishna And that darshan Is Usually A Function of his How beautiful We take darshan And at that time we see How he is Dressed How he is standing Who all he is with How his expression is And normally that is what we look at Whenever we Meet any person Many times Famous people If there is somebody famous People want to see how they walk How is their carriage How is their overall Countenance How do they comport themselves So all that is what Inspires That’s what we observe And then it inspires Us that is Attractive So just as we can Have darshan Of Krishna by Going to the temple and meditating on his form In the temple We can also let Verses Like these Become The intellectual templates For our meditation On Krishna That means That we Let these Let Verses like these Become the basis By which We can internally meditate On Krishna So Krishna is Beautiful Is Loving And his love is not just an abstract Conception but there is a Tangible demonstration Of that love In The way he reciprocates With the cows, the gopas, the gopis And By Meditating on that We can Take our Attraction To him To a more Tangible level Just like we If we love someone Now We may say I have a very close relationship with my friend We have some friend But then If we That feeling of affection which is there within us That If we suddenly get a phone call And it’s from an unidentified number And we pick up the phone and say It’s our friend calling from some new number Just the Perception Of that friend Here we are getting audio perception By Hearing the voice That itself brings pleasure Oh hello, how are you? We often see that When we call Someone Or when someone calls us Initially we don’t recognize the caller The tone of the voice is Maybe official Maybe to some extent even suspicious But as soon as The caller is recognized The voice immediately Changes to Pleasant And Pleasant And joyous So in the same way When we are chanting the holy names Although we conceptually understand That the holy name is not different From Krishna Still It is not easy For us At our level of consciousness To Always Remember that And to base our bhakti on that Intellectual understanding But Thankfully for us Krishna also manifests In ways That We can Perceive More recognizably So sometimes when We are unable to feel Krishna’s When we start chanting We may not immediately feel Krishna’s presence We may not Identify that this is Krishna Not in intellectual terms Intellectually we may know But emotionally we may not be able to connect with Krishna So at that time Meditating on Verses like these Is like Taking darshan of Krishna And that darshan Will Bring Of course that inner darshan Which is based on Understanding, recognition of Who this is We chant the holy names At the same time We Or before we start chanting the holy names Or while we are chanting the holy names We meditate On verses like this And such meditation Triggers Our inner recognition Oh this is Krishna The same beautiful Krishna With his loving devotees Is the person who is manifesting As the holy name And Then With the warmth And the pleasure of Recognition Animating our chanting We can Chant much more Effectively We can Our prayer becomes more devotional Heartfelt And fulfilling Thank you.