Carry me from drops of fleeting pleasure to the ocean of your ever-blissful love

itīdṛk sva-līlābhir ānanda-kuṇḍe

By such pastimes in joy’s pure sea,
He bathed the world in ecstasy.
Each act revealed his love profound,
Where bliss and beauty both abound.

(Damodarashtakam — Verse 3, Line 1)

My dear Lord, you offer an ocean of bliss in your realm of spiritual love, whereas in this world I chase mundane things that offer mere drops of pleasure. What’s worse, many of those drops soon swell into oceans of trouble.

O merciful Lord, please strengthen my head with your wisdom so I may turn away from this desperate, doomed pursuit of worldly pleasure and turn toward you. Grant me the conviction that you can and will provide all the joy I need—indeed, far more than I can ever seek.

O infallible Lord, knowing what is right with my head yet failing to do it due to weakness of heart has been my predicament for years, decades—perhaps lifetimes. Please, therefore, complement the strengthening of my head with the enriching of my heart. Grant me the devotional realization that the sweetness in your pastimes is oceanic. Let me become curious about your delightful pastimes, thus opening my heart for a trickle of your joyous love to flow in. Let me go further and learn to cherish those pastimes as having the potential to fulfill my heart’s highest aspiration for love. Then that trickle will—by your mercy—become a mighty flow that fills and floods my heart.

With my head and heart thus fixed in you, O all-attractive Lord, may the joy of such absorption in you render all material temptations pale and stale.