Gita 10.24 – Channel feelings of awe from giant things towards the source of all awe

Thank you Bhagavad Gita 10.24 kurodasāṁ ca mukhyamāṁ viddhi-pārtha-bhruhaspati se nāni nā māṁ skandhā sarasāṁ asmi-sāgaraḥ Krishna continues instead of describing the opulences the opulences in this world is the bhūtis and now he is talking in the celestial realm primarily kurodasāṁ ca mukhyamāṁ purodasa purohita purodasa are similar words and they refer to priests those who do the sacrificial rituals when performing yajna primarily kurodasāṁ ca mukhyamāṁ among the purodasas the chief viddhi-pārtha-bhruhaspati know that I am bruhaspati devatas are the objects of piety and they are also the subjects of piety that means in this world people who are pious they worship devatas and that is how they are the objects of piety our pious activities we often do them while aiming for the devatas and subjects of piety means that they themselves also usually live piously they themselves also live in a way that is conducive for the maintenance of dharma in the cosmos so they also perform yajna and they have priests who enable help them perform yajna and those priests have a head that is bruhaspati bruhaspati is no ordinary person devatas are the formidable warriors and they are rulers of various planets and they are administrators of the cosmic government they themselves are very influential and among their many priests the chief priest is a very very powerful person so now priests those who do sacerdotal duties they are an important part of any religious culture and they are respected and among them the chief priest should be especially highly respected and so krishna he says that whenever we are performing religious rituals and we see some venerable, pious administrator we can contemplate that this piety, this virtue this expertise all this is a manifestation of me so he explained to us that it is the power of bruhaspati is a manifestation of krishna's opulence bruhaspati's enormous power is pointed to in the 6th canto of shloka is of course hinted at later also the battle between the devatas and the demons are ongoing affairs at one particular point when indra fails to respect bruhaspati that failure puts him at odds not just at odds with bruhaspati not bruhaspati's vindictive but rather indra puts himself at odds with dharma and thus he has to bear consequence the consequence that he has to bear is that he has to lose his kingdom he is wiped out by the devatas so bruhaspati is a great person and an aparad to him an offense to him as grievous consequences so that formidable power of bruhaspati is a manifestation of krishna senanina maham skandaha sena is army senani is is a short form of commander of sena or senapati so among the various commanders and skandaha in an army there is a king and there is a commander you see yudhishthira mara is the king of the pandavas or we could say kaurava durodhana was the de facto king dhritarashtra was not there on the war field and then apart from them they had a commander and the commander is almost never the same as the king durodhana never became the commander of the kauravas they had bheeshma for 10 days durodhana for 5 days karuna for 2 days shalya for 1 day and ashwathama for 1 night so the point is that in a war a commander is a very very important person the kauravas have dhritarashtra as their commander so the devatas they often have to fight war against the demons the demons live in the lower parts of the universe but they always want to rise to the higher parts and for rising to the higher parts they have to overpower the devatas and for this they often fight so they need a very competent commander for fighting and skandaha is an extremely powerful commander the concept of skandaha or the word skandaha comes also in the in some other holy names also accumulation of holy names skandaha is a very important and powerful person and it is said over here that skandaha's position, power all that manifests Krishna's power and in that sense whenever we hear about skandaha fighting we get to remember Krishna and then it is said among water bodies and the river so now now there are many different bodies of water there can be ponds, there can be lakes, rivers now among these by far the biggest body is the sagara sea and ocean ocean is actually much bigger than the sea, sagara can refer to the sea can also be referred to the ocean especially if we are going by a ship and when we see water all around us in all directions as far as the eye can see we can really appreciate the smallness of our own existence of our own being and the hugeness of the ocean all around us so it is that we all are actually awed by seeing big things and when we see enormous body of water the feeling of awe that comes we can channel that feeling of awe towards the source of all awe that is the supreme now there are two words associated with supreme, there is awesome and there is awful so awful means something which is dreadful awesome means something which is wondrous, astonishing so when we appreciate God's greatness that is a way in which the feeling of awe in the sense of awesomeness can increase within us and that feeling of awe can nourish us and help us become more submissive in approaching the Lord as long as we think that we are we are great and yeah God is greater than me but I am also not too small but just when we look at the hugeness of nature and then we think how great must be the person who is the Lord and source and master of that nature when we appreciate this is actually mind boggling the person is indeed my master so by meditating on the awe inspiring manifestation in this world we can deepen our appreciation and attraction for the awesome source of all those things.