SB 8.3.12 The innumerable forms of the Lord manifest his infinite love for us

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
us the gift that he’s so eager to give us, pure spiritual happiness. Thank you.
So here Gajendra is continuing his prayers and now he’s describing how the Lord manifests in various forms to extend his mercy. In the previous he said how the Lord is the master of the impersonalists, how he is the giver of happiness, this is beyond matter, nirvana gudal samvede. So now he’s talking about the various forms and shantaya ghoraya, so Adacharya’s and Krishna’s describe how these refer to various forms.
Shantaya refers to the super soul who is situated in the heart of all living beings as an observer. Ghoraya refers to the forms like Parashurama and Narasimha which were fierce. Then Mudha refers to something unintelligent that refers to the Lord’s form like a boar, the shukra avatar.
So earlier it was said that the Lord is transcendental but now it is mentioned that the Lord accepts forms in this world. It seemed to have material quality. So the Lord manifests as the person who taught impersonalism, that is a tatra.
So one who taught equanimity, who taught just attain voidness and who is also manifesting as the Brahman effulgence. So the important point here is not the specifics of various incarnations but the generic principle that the Lord manifests in his mercy in many different ways, in many forms, thereby making himself accessible to us. So the Lord is always trying to extend himself so that he can reach out to us.
Now we too have to extend ourselves so that we can get his mercy. In a sense we discuss often the example of a person who has fallen into a well and then somebody from outside throws a rope down. Person from inside has to hold on to the rope.
So the various forms of the Lord manifests are in a way the rope thrown down. Of course we say the rope thrown down in the process of devotional service but the process of devotional service depends on attraction. If we are not attracted to the Lord we cannot perform devotional service.
So the Lord manifests himself in various forms so that we can become attracted to him and to become attracted to him there may be different people with different natures and the Lord by manifesting in various forms gives people the opportunity to become attracted based on their individual natures and in this way he’s throwing down not just in a sense one rope but many ropes hoping that we will select at least one of those ropes and become elevated and among all incarnations Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is Mahavadanya Yadav, the most magnanimous because he gives the holy name which is like a Nityavatar. The other avatars come, manifest their pastimes and go away at least from our material vision, our vision in this world but the holy name is always with us and by meditating on how Krishna is so merciful to come in so many different ways that his incarnations are like the waves in an ocean that means they’re unlimited because his love for us is unlimited and when we meditate on how his love for us is unlimited then we can try to reciprocate and that unlimited love has manifested in the form of the Nama Avatar and when we are trying to be attentive in the chanting of the holy names we are simply trying to by that hold on to the rope of mercy that Krishna has offered by trying to become attracted to the holy name and in this way we can let him pull us out so by meditating on how Krishna loves us so much and how he has made himself so accessible to us we can we can push ourselves, inspire ourselves to put in the little effort that is required to reciprocate with him through prayerful devotional mantra meditation. Thank you.