What do the terms ‘revealed scriptures’ and ‘lotus feet’ mean?
From Manas chakravarty
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question, what do the terms revealed scriptures and lotus feet mean? Revealed scriptures refer to those timeless literature that are coming to us from God. So, revelation generally means that which exists but is made visible to us at a particular time. So, the scriptures are eternal, they are co-eternal with existence itself.
And they are revealed to us by the grace of God. They are entirely different from the literature that is composed by human beings with their own intelligence and thoughts. And lotus feet means, it refers to the feet of Krishna generally and also to those feet of his exalted devotees.
So, the lotus stays in the dirty water. Even if the lotus stays in dirty water, it doesn’t become dirty. The water, dirty water just slips away from it and the lotus stays clean and shining.
And the lotus is often used as a metaphor for remaining pure amidst impure circumstances. Padma Pakti Ramayana is a chapter of the Bhagavad Gita where Krishna uses this word to refer to those who offer the fruits of their work to Krishna. They live like a lotus flower.
Lotus is untouched by water. Similarly, they are untouched by karma and karmic reactions. So, when Krishna comes to this world at that time, although he is in this world, he is not of this world.
He is never affected or motivated by the selfishness, the narrow-mindedness, the short-sightedness that characterizes people’s actions in this world. Krishna remains completely transcendental, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipotent, and he acts for the good of everyone. So, that Krishna, he comes on this earth, he walks on the earth just like all other human beings.
In itself miraculous, that is a manifestation of his mercy. He comes as an avatar. But the scriptures as well as the acharyas do point out to us that Krishna is not like any other being.
And they say that his feet are lotus feet, that he is not affected by the world, just as lotus is not affected by surroundings. And similarly, great devotees who also live for Krishna’s sake, they live to serve Krishna, to do his will in this world, they are also asked to have lotus feet. So, lotus feet basically is not a literal idea that somebody has feet made of lotus, but it is a metaphorical reference to be uncontaminated amidst contaminated situations.