When Krishna is complete, how can he be the beneficiary of our sacrifices, as Gita 5.29 says?

From Madhusudan Vishnu P

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Question from Madhusudana Vishnu Prabhu. In the translation of 5.29 Bhagavad Gita, Sri Prabhupada says that Krishna is the beneficiary of all sacrifices.
When Krishna is the source of everything and He is complete, how can He be the beneficiary of something that we do? Answer. The Sanskrit here is Bhokta, Ram, Yajna, Tapasam. So Krishna is the Bhokta, the enjoyer.
Now we may ask also how can Krishna be the enjoyer of anything that we do? Krishna is transcendental and most of us are in material consciousness. So how can He be the enjoyer of something which we are doing often with material consciousness, often the sacrifices that are done even in the Vedic times, the yajnas are often a part of karma kanda rituals and they are done largely in material consciousness. So how can He be the enjoyer of those? So here we have to understand two different points.
First of all, the word enjoyer, all the word beneficiary, both of them are used in the sense that He is the ultimate objective of these sacrifices. So if you look at the flow of the fifth chapter, Krishna is building up from Karma Yoga towards Bhakti Yoga. We will talk about Bhakti Yoga explicitly in the middle section, chapters 7 to 12 and in the ninth chapter, He will also tell very clearly.
In 9.24, He says, aham hi sarva yajnanam bhokta cha prabhurevacha natum amubhijananti tattvena tascavanti te. In 9.23, 24, He talks about this. So aham hi sarva yajnanam bhokta.
I am the enjoyer of all sacrifices and prabhurevacha, I am the master. And there if we see what Krishna is telling, He is contrasting demigod worship. In 2021, He talks about how when somebody goes to heaven, one falls back.
In 22, He says that His devotees are always protected. Yoga kshemam vahamyaham. And then He says 23, 24, He talks about what is the problem with those who worship the devatas? Their knowledge is incomplete.
Their worship is avidhi purvakam. So here, Krishna is giving the knowledge that He is the ultimate objective of everything that we do. So in that sense, He is the enjoyer and He is the beneficiary.
It’s not in the sense that the Lord needs anything. Normally the word beneficiary is used if somebody passes away and that person leaves a will, then the beneficiaries, okay, this person will get this, this person will get that, or if some agreement is made, who are the beneficiaries in that. So we talk about this in terms of benefit.
So that is the second meaning. If you want to take it, Prahlad Maharaj says that how my dear Lord, although you are complete, you still accept respect from people for their advancement, for their elevation. So this is just as by decorating the mirror, a person cannot be decorated.
But by decorating oneself, the mirror automatically gets decorated. So the Lord is the self of the self. We are all His parts.
So when we serve Him, He doesn’t need our service. He is Poornam. But avidusho vrunite, out of mercy He accepts.
Why? So that we can attain completeness. So the beneficiary, the word is used in the sense of recognizing the connectedness that actually the Lord acts as if He needs the sacrifices. The Lord acts as if He asks for the sacrifices.
Just like patram, pushpam, palam, he is saying, offer something to me. If you can’t offer opulent things, at least offer some fruits and flowers to me. So all this He is saying so that one can recognize that we should serve Him.
So this can be understood at two levels, as I said. Firstly, it is in the sense that the Lord is the objective. And the second is the Lord, out of His mercy, asks us to do certain things and reminds us that we are supposed to do it for Him.
So acting as if He is the beneficiary of these things, whereas actually it is we who are the beneficiary and this is His compassion. So does He benefit or does He enjoy? It is in the sense that although He is complete, He is concerned about our well-being. And just as if a lost son comes back home or progresses in the journey towards coming back home, then the father is happy by that.
Now, is the father the beneficiary? No, the son is the beneficiary. But because there is love, the father also feels benefited by that. And the father also enjoys.
So like that, these karmakanda sacrifices which are there and all sacrifices in general, the Lord is the ultimate beneficiary in the sense that the Lord feels benefited and feels delighted that the souls who have left Him, the souls who are estranged from Him are returning back to Him for their own eternal well-being. And because the Lord loves the souls, He feels happy for them. And in that sense, indirectly, He is the beneficiary.
In the same verse, Prabhupada actually clarifies, The Lord is the benefactor and well-wisher of all living beings. So it is not that we are doing anything for Him, rather He is doing everything for us. He is the benefactor.
Benefactor means one who does good for others. So He does good for us. And one of the ways He does good is that although we are unqualified, He still accepts the sacrifices that we perform.
Even when we don’t perform them exclusively for His pleasure, we perform them just to get some material benefits. But by His grace, He accepts those sacrifices and thereby we make progress. And seeing our progress, He feels satisfied.
Thank you. Hare Krishna.