Where are the pastimes of the countless incarnations described?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you very much.
The Lord’s Avatars are infinite because His love for us is infinite. His love for us is infinite and that’s why He tries to reach out to us in many, many ways. In many different forms and many different times.
And His principle is that He descends whenever there is a urgent need in the mission of Shri Radha. He descends in the mission of Shri Radha. And He demonstrates His pastimes and we can interact with Him.
So now, the very fact that the Bhagavatam says that there are as many avatars as there are beings indicates that they are infinite. Something is infinite that cannot be exhaustively described. It is only indicatively described.
So the Bhagavatam gives an indicative list of certain avatars. And our human capacity for acquiring knowledge is finite. That is why we cannot know about all the possible avatars and where they are present and for what purpose they descend.
The scripture itself cannot describe it because the scripture is made accessible and the human capacity is finite. As revealed to us, it is finite. So, what we can know in general from the scripture is that the Lord never leaves anyone in His own.
The Lord offers His love to everyone at different times in different ways. Now, as compared to the pastimes in other places, Krishna is not obliged to perform exactly the same pastime in India. He can perform some pastime in some different ways.
So it is not that everyone in Krishna’s pastimes is necessarily an eternal associate. Some of His close associates are eternal associates. But others are so fortunate to be there in that time and especially in the sense that they got the fortune to be there.
But, when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu said, go to South India too, or say when Krishna is travelling from Hastinapur to Dwarka, is it that all the people who saw Him in all the villages and towns, they were all eternal associates? Not necessarily. They are just souls who somehow happened to be there and they got the fortune of worshipping Krishna. So, Krishna descends for the purpose of benedicting people.
And there are certain… So, sometimes certain people may also act in different ways. It’s not that everybody acts the same. So, certain details in certain pastimes change.
And that is also because one of the purposes of Krishna’s pastimes, Gita, is for the purpose of Rasa, for the purpose of pleasure. So, Krishna gets pleasure in that variety also. That’s why sometimes in the Puranas, different Puranas, the same pastime is described in slightly different ways.
That’s because these Puranas are describing pastimes of different kalpas. Different yugas or different kalpas. It’s called yuga page or kalpa page.
So, that’s how there is some variety. But there is still, in whatever specific variety may be there, underline that the commonalities of all pastimes are meant to benedict the souls by restoring order here and by attracting the souls to Krishna’s eternal home. Thank you.