Hare Krishna Prabhujis and Matajis,
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudeva.
Recently we had the glorious Kartik month, when Mother Yashoda bound Lord Krishna with the mortar using a rope. This pastime is a great inspiration for all devotees as the Lord displays unlimited mercy in two aspects:
1. He allowed Himself to be bound by mother Yashoda like a normal child
2. He delivered the sons of Kuvera who were standing in the form of trees due to the curse of Narada Muni.
However, while describing this pastime, Srila Sukadeva Goswami not only describes the Lord's merciful nature but he also highlights the Lord's Supreme nature in clear terms. He does this because we should not take the Lord cheaply because He is chased by Mother Yashoda and bound by her like any normal child. And because of these acts, He does not lose His Supremacy. He is the same Supreme Lord who is celebrated in the Vedas and Upanishads. His quality of affection for His devotees only makes Him so accessible to the devotees and perform such lilas. We will meditate on the shlokas spoken by Sukadeva Goswami on the Lord's Supreme spiritual and infinite nature while describing this pastime.
Srila Jiva Goswami explains how it is not possible to bind Lord Krishna at all with a rope as done by Mother Yashoda. Binding means to use a rope to encompass so that the interior object is covered and tied up. The below conditions are to be satisfied for binding any object with a rope.
a. The object which is bound should be smaller than the rope and limited in size.
b. One should hold the rope and stand in front or back or any side of the object at a prior point in time to bind it.
c. The object which is bound should be under the control of time as rope is perishable by passage of time.
d. One must bind an object with something that will cover and envelop the object.
e. The rope should be stronger than the object it binds.
f. Rope can bind only gross solid material objects. (rope cannot bind even material things like light, liquids, gas, space or fire which are not solids). So the object should be a gross material object.
And none of the above conditions are met in case of Lord Krishna and this is summarized in the below shloka of Srimad Bhagavatam (SB 10.9.13). Each of the words in the shloka echoes the Vedic hymns and hence we can infer easily that the Lord cannot be bound by a rope.
na cāntar na bahir yasya na pūrvaṁ nāpi cāparam
pūrvāparaṁ bahiś cāntar jagato yo jagac ca yah
The Supreme Personality of Godhead has no beginning and no end, no exterior and no interior, no front and no rear. In other words, He is all-pervading. Because He is not under the influence of the element of time, for Him there is no difference between past, present and future; He exists in His own transcendental form at all times. Being absolute, beyond relativity, He is free from distinctions between cause and effect, although He is the cause and effect of everything.
Krishna willing, we will see the detailed meaning of this shloka in the subsequent offerings.
Thank you very much.
Yours in service of Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudeva,
Narahari Krishna das
Ipswich.
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