99: Spark of Splendor - hey, I tried

 Chapter 10, Text 41: Know that all opulent, beautiful and glorious creations spring from but a spark of My splendor.

This afternoon I walked out my front door with my fabulous Sony A6000 camera in hand. Meditating on this verse of the Gita, I was determined to discover sparks of God's splendor outside my front door. 

I snapped pictures of angular palms, yellow leaves gleaming in the sun, red leaves peeking out of the forest floor, the bright green of a tiny tuft of a leaf amidst a sea of gnarled branches. 

Okay, okay, lots of leaves. 

I tried to ambush an ant for a picture, but they just scuttled away, and I couldn't focus my gigantic camera lens in time to capture them. So there went that. 

I tried to capture the beams of sunlight that filtered through the forest and landed upon my face. The experience of absorbing that  liquid gold was lost when I took a picture, even with my fancy camera. Might as well have had my phone camera. 

To be honest, I live down a quiet dirt road. It's lovely and soothing and peace-giving to my heart when I want to clear my head and bask in the silence of the woods. But I'll tell you what, it's not much of a "spark of splendor." 

Halfway back, I navigated on my camera to view a picture I had taken, to double-check the angle. 

NO MEMORY CARD. CANNOT READ. 

Huh? 

I opened up the battery case and saw that indeed I had a memory card inserted. I tried again. Nope. No use. Later on at home I inspected the card to find that it was chipped and broken. 

I sighed. All those pictures I thought I had taken of sparks of splendor were... well, gone. 

Like a spark that flares brightly for a dazzling moment, then gone. Forever. Just a spark. 

Two things I take away from this experience. 

1) If I train my eye to see God's glory in even the tiniest leaf, or a beam of sunlight, or the veins of my hand, then that is the greatest glory. 

2) Before I set out on a photo shoot, check to make sure my memory card is working. 

52: Jesting With The King

CHAPTER 11, TEXTS 41-42: Thinking of You as my friend, I have rashly addressed You “O Kṛṣṇa,” “O Yādava,” “O my friend,” not knowing Your glories. Please forgive whatever I may have done in madness or in love. I have dishonored You many times, jesting as we relaxed, lay on the same bed, or sat or ate together, sometimes alone and sometimes in front of many friends. O infallible one, please excuse me for all those offenses.

We have been experiencing along with Arjuna the terrifying forms of God in His most powerful, awe-inspiring universal form, which includes viewing the vast pantheon of  demigods, spinning planets and  galaxies, and all beings  rushing into the mouth of death. I would imagine that if I was to witness even a fraction of any of this, my brain would be blank.  

But Arjuna's brain is not blank. In fact, he has the presence of mind to... huh? Apologize to Krishna for being so familiar?

The stark contrast between the universal form and Arjuna's description of intimate moments with Krishna is jarring. He describes lounging on the same bed, eating together, and jesting in the company of friends. There's a sense of  coming back down to earth to the present moment, right there on a chariot in the midst of a battlefield, and  I can almost see Arjuna folding his palms, stuttering his apologies. 

Arjuna's apology brings to mind a simple comparison - he's just joking with an old friend, maybe even making fun of him. His friend would laugh along, maybe tease him in return. And then only much later would he find out that the old friend is actually the king. If I had been in Arjuna's shoes, I would be stumbling out apologies and begging forgiveness, too. 

But the king is not only a king. Being a king is a role, not an identity. 

Ultimately, a king is a person. 

Krishna is a person, and He "is so kind and merciful that in spite of such opulence He played with Arjuna as a friend. Such is the transcendental loving reciprocation between the devotee and the Lord." Although Arjuna is gushing his apologies for his familiarity with Krishna, it's clear that Krishna is quite aware that Arjuna was interacting with him as a friend, eating together, joking with each other. Krishna was not only aware, He enjoyed this kind of exchange, this kind of natural loving reciprocation. 

Arjuna is thoroughly awestruck and trembling from this divine display of the universe - creation, annihilation, all the demigods and planets and galaxies - and yet he has the presence of mind to come back to remembering his relationship with Krishna, which consists  of such seemingly simple, mundane exchanges. This is because "the relationship between the living entity and Kṛṣṇa is fixed eternally; it cannot be forgotten, as we can see from the behavior of Arjuna." Prabhupad writes here that this relationship is eternal, which means that it is beyond this material world. 

The virat-rupa, the universal form, is actually the material manifestation of God's greatness. Prabhupad writes "This universal form is material and temporary, as the material world is temporary" (11.45, purport). So although Arjuna was given divine eyes to behold this universal form, nevertheless the form is material and therefore temporary. After all, the universe and the demigods and the planets are constantly being created and destroyed. 

But if something is eternal - like the soul, like God Himself - there is no creation. There is no destruction. And between the soul and God is a relationship that is eternal - that relationship was never created, it will never be destroyed. 

This means that that relationship - that thread of connection - is more powerful and divine than even the universal form. 

In this way, "Although Arjuna has seen the opulence in the universal form, he cannot forget his friendly relationship with Kṛṣṇa." So although the universes may rise and fall, the demigods create and destroy, the galaxies expand and collapse, living beings rush into the mouths of death in a ceaseless current, all these things will come and go. 

But that friendly relationship is not forgotten. 

Those jests, those moments of lounging and eating together amongst friends - that friendly relationship between Arjuna and Krishna will outlast even the longest lived demigod and universe because that is love, and love is eternal. 

Now that is truly wondrous.

Full purport here: https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/11/41-42/

51: Flaming Mouths of Time

CHAPTER 11, TEXT 32: The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds, and I have come here to destroy all people. With the exception of you [the Pāṇḍavas], all the soldiers here on both sides will be slain.

65 million people die each year in the world.  

That is 178,000 each day, 

7425 each hour, 

and 120 each minute (bioethics.georgetown.edu). 

That means that every SECOND, two people die. In the time span of writing this post over the past minute or so, 100 people have died. 

Krishna says in this verse, "Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds, and I have come here to destroy all people." Time does not only destroy people, but all living beings, all natural formations of the earth, the world itself, all the worlds, all the universes... time destroys all. 

How come Krishna is saying this powerful statement? In the verses previous to this one, Arjuna is describing what he sees in Krishna's universal form: "I see all people rushing full speed into Your mouths, as moths dash to destruction in a blazing fire" (11.29) and "O Viṣhṇu, I see You devouring all people from all sides with Your flaming mouths" (11.30). Arjuna is again repeating himself, terrified and awestruck, trying to make sense of what he sees. How can he see all people rushing into God's mouth to be devoured and destroyed? Isn't God supposed to be... well, good? 

Prabhupad explains, "Although Arjuna knew that Kṛṣṇa was his friend and the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he was puzzled by the various forms exhibited by Kṛṣṇa. Therefore he asked further about the actual mission of this devastating force." Puzzled indeed! One can imagine that Arjuna is trying to process not only that his friend is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, but that God would devour people and the worlds in such a terrifying display. Interestingly, Prabhupad writes that Arjuna wanted to know further about the "actual mission" of this force - he wants to know what these flaming mouths actually mean and why they matter.  

This is Krishna's response: "Time I am, great destroyer of the worlds." 

Time. 

Amazing. We glance at the clock throughout the day, keeping track of its passage in order to go to work, eat, go to sleep, make appointments, catch a flight, and more. I have glanced at my computer clock a few times during this post, calculating how long I've spent writing.  

In the past 15 minutes, 1,800 people have died. 

Prabhupad writes, "Time is destruction, and all manifestations are to be vanquished by the desire of the Supreme Lord. That is the law of nature."

This destruction is what Arjuna is seeing by the flaming mouths of the universal form. Note that Prabhupad says that "all manifestations" will be destroyed. This means that death will come for all of us one day, for death "is an inevitable process eventually occurring in all living organisms" (wikipedia.org). So yes, over 2,000 human beings have died within the past 20 minutes or so, but what about all the living organisms on this planet? 

Millions, maybe even billions of beings die every minute, every second. 

What's more, the world itself is being destroyed at every minute. For example, if a house is left alone for even a year with no one to live in it or care for it, it begins to decay. Just by the passage of time, the house is destroyed. This goes for anything on this planet, from human structures like The Coliseum to natural formations like The Appalachian Mountains. "All manifestations" are being destroyed. 

This is the reality of this material world.  

And one day, our own lives will snuff out, and we will be like another moth into the flaming mouth of time. 

34 minutes - 4,080 deaths. 

Full purport here: https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/11/32/

50: Oh My God.

CHAPTER 11, TEXT 19: You are without origin, middle or end. Your glory is unlimited. You have numberless arms, and the sun and moon are Your eyes. I see You with blazing fire coming forth from Your mouth, burning this entire universe by Your own radiance.

Arjuna has been given divine eyes to behold the universal form. Although we - the readers - do not have divine eyes, in our mind's eye we can somehow behold this dazzling form. Just by reading these words, my mind is awestruck, attempting to grasp the magnitude of God's greatness. 

No beginning, middle, or end. 

Numberless arms. 

The sun and moon are Your eyes. 

Blazing fire pouring from Your mouth, 

burning the universe

by Your own radiance. 

The images, the vastness flash through my mind and leave me breathless and awestruck. 

Interestingly, Arjuna has made very similar exclamations in verses 17 and 18:

You are inexhaustible

You are the oldest

Your form has a glaring effulgence

spreading like blazing fire

or the immeasurable radiance of the sun. 

Arjuna is repeating himself. Although there are poetic reasons for repetition, such as the power of persuasion, added emphasis, and creating rhythm, there is a far simpler reason that Arjuna is repeating himself: he is overcome with wonder. Prabhupad writes, "Here and in many other places there is repetition, but according to the scriptures, repetition of the glories of Kṛṣṇa is not a literary weakness. It is said that at a time of bewilderment or wonder or of great ecstasy, statements are repeated over and over. That is not a flaw." Certainly we can all identify a time in our lives when we were overcome with bewilderment, wonder, or ecstasy, and all we could do was repeat ourselves. 

Forgive me, but the phrase that keeps coming to me when I read these verses is:

Oh 

my 

God. 

Literally. 

Oh my God. 

I want to just keep repeating that phrase as the images flash through my mind - a beginningless and endless form, blinding radiance of the sun, rivers of fire, the planets are God's eyes, the eternality of the universe...

Oh my God. 

Oh my Krishna. 

Full purport here: https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/11/19/

48: Spark of Splendor

CHAPTER 10, TEXT 41: Know that all opulent, beautiful and glorious creations spring from but a spark of My splendor.

"I love to travel, and I've traveled a good part of the world, but I am so tired of traveling right now in my life," I said to my friend Shanti. "What about you? Do you want to travel?"

"I want to travel so badly," she said with passion. "It's been a couple years since I've traveled because I've been completing my degree, but I miss it. I miss the adventure, the fresh culture, the sense that I'm being shaken out of my ordinary routine,"

I paused a moment, for those reasons were the reasons that I had burned to travel the world in my 20s. "Wow. You're right. Travel is magical. Have you seen those new Microsoft landing page image things? These amazing pictures of the world?"

Shanti paused and then nodded, "Yes! Whenever you log in to your account? Yes I have,"

"Amazing, right? These exotic images of places around the world, just so stunning and breathtaking. I feel that wanderlust in my heart again to travel the world,"

"Absolutely," Shanti agreed. "And seeing such beauty it's like, yes, like, this is God. This is God's temple, mama mana mandire, like you always used to sing,"

"Yes," I murmured. "Yes indeed."  

When I was 14 years old living in Hawaii, I did not live near a physical temple of Krishna. I longed to live near one, but I could not. So I turned to a temple that I experienced every day - the breathtaking beauty of nature in Hawaii. Almost every evening I would ride my bike to the crest of a mountain to watch the glorious sunset over the Pacific Ocean, and I would sing the song Mama Mana Mandire: may You reside in the temple of my heart. 

I began to realize that God's creation is His temple and appreciating His beauty is worship. 

In the years that followed when I lived near a temple and also traveled the world, that song threaded its way into my life. Every time I experienced some moment of beauty in nature that took my breath away, I would sing, as Shanti reminded me, "Mama mana mandire...".

This is God. This is His temple. 

So when I read this verse of the Gita this morning, 10.41, I exclaimed in delight. This verse is like an old friend, words that I've heard since I was a little girl, reminding me that even the most wondrous, breathtaking sunset or waterfall or rainbow is but the tiniest, glittering spark of God's splendor. 

below are screenshots of the Microsoft landing page things :)

Full purport here: https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/10/41/

35: As Is The Individual, So Is The Universe

CHAPTER 7, TEXT 27: O scion of Bharata, O conqueror of the foe, all living entities are born into delusion, bewildered by dualities arisen from desire and hate.

This means that the idea that God looks like this

is a matter of human interpretation. Anthropomorphism states that we are superimposing human qualities upon something (and someone) that could not possibly possess those qualities. How can an all-powerful Creator have hands and facial hair? The Cambridge dictionary defines anthropomorphism more broadly as "the showing or treating of animals, gods, and objects as if they are human in appearance, character, or behavior" (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/anthropomorphism). So not only is the supposed creator of the universe an old man with a long white beard, so are weather phenomena such as lighting

and even the modern the portrayal of animals in animated films

to how dogs are treated like humans

Ultimately, the idea of anthropomorphism asserts that humans are not the center of the universe, but we superimpose our own idea of humanity on everyone and everything around us. We MAKE ourselves the center of the universe. There is a subtle negative connotation here, that to view the world colored by human characteristics is delusional and even damaging.

But anthropomorphism, in its simple way, is actually touching upon a deep eternal truth. The Yajur Veda states yatha pinde tatha brahmande, yatha brahmande tatha pinde, which translates, "As is the individual, so is the universe; as is the universe, so is the individual." This means eternal patterns of life and the universe are repeated from the macro scale to the micro scale.

For example:

Brain cells are tiny, invisible to the naked eye, and the universe is so large that we cannot grasp its enormity with the naked eye. But from the gargantuan to the minuscule, patterns are repeated.

Below is a figure of all the major river basins of the United States. Rivers are considered the "veins" of the land.

This is a diagram of the circulatory system of the human body, the veins and the arteries. 

and the veins of a leaf

This is only one way that patterns are repeated, from the macro to the micro. 

As is the individual, so is the universe; as is the universe, so is the individual. 

Ultimately, the Vedic scriptures would concur with the Christian conception that "God created man in his own image" (1:27, KJV) and not the other way around where humans create God in THEIR image, as in anthropomorphism. Prabhupad asserts that "those who are deluded by duality and nescience think that the Supreme Personality of Godhead is created by material energies." In fact, God is the source of material energies. He is not created or formed by material minds. Thus anthropomorphism is a mere shadow of a divine truth that indeed God is a person.

The problem with God being a person who created the universe is that He must be the most powerful, most beautiful, most intelligent, and basically, the most everything. When anyone is the most of anything, envy is bound to happen.

Aristotle defines envy as pain at the sight of another’s good fortune, stirred by “those who have what we ought to have.”

And that's our problem. Prabhupad writes that an ignorant person wants the peace and bliss of merging into the light of the Supreme Lord but is envious of Krishna's position as the Supreme Personality of Godhead (vedabase.com). We actually feel pain to accept the glory of God, and deep down we feel, "I ought to have that." Prabhupad writes, "The illusory energy is manifested in the duality of desire and hate." The perpetual cycle of desiring independent happiness and hating God is what keeps us bound by illusion in this world.

For people trapped in this cycle, "This is their misfortune. Such deluded persons, symptomatically, dwell in dualities of dishonor and honor, misery and happiness, woman and man, good and bad, pleasure and pain, etc." When humans turn away from absolute truth, then they plunge into the miseries of these dualities.

Dishonor and honor become relative and thus cheapened.

Misery becomes a necessary contrast to experience any kind of happiness.

Woman and man become adversaries, fighting for dominance and control and recognition.

Good and bad become the flavor from which life is lived, the only reference point my own perspective.

Pleasure and pain become the spice of life, the avoiding of pain just as poignant as the incessant striving for pleasure - both flicker in and flicker out.

In the midst of all of these dualities, the world revolves around human beings. Humans become the center of the universe. Humans create a God in our image, and we superimpose human qualities on all we see and experience. There is no understanding that there could be absolute honor, absolute happiness, an absolute identity, and an Absolute Truth.

To any logical person, anthropomorphism seems childish and deluded, because it implies that humans are the center. But if we could stretch our minds to consider that maybe on a divine level, God created man in HIS image, and this divine pattern is echoed everywhere, then we can understand that there is no one to be envious of. We see personality infusing every living being because God Himself has a personality.

If God is everywhere and in everyone's heart and in everything, then there is no duality, no battle for dominance and control and pleasure. When Krishna states that "all living entities are born into delusion" this is what He means - we all are attracted to attain happiness and repulsed by the idea of an authentic personal God whom to surrender to.


Full purport by Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupad here: https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/7/27/