Devanagari
तमयं मन्यते लोको ह्यसङ्गमपि सङ्गिनम् ।
आत्मौपम्येन मनुजं व्यापृण्वानं यतोऽबुध: ॥ ३७ ॥
Verse text
tam ayaṁ manyate loko
hy asaṅgam api saṅginam
ātmaupamyena manujaṁ
vyāpṛṇvānaṁ yato ’budhaḥ
Synonyms
tam
—
unto Lord Kṛṣṇa
;
ayam
—
all these (common men)
;
manyate
—
do speculate within the mind
;
lokaḥ
—
the conditioned souls
;
hi
—
certainly
;
asaṅgam
—
unattached
;
api
—
in spite of
;
saṅginam
—
affected
;
ātma
—
self
;
aupamyena
—
by comparison with the self
;
manujam
—
ordinary man
;
vyāpṛṇvānam
—
being engaged in
;
yataḥ
—
because
;
abudhaḥ
—
foolish because of ignorance .
Translation
The common materialistic conditioned souls speculate that the Lord is one of them. Out of their ignorance they think that the Lord is affected by matter, although He is unattached.
Translation (Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura)
Although the queens’ beautiful smiles and furtive glances were all spotless and exciting, and signified deep love, and although they could conquer Cupid himself by making him give up his bow in frustration, those who approached him with false smiles and glances could not agitate the senses of the Lord.
Purport
The word
abudhaḥ
is significant here. Due to ignorance only, the foolish mundane wranglers misunderstand the Supreme Lord and spread their foolish imaginations amongst innocent persons by propaganda. The Supreme Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the original primeval Personality of Godhead, and when He was personally present before the eyes of everyone, He displayed full-fledged divine potency in every field of activities. As we have already explained in the first verse of
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam,
He is completely independent to act however He likes, but all His actions are full of bliss, knowledge and eternity. Only the foolish mundaners misunderstand Him, unaware of His eternal form of knowledge and bliss, which is confirmed in the
Bhagavad-gītā
and
Upaniṣads.
His different potencies work in a perfect plan of natural sequence, and doing everything by the agency of His different potencies, He remains eternally the supreme independent. When He descends to the material world by His causeless mercy to different living beings, He does so by His own potency. He is not subject to any condition of the material modes of nature, and He descends as He is originally. The mental speculators misunderstand Him as the Supreme Person, and they consider His impersonal features as inexplicable Brahman to be all. Such a conception is also the product of conditioned life because they cannot go beyond their own personal capacity. Therefore, one who considers the Lord on the level of one’s limited potency is only a common man. Such a man cannot be convinced that the Personality of Godhead is always unaffected by the modes of material nature. He cannot understand that the sun is always unaffected by infectious matter. The mental speculators compare everything from the standpoint of experimental knowledge of their own selves. Thus when the Lord is found to act like an ordinary person in matrimonial bondage, they consider Him to be like one of them, without considering that the Lord can at once marry sixteen thousand wives or more. Due to a poor fund of knowledge they accept one side of the picture while disbelieving the other. This means that due to ignorance only they always think of Lord Kṛṣṇa as like themselves and make their own conclusions, which are absurd and unauthentic from the version of the
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.
Commentary (Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura)
“How can Kṛṣṇa be beyond matter when he enjoys sense objects with his senses?” This verse answers.
With their pure, beautiful smiles (amala-valgu-hāsa) and bashful glances (vrīḍāvaloka) indicating deep prema (uddāma-bhāva) directed towards Kṛṣṇa, which arose from their own pain of love, they defeated Cupid. Cupid first considered, “Hey, they are glancing at their beloved Kṛṣṇa with desire without even being struck by my arrows!” Then he became struck with wonder on seeing Kṛṣṇa’s sweetness. The material Cupid, who had come to bewilder Kṛṣṇa, himself became bewildered and threw down his bow. In the presence of their arched bow-like eyebrows and the arrows of their bashful glances, what is the use of my bow and arrows? Thus he gave them up.
Though they were the best of women, they could not disturb his senses with their beautiful smiles and glances endowed with deception (kuhakaiḥ) to bring him under control. However, if those glances were endowed with prema, then they could disturb his senses. Because they did possess the proper type of love, their glances and smiles were certainly endowed with prema, though it was conjugal prema. They are described in the verse as having prema (bhāva-piśuna) and others are described as having deception (kuhakaiḥ). In the first case, though the Lord is under the control of his wives, the Lord is still beyond prakṛti and the guṇas of matter, because he is under the control of prema, which is a function of the cit-śakti (not material māyā), and because their glances and smiles are composed of prema, the love that appears in them, and the pastimes of love that arise from that love are all spiritual. It is therefore impossible to say that the Lord has enjoyment of material sense objects, such as material sound and touch. In the second case, because it is impossible for a person without prema to control the Lord, the verse says that his senses cannot at all be disturbed by deception. Therefore the previous statement reme strī-ratna-kūṭa-stho bhagavān prākṛto yathā cannot mean that the Lord is attracted to material enjoyment.
One cannot say that the queens are material if sometimes their love-filled glances do not bring the Lord under control, because all the queens belong to the cit-śakti and none of their glances or smiles can ever be material. Nor should one say that the Lord is controlled by the general cit-śakti, arising from his svarūpa. He is actually controlled by prema alone which is a special function of the cit-śakti. From this conclusion, there are no more objections.