Devanagari
यथा गोपायति विभुर्यथा संयच्छते पुन: ।
यां यां शक्तिमुपाश्रित्य पुरुशक्ति: पर: पुमान् ।
आत्मानं क्रीडयन् क्रीडन् करोति विकरोति च ॥ ७ ॥
Verse text
yathā gopāyati vibhur
yathā saṁyacchate punaḥ
yāṁ yāṁ śaktim upāśritya
puru-śaktiḥ paraḥ pumān
ātmānaṁ krīḍayan krīḍan
karoti vikaroti ca
Synonyms
yathā
—
as
;
gopāyati
—
maintains
;
vibhuḥ
—
the great
;
yathā
—
as
;
saṁyacchate
—
winds up
;
punaḥ
—
again
;
yām yām
—
as
;
śaktim
—
energies
;
upāśritya
—
by employing
;
puru
—
śaktiḥ — the all-powerful
;
paraḥ
—
the Supreme
;
pumān
—
Personality of Godhead
;
ātmānam
—
plenary expansion
;
krīḍayan
—
having engaged them
;
krīḍan
—
as also personally being engaged
;
karoti
—
does them
;
vikaroti
—
and causes to be done
;
ca
—
and .
Translation
Kindly describe how the Supreme Lord, who is all-powerful, engages His different energies and different expansions in maintaining and again winding up the phenomenal world in the sporting spirit of a player.
Translation (Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura)
I desire to know how the Lord maintains and then destroys the universe again. By which śaktis does this possessor of many śaktis, the supreme person, sport with māyā and create the elements, and then employing the devatās create the bodies of the living entities? O brāhmaṇa! The activities of the Lord, performer of astonishing activities, certainly appear hard to understand for even the wise.
Purport
In the
Kaṭha Upaniṣad
(2.2.13) the Supreme Lord is described as the chief eternal being amongst all other eternal individual beings (
nityo nityānāṁ cetanaś cetanānām
) and the one Supreme Lord who maintains innumerable other individual living beings (
eko bahūnāṁ yo vidadhāti kāmān
). So all living entities, both in the conditioned state and in the liberated state, are maintained by the Almighty Supreme Lord. Such maintenance is effected by the Lord through His different expansions of Self and three principal energies, namely the internal, external and marginal energies. The living entities are His marginal energies, and some of them, in the confidence of the Lord, are entrusted with the work of creation also, as are Brahmā, Marīci, etc., and the acts of creation are inspired by the Lord unto them (
tene brahma hṛdā
). The external energy (
māyā
) is also impregnated with the
jīvas,
or conditioned souls. The unconditioned marginal potency acts in the spiritual kingdom, and the Lord, by His different plenary expansions, maintains them in different transcendental relations displayed in the spiritual sky. So the one Supreme Personality of Godhead manifests Himself in many (
bahu syām
), and thus all diversities are in Him, and He is in all diversities, although He is nevertheless different from all of them. That is the inconceivable mystic power of the Lord, and as such everything is simultaneously one with and different from Him by His inconceivable potencies (
acintya-bhedābheda-tattva
).
Commentary (Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura)
Gopāyati means “maintains.” Samyacchate means “destroys.” The Lord possesses many śaktis such as the taṭaṣthā-śakti, bahiraṅga-śakti and antaraṅga-śakti related to the jīva, matter and the spiritual world. He sports with māyā-śakti (krīḍan) and creates a form of himself (ātmānam karoti) in the form of mahat-tattva, false ego and other elements. This is a question about sarga, primary creation. He engages others, the devatās such as Brahmā and Marīci, in sporting (krīḍayan), and creates a form of himself (ātmānam vikaroti) in the form of the devatās, animals, and humans. This is secondary creation.