Canto 6: Prescribed Duties for MankindChapter 16: King Citraketu Meets the Supreme Lord

Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 6.16.33

tataḥ samādhāya mano manīṣayā

babhāṣa etat pratilabdha-vāg asau

niyamya sarvendriya-bāhya-vartanaḿ

jagad-guruḿ sātvata-śāstra-vigraham

SYNONYMS

tataḥ — thereafter; samādhāya — controlling; manaḥ — the mind; manīṣayā — by his intelligence; babhāṣa — spoke; etat — this; pratilabdha — recovering; vāk — speech; asau — that one (King Citraketu); niyamya — controlling; sarva-indriya — of all the senses; bāhya — external; vartanam — the wandering; jagat-gurum — who is the spiritual master of everyone; sātvata — of devotional service; śāstra — of the holy scriptures; vigraham — the personified form.

TRANSLATION

Thereafter, by controlling his mind with his intelligence and thus restricting his senses from external engagements, he recovered suitable words with which to express his feelings. Thus he began offering prayers to the Lord, who is the personification of the holy scriptures [the sātvata-saḿhitās like the Brahma-saḿhitā and the Nārada-pañcarātra] and who is the spiritual master of all. He offered his prayers as follows.

PURPORT

One cannot offer prayers to the Lord with mundane words. One must become spiritually advanced by controlling the mind and senses. Then he can find suitable words to offer in prayers to the Lord. Quoting the following verse from the Padma Purāṇa, Śrīla Sanātana Gosvāmī forbids us to sing any song not sung by authorized devotees.

avaiṣṇava-mukhodgīrṇaḿ

pūtaḿ hari-kathāmṛtam

śravaṇaḿ naiva kartavyaḿ

sarpocchiṣṭaḿ yathā payaḥ

The words or songs of a person not fixed in Vaiṣṇava behavior, not strictly following the rules and regulations and chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra should not be accepted by pure devotees. The words sātvata-śāstra-vigraham indicate that the sac-cid-ānanda body of the Lord can never be accepted to be made of māyā. Devotees do not offer prayers to the Lord in an imaginary form. The existence of the Lord's form is supported by all Vedic literature.

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His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Founder Ācārya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness