This chapter describes how Brahmā and other demigods, after offering prayers to Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, requested the Lord to return to His own abode and how Uddhava, anticipating separation from the Supreme Personality of Godhead, was very distressed and prayed to Śrī Kṛṣṇa that he might accompany Him on His return to that abode.
Desiring to see Śrī Kṛṣṇa in His humanlike form, which enchants all the worlds, the Gandharvas, Apsarās, Nāgas, Ṛṣis, Pitās, Vidyādharas, Kinnaras and other demigods, all headed by Brahmā, Śiva and Indra, arrived at the city of Dvārakā. Covering the body of Kṛṣṇa with flower garlands from the Nandana gardens of heaven, they praised Him with statements about His transcendental power and qualities.
All living entities, beginning with Brahmā, are subordinate to Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa creates the universe by empowering His expansion Mahā-Viṣṇu. Although Kṛṣṇa creates, maintains and destroys this world through His material energy, He remains transcendental to the material energy and perfectly self-satisfied. Even in the midst of His sixteen thousand queens, Lord Kṛṣṇa is undisturbed.
Performers of fruitive sacrifices and yogīs desiring mystic power contemplate the lotus feet of Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa to attain their materialistic objectives. But the most elevated devotees, who desire liberation from the bondage of material work, lovingly contemplate the Lord’s lotuslike feet because those feet are the fire that destroys all desires for sense gratification. One cannot actually purify the mind by ordinary worship, penance and other such processes. One can purify the mind contaminated by sense gratification only through mature faith in the mode of goodness, which arises by hearing the glories of Kṛṣṇa. Therefore, intelligent persons situated in the varṇāśrama system serve the two kinds of holy places: the nectarean rivers of the topics of Kṛṣṇa and the nectarean rivers flowing from the Lord’s lotus feet.
By incarnating within the Yadu dynasty, Kṛṣṇa performed the highest welfare work for the entire universe by displaying His transcendental pastimes. Simply by hearing and chanting about these pastimes, pious persons in Kali-yuga can definitely cross over the ocean of material illusion. When the Lord had fulfilled the purpose of His descent and the Yadu dynasty was facing imminent destruction from the brāhmaṇas’ curse, the Lord desired to wind up His pastimes. When Brahmā prayed to the lotus feet of Lord Kṛṣṇa for the deliverance of himself and all the other demigods, Śrī Kṛṣṇa revealed in His reply that after the destruction of the Yadu dynasty He would return to His own abode.
Observing terrible disturbances indicating the imminent destruction of the world, Lord Kṛṣṇa called together the wise members of the Yadu dynasty and reminded them of the brāhmaṇas’ curse. The Lord convinced them to go to Prabhāsa-tīrtha, where they could save themselves by the performance of ritual bathing, charity, and so on. The Yadus, in obedience to Kṛṣṇa’s desire, prepared to journey to Prabhāsa.
Upon seeing and hearing the Lord’s conversation with the Yadu dynasty, Uddhava approached Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa in a secluded place, offered Him full obeisances and, with folded hands, expressed his inability to tolerate separation from the Lord. He begged Kṛṣṇa to carry him to His own abode.
If one tastes the nectar of Kṛṣṇa’s pastimes with his ears, one loses all hankering for other things. Persons who engage constantly in Kṛṣṇa’s service — while eating, sporting, sleeping, sitting, etc. — cannot tolerate separation from Kṛṣṇa. They honor all kinds of remnants from Śrī Kṛṣṇa and thus conquer the Lord’s illusory energy. Peaceful members of the renounced order attain Brahmaloka after exhaustive and painful exertion, whereas the devotees of the Lord simply discuss Lord Kṛṣṇa among themselves, chant and remember His various pastimes and instructions, and thus automatically cross beyond the insurmountable material energy.