Live the Bhāgavatam · SB 10.87.31
Nirodha· Winding upLiberation Preserves Our Eternal Service
“Neither material nature nor the soul who tries to enjoy her are ever born, yet living bodies come into being when these two combine, just as bubbles form where water meets the air. And just as rivers merge into the ocean or the nectar from many different flowers blends into honey, so all these conditioned beings eventually merge back into You, the Supreme, along with their various names and qualities.”
What the purport teaches
- The individual souls are not created when they are born, nor destroyed when they merge back into the Lord. Birth means becoming covered by a material body; liberation ends both gross and subtle material coverings.
- Material nature supplies the ingredients of creation, and the Supreme Lord inspires her transformations by His glance. Because material nature is His expansion, He is ultimately both the ingredient cause and the directing cause.
- In partial dissolution, individual karmic reactions remain dormant, like different nectars mixed into honey. In liberation, false material designations are given up, and the liberated souls become equally situated as servants of the Supreme Lord.
Try this today
Write down one material label you identify with, then add: “Beyond this temporary designation, I am a servant of the Supreme Lord.”
Ask yourself
How does understanding liberation as eternal service, rather than loss of identity, shape my spiritual goal?
Carry the question through the day, then answer it in your own words before sleep.
From Canto 10, chapter 14 onward, the translation and purports were completed by Śrīla Prabhupāda's disciples after his departure, and published by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust.