Live the Bhāgavatam · SB 2.1.32
Āśraya· The supreme shelterThe Supreme Lord Is a Complete Person
“Modesty is the upper portion of His lips, hankering is His chin, religion is the breast of the Lord, and irreligion is His back. Brahmājī, who generates all living beings in the material world, is His genitals, and the Mitrā-varuṇas are His two testicles. The ocean is His waist, and the hills and mountains are the stacks of His bones.”
What the purport teaches
- The Supreme Lord is not impersonal; He is the Supreme Person. His personality, however, differs from what our imperfect thinking can conceive.
- The Lord is complete with all bodily organs, but these have different forms and potencies from ours. Descriptions of Him as impersonal deny a personality limited by our speculation, not His personal existence.
- One can worship the Lord by seeing hills, mountains, oceans and sky as parts of His gigantic body. The virāṭ-rūpa shown by Kṛṣṇa to Arjuna challenges disbelief.
Try this today
Look at the sky or a nearby hill today and offer a moment of worship to the Lord while recalling His gigantic form.
Ask yourself
Am I limiting my understanding of the Lord’s personality to what I know of human bodies?
Carry the question through the day, then answer it in your own words before sleep.
The study points, practice and question are short summaries drawn from Śrīla Prabhupāda's translation and purport. Read the full purport to go deeper.