Study a Verse

• The word durga means “that which does not go very easily.”
• Generally durga refers to a fort, which one cannot very easily enter.
• Because the Supreme Personality of Godhead promised to protect Bali Mahārāja and his associates from all dangers, He is addressed here as durga-pāla, the Lord who gives protection from all miserable conditions.

Śrīla Prabhupāda's own sentences, chosen from the purport as its central points. Read the full purport on Vedabase to see them in place.

Public loss and humiliation → Total surrender. An apparent external defeat conceals a devotional triumph.

Chapters 19–23 of Canto 8: Vāmana tests Bali; Bali offers everything. An editorial reading of the story's mood, not the text itself. See the emotional arc

Chapter 23: The Demigods Regain the Heavenly Planets

From the chapter summary, the lines nearest this verse:

The great soul Bali Mahārāja experienced that the highest gain in life is to attain devotional service under the shelter of the Lord’s lotus feet in full surrender. Being fixed in this conclusion, his heart full of ecstatic devotion and his eyes full of tears, he offered obeisances to the Personality of Godhead and then, with his associates, entered the planet known as Sutala.