God Sometimes - The Diverse Activities of the Supreme Lord
Śrīla Prabhupāda teaches that the Absolute Truth is not a monotonous, inactive energy. The Supreme Personality of Godhead is the most dynamic person in existence, and His activities are characterized by unlimited variety. The Vedic literatures often describe what the Lord "sometimes" does, revealing that He cannot be boxed into a predictable, material formula. He acts according to His own sweet will, reciprocating with the unique love of His devotees and responding to the specific needs of the cosmic manifestation in wonderfully diverse ways.
Descending in Diverse Ways
The Supreme Lord is not restricted to a single method of delivering the conditioned souls. Śrīla Prabhupāda explains that the Lord utilizes a variety of descents and empowered agents to execute His missionary activities across the universe.
- For this business, sometimes God personally comes; sometimes He sends His representative, His son, or His devotee, His servant. This is going on. God wants that these forgotten souls should come back to home, back to Godhead.
- Sometimes personally, sometimes by an incarnation and sometimes by authorizing a living being to act on His behalf - the Supreme Lord appears in this material world.
- Sometimes He appears as a saktyavesa-avatara like Lord Buddha. As explained before, these saktyavesa-avataras are incarnations of Visnu's power invested in a living entity.
- The Lord can appear in any family. Sometimes He appears as a fish incarnation or a boar incarnation. Thus the Lord is completely free and independent to appear anywhere and everywhere by His internal potency.
The Paradox of His Mercy
The Lord's mercy does not always align with material expectations. Śrīla Prabhupāda points out that while the Lord sometimes grants material facilities to encourage neophytes, His greatest mercy is often shown by stripping away a devotee's material attachments so they must depend entirely on Him.
- The conclusion is that even though we do not wish to be separated from our possessions, sometimes the Lord forcibly takes them from us; and sometimes He showers such benedictions upon us that we are unable to receive them all.
- Sometimes He does this by taking away a devotee's material attachments by force and baffling all his material protective agents, for thus the devotee must completely depend on the Lord's protection.
- To show special favor, the Lord sometimes makes an example of someone like Bali Maharaja, who was now bereft of all his possessions.
- Sometimes the Lord arranges an unfortunate wife for His devotee so that gradually, due to family circumstances, the devotee becomes detached from his wife and home and makes progress in devotional life.
Sweet and Playful Pastimes
In His supreme abode of Vṛndāvana, the Lord completely sets aside His majestic opulence to exchange pure, spontaneous love with His devotees. Śrīla Prabhupāda beautifully describes how the Lord sometimes acts like an ordinary, playful human child.
- Sometimes, Their ankle bells tinkling, They would play football with fruits like bael and amalaki. Sometimes They would cover Themselves with blankets and imitate cows and bulls and fight with one another, roaring loudly.
- Sometimes Krsna and Balarama would play on Their flutes, sometimes They would throw ropes and stones devised for getting fruits from the trees, sometimes They would throw only stones.
- Krsna sometimes played with His intimate friends by engaging in fighting or wrestling with their arms, sometimes by playing ball, sometimes by playing chess.
- Sometimes the Lord, as the child of mother Yasoda, requests His devotee for some food, as if He were very hungry.
Manifesting the Fighting Spirit
It may seem contradictory for the Supreme Lord to fight, but Śrīla Prabhupāda clarifies that because the fighting instinct exists within us, it must originate in the Absolute. When the Lord desires to exhibit this chivalrous spirit, He descends to annihilate powerful demons.
- The Lord sometimes desires to fight. The fighting spirit also exists in the Supreme Lord, otherwise how could fighting be manifested at all.
- When He desires to fight with someone, He has to find an enemy, but in the Vaikuntha world there is no enemy. Therefore He sometimes comes to the material world as an incarnation in order to manifest His fighting spirit.
- Thus Krsna is eternally engaged in His transcendental activities in Vrndavana with His friends, the cowherd boys and gopis, but sometimes He exhibits the extraordinary prowess of the Supreme Personality of Godhead by killing different types of demons.
- Although the Lord sometimes assumes a fierce appearance to kill the duskrtis, the devotees worship Him. The devotee always takes pleasure in worshiping the Lord and glorifying the Lord in any form, either pleasing or fierce.
Conclusion
A shallow understanding of the Absolute Truth attempts to limit God to a static, emotionless entity. However, Śrīla Prabhupāda reveals the vibrant reality of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, where the Supreme Lord is full of spiritual variety. Sometimes the Lord appears as the fierce Nṛsiṁhadeva, and sometimes He crawls in the mud of Vraja as a playful infant. Sometimes He sends a representative to preach, and sometimes He descends Himself. His interactions with His devotees are equally dynamic; sometimes He communicates through dreams, sometimes He allows Himself to be defeated by their love, and sometimes He strips away their material comforts to ensure their rapid return to the spiritual sky. By studying the diverse ways the Lord sometimes acts, a sincere soul begins to appreciate the unlimited depth, unpredictability, and supreme sweetness of the Personality of Godhead.
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Śrīla Prabhupāda lives within his instructions. This article is a summary of the profound truths found in the Vaniquotes category God Sometimes. We invite you to visit this link to study the complete compilation and experience Śrīla Prabhupāda's teachings in their direct, verbatim form.