Shloka 7
Parīkṣit’s Full Surrender and Śukadeva’s Maṅgalācaraṇa to Kṛṣṇa
Inquiry into Creation, Maintenance, and Dissolution
यथा गोपायति विभुर्यथा संयच्छते पुन: । यां यां शक्तिमुपाश्रित्य पुरुशक्ति: पर: पुमान् । आत्मानं क्रीडयन् क्रीडन् करोति विकरोति च ॥ ७ ॥
yathā gopāyati vibhur yathā saṁyacchate punaḥ yāṁ yāṁ śaktim upāśritya puru-śaktiḥ paraḥ pumān ātmānaṁ krīḍayan krīḍan karoti vikaroti ca
အစွမ်းအာဏာအပြည့်ရှိသော ဘုရားသခင်သည် မိမိ၏ မျိုးစုံသော စက္တိများကို အားထား၍ လောကကို ထိန်းသိမ်းပြီး နောက်တဖန် ပြန်လည်သိမ်းယူတော်မူသည်; အမြင့်ဆုံး ပုရုရှသည် ကစားသကဲ့သို့ ဖန်ဆင်း၍ ပြောင်းလဲတော်မူသည်။
In the Kaṭha Upaniṣad (2.2.13) the Supreme Lord is described as the chief eternal being amongst all other eternal individual beings ( nityo nityānāṁ cetanaś cetanānām ) and the one Supreme Lord who maintains innumerable other individual living beings ( eko bahūnāṁ yo vidadhāti kāmān ). So all living entities, both in the conditioned state and in the liberated state, are maintained by the Almighty Supreme Lord. Such maintenance is effected by the Lord through His different expansions of Self and three principal energies, namely the internal, external and marginal energies. The living entities are His marginal energies, and some of them, in the confidence of the Lord, are entrusted with the work of creation also, as are Brahmā, Marīci, etc., and the acts of creation are inspired by the Lord unto them ( tene brahma hṛdā ). The external energy ( māyā ) is also impregnated with the jīvas, or conditioned souls. The unconditioned marginal potency acts in the spiritual kingdom, and the Lord, by His different plenary expansions, maintains them in different transcendental relations displayed in the spiritual sky. So the one Supreme Personality of Godhead manifests Himself in many ( bahu syām ), and thus all diversities are in Him, and He is in all diversities, although He is nevertheless different from all of them. That is the inconceivable mystic power of the Lord, and as such everything is simultaneously one with and different from Him by His inconceivable potencies ( acintya-bhedābheda-tattva ).
FAQs
This verse explains that the Supreme Person acts through whichever of His energies He chooses—protecting, withdrawing, creating, and transforming the cosmos as part of His divine play.
He emphasizes that the Lord is complete and independent; creation and dissolution are not forced upon Him but occur effortlessly through His potencies, like a pastime.
It builds faith that the universe is not random—maintenance and change occur under divine control—encouraging surrender, steadiness in upheaval, and devotion rather than anxiety.