Shloka 4
Bhagavān’s Avatāras, Their Protections (Poṣaṇa), and the Limits of Knowing Him
अत्रेरपत्यमभिकाङ्क्षत आह तुष्टो दत्तो मयाहमिति यद् भगवान् स दत्त: । यत्पादपङ्कजपरागपवित्रदेहा योगर्द्धिमापुरुभयीं यदुहैहयाद्या: ॥ ४ ॥
atrer apatyam abhikāṅkṣata āha tuṣṭo datto mayāham iti yad bhagavān sa dattaḥ yat-pāda-paṅkaja-parāga-pavitra-dehā yogarddhim āpur ubhayīṁ yadu-haihayādyāḥ
အထရီ မဟာရသီသည် သားသမီးရရန် ဆုတောင်းခဲ့သည်။ ဘဂဝန်သည် နှစ်သက်၍ “ငါသည် ဒတ္တ အဖြစ် သင့်ထံ ပေးအပ်၏” ဟု မိန့်ကာ အထရီ၏ သား ဒတ္တာထရေယ အဖြစ် အဝတားတော်မူသည်။ ထိုသခင်၏ ခြေတော်ကြာပန်းမှုန်ကြောင့် ယဒု၊ ဟိုင်းဟယ စသည်တို့ သန့်စင်ကာ လောကီနှင့် အာတ్మိက အကျိုးကျေးဇူး နှစ်မျိုးလုံး ရရှိ하였다။
Transcendental relations between the Personality of Godhead and the living entities are eternally established in five different affectionate humors, which are known as śānta, dāsya, sakhya, vātsalya and mādhurya. The sage Atri was related with the Lord in the affectionate vātsalya humor, and therefore, as a result of his devotional perfection, he was inclined to have the Personality of Godhead as his son. The Lord accepted his prayer, and He gave Himself as the son of Atri. Such a relation of sonhood between the Lord and His pure devotees can be cited in many instances. And because the Lord is unlimited, He has an unlimited number of father-devotees. Factually the Lord is the father of all living entities, but out of transcendental affection and love between the Lord and His devotees, the Lord takes more pleasure in becoming the son of a devotee than in becoming one’s father. The father actually serves the son, whereas the son only demands all sorts of services from the father; therefore a pure devotee who is always inclined to serve the Lord wants Him as the son, and not as the father. The Lord also accepts such service from the devotee, and thus the devotee becomes more than the Lord. The impersonalists desire to become one with the Supreme, but the devotee becomes more than the Lord, surpassing the desire of the greatest monist. Parents and other relatives of the Lord achieve all mystic opulences automatically because of their intimate relationship with the Lord. Such opulences include all details of material enjoyment, salvation and mystic powers. Therefore, the devotee of the Lord does not seek them separately, wasting his valuable time in life. The valuable time of one’s life must therefore be fully engaged in the transcendental loving service of the Lord. Then other desirable achievements are automatically gained. But even after obtaining such achievements, one should be on guard against the pitfall of offenses at the feet of the devotees. The vivid example is Haihaya, who achieved all such perfection in devotional service but, because of his offense at the feet of a devotee, was killed by Lord Paraśurāma. The Lord became the son of the great sage Atri and became known as Dattātreya.
FAQs
In this verse, Dattātreya is identified as the Supreme Lord’s incarnation who appeared to Atri after Atri desired an offspring and pleased the Lord through devotion and austerity.
It means “I am given to you”—the Lord, satisfied with Atri, personally granted Himself as Atri’s son, hence the name Datta (Dattātreya).
It teaches that sincere longing for divine service and steady spiritual practice attracts the Lord’s mercy, and that true purification and higher abilities come from connection to the Lord’s lotus feet—not from ego-driven pursuit of powers.