218
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam
[ Canto 3, Ch. 5 ]
tataḥ —therefore;  vayam —all of us;  mat-pramukhāḥ —coming from the total cosmos, the  mahat-tattva ;  yat-arthe —for the purpose of which;  babhūvima —created;  ātman —the self;  karavāma —shall do;  kim —what;  te —Your service;  tvam —Yourself;  naḥ —to us;  svacakṣuḥ —personal plan;  paridehi —specifically grant us;  śaktyā —with potency to work;  deva —O Lord;  kriyārthe —for acting;  yat —that which;  anugrahāṇām —of those who are specifically favored.
TRANSLATION
O Supreme Self, please give us, who are created in the beginning from the  mahat-tattva , the total cosmic energy, Your kind directions on how we shall act. Kindly award us Your perfect knowledge and potency so that we can render You service in the different departments of subsequent creation.
PURPORT
The Lord creates this material world and impregnates the material energy with the living entities who will act in the material world. All these actions have a divine plan behind them. The plan is to give the conditioned souls who so desire a chance to enjoy sense gratification. But there is another plan behind the creation: to help the living entities realize that they are created for the transcendental sense gratification of the Lord and not for their individual sense gratification. This is the constitutional position of the living entities. The Lord is one without a second, and He expands Himself into many for His transcendental pleasure. All the expansions—the  Viṣṇu-tattvas , the  jīva-tattvas  and the  śakti-tattvas  (the Personalities of Godhead, the living entities and the different potential energies)—are different offshoots from the same one Supreme Lord. The  jīva-tattvas  are separated expansions of the  Viṣṇu-tattvas , and although there are potential differences between them, they are all meant for the transcendental sense gratification of the Supreme Lord. Some of the  jīvas , however, wanted to lord it over material nature in imitation of the lordship of the Personality of Godhead. Regarding when and why such propensities overcame the pure living entities, it can only be explained that the  jīva-tattvas  have infinitesimal independence and that due to misuse of this independence some of the living entities have become implicated in the conditions of cosmic creation and are therefore called  nitya-bandhanas , or eternally conditioned souls.
The expansions of Vedic wisdom also give the  nitya-bandhanas , the conditioned living entities, a chance to improve, and those who take