336
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam
[Canto 4, Ch. 8]
sva-icchā —by His own supreme will;  avatāra —incarnation;  caritaiḥ —activities;  acintya —inconceivable;  nija-māyayā —by His own potency;  kariṣyati —performs;  uttama-ślokaḥ —the Supreme Personality of Godhead;  tat —that;  dhyāyet —one should meditate;  hṛdayaṅgamam —very attractive.
TRANSLATION
My dear Dhruva, besides worshiping the Deity and chanting the mantra three times a day, you should meditate upon the transcendental activities of the Supreme Personality of Godhead in His different incarnations, as exhibited by His supreme will and personal potencies.
PURPORT
Devotional service comprises nine prescribed practices—hearing, chanting, remembering, worshiping, serving, offering everything to the Deity, etc. Here Dhruva Mahārāja is advised not only to meditate on the form of the Lord, but to think of His transcendental pastimes in His different incarnations. Māyāvādī philosophers take the incarnation of the Lord to be in the same category as the ordinary living entity. This is a great mistake. The incarnation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead is not forced to act by the material laws of nature. The word  svecchā  is used here to indicate that He appears out of His supreme will. The conditioned soul is forced to accept a particular type of body according to his  karma  given by the laws of material nature under the direction of the Supreme Lord. But when the Lord appears, He is not forced by the dictation of material nature; He appears as He likes by His own internal potency. That is the difference. The conditioned soul accepts a particular type of body, such as the body of a hog, by his work and by the superior authority of material nature. But when Lord Kṛṣṇa appears in the incarnation of a boar, He is not the same kind of hog as an ordinary animal. Kṛṣṇa appears as Varāha  avatāra  in an expansive feature which cannot be compared to an ordinary hog’s. His appearance and disappearance are inconceivable to us. In the  Bhagavad-gītā  it is clearly said that He appears by His own internal potency for the protection of the devotees and the annihilation of the nondevotees. A devotee should always consider that Kṛṣṇa does not appear as an ordinary human being or ordinary beast; His appearance as Varāha-mūrti or a horse or tortoise is an exhibition of His internal potency. In the  Brahma-saṁhitā  it is said,  ānanda-cinmaya-rasa-pratibhāvitābhiḥ : one should not mistake the appearance of the Lord as a human being or a beast to be the same as the birth of an ordinary conditioned soul, who is forced to appear by the laws of nature, whether