50 Srimad-Bhagavatam [Canto 3, Ch. 2

yah pafica-hayano matra
pratarasaya yacitah

tan naicchad racayan yasya
saparyam bala-lilaya

yah—one who; paica—five; hayanah—years old; matra—by his mother;
pratarasaya—for breakfast; ya@citah—called for; tat—that; na—not; aicchat—
liked; racayan—playing; yasya—whose; saparyam-—service; bdala-lilaya—
childhood.

TRANSLATION

He was one who even in his childhood, at the age of five years, was so
absorbed in the service of Lord Krsna that when he was called by his
mother for morning breakfast, he did not wish to have it.

PURPORT

From his very birth, Uddhava was a natural devotee of Lord Krsna, or
a nitya-siddha, a liberated soul. From natural instinct he used to serve
Lord Krgna, even in his childhood. He used to play with dolls in the form
of Krsna, he would serve the dolls by dressing, feeding and worshiping them,
and thus he was constantly absorbed in the play of transcendental
realization. These are the signs of an eternally liberated soul. An eternally
liberated soul is a devotee of the Lord who never forgets Him. Human
life is meant for reviving one’s eternal relation with the Lord, and all
religious injunctions are meant for awakening this dormant instinct of the
living entity. The sooner this awakening is brought about, the quicker the
mission of human life is fulfilled. In a good family of devotees, the child
gets the opportunity to serve the Lord in many ways. A soul who is
already advanced in devotional service has the opportunity to take birth
in such an enlightened family. This is confirmed in the Bhagavad-gita
(6.41). Sucinam srimatarh gehe yoga-bhrasto ’bhi jayate: even the fallen
devotee gets the opportunity to take his birth in the family of a well-
situated brahmana or in a rich, well-to-do mercantile family. In both these
families there is a good opportunity to revive one’s sense of God
consciousness automatically because particularly in these families the
worship of Lord Krsna is regularly performed and the child gets the
opportunity to imitate the process of worship called arcana.

The pdiicaratriki formula for training persons in devotional service is
temple worship, whereby the neophytes get the opportunity to learn
devotional service to the Lord. Maharaja Pariksit also used to play with
