218 Srimad-Bhagavatam {Canto 3, Ch. 5

tatah—therefore; vayam—all of us; mat-pramukhah—coming from the
total cosmos, the mahat-tattva; yat-arthe—for the purpose of which;
babhivima—created; atman—the self; karavama—shall do; kim—what; te—
Your service; tvam—Yourself; nah—to us; svacaksuh—personal plan;
paridehi—specifically grant us; saktya—with potency to work; deva—O
Lord; kriyarthe—for acting; yat—that which; anugrahanam—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 Visnu-tattvas, the jiva-tattvas and the sakti-tattvas (the Personalities of
Godhead, the living entities and the different potential energies)—are
different offshoots from the same one Supreme Lord. The jiva-tattvas
are separated expansions of the Visnu-tattvas, and although there are
potential differences between them, they are all meant for the transcen-
dental sense gratification of the Supreme Lord. Some of the jivas,
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 jiva-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
