220 Srimad-Bhagavatam [Canto 6, Ch. 4

“O son of Maharaja Nanda [Krsna], I am Your eternal servitor, yet some-
how or other I have fallen into the ocean of birth and death. Please pick
me up from this ocean of death and place me as one of the atoms at Your
lotus feet.” Being pleased with the devotee, the Lord turns all his ma-
terial impediments into spiritual service. In this connection Srila
Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura quotes a verse from the Visnu Purana:

hladini sandhini samvit
tvayy eka sarva-samsthitau
hlada-tapa-kari misra

tvayi no guna-varjite

In the material world, the spiritual energy of the Supreme Personality of
Godhead is manifested as tapa-kari, which means “‘causing miseries.”
Everyone hankers for happiness, but although happiness originally
comes from the pleasure potency of the Supreme Personality of Godhead,
in the material world, because of material activities, the pleasure potency
of the Lord becomes a source of miseries (hidda-tapa-kari). False happi-
ness in the material world is the source of distress, but when one’s en-
deavors for happiness are redirected toward the satisfaction of the
Supreme Personality of Godhead, this tapa-kari element of misery is
vanquished. An example given in this connection is that extracting fire
from wood is certainly difficult, but when the fire comes out it burns the
wood to ashes. In other words, experiencing the Supreme Personality of
Godhead is extremely difficult for those devoid of devotional service, but
everything becomes easier for a devotee, and thus he can very easily
meet the Supreme Lord.

Here the prayers say that the form of the Lord is beyond the jurisdic-
tion of material form and is therefore inconceivable. A devotee prays,
however, ‘‘My dear Lord, be pleased with me so that I may very easily
see Your transcendental form and potency.”’ Nondevotees try to under-
stand the Supreme Brahman by discussions of neti neti. Nisedha-nir-
vana-sukhanubhitih: a devotee, however, simply by chanting the holy
name of the Lord, avoids such laborious speculations and realizes the ex-
istence of the Lord very easily.
