Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Sri Jiva Goswami's feast-day, celebrated in the temple he founded in Vrindavana.
(Radha-Damodara Temple).
And here, is Sri Jiva Goswami's elegant definition of God - all in one sentence!

"He who is the very form of existence, consciousness and bliss, who possesses inconceivable, multifarious and unlimited energies that are of his own nature, he who is the ocean of unlimited, mutually contradictory qualities, such that in him both the attribute and the possessor of attributes, the lack of differences and the varieties of difference, formlessness and form, pervasiveness and centrality all are true, who’s beautiful form is distinct from both gross and subtle entities, self-luminous and consisting entirely of his own nature, who has unlimited such forms that are manifested by his chief form called Bhagavan, who’s left side is beautified by Laksmi, who is the manifestation of his personal energy suitable to his own form, Bhagavan resides in his own abode along with his associates, who are furnished with a form that is a special manifestation of his own splendor, who astonishes the hosts of atmaramas, those who take pleasure in the self, by his wonderful qualities, pastimes, et cetera, which are characterized by the playing of his personal energy, who’s own generic brilliance is manifested in the form of the reality, who is the sole shelter and life of this marginal energy called the jivas, who’s mere reflected energy are the gunas, visible in unlimited phenomenal world, that person is Bhagavan (God)."

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