Text-26-30
SB 1.16.26-30
satyam saucam daya ksantis
tyagah santosa arjavam
samo damas tapah samyam
titiksoparatih srutam
jñanam viraktir aisvaryam
sauryam tejo balam smrtih
svatantryam kausalam kantir
dhairyam mardavam eva ca
pragalbhyam prasrayah silam
saha ojo balam bhagah
gambhiryam sthairyam astikyam
kirtir mano ’nahankrtih
ete canye ca bhagavan
nitya yatra maha-gunah
prarthya mahattvam icchadbhir
na viyanti sma karhicit
tenaham guna-patrena
sri-nivasena sampratam
socami rahitam lokam
papmana kalineksitam
Translation by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada:
In Him reside (1) truthfulness, (2) cleanliness, (3) intolerance of another’s unhappiness, (4) the power to control anger, (5) self-satisfaction, (6) straightforwardness, (7) steadiness of mind, (8) control of the sense organs, (9) responsibility, (10) equality, (11) tolerance, (12) equanimity, (13) faithfulness, (14) knowledge, (15) absence of sense enjoyment, (16) leadership, (17) chivalry, (18) influence, (19) the power to make everything possible, (20) the discharge of proper duty, (21) complete independence, (22) dexterity, (23) fullness of all beauty, (24) serenity, (25) kindheartedness, (26) ingenuity, (27) gentility, (28) magnanimity, (29) determination, (30) perfection in all knowledge, (31) proper execution, (32) possession of all objects of enjoyment, (33) joyfulness, (34) immovability, (35) fidelity, (36) fame, (37) worship, (38) pridelessness, (39) being (as the Personality of Godhead), (40) eternity, and many other transcendental qualities which are eternally present and never to be separated from Him. That Personality of Godhead, the reservoir of all goodness and beauty, Lord Sri Krsna, has now closed His transcendental pastimes on the face of the earth. In His absence the Age of Kali has spread its influence everywhere, so I am sorry to see this condition of existence.
Purport by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada:
Even if it were possible to count the atoms after smashing the earth into powder, still it would not be possible to estimate the unfathomable transcendental qualities of the Lord. It is said that Lord Anantadeva has tried to expound the transcendental qualities of the Supreme Lord with His numberless tongues, and that for numberless years together it has been impossible to estimate the qualities of the Lord. The above statement of the qualities of the Lord is just to estimate His qualities as far as a human being is able to see Him. But even if it is so, the above qualities can be divided into many subheadings. According to Srila Jiva Gosvami, the third quality, intolerance of another’s unhappiness, can be subdivided into (1) protection of the surrendered souls and (2) well wishes for the devotees. In the Bhagavad-gita the Lord states that He wants every soul to surrender unto Him only, and He assures everyone that if one does so He will give protection from the reactions of all sins. Unsurrendered souls are not devotees of the Lord, and thus there is no particular protection for everyone in general. For the devotees He has all good wishes, and for those who are actually engaged in loving transcendental service of the Lord, He gives particular attention. He gives direction to such pure devotees to help them discharge their responsibilities on the path back to Godhead. By equality (10), the Lord is equally kind to everyone, as the sun is equal in distributing its rays over everyone. Yet there are many who are unable to take advantage of the sun’s rays. Similarly, the Lord says that surrendering unto Him is the guarantee for all protection from Him, but unfortunate persons are unable to accept this proposition, and therefore they suffer from all material miseries. So even though the Lord is equally well-wishing to everyone, the unfortunate living being, due to bad association only, is unable to accept His instructions in toto, and for this the Lord is never to be blamed. He is called the well-wisher for the devotees only. He appears to be partial to His devotees, but factually the matter rests on the living being to accept or reject equal treatment by the Lord.
The Lord never deviates from His word of honor. When He gives assurance for protection, the promise is executed in all circumstances. It is the duty of the pure devotee to be fixed in the discharge of the duty entrusted to him by the Lord or the Lord’s bona fide representative, the spiritual master. The rest is carried on by the Lord without a break.
The responsibility of the Lord is also unique. The Lord has no responsibility because all His work is done by His different appointed energies. But still He accepts voluntary responsibilities in displaying different roles in His transcendental pastimes. As a boy, He was playing the part of a cowboy. As the son of Nanda Maharaja, He discharged responsibility perfectly. Similarly, when He was playing the part of a ksatriya as the son of Maharaja Vasudeva, He displayed all the skill of a martially spirited ksatriya. In almost all cases, the ksatriya king has to secure a wife by fighting or kidnapping. This sort of behavior for a ksatriya is praiseworthy in the sense that a ksatriya must show his power of chivalry to his would-be wife so that the daughter of a ksatriya can see the valor of her would-be husband. Even the Personality of Godhead Sri Rama displayed such a spirit of chivalry during His marriage. He broke the strongest bow, called Haradhanur, and achieved the hand of Sitadevi, the mother of all opulence. The ksatriya spirit is displayed during marriage festivals, and there is nothing wrong in such fighting. Lord Sri Krsna discharged such responsibility fully because although He had more than sixteen thousand wives, in each and every case He fought like a chivalrous ksatriya and thus secured a wife. To fight sixteen thousand times to secure sixteen thousand wives is certainly possible only for the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Similarly, He displayed full responsibility in every action of His different transcendental pastimes.
The fourteenth quality, knowledge, can be further extended into five subheadings, namely (1) intelligence, (2) gratefulness, (3) power of understanding the circumstantial environments of place, object and time, (4) perfect knowledge of everything, and (5) knowledge of the self. Only fools are ungrateful to their benefactors. The Lord, however, does not require benefit from anyone besides Himself because He is full in Himself; still He feels benefited by the unalloyed services of His devotees. The Lord feels grateful to His devotees for such unsophisticated, unconditional service and tries to reciprocate it by rendering service, although the devotee also has no such desire in his heart. The transcendental service of the Lord is itself a transcendental benefit for the devotee, and therefore the devotee has nothing to expect from the Lord. On the assertion of the Vedic aphorism sarvam khalv idam brahma, we can understand that the Lord, by the omnipresent rays of His effulgence, called brahmajyoti, is all-pervading inside or outside of everything, like the omnipresent material sky, and thus He is also omniscient.
As far as the beauty of the Lord is concerned, He has some special features that distinguish Him from all other living beings, and over and above that He has some special attractive beautiful features by which He attracts the mind of even Radharani, the supermost beautiful creation of the Lord. He is known, therefore, as Madana-mohana, or one who attracts the mind of even Cupid. Srila Jiva Gosvami Prabhu has scrutinizingly analyzed other transcendental qualities of the Lord and affirms that Lord Sri Krsna is the Absolute Supreme Personality of Godhead (Parabrahman). He is omnipotent by His inconceivable energies, and therefore He is the Yogesvara, or the supreme master of all mystic powers. Being the Yogesvara, His eternal form is spiritual, a combination of eternity, bliss and knowledge. The nondevotee class cannot understand the dynamic nature of His knowledge because they are satisfied to reach up to His eternal form of knowledge. All great souls aspire to be equal in knowledge with Him. This means that all other knowledge is ever insufficient, flexible and measurable, whereas the knowledge of the Lord is ever fixed and unfathomable. Srila Suta Gosvami affirms in the Bhagavatam that although He was observed by the citizens of Dvaraka every day, they were ever increasingly anxious to see Him again and again. The living beings can appreciate the qualities of the Lord as the ultimate goal, but they cannot attain the status quo of such equality. This material world is a product of the mahat-tattva, which is a state of the Lord’s dreaming condition in His yoga-nidra mystic slumber in the Causal Ocean, and yet the whole creation appears to be a factual presentation of His creation. This means that the Lord’s dreaming conditions are also factual manifestations. He can therefore bring everything under His transcendental control, and thus whenever and wherever He does appear, He does so in His fullness.
The Lord, being all that is described above, maintains the affairs of the creation, and by His so doing He gives salvation even to His enemies who are killed by Him. He is attractive even to the topmost liberated soul, and thus He is worshipable even by Brahma and Siva, the greatest of all demigods. Even in His incarnation of purusa-avatara He is the Lord of the creative energy. The creative material energy is working under His direction, as confirmed in the Bhagavad-gita (9.10). He is the control switch of the material energy, and to control the material energy in the innumerable universes, He is the root cause of innumerable incarnations in all the universes. There are more than five hundred thousand incarnations of Manu in only one universe, besides other incarnations in different universes. In the spiritual world, however, beyond the mahat-tattva, there is no question of incarnations, but there are plenary expansions of the Lord in different Vaikunthas. The planets in the spiritual sky are at least three times the number of those within the innumerable universes in the mahat-tattva. And all the Narayana forms of the Lord are but expansions of His Vasudeva feature, and thus He is Vasudeva, Narayana and Krsna simultaneously. He is sri-krsna govinda hare murare he natha narayana vasudeva, all in one. His qualities, therefore, cannot be counted by anyone, however great one may be.