31. O almighty Lord, how greatly fortunate are the cows and ladies of Vrndavana, the nectar of whose breast-milk You have happily drunk to Your full satisfaction, taking the form of their calves and children! All the Vedic sacrifices performed from time immemorial up to the present day have not given You as much satisfaction.
32. How greatly fortunate are Nanda Maharaja, the cowherd men and all the other inhabitants of Vrajabhumi! There is no limit to their good fortune, because the Absolute Truth, the source of transcendental bliss, the eternal Supreme Brahman, has become their friend.
33. Yet even though the extent of the good fortune of these residents of Vrndavana is inconceivable, we eleven presiding deities of the various senses, headed by Lord Siva, are also most fortunate, because the senses of these devotees of Vrndavana are the cups through which we repeatedly drink the nectarean, intoxicating beverage of the honey of Your lotus feet.
34. My greatest possible good fortune would be to take any birth whatever in this forest of Gokula and have my head bathed by the dust falling from the lotus feet of any of its residents. Their entire life and soul is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Mukunda, the dust of whose lotus feet is still being searched for in the Vedic mantras.
35. My mind becomes bewildered just trying to think of what reward other than You could be found anywhere. You are the embodiment of all benedictions, which You bestow upon these residents of the cowherd community of Vrndavana. You have already arranged to give Yourself to Putana and her family members in exchange for her disguising herself as a devotee. So what is left for You to give these devotees of Vrndavana, whose homes, wealth, friends, dear relations, bodies, children and very lives and hearts are all dedicated only to You?
36. My dear Lord Krishna, until people become Your devotees, their material attachments and desires remain thieves, their homes remain prisons, and their affectionate feelings for their family members remain foot-shackles.
37. My dear master, although You have nothing to do with material existence, You come to this earth and imitate material life just to expand the varieties of ecstatic enjoyment for Your surrendered devotees.
38. There are people who say, “I know everything about Krishna.” Let them think that way. As far as I am concerned, I do not wish to speak very much about this matter. O my Lord, let me say this much: As far as Your opulences are concerned, they are all beyond the reach of my mind, body and words.
39. My dear Krishna, I now humbly request permission to leave. Actually, You are the knower and seer of all things. Indeed, You are the Lord of all the universes, and yet I offer this one universe unto You.
40. My dear Sri Krishna, You bestow happiness upon the lotuslike Vrsni dynasty and expand the great oceans consisting of the earth, the demigods, the brahmanas and the cows. You dispel the dense darkness of irreligion and oppose the demons who have appeared on this earth. O Supreme Personality of Godhead, as long as this universe exists and as long as the sun shines, I will offer my obeisances unto You.
41. Sukadeva Gosvami said: Having thus offered his prayers, Brahma circumambulated his worshipable Lord, the unlimited Personality of Godhead, three times and then bowed down at His lotus feet. The appointed creator of the universe then returned to his own residence.
42. After granting His son Brahma permission to leave, the Supreme Personality of Godhead took the calves, who were still where they had been a year earlier, and brought them to the riverbank, where He had been taking His meal and where His cowherd boyfriends remained just as before.
43. O King, although the boys had passed an entire year apart from the Lord of their very lives, they had been covered by Lord Krishna’s illusory potency and thus considered that year merely half a moment.
44. What indeed is not forgotten by those whose minds are bewildered by the Lord’s illusory potency? By that power of Maya, this entire universe remains in perpetual bewilderment, and in this atmosphere of forgetfulness no one can understand his own identity.
45. The cowherd boyfriends said to Lord Krishna: You have returned so quickly! We have not eaten even one morsel in Your absence. Please come here and take Your meal without distraction.
46. Then Lord Hrsikesa, smiling, finished His lunch in the company of His cowherd friends. While they were returning from the forest to their homes in Vraja, Lord Krishna showed the cowherd boys the skin of the dead serpent Aghasura.
47. Lord Krishna’s transcendental body was decorated with peacock feathers and flowers and painted with forest minerals, and His bamboo flute loudly and festively resounded. As He called out to His calves by name, His cowherd boyfriends purified the whole world by chanting His glories. Thus Lord Krishna entered the cow pasture of His father, Nanda Maharaja, and the sight of His beauty at once produced a great festival for the eyes of all the cowherd women.
48. As the cowherd boys reached the village of Vraja, they sang, “Today Krishna saved us by killing a great serpent!” Some of the boys described Krishna as the son of Yasoda, and others as the son of Nanda Maharaja.
49. King Pariksit said: O brahmana, how could the cowherd women have developed for Krishna, someone else’s son, such unprecedented pure love—love they never felt even for their own children? Please explain this.
50. Sri Sukadeva Gosvami said: O King, for every created being the dearmost thing is certainly his own self. The dearness of everything else—children, wealth and so on—is due only to the dearness of the self.
51. For this reason, O best of kings, the embodied soul is self-centered: he is more attached to his own body and self than to his so-called possessions like children, wealth and home.
52. Indeed, for persons who think the body is the self, O best of kings, those things whose importance lies only in their relationship to the body are never as dear as the body itself.
53. If a person comes to the stage of considering the body “mine” instead of “me,” he will certainly not consider the body as dear as his own self. After all, even as the body is growing old and useless, one’s desire to continue living remains strong.
54. Therefore it is his own self that is most dear to every embodied living being, and it is simply for the satisfaction of this self that the whole material creation of moving and nonmoving entities exists.
55. You should know Krishna to be the original Soul of all living entities. For the benefit of the whole universe, He has, out of His causeless mercy, appeared as an ordinary human being. He has done this by the strength of His internal potency.
56. Those in this world who understand Lord Krishna as He is see all things, whether stationary or moving, as manifest forms of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Such enlightened persons recognize no reality apart from the Supreme Lord Krishna.
57. The original, unmanifested form of material nature is the source of all material things, and the source of even that subtle material nature is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krishna. What, then, could one ascertain to be separate from Him?
58. For those who have accepted the boat of the lotus feet of the Lord, who is the shelter of the cosmic manifestation and is famous as Murari, the enemy of the Mura demon, the ocean of the material world is like the water contained in a calf’s hoof-print. Their goal is paraà padam, Vaikuntha, the place where there are no material miseries, not the place where there is danger at every step.
59. Since you inquired from me, I have fully described to you those activities of Lord Hari that were performed in His fifth year but not celebrated until His sixth.
60. Any person who hears or chants these pastimes Lord Murari performed with His cowherd friends—the killing of Aghasura, the taking of lunch on the forest grass, the Lord’s manifestation of transcendental forms, and the wonderful prayers offered by Lord Brahma—is sure to achieve all his spiritual desires.
61. In this way the boys spent their childhood in the land of Vrndavana playing hide-and-go-seek, building play bridges, jumping about like monkeys and engaging in many other such games.
