SB 10.54: The Marriage of Kṛṣṇa and Rukmiṇī

To express His great affection for Rukmiṇī, Lord Kṛṣṇa gallantly referred to His own Yādava army as “your men,” indicating that the Lord’s entire dynasty was now the property of His beloved queen. The Supreme Lord, Kṛṣṇa, desires to share His blissful opulences with all living beings, and thus He sincerely invites them to come back home, back to Godhead. The Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, introduced throughout the world by Śrīla Prabhupāda on the order of his spiritual master, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, who himself preached all over India on the order of his exalted father, Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, is broadcasting the loving message of Lord Kṛṣṇa: Remember Him, serve Him, return to Him and share in the infinite bounty of the kingdom of God.

Jarāsandha offers his own life as an example of the inevitable happiness and distress of this material world.

Rukmī spoke these angry words and then set off to pursue Lord Kṛṣṇa, as described in the following verses.

Śrīla Śrīdhara Svāmī explains that gopālasya actually means “of the protector of the Vedas,” while durmateḥ means “of Him whose beautiful mind is compassionate even toward the wicked.” Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī adds that the real meaning of what Rukmī said is that today, fighting with Lord Kṛṣṇa, Rukmī would relieve himself of his pretensions to being a great hero.

Śrīla Śrīdhara Svāmī points out that kula-pāṁsana may be understood as a combination of the words kula-pa, “O master of the Yadu dynasty,” and aṁsana, “O expert killer of enemies.” The ācārya gives the grammatical details that make this interpretation possible.

Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī points out that in fact Lord Kṛṣṇa was meant to lie down together with Rukmiṇī on a beautiful bed of flowers, but out of shyness Rukmī did not directly mention this point.

Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī quotes the “worldly rule” that one’s sister is the personification of mercy: dayāyā bhaginī mūrtiḥ. Even though Rukmī was wicked and was opposed to his sister’s best interest, Rukmiṇī was compassionate toward him, and the Lord shared her compassion.

Lord Balarāma, in the interest of fairness, is giving a complete analysis of the situation. Although one should not kill a relative, there are extenuating circumstances according to military codes. In the American Civil War, which took place in the 1860s, many families were divided between the army of the North and that of the South, and thus fratricidal killing unfortunately became a common affair. Such killing is certainly ghoratama, most dreadful. Yet such is the nature of the material world, where duty, honor and so-called justice often create conflict. Only on the spiritual platform, in pure Kṛṣṇa consciousness, can we transcend the unacceptable pain of material existence. Rukmī was maddened by pride and envy and thus could not understand anything about Kṛṣṇa or Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

The last line of this text, yathā jyotir yathā nabhaḥ, introduces two analogies in which we perceive one thing to be many. Jyotiḥ indicates the light of heavenly bodies such as the sun or moon. Although there is only one moon, we may see the moon reflected in pools, rivers, lakes and buckets of water. Then it would appear as if there were many moons, although there is only one. Similarly, we perceive a divine presence in each living being because the Supreme Lord is present everywhere, although He is one. The second analogy given here, yathā nabhaḥ, is that of the sky. If we have a row of sealed clay pots in a room, the sky, or air, is in each pot, although the sky itself is one.

The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (1.2.32) gives a similar analogy concerning fire and wood:

yathā hy avahito vahnir
 dāruṣv ekaḥ sva-yoniṣu
nāneva bhāti viśvātmā
 bhūteṣu ca tathā pumān

“The Lord, as the Supersoul, pervades all things, just as fire permeates wood, and so He appears to be of many varieties, though He is the absolute one without a second.”

As explained in the previous text, the conditioned soul ignorantly assumes himself to be the material body and thus rotates in the cycle of birth and death. In fact, matter and spirit are co-energies of the original source of everything, the Supreme Lord, who is the Absolute Truth.

As Lord Kṛṣṇa explains in the Bhagavad-gītā (7.5), jīva-bhūtāṁ mahā-bāho yayedaṁ dhāryate jagat. The material world is sustained by the living beings’ desire to exploit it. The material world is like a prison. Criminals are determined to commit crimes, and thus the government finds it necessary to maintain a prison system. Similarly, the Supreme Lord maintains the material universes because the conditioned souls are determined to rebel against Him and try to enjoy without His loving cooperation. Thus here the phrase tad-dhetutvāt is used to describe the soul, meaning that the soul is the cause of matter assembling itself into a material body. The term tat-prasiddheḥ indicates that the soul is the cause of the body’s being perceived, and the same term also indicates that this fact is well known to the enlightened.

Besides its given meaning, the word ātmanaḥ in this verse may indicate the Supreme Soul, in which case the term tad-dhetutvāt indicates that Lord Kṛṣṇa expands His personal potency and thus manifests the material universe. Since the Lord exists eternally in His pure, spiritual body, He never becomes material, as indicated here.

As stated in śruti, asaṅgo hy ayaṁ puruṣaḥ: “The living being has no intimate connection with the material world.” This point is explained in the present verse. A similar statement is found in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (11.22.56):

arthe ’hy avidyamāne ’pi
 saṁsṛtir na nivartate
dhyāyato viṣayān asya
 svapne ’narthāgamo yathā

“For one who is meditating on sense gratification, material life, although lacking factual existence, does not go away, just as the unpleasant experiences of a dream do not.”

Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī explains that the word bhoja means “experience” and that, kaṭaḥ, according to the Nānārtha-varga dictionary, means “vow.” Thus Bhojakaṭa is the place where Rukmī experienced misery as a result of his vow.