Damodara (Kartik Vrata)

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Those superexcellent pastimes of Lord Krsna’s babyhood drowned the Inhabitants of Gokula in pools of ecstasy. To the devotees who are Attracted only to His majestic aspect of Narayana in Vaikuntha, the Lord herein reveals: "I am conquered and overwhelmed by pure Loving devotion." To the Supreme Lord Damodra, my obesances hundreds and hundreds of times.

Born in Jagannath Puri in 1957 he became associated with ISKCON while on his second year in college. He joined the Society in 1978 and was intiated by His Holiness Jayapataka Swami the following year during the Gaura Purnima Festival in Sri Dham Mayapur. From then on he served in various capacities, first as sankirtan leader in Kolkata, then on the boat preaching party in Mayapur. Starting in 1983 he served four years as Temple President in Bhuvaneswar.

In 1987 he returned to Mayapur to become general manager. Under his supervision the Gita Correspondence-course program, College preaching and book distribution were develop-ed. At present Maharaja is serving in Mayapur as Co-director and one of the GBC members.

"To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear, millennium after millennium."

From the above statement of Lord Sri Krsna in the Bhagavad-gita it is understood that the Lord incarnates in each yuga for protecting His devotees, annihilating the demons and re-establishing dharma. But our Vaisnava acaryas have stated that there is a higher purpose for the advent of the Lord in this material world. According to them, the three reasons given above are secondary reasons.

As stated in scripture:

"I perform different pastimes in this world to give pleasure to my devotees."

"You Yourself descend to propagate the transcendental science of devotional service unto the hearts of the advanced transcendentalists and mental speculators, who are purified by being able to discriminate between matter and spirit. How, then, can we women know You perfectly?"

As stated in Srimad-Bhagavatam (10.33.36):

"Lord Krsna descends apparently as a human being, and He exhibits His transcendental pastimes in Vrndavana so that the conditioned soul may be attracted to hearing His transcendental activities." From the above references it is understood that the purpose of the Lord’s advent is to attract people by His transcendental pastimes. It is true that people will naturally be attracted to the Lord when they hear of His wonderful pastimes, but they may need the key of understanding, given by the dcaryas, to unlock this great treasure.

In general, the world and its religions believe that God has no form. Even in Hinduism, this concept of a formless God is very strong. If you say God has no form then it is easily accepted, because formlessness is seen as something extraordinary. Ordinary people have a form, but God is extraordinary, therefore He must have no form. People readily accept this concept. Those who do accept the personal aspect of God, more easily accept Lord Visnu or Narayana as God. It is easy for people to accept the extraordinary form of Lord Visnu as God. He has four hands, a blue body and is lying on a serpent in the ocean of milk, or residing in Vaikuntha, etc. But when it comes to accepting Lord Rama or Lord Krsna as God, many questions and doubts seem to arise in the mind. The Lord in these forms has exhibited many extraordinary feats as well as very common activities, which lead people to doubt whether Sri Rama and Sri Krsna are really God or not. For example, the seemingly worldly behavior of Lord Ramacandra when He was banished to the forest and His wife was stolen by Ravana. Lord Rama was lamenting and crying for His wife. This apparent contradiction is also prevalent in the pastimes off Lord Sri Krsna. Asa child, He was afraid of the stick in His mother’s hand, He stole butter in different houses, He danced with the wives of other men in the middle of the night, etc. By hearing of these seemingly common activities, some people begin to doubt that Krsna and Rama are actually God. How can God have all these qualities when He is transcendental to material qualities? Param brahma, God, has unlimited good qualities. But there are eighteen qualities that God does not possess, for example:

The sdstras name eighteen principal faults that are never present in the Lord: illusion, laziness, error, cruelty, intense lust, fickleness, arrogance, envy, violence, sorrow, fatigue, dishonesty, anger, longing, fear, confusion, partiality, and dependency on others.

Though these qualities are not supposed to be within God, we see in the many pastimes of Sri Rama and Sri Krsna that some these qualities are exhibited by the Lord. How can we reconcile this?

If we simply read scripture, we cannot understand. We will become more bewildered by the pastimes of God, and as a result the purpose of the Lord's advent will have failed. The Lord appears to exhibit His pastimes by which people will be attracted to Him, but in reality we see that simply by hearing about His pastimes many doubts begin to surface. To fully grasp the nectar of the Lord’s pastimes, we must hear them explained by the dcaryas.

By paying careful attention to the explanations given by the Vaisnava dcaryas, all doubts will be dispelled and it will become clear that the qualities which seem to disqualify the Lord as God are actually wonderful qualities which enhance His greatness.

Through this description of the dama-bandhana-lila we will explore this great secret.

Srila Sukadeva Gosvami has described this special pastime of dama-bandhana in Srimad-Bhagavatam in great ecstasy. Moreover, our great Vaisnava acaryas have given insightful commentaries on this topic which provide greater clarity and sweetness. The dama-bandhana pastime chapter of this book includes the commentaries of Srila Vigvanatha Cakravarti Thakura and Srila Jiva Gosvami. Srila Jiva Gosvami has also very wonderfully described this pastime of binding Krsna in his book Gopdala-campii. I have added some of that description as it has been translated by His Holiness Bhanu Swami. While I was about to finish compiling this chapter, I came across a lecture given by His Holiness Radha-Govinda Goswami Maharaja, which has been published in a small book. Upon reading that book I discovered further interesting descriptions and could not help but include them. Thus this book is a combination of various nectarean commentaries of some of our great acaryas.