ŚB 10.60.37
निष्किञ्चनो ननु भवान् न यतोऽस्ति किञ्चिद्
यस्मै बलिं बलिभुजोऽपि हरन्त्यजाद्या: ।
न त्वा विदन्त्यसुतृपोऽन्तकमाढ्यतान्धा:
प्रेष्ठो भवान् बलिभुजामपि तेऽपि तुभ्यम् ॥ ३७ ॥
niṣkiñcano nanu bhavān na yato ’sti kiñcid
yasmai baliṁ bali-bhujo ’pi haranty ajādyāḥ
na tvā vidanty asu-tṛpo ’ntakam āḍhyatāndhāḥ
preṣṭho bhavān bali-bhujām api te ’pi tubhyam
Synonyms
niṣkiñcanaḥ — without possessions; nanu — indeed; bhavān — You; na — not; yataḥ — beyond whom; asti — there is; kiñcit — anything; yasmai — to whom; balim — tribute; bali — of tribute; bhujaḥ — the enjoyers; api — even; haranti — carry; aja-ādyāḥ — headed by Brahmā; na — not; tvā — You; vidanti — know; asu-tṛpaḥ — persons satisfied in the body; antakam — as death; āḍhyatā — by their status of wealth; andhāḥ — blinded; preṣṭhaḥ — the most dear; bhavān — You; bali-bhujām — for the great enjoyers of tribute; api — even; te — they; api — also; tubhyam — (are dear) to You.
Translation
You possess nothing because there is nothing beyond You. Even the great enjoyers of tribute — Brahmā and other demigods — pay tribute to You. Those who are blinded by their wealth and absorbed in gratifying their senses do not recognize You in the form of death. But to the gods, the enjoyers of tribute, You are the most dear, as they are to You.
Purport
Here Śrīmatī Rukmiṇī-devī replies to Lord Kṛṣṇa’s statement in text 14:
niṣkiñcanā vayaṁ śaśvan
niṣkiñcana-jana-priyāḥ
tasmāt prāyeṇa na hy āḍhyā
māṁ bhajanti su-madhyame
“We have no material possessions, and We are dear to those who similarly have nothing. Therefore, O slender one, the wealthy hardly ever worship Me.”
Queen Rukmiṇī begins her statement by saying niṣkiñcano nanu, “You are indeed niṣkiñcana.” The word kiñcana means “something,” and the prefix nir — or, as it appears here, niṣ — indicates negation. Thus in the ordinary sense niṣkiñcana means “one who does not have something,” or, in other words, “one who has nothing.”
But in the present verse Queen Rukmiṇī states that Lord Kṛṣṇa “possesses nothing” not because He is a pauper but because He Himself is everything. In other words, since Kṛṣṇa is the Absolute Truth, all that exists is within Him. There is no second thing, something outside the Lord’s existence, for Him to possess. For example, a man may possess a house or a car or a child or money, but these things do not become the man: they exist outside of him. We say he possesses them merely in the sense that he has control over them. But the Lord does not merely control His creation: His creation actually exists within Him. Thus there is nothing outside of Him that He can possess in the way that we possess external objects.
The ācāryas explain niṣkiñcana in the following way: To state that a person possesses something implies that he does not possess everything.
In other words, if we say that a man owns some property, we imply that he does not own all property but rather some specific property. A standard American dictionary defines the word some as “a certain indefinite or unspecified number, quantity, etc., as distinguished from the rest.” The Sanskrit word kiñcana conveys this sense of a partial amount of the total. Thus Lord Kṛṣṇa is called niṣkiñcana to refute the idea that He possesses merely a certain amount of beauty, fame, wealth, intelligence and other opulences. Rather, He possesses infinite beauty, infinite intelligence, infinite wealth and so on. This is so because He is the Absolute Truth.
Śrīla Prabhupāda begins his introduction to the First Canto, Volume One, of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam with the following statement, which is quite relevant to our present discussion: “The conception of God and the conception of the Absolute Truth are not on the same level. The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam hits on the target of the Absolute Truth. The conception of God indicates the controller, whereas the conception of the Absolute Truth indicates the summum bonum, or the ultimate source of all energies.” Here Śrīla Prabhupāda touches upon a fundamental philosophical point. God is commonly defined as “the supreme being,” and the dictionary defines supreme as (1) highest in rank, power, authority, etc; (2) highest in quality, achievement, performance, etc; (3) highest in degree; and (4) final, ultimate. None of these definitions adequately indicates absolute existence.
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