SB 2.7.24
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
TEXT 24
yasmā adād udadhir ūḍha-bhayāṅga-vepo
mārgaṁ sapady ari-puraṁ haravad didhakṣoḥ
dūre suhṛn-mathita-roṣa-suśoṇa-dṛṣṭyā
tātapyamāna-makaroraga-nakra-cakraḥ
SYNONYMS
yasmai—unto whom; adāt—gave; udadhiḥ—the great Indian Ocean; ūḍha-bhaya—affected by fear; aṅga-vepaḥ—bodily trembling; mārgam—way; sapadi—quickly; ari-puram—the city of the enemy; hara-vat—like that of Hara (Mahādeva); didhakṣoḥ—desiring to burn to ashes; dūre—at a long distance; su-hṛt—intimate friend; mathita—being aggrieved by; roṣa—in anger; su-śoṇa—red-hot; dṛṣṭyā—by such a glance; tātapyamāna—burning in heat; makara—sharks; uraga—snakes; nakra—crocodiles; cakraḥ—circle.
TRANSLATION
The Personality of Godhead Rāmacandra, being aggrieved for His distant intimate friend [Sītā], glanced over the city of the enemy Rāvaṇa with red-hot eyes like those of Hara [who wanted to burn the kingdom of heaven]. The great ocean, trembling in fear, gave Him His way because its family members, the aquatics like the sharks, snakes and crocodiles, were being burnt by the heat of the angry red-hot eyes of the Lord.
PURPORT
The Personality of Godhead has every sentiment of a sentient being, like all other living beings, because He is the chief and original living entity, the supreme source of all other living beings. He is the nitya, or the chief eternal amongst all other eternals. He is the chief one, and all others are the dependent many. The many eternals are supported by the one eternal, and thus both the eternals are qualitatively one. Due to such oneness, both the eternals constitutionally have a complete range of sentiments, but the difference is that the sentiments of the chief eternal are different in quantity from the sentiments of the dependent eternals. When Rāmacandra was angry and showed His red-hot eyes, the whole ocean became heated with that energy, so much so that the aquatics within the great ocean felt the heat, and the personified ocean trembled in fear and offered the Lord an easy path for reaching the enemy's city. The impersonalists will see havoc in this red-hot sentiment of the Lord because they want to see negation in perfection. Because the Lord is absolute, the impersonalists imagine that in the Absolute the sentiment of anger, which resembles mundane sentiments, must be conspicuous by absence. Due to a poor fund of knowledge, they do not realize that the sentiment of the Absolute Person is transcendental to all mundane concepts of quality and quantity. Had Lord Rāmacandra's sentiment been of mundane origin, how could it disturb the whole ocean and its inhabitants? Can any mundane red-hot eye generate heat in the great ocean? These are factors to be distinguished in terms of the personal and impersonal conceptions of the Absolute Truth. As it is said in the beginning of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, the Absolute Truth is the source of everything, so the Absolute Person cannot be devoid of the sentiments that are reflected in the temporary mundane world. Rather, the different sentiments found in the Absolute, either in anger or in mercy, have the same qualitative influence, or, in other words, there is no mundane difference of value because these sentiments are all on the absolute plane. Such sentiments are definitely not absent in the Absolute, as the impersonalists think, making their mundane estimation of the transcendental world.