Text 43
nāhaṁ tavāṅghri-kamalaṁ
kṣaṇārdham api keśava
tyaktuṁ samutsahe nātha
sva-dhāma naya mām api
na — am not; aham — I; tava — Your; aṅghri-kamalam — lotus feet; kṣaṇa — of a moment; ardham — for half; api — even; keśava — O killer of the demon Keśī; tyaktum — giving up; samutsahe — am I able to tolerate; nātha — O master; sva-dhāma — to Your own abode; naya — please take; mām — me; api — also.
O Lord Keśava, my dear master, I cannot tolerate giving up Your lotus feet even for a fraction of a moment. I urge You to take me along with You to Your own abode.
Uddhava understood that Kṛṣṇa was going to withdraw the Yadu dynasty, and thus he begged the Lord to take him along to the Lord’s abode. He had no desire to merge into Kṛṣṇa’s impersonal effulgence; instead he wanted to go to the Lord’s spiritual abode and continue associating with Kṛṣṇa as His dearmost friend. Kṛṣṇa is the Personality of Godhead and can do whatever He likes, but the devotee begs the Lord for the chance to serve Him. Although the Lord manifests within the material world His various abodes, such as Vṛndāvana, Dvārakā and Mathurā, and although these are certainly nondifferent from their counterparts in the spiritual world, the most advanced devotees, overwhelmed with desire to personally serve the Lord, are very eager to go to the Lord’s original spiritual planet. As stated by Lord Kapila in the Third Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, the pure devotees have no desire for liberation. Because of their eagerness to render service, they urge the Lord to appear before them. The six Gosvāmīs, due to their intense eagerness to serve Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, urgently searched after Them, calling out Their names in the forests of Vṛndāvana. Similarly, Uddhava is urging the Lord to take him to His own abode so that Uddhava’s personal service to the Lord’s lotus feet will not be interrupted even for a moment.
Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura has pointed out that immature conditioned souls think that Lord Kṛṣṇa is an ordinary jīva soul engaged in material activities and was thus unable to protect His own dynasty from the curse of the brāhmaṇas. Uddhava’s statement corrects such unfortunate persons. It is Lord Kṛṣṇa Himself who awarded pious living entities birth in brahminical families, and then Lord Kṛṣṇa further awarded them the potency to curse His dynasty. And finally, Lord Kṛṣṇa personally kept the curse intact, although He was capable of neutralizing it. Therefore in the beginning, middle and end, directly and indirectly, in the past, present and future, Lord Kṛṣṇa is the Absolute Truth, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and He is completely transcendental to even the slightest touch of material illusion or impotence.