Text 43
tvam eva bhagavann etac
chiva-śaktyoḥ svarūpayoḥ
viśvaṁ sṛjasi pāsy atsi
krīḍann ūrṇa-paṭo yathā
tvam — you; eva — certainly; bhagavan — O my lord; etat — this; śiva-śaktyoḥ — being situated in your auspicious energy; svarūpayoḥ — by your personal expansion; viśvam — this universe; sṛjasi — create; pāsi — maintain; atsi — annihilate; krīḍan — working; ūrṇa-paṭaḥ — spider’s web; yathā — just like.
My dear lord, you create this cosmic manifestation, maintain it, and annihilate it by expansion of your personality, exactly as a spider creates, maintains and winds up its web.
In this verse the word śiva-śakti is significant. Śiva means “auspicious,” and śakti means “energy.” There are many types of energies of the Supreme Lord, and all of them are auspicious. Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Maheśvara are called guṇa-avatāras, or incarnations of material qualities. In the material world we compare these different incarnations from different angles of vision, but since all of them are expansions of the supreme auspicious, all of them are auspicious, although sometimes we consider one quality of nature to be higher or lower than another. The mode of ignorance, or tamo-guṇa, is considered very much lower than the others, but in the higher sense it is also auspicious. The example may be given herein that the government has both an educational department and criminal department. An outsider may consider the criminal department inauspicious, but from the government’s point of view it is as important as the education department, and therefore the government finances both departments equally, without discrimination.