Brahma Leaves For His Own Abode

Brahma Leaves For His Own Abode by Srila Vaiyasaki

Having thus offered his prayers, Brahma three times circumambulated his worshipful Lord, the unlimited Personality of Godhead, and then bowed at His lotus feet. The appointed creator of the universe then returned to his own residence.

After granting His son Brahma permission to leave, the Supreme Personality of Godhead took the calves, who were still where they had been a year earlier, and brought them to the riverbank, where He had been taking His meal and where His cowherd boyfriends remained just as before. O King, although the boys had passed an entire year they considered that year merely half a moment. What indeed is not forgotten by those whose minds are bewildered by the Lord’s illusory potency? By that power of Maya, this entire universe remains in perpetual bewilderment, and in this atmosphere of forgetfulness no one can understand even his own identity.

The cowherd boyfriends said to Lord Krishna: You have returned so quickly! We have not eaten even one morsel in Your absence. Please come here and take Your meal without distraction. Then Lord Hrishikesha, smiling, finished His lunch in the company of His cowherd friends. While they were returning from the forest to their homes in Vraja, Lord Krishna showed the cowherd boys the skin of the dead serpent Aghasura.

Lord Krishna’s transcendental body was decorated with peacock feathers and flowers and painted with forest minerals, and He played His bamboo flute loudly and festively. As He called out to His calves by name, His cowherd boyfriends purified the whole world by chanting His glories. Thus Lord Krishna entered the cow grazing pasture of His father Nanda Mahārāja, and the sight of His beauty at once produced a great festival for the eyes of all the cowherd women. As the cowherd boys reached the village of Vraja, they sang, “Today Krishna saved us by killing a great serpent!” Some of the boys described Krishna as the son of Yashoda, and others as the son of Nanda Maharaja.

—Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (Bhāgavata Purāṇa) » Canto 10: The Summum Bonum » Chapter 14. Brahma’s Prayers to Lord Krishna »Verses: 41-48.