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Every place within a radius of one hundred miles from where a devotee is born becomes sanctified

Expressions researched:
"every place within a radius of one hundred miles from where a devotee is born becomes sanctified"

Other Books by Srila Prabhupada

Mukunda-mala-stotra (mantras 1 to 6 only)

The sastras state that a family in which a pure devotee is born is sanctified for one hundred generations of ancestors and descendants. And the sastras also state that every place within a radius of one hundred miles from where a devotee is born becomes sanctified. If a devotee can sanctify the place and family of his birth so extraordinarily, then what to speak of how completely the Lord can sanctify the place and family in which He chooses to take His birth.
Mukunda-mala-stotra mantra 2, Purport:

Vasudeva and Devaki are confidential devotees of the Lord in the mood of parental love. Even greater than them are Nanda and Yasoda, His foster parents in Vrndavana. The Lord takes great pleasure in being addressed as Devaki-nandana ("the son of Devaki"), Nanda-nandana ("the son of Nanda"), Yasoda-nandana ("the son of Yasoda"), Dasarathi ("the son of King Dasaratha"), Janaki-natha ("the husband of Janaki"), and so on. The pleasure one gives the Lord by addressing Him by such names is many, many times greater than the pleasure He enjoys when He is addressed as the Supreme Father, the Greatest of the Great, Paramesvara, or anything of that nature, which indicate volumes of awe and veneration. Therefore the names King Kulasekhara uses to glorify the Lord in this verse indicate his intimate transcendental relationship with the Lord.

As explained above, all the names of the Lord are as powerful as the Lord Himself, but one can experience different transcendental mellows by chanting His different transcendental names. For example, the sastra (scripture) states that there are one thousand principal names of Lord Visnu, the Personality of Godhead. But if a person utters the name Rama only once, he gets the result of chanting one thousand names of Visnu. And if somebody once chants the name Krsna, he achieves the results obtained by chanting the name Rama three times. In other words, uttering the name Krsna once is equal to uttering three thousand other names of Visnu.

Therefore King Kulasekhara, knowing how pleased the Lord is to be addressed by a name indicating His transcendental relationships with His intimate devotees, and knowing also the potency of the name Krsna, has chosen to glorify the Lord by addressing Him as Devaki-nandana and Krsna. The king also addresses Him as Vrsni-vamsa-pradipa ("the brilliant light in the Vrsni dynasty") because millions of generations of the Vrsni dynasty became sanctified by the Lord's appearance within it. The sastras state that a family in which a pure devotee is born is sanctified for one hundred generations of ancestors and descendants. And the sastras also state that every place within a radius of one hundred miles from where a devotee is born becomes sanctified. If a devotee can sanctify the place and family of his birth so extraordinarily, then what to speak of how completely the Lord can sanctify the place and family in which He chooses to take His birth.

The Lord's birth on the face of the earth is certainly very mysterious, and therefore it is difficult for ordinary men to believe in His birth. How can the all-powerful Lord take birth, seemingly like an ordinary man? The matter is explained in the Bhagavad-gita (4.6), where the Lord says,

ajo 'pi sann avyayatma bhutanam isvaro 'pi san
prakrtim svam adhisthaya sambhavamy atma-mayaya

"Although I am unborn and My transcendental body never deteriorates, and although I am the Lord of all living entities, by My transcendental potency I still appear in every millennium in My original transcendental form." From the sastra we learn that the Lord takes birth not only in the family of human beings but also in the families of demigods, aquatics, animals, and so on. One may argue that an ordinary living being is eternal and unborn like the Lord and also takes birth in different species of life, and so there is no difference between the Lord and an ordinary living being. The difference is, however, that while an ordinary living being changes his body when he transmigrates from one species of life to another, the Lord never changes His body: He appears in His original body, without any change. Also, while there is a vast difference between the ordinary living entity and his body, there is no difference between the Lord and His body because He is pure spirit. In other words, there is no distinction between His body and His soul.

The word avyayatma in the above verse from the Bhagavad-gita clearly indicates that the Lord's body is not made of material elements. He is all spirit. Birth and death apply only to the material body. The body of the ordinary living being is made of material elements and is therefore subject to birth and death. But the Lord's body, being all spiritual and thus eternal, neither takes birth nor dies. Nor can the Lord be forced to take birth in some particular family due to His past deeds, as an ordinary living being is.

Page Title:Every place within a radius of one hundred miles from where a devotee is born becomes sanctified
Compiler:NandaGopalJivan, Visnu Murti
Created:06 of Apr, 2013
Totals by Section:BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=1, Lec=0, Con=0, Let=0
No. of Quotes:1