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TEXT 14 satatam kirtayanto mam
SYNONYMS  satatam--always;
kirtayantah--chanting;
mam--Me; yatantah ca--fully endeavoring also; drdha-vratah--with
determination; namasyantah ca--offering obeisances; mam--unto
Me; bhaktya--in devotion;
nitya-yuktah--perpetually engaged;
upasate--worship.
TRANSLATION Always chanting
My glories, endeavoring with great determination, bowing down before Me,
these great souls perpetually worship Me with devotion.
PURPORT The mahatma
cannot be manufactured by rubber-stamping an ordinary man. His symptoms
are described here: a mahatma is always engaged in chanting the
glories of the Supreme Lord Krsna, the Personality of Godhead. He has no
other business. He is always engaged in the glorification of the Lord.
In other words, he is not an impersonalist. When the question of glorification
is there, one has to glorify the Supreme Lord, praising His holy name,
His eternal form, His transcendental qualities and His uncommon pastimes.
One has to glorify all these things; therefore a mahatma is attached
to the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
One who
is attached to the impersonal feature of the Supreme Lord, the brahmajyoti,
is not described as mahatma in the Bhagavad-gita. He is described
in a different way in the next verse. The mahatma is always engaged
in different activities of devotional service, as described in the Srimad-Bhagavatam,
hearing and chanting about Visnu, not a demigod or human being. That is
devotion: sravanam kirtanam visnoh, smaranam, and remembering
Him. Such a mahatma has firm determination to achieve at the ultimate
end the association of the Supreme Lord in any one of the five transcendental
rasas.
To achieve that success, he engages all activities--mental, bodily and
vocal, everything--in the service of the Supreme Lord, Sri Krsna. That
is called full Krsna consciousness.
In devotional
service there are certain activities which are called determined, such
as fasting on certain days, like the eleventh day of the moon, Ekadasi,
and on the appearance day of the Lord, etc. All these rules and regulations
are offered by the great acaryas for those who are actually interested
in getting admission into the association of the Supreme Personality of
Godhead in the transcendental world. The mahatmas, great souls,
strictly observe all these rules and regulations, and therefore they are
sure to achieve the desired result.
As described
in the second verse of this chapter, this devotional service is not only
easy, but it can be performed in a happy mood. One does not need to undergo
any severe penance and austerity. He can live this life in devotional service,
guided by an expert spiritual master, and in any position, either as a
householder or a sannyasi, or a brahmacari; in any position
and anywhere in the world, he can perform this devotional service to the
Supreme Personality of Godhead and thus become actually mahatma,
a great soul.
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