Verse 1.7.20

Bengali text, Devanagari and Unicode transliteration of verse 1.7.20:

এত যে, গোসাঞি, ভাবে করহ ক্রন্দন তবু ত’ দারিদ্র্য-দুঃখ না হয খণ্ডন! ॥ ২০ ॥

एत ये, गोसाञि, भावे करह क्रन्दन तबु त’ दारिद्र्य-दुःख ना हय खण्डन! ॥ २० ॥

eta ye, gosāñi, bhāve karaha krandana tabu ta’ dāridrya-duḥkha nā haya khaṇḍana! || 20 ||

eta ye, gosani, bhave karaha krandana tabu ta’ daridrya-duhkha na haya khandana! (20)

English translation:

(20) “You all cry for the Lord with love and devotion, yet you remain poverty-stricken.

Commentary: Gauḍīya-bhāṣya by Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura:

The word bhāve means “with intense love,” and the word gosāñi is a respectful address to the Lord. At the time of chanting Kṛṣṇa’s names tears of love flow from the eyes of His loving devotees. The atheistic karmis who were eager for sense enjoyment and who were offenders at the feet of the holy names did not accept such flow of tears as a symptom of love for Kṛṣṇa; rather, they ridiculed the chanting of Kṛṣṇa’s names and shedding of tears as useless, because they thought that by chanting Kṛṣṇa’s names the devotees were not able to attain the insignificant and irrelevant fruit of freedom from poverty. In other words, the devotees were not able to achieve material prosperity and happiness by counteracting their poverty with the help of the holy name, which is nondifferent from the eternally worshipable Lord Kṛṣṇa. Those atheists committed severe offenses at the feet of the holy names by their faithlessness. In other words, they did not believe that by purely chanting the holy names one attains love of Kṛṣṇa, by nāmābhāsa all of one’s anarthas are destroyed and one is freed from all material miseries, and by chanting with offense one achieves the fruits of trivarga—dharma, artha, and kāma. Furthermore, because they had no faith in the Supreme Lord, they did not believe that in the course of their service to the Lord the pure devotees gladly accept various miseries and poverty as the mercy of the Lord. They simply desired that the devotees would become greedy for material enjoyment and sense gratification like themselves.