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Naturally, every devotee desires to see Krsna and the desire to see Krsna is not a fruitive one. You might say, “Well, the top most level of pure devotion was to be free from all selfish desire so isn’t it selfish when we are desiring to see Krsna. Isn’t it about our desire instead of the higher principle of satisfying Krsna’s desire?”

 

Yes, but still every devotee in his heart-of-hearts desires to be with Krsna, desires to see Krsna because that is how we are designed, we are made like that. We are pleasure seeking – this we cannot stop. The constitutional position of the living being is described in the Vedanta Sutra (1.1.12) as ānandamayo ‘bhyāsāt, or being pleasure seeking.

 

So, this element of being pleasure seeking is something that cannot be taken away out of our nature therefore any process that denies us that is an artificial process and cannot be maintained. Therefore, we see that impersonalism and Buddhism are two processes that are based on negation, processes that are based on denial of desire, denial of pleasure. In these two processes, one has to basically write-off the whole material world whereas in Bhagavatam, we find that the beauty in this world can be taken as the smile of Krsna.

 

A smile can be taken as “welcome”. So the beauty in this world is the welcoming smile of Krsna. This is nice so then we don’t have to develop this mood where we write-off the material world altogether; that if we see anything beautiful in this world that can’t appreciate it. We can appreciate it and see that Krsna is behind it all. If we see some beautiful birds, not that we desire to become like that, but we can see that there is beauty in this world because it is reflecting the even greater beauty of the spiritual world. And that all the aesthetics of this world are inviting us to the higher world of beauty and aesthetics…