TEXT 21
ekah srjati bhutani
bhagavan atma-mayaya
esam bandham ca moksam ca
sukham duhkham ca niskalah
SYNONYMS
ekahone; srjaticreates; bhutanidifferent varieties of living entities; bhagavanthe Supreme Personality of Godhead; atma-mayayaby His personal potencies; esamof all the conditioned souls; bandhamthe conditional life; caand; moksamthe liberated life; caalso; sukhamhappiness; duhkhamdistresses; caand; niskalahnot affected by the material qualities.
TRANSLATION
The Supreme Personality of Godhead is one. Unaffected by the conditions of the material world, He creates all the conditioned souls by His own personal potency. Because of being contaminated by the material energy, the living entity is put into ignorance and thus into different conditions of bondage. Sometimes, by knowledge, the living entity is given liberation. In sattva-guna and rajo-guna, he is subjected to happiness and distress.
PURPORT
The question may be raised why the living entities are situated in different conditions and who has arranged this. The answer is that it has been done by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, without anyones help. The Lord has His own energies (parasya saktir vividhaiva sruyate), and one of them, namely the external energy, creates the material world and the varieties of happiness and distress for the conditioned souls under the supervision of the Lord. The material world consists of three modes of material naturesattva-guna, rajo-guna and tamo-guna. By sattva-guna the Lord maintains the material world, by rajo-guna He creates it, and by tamo-guna He annihilates it. After the varieties of living entities are created, they are subject to happiness and distress according to their association. When they are in sattva-guna, the mode of goodness, they feel happiness, when in rajo-guna they are distressed, and when in tamo-guna they have no sense of what to do or what is right and wrong.

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