The verse and its meaning · Bhagavad Gita · Chapter 10 · Where the Divine Shines

Glories Without End

Bhagavad Gita 10.40

नान्तोऽस्ति मम दिव्यानां विभूतीनां परंतप। एष तूद्देशतः प्रोक्तो विभूतेर्विस्तरो मया

Meaning · English

There is no end to my divine manifestations, conqueror of enemies. What I have told you is only a sample, a brief outline of the extent of my glories.

Krishna closes his long list of glories with an honest admission: the list is not complete. Three words carry it. Vibhuti means a glory, a splendor, something in which power shows itself. Divya means divine, belonging to God and not made by anyone. Uddesha means a pointing-out, a short sketch of a topic, the way a teacher indicates a subject without exhausting it. So Krishna says his divine glories have no end, and what he has spoken is only a pointing. The reason is clear from the chapter. Arjuna asked for a way to think of God everywhere, and Krishna gave examples, the best of each kind of thing, so the mind could find a handle. A handle is not the whole object. Krishna also calls Arjuna parantapa, a scorcher of enemies, a warrior's title, as if to say that even a man used to winning cannot finish this count. The verse asks Arjuna to hold the list loosely: to use it as a doorway, and to stop expecting to complete it. Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhva all take the verse as Krishna admitting that the glories are beyond full enumeration; they differ on what the glories finally rest in, which later verses reach, not this one.

A guide in a vast forest shows a visitor five of its finest trees and says, these are only a few. The visitor does not complain that the tour was short. The five trees teach what to look for, and the visitor walks on seeing differently. The list is the five trees; the forest is the glory that has no end.

1. Tonight, pick one ordinary thing near you: a lit window, a cup of tea, a child's laugh. 2. Look at it for one minute and name three things about it you had not noticed before. 3. Then admit, in a sentence, that you have only named three, and there are more. 4. Do the same with a different thing tomorrow, and notice how the list never quite finishes.

A grandmother sits on a train platform at dawn, waiting for a delayed train, and a grandchild asks her to name every bird she can hear. She names four, then stops. There are more calls she cannot tell apart. In that moment the verse offers a way to stand: the four names are real and useful, and the unnamed ones are not a failure of her knowing. She can let the count remain open, and listen without needing a finished list. That takes a small pressure off, since the wish to master everything often makes people anxious or dismissive of what they cannot sort. Ordinary experience confirms that a person who admits how much is left unknown tends to look more carefully. The limit is plain. The verse does not tell her which bird is which, and it does not make the delay shorter or the wait easier. It speaks of Krishna's glories as the text's own teaching, and it offers a habit of attention, not a method for solving a practical problem.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: The Seed Within Everything · Bhagavad Gita 10.39
• Next: A Spark of Splendor · Bhagavad Gita 10.41
• All of Bhagavad Gita · Ask Krishna about it

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