Krishna’s Seventeen Unique Qualities

By: Mahanidhi Swami

Scriptures state that Bhagavan Sri Krishna has 64 transcendental qualities exhibited in their highest degree. Sri Krishna’s good qualities are also inexhaustible, unlimited in quantity and eternally existing. Exalted personalities like Brahma and Siva can possess 55 of these qualities, and living entities like ourselves can have 50 of these qualities in a minute quantity for a brief time.

In Priti Sandarbha, Sri Jiva Goswamipada lists seventeen unique qualities possessed only by Bhagavan Sri Krishna. While chanting nama-japa, one can remember these divine qualities of our Sweet Lord Shyama, and thus mentally worship Krishna’s most wonderful and variegated Personality.

1. Power to attain ANYTHING simply by desiring it.

2. Complete control over a host of achintya-shaktis.

3. Sole resting place of perfect goodness.

4. Protector of all the worlds.

5. Grants Vaikuntha residence to demons He kills.

6. Attractive to all liberated souls.

7. Served by Brahma, Siva, all demigods and sages.

8. Krishna’s spiritual form contains inconceivable transcendental potencies.

9. Krishna’s beauty and other virtues are limitless, eternally new and fresh.

10. In His purusha-avatara forms, Sri Krishna controls the world of Maya.

11. Krishna is God—the generator, operator and destroyer of the material worlds.

12. Krishna is the source of all avataras.

13. Unlimited material universes reside in the pores of His transcendental form.

14. Within His form as the original Personality of Godhead, Bhagavan Sri Krishna has all the inconceivable potencies and transcendental qualities of Vishnu, Narayana, Vasudeva and all other divine expansions.

15. Sri Krishna gives liberation and devotional service to the demons He kills.

16. Sri Krishna’s divine form and features display a wonderful, incomparable sweetness.

17. Association with Krishna brings a perfect bliss—far, far beyond anything the material mind and senses can ever know.

Ananda Khanda Bhagavan Sri Krishna ki jai!

Jai Jai Sri Radhe!