One should prepare offerings of various kinds—sweet rice made with jaggery, clarified butter, fried cakes, rice cakes, and other sweets, along with curd, soup, and whatever foods are available. Each day and on festival days, one should perform acts of reverence: anointing with oil, gentle massage, gazing into a mirror, cleaning the teeth, bathing, offering food and drink, and engaging in singing and dancing. When the time comes for worship, one should make ready a consecrated fire-pit, complete with a girdle, fuel, and altar, and kindle the sacred fire, tending it with care as prescribed. After laying out kuśa grass and sprinkling the area with water, the offerings are placed in their proper order and purified. Approaching the fire with devotion, these offerings are presented to the Lord. In the heart, one should meditate upon the Lord—radiant as molten gold, bearing conch, discus, mace, and lotus, shining with four arms, tranquil and adorned in garments the color of lotus filaments. He is resplendent with crown, bracelets, waistband, and splendid armlets, marked by the Śrīvatsa on his chest, shining with the Kaustubha gem and garlanded with forest flowers. As the worship continues, the devotee places the wooden offerings and those soaked in clarified butter into the fire. Portions of ghee are offered for the ancestors and the gods, and then the oblation, immersed in ghee, is given. Having worshipped and bowed, he offers gifts to the Lord’s attendants, recites the root mantra, and contemplates Brahman, remembering the essence of Nārāyaṇa. Water for sipping and the remnants of the offerings are then given, preparing them for Viṣvaksena. Fragrant mouth-fresheners such as betel are offered, and with singing, praise, dancing, and enactments of the Lord’s deeds, the devotee narrates and listens to the Lord’s stories, becoming absorbed, even if just for a moment. With hymns of all kinds—lofty and simple, drawn from the Purāṇas and from everyday speech—he extols the Lord, prays for grace, and prostrates himself. Placing his head at the Lord’s feet, arms crossed, he implores, “Protect me, O Lord! I have surrendered, frightened by the ocean of death and its snares.” With reverence, he places upon his head the remains of the offering given by the Lord. If the worship is to be concluded, he respectfully returns the offering to the light, and again to the supreme light. Wherever there is faith in worship, he should honor the Lord there, for the Lord is present in all beings and within the self as the universal soul. By following the paths of ritual and yoga, both Vedic and Tantric, the worshipper attains from the Lord the perfection he desires. Establishing the Lord’s image, he should build a firm temple and create delightful flower gardens for worship and festivals. For the ongoing flow of worship and rites, both daily and on great festivals, he should dedicate fields, shops, towns, and villages, thus attaining the Lord’s realm. By consecration, he becomes sovereign over the three worlds with a residence; through worship and related acts, he attains Brahma’s world, and by the threefold path, equality with the Lord. Through exclusive devotion and yoga, he attains the Lord alone; whoever worships in this way obtains the path of devotion. Yet, whoever takes for themselves what has been given to the gods or to Brahmins for their maintenance becomes a dung-eater for tens of thousands of years. For the sake of the doer, the essence, and the approver—those who share in the actions—after death, greater fruits of those deeds are repeatedly obtained. Now, Śuka continued: On the eleventh day, Nanda fasted and worshipped Janārdana; on the twelfth, he entered the waters of the Kālindī to bathe. But a servant of Varuṇa, an asura, seized him and brought him to Varuṇa, for Nanda had entered the water at night, crossing the asuric boundary. The cowherds, unable to see Nanda, cried out in distress, “Krishna! Rama!” Hearing their calls, the Blessed Lord understood that his father had been taken by Varuṇa. The mighty Lord, who grants fearlessness to his own, went to that place. When Hrishikesha arrived, the guardian of the world, Varuṇa, welcomed him with great honor, worshipped him splendidly, and rejoiced at the festival of beholding him. Varuṇa said, “Today my body is pacified; today my purpose is fulfilled. Those devoted to your feet, O Blessed One, have reached the end of the path. Obeisance to you, Supreme Self, Brahman, where illusion and the imagined creation of worlds are not heard of. Unknowingly, by my own foolishness and ignorance, your father was brought here; may you forgive this. You, who see all, O Krishna, are worthy to show your favor to me as well. O Govinda, lover of your father, let your father be taken back.” Thus propitiated, Krishna, the Lord of lords, took his father and returned, bringing joy to his relatives. Nanda, having witnessed the extraordinary glory of the guardian of the world and their reverence for Krishna, spoke to his kinsmen, astonished. The cowherds, their minds eager, wondered, “Will this Lord show us our own subtle destination?” The Blessed Lord, knowing the hearts of his own people, considered their desire with compassion. For people in this world, bewildered by ignorance, desire, and action, wander among higher and lower paths, not knowing their own true destination. Thinking thus, Lord Hari, full of great compassion, revealed to the cowherds his own world, which is beyond darkness. That world is truth, knowledge, infinite—Brahman, the eternal radiance, which sages behold when all qualities have ceased and their minds are absorbed. Krishna led them to the lake of Brahman; immersing them and lifting them out, he revealed to them the world of Brahman, where Akrura had once gone. Nanda and the others, seeing that place, were filled with supreme bliss and, amazed, saw Krishna being praised there by hymns. Knowledge, discrimination, scripture, austerity, direct perception, tradition, and inference—whatever is present at the beginning and end of these, and time and causality as well, that alone exists in the middle. Thus concludes the twenty-eighth chapter of the first half of the tenth book in the great Purana, Srimad Bhagavata, the scripture of the supreme, swan-like sages.