Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.86.42
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
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gṛha-andha-kūpe
—
in the blind well of family life
Compound: gṛha (home) + andha (blind) + kūpa (well). 'A well overgrown with grass, hidden from sight, into which the unwary fall.' Bhāgavata's standard metaphor for saṁsāra. Śrutadeva names his own setting honestly.
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tīrtha-āspada
—
the shelter of all holy places
Compound: tīrtha (sacred bathing-place) + āspada (residence, support). The brāhmaṇas' foot-dust is the home of all tīrthas. Gauḍīyas treat Vaiṣṇava-aṅghri-reṇu as the supreme tīrtha — higher than any river, because the sādhu carries every river in his sole.
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ātma-niketa
—
the place of residence of Himself
Compound: ātma (self, here Bhagavān) + niketa (abode). The brāhmaṇas are Kṛṣṇa's residence. Gauḍīyas read this with SB 9.4.68 — Bhagavān says the sādhu's heart is His home. The verse identifies sādhu-saṅga with bhagavat-saṅga.
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patitasya
—
of one fallen
Past participle of √pat. 'Fallen.' Śrutadeva calls himself patita — the same word Caitanya Mahāprabhu uses for the conditioned soul in patita-pāvana. Bhagavān is patita-pāvana precisely because Śrutadevas exist.
I should not become proud that the Lord has come to my house with his devotees. With that realization as a cause, he speaks with a lowly attitude on realizing the mercy of the Lord upon him. How have I met Kṛṣṇa and these brāhmaṇas within whose minds the form of Kṛṣṇa (asya ātma) always appears?
He did not become proud, but rather his humility increased, with great devotion. He began to think, out of humility, not thinking from the beginning that this had happened because he was a devotee. I am in the blind well of household life. The dust of the sages’ feet is the shelter of all tīrthas. How have I met Kṛṣṇa and these brāhmaṇas within whose minds the form of Kṛṣṇa (asya ātma) always appears? Or the sages live in the Lord’s place, Dvāraka (ātma-niketa). They are closely related with the Lord. They are most worthy of worship on this earth (bhūsuraiḥ).
Śrutadeva calls his own household life a 'blind well' — gṛha-andha-kūpa. The bhakta does not flatter his station. Yet the blind well now has Kṛṣṇa at its bottom; even the well becomes a tīrtha.
The image of the household as a blind well is recurrent in the Bhāgavatam — most pointedly in SB 5.13–14, where Jaḍa Bharata describes the saṁsāric forest to Rahūgaṇa, and a man falls into an andha-kūpa overgrown with grass. The image is older than Śrutadeva.
What is new here is the resolution: the blind well receives Kṛṣṇa as visitor. Gauḍīyas teach that gṛhastha-bhakti, when sincere, draws Bhagavān into the very well that traps others. Niṣkiñcana-disposition matters more than ascetic geography.
My note
Source: vedabase.io