Namakeerthanam is the dharmam that can be easily followed by everyone, says azhwar. Both vishnu dharmam and srimad bhagavatham again and again tells about the same route. The strength of a human is not exactly that great. Man is always alpagnyan, asakthan, but bhagavan is sarvagnyan, sarvasakthan. A jeevan that is asakthan is always better to be under the protection of the sarvasakthan, the bhagavan. Even if 1000 people join together that is not strength, but the strength of the bhagavan is truly strong. Man cannot protect himself at all well and if he cannot, then how will he protect others. There is a story told in tamil. There is a matruthirunali (visually challenged person) who has lost both his legs.
He is always sitting. When lots of warriors from another desham are coming to wage war, this matruthiranli is telling that if someone can lift him up, then he can go to war and win, such is the fate of the human as well. Jeevan is asakthan, we have knowledge but that is not enough. How, lets say we are inside a building and if someone asks what is happening outside this building we cannot say. knowledge is bound to a place. If we ask someone what will happen in 10 days he cannot tell, knowledge is restricted to time. why, even if he is asked what happened 10 days ago, he does not remember as he forgets. Therefore knowledge is bound by place and time.
He is always sitting. When lots of warriors from another desham are coming to wage war, this matruthiranli is telling that if someone can lift him up, then he can go to war and win, such is the fate of the human as well. Jeevan is asakthan, we have knowledge but that is not enough. How, lets say we are inside a building and if someone asks what is happening outside this building we cannot say. knowledge is bound to a place. If we ask someone what will happen in 10 days he cannot tell, knowledge is restricted to time. why, even if he is asked what happened 10 days ago, he does not remember as he forgets. Therefore knowledge is bound by place and time.
Likewise if you ask a musician about the medicine for stomach pain, he will say he does not know about medicine. Whatever he knows that knowledge alone is with him. If we ask a doctor about constructing a home and ask him for a plan, he will not know that. If we ask a architect and ask him to arrange a carnatic music concert, he cannot do that. So we cannot say that a man knows everything. With this small mind possessing shallow knowledge, how can one know the paramAtman? How can he think about paramAtman. So for the human, how much ever money, strength, people, youth, power he possesses may one day be of no use to him, but the deivabalam (strength of God) will always protect him.
The easiest way to get the deivabalam in this kaliyuga is namakeerthanam. If we take the tattwa from the mahabharata, we know duryodhana is verily the kali purushan. An avatar of kali is duryodhana. How did draupadi, drupada's daughter come into being, she came out of the agni kundam (sacrificial fire) on her own. When we perform homam in our homes (we perform sudarshana homam, like that we do purushasuktha homam, we think that God is present in the agni of the homa kundam and we pour ghee into it. So whatever arises from the agni is deiva shakthi. All the devathas live in the agni only. Because draupadi came from the agni kundam, she possessed deiva shakthi. Deivam will attract only dharma and that's why dharmaputra is dharma incarnate. Naranarayana incarnate is arjuna - indran. Bhima incarnate is vAyu - prana. Similarly nakula sahadeva, the deiva shakthi is present amongst them both - Naran amsam + aswini kumara amsam all are together with the pandavas. Whereas bhishma and drona are mahans, who have come down through the generations. We then see in the sabha where there were both these mahans who have come down through generations present as well as the bhagavan protected pandavas, yet the kali cunningly won the game of dice. What I am now saying is the tattwa in this.
What kali will do is to control dharma somehow by trick and cunning not allowing dharma to lift its head. Not only that kali will also ridicule the deiva shakthi. Kali will write badly about deivam, put up Sbad pictures of deivam, showing so to make people happy about it all this kali will do. Even mahans like bhishma and drona are struck down and not knowing what to do about this kali which is ridiculing the deiva shakthi, they do not know whether to follow the old ways nor know to follow this new path taken by kali. At this time deivam itself is trying to save by "Govinda". Once this cry is heard, everything now changed. Dharma stood, all the other powers were subdued, god saved himself. Thus, according to draupadi, it is the namasankeerthanam which will save one from this world is the tattvam that's expounded in the mahabharata. If a temple has lost some of its sannidhyam, then the sannidhyam will increase due to namakeerthanam, one will get atma balam due to namakeerthanam. One will get the grace of the bhagavan through namakeerthanam. In whichever home there is namakeerthanam there will be the bhagavan kripa. So one should only trust the deiva balam and the easiest way to earn that balam is by namakeerthanam. Even though today you feel that other forms of strength are powerful, one day this will be proven false. The spider will weave a circular web. The aim of this spider is to pick up those insects which fall into its web. The silkworm also spins a web. When the worm is young no one will touch it and it wil smell like anything. The worm will think that I am so beautiful and any danger might come to me, so it will spit out a thread and weave it around itself. In Tamil, they will say "peesa kOsa kirumipolE", the silk worm to save itself spun a web but ti does not know that web is the silk thread. Such a silk worm is now taken and dropped into boiling hot water and out of this immediately the silk threads are taken out and we have the silk sarees created out of them! Something that the silk worm created to save its own life now destroyed its life instead. Like that jeevan such as us by leaving the god alone, but to save ourselves only using our own buddhi, yukthi, doing this and that, one can never win. He may win in the worldly life which is also temporary, but he will never be able to get mukthi. In the revolving cycle of birth and death, being born again and again but even in this rebirth we cannot say that he will get a human birth. But see how much the bhagavan has shown his grace, "sakrUn manaha krishnapadAravindayO nivEshitham tad gunaragiyaiHi ihatEyam pApaprutaschatapatAnu" - just once perform namaskaram to krishnan (sakrUn manaha). You dont have to serve the lord with extreme dridavisvAsam, even with doubt if you do also its ok. The bhagavath bhakthi has to be performed with drida bhakthi and concentration but being untouched by the world, just like the lotus and the water. We need to be in the world but not become attached. There is no need to run anywhere and not leave anything. Performing all daily duties and watching over it but not being attached to it, we should be! But deiva bhakthi must be done with attachment. But our state is like we do the worldly things with great attachment, family matters and businesses but bhagavath bhakthi is being done only at the surface. For one who has been going to see the perumal for 10 days, not going for one day doesnt not affect him. For one performing namakeerthanam daily, leaving it for one day he does not think that he has lost this one day. Even when speaking to a friend, cracking jokes etc we may not know how much time is spent on that. If someone asks you to do japam or dhyanam, we count and say is 100 sufficient or keep a clock to do that. Whether looking at the clock or using a japa mala, they check to see how much is left.
Even when doing bhagavatha parayanam or ramayanam I have seen many, they check how many pages are still left to be read, how much time it will take. But where is the commitment here. But bhagavan is not seeing this. Atleast like this he is doing, bhagavan thinks. "sakrUn manaha krishnapadAravindayO nivEshitham tad gunaragiyaiHi ihatEyam pApaprutaschatapatAnu .. Swapnena ahi pashyanthi jeernanithhaha check...how beautifully will one say this. Its only bhagavatham that can say this. Whether you have belief or not come to the temple and see bhagavan. This bhakthi you have to start. You have to start the bhakthi in some place atleast. In some place. At some point. Even with disbelief still please do come, it is ok. Therefore "sakrun ..swapneyathi" - even in dream he will not get hell. Even in dream he will not see the yamadUtas. When he serves lord ranganathar that itself becomes prayaschittam for him. I will tell you a story told by sage agastya. "kAnyakubjE vidaskasyachit tashipathi ajamilaha namnAm nastakadAcharaha dAshya samsarga dUshitAha." kAanyakubjE vidaskasyachit - there is a desam called kAnyakubjE, in that desam there lived a person named ajAmila, starts the story. Whatever we are saying, rather than telling that as a information, if we tell that as a real happening it will sink deeply in the mind. The truth of that information also will be known clearly isn't it. Whilst telling a good advice for a friend not to do such a such thing, that is a good indication only. Whichever we say to him to do or not to do, if we but tell him about what has happened for real like for example - saying such a such thing this person did in this family and as a result he got into so much difficulty etc that's why be careful don't do this is much clearer. Whilst saying so this will sink deeply into the heart of the person. He will ask, did this happen really, did you see, is it so. There wqas a couple who did not have a child and they performed ramayana navaha parayanam and once they did that, a beautiful child was born to them. When something happened for real, for us, more belief happens with that rather than reading about it. That is why in the bhagavatham when sukar, for each question posed by parikshith, he keeps telling a story related to that. When parikshith asks did it happen, sukar says yes parikshith, this happened and then proceeds to tell the story about it. In ramayana the story is continuous whereas in ther bhagavatham the stories are different. The reason is because of the questions posed by parikshith and based on this respective stories are being told which is collectively preserved in the srimad bhagavatham.
Subham!
Radhe Radhe
Read more translations of the other episodes at: http://aranganinarumai.blogspot.com/
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