Prologue

Attracted by the sublime beauty around a Himalayan cave, Nārada camps there and enters into a deep meditation. The king of gods, Indra, becomes panicky and sends Kāmadeva to obstruct Nārada’s tapas. Kāmadeva fails in his attempts. Nārada forgives him.

Everywhere the event is celebrated as the protective act of the Lord to save his devotee. But Nārada’s mind works differently. He sees the event as his own victory over lust and anger. Puffed up with pride, he now wants recognition and the first person he wants to meet is Śiva.

Nārada Meets Śiva

Nārada proceeded toward Kailāsa. It is not difficult to guess why he was so keen to meet Śiva. The Lord of Kailāsa is glorified in books as the Guru of all renunciates. His renunciation is supreme and unparalleled. He is the greatest conqueror of lust and other passions. It is understandable that Nārada—now himself the greatest conqueror of lust and anger, at least in his own eyes—was eager to see how Śiva would react when he heard the story of Nārada’s conquest. Nārada was sure that Śiva would feel jealous of him and become sad that his supremacy in the field had ended.

Kailāsa. Śiva stood up to welcome Nārada, the devotee of Hari. Without wasting any time in formalities, Nārada began to narrate the story of his victory over lust and anger. Śiva listened patiently. After the pompous discourse of Nārada ended, Śiva told him, “Good, my friend, very good. What you’ve told me is indeed fine, but please don’t tell this to anyone else. Take care especially that you don’t utter a word about this before Hari. Even if he leads you to this subject, keep your mouth shut.”

The significance of Śiva’s reply was too subtle to be understood by Nārada’s clouded mind. By asking Nārada not to repeat his tale before others, Śiva was indirectly telling him, “O Nārada, when you came I thought I would be able to hear, as usual, the story of the Lord (Rāma-kathā) from you. Instead, you bored me to death by a discourse on your encounter with Kāmadeva (kāma-kathā). You have wasted enough of my time. Never mind, but now don’t go about everywhere wasting the time of other holy people by your unholy discourse.”

Śiva knew only too well who had protected Nārada, that is why he expressly prohibited him from boasting of the incident before Hari. Suppose I am waylaid on a dark night by bandits and someone mysteriously appears, gives the fellows a thrashing and quietly goes away. The next day I go to this same person and boast before him of how heroically I had tackled the bandits. Could anything be more ludicrous? Śiva had compassion on Nārada. He did not want him to make a fool of himself, so he advised him not to speak of the incident before Hari.

But Śiva’s advice evidently fell on deaf ears. Nārada completely misunderstood Śiva’s intention. When he heard Śiva’s words, Nārada had a good laugh in his mind. He realized that what he had anticipated had proved true to the letter. Śiva had become mad with jealousy. He was afraid that no one would thenceforth acknowledge him as the greatest model of purity and detachment. So he wanted to keep Nārada’s victory a secret, and thus retain his own fame. But Nārada thought to himself, “Nothing doing! The world must know the truth. I am the greatest living being in the world. I have no patience with people who are jealous and envious.”

Common sense obviously had taken leave of Nārada. Could there be any comparison really between Śiva’s victory and Nārada’s victory over Kāmadeva? When Kāmadeva was sent on his fatal mission to Kailāsa, we are told that he was aware of the stupendous magnitude of the task assigned to him. So he first deluged the whole world with the burning fever of lust, and only then he entered Kailāsa. He found Śiva in deep meditation. As soon as he saw Śiva’s immaculately pure form, the lust-fever of the world completely subsided. Śiva’s was a victory of cosmic proportion; it benefited the entire world. In the case of Nārada, as we have seen, his success was a purely individual affair. It made no difference to the world at large.

Furthermore, notice the difference in the way the two reacted to Kāmadeva’s wiles. Kāmadeva’s ammunition went phut by the mere sight of Śiva in meditation. All that remained with him were his bow and the love-arrows. When Kāmadeva shot the arrows one after another at Śiva’s heart, Śiva lost his patience. He opened his eyes and saw Kāmadeva hiding behind a branch of a tree. Burning with fury, Śiva opened his third-eye and reduced Kāmadeva to ashes.

As against this, in Nārada’s case we saw him forgiving Kāmadeva and letting him off unpunished. Superficially it does seem that Nārada’s reaction was more noble and commendable than Śiva’s. While Śiva had lost his temper and become violent, Nārada had conquered anger and had the broadness of heart to forgive. But let us go deeper and try to find out who had done the right thing.

Spiritual life is a search for true and eternal freedom. We cannot be free until all the fetters that bind us are snapped away. Our scriptures point out to us that these bondages are of various kinds: for instance, aversion, shame, pity, suspicion, hatred, pride, lust, anger, greed, attachment, and jealousy. In our own times, Sri Ramakrishna summed up the matter best by pointing out the two arch-enemies of spiritual seekers: lust and greed.

All other bondages are, in fact, direct or indirect products of lust and greed. Sri Ramakrishna remains most uncompromising with regard to these two factors. Throughout his teachings we see him condemning nothing except lust and greed. And, may it be remembered, he also had mercilessly burned to ashes lust and greed, without forgiving them and without letting them live on as our great hero Nārada had done.

When a spiritual seeker is confronted with these enemies, should they be forgiven or should they be finished off? Take Nārada’s case. He forgave Kāmadeva and he felt he had done something extraordinary: he imagined that he had conquered not only lust but also anger. But had he? As the story goes on to show, he succumbed eventually to both lust as well as anger.

Besides, what justification had Nārada to let Kāmadeva go away? Had he promised Nārada that he would never torment him again? Indeed, Nārada was soon to become grievously afflicted with lust-fever generated by the same Kāmadeva whom he had so magnanimously let off.

When we are asked to be merciful, forbearing and kind, we are not expected to exercise these virtues while dealing with lust and greed and other “enemies” of spiritual life that are products of these two. Nārada’s mercy was wrongly directed. In fact, it was not mercy at all, if we look at it more closely. It was really Nārada’s subliminal desire to be reckoned as the most merciful and forgiving man, as one who had subdued his anger fully. It was individual ambition prompted by Nārada’s egoism, which was now assuming alarming proportions with the passing of every moment.

Smug in the belief that Śiva had acknowledged Nārada’s extraordinary victory over lust and anger, Nārada now proceeded to Vaikuṇṭha to let Śrī Hari know of the great conquest. Śiva had warned Nārada not to do so. Which made it all the more imperative for Nārada to do precisely that.