Prologue
Attracted by the sublime beauty around a Himalayan cave, Nārada enters into a deep and long meditation. Sent by Indra to obstruct Nārada’s tapas, Kāmadeva fails in his attempts. Nārada forgives him and everywhere the event is celebrated as the protective act of the Lord to save his devotee. But Nārada sees the event as his own victory over lust and anger.
Puffed up with pride and hungering for recognition, he reports the event to Śiva, who advises him not to tell this to anyone else, especially not to Śrī Hari. But Nārada repeats his tale before the Lord anyway. The Lord smiles and, to bring his devotee back on the right path, creates a magic kingdom where a Svayaṁvara is being held for the princess.
Nārada happens to visit the place, falls in love with the princess and, in order to win her hand in marriage, begs the Lord for a divine form. Śrī Hari grants his prayer.
Nārada Does One Right Thing
Nārada’s infatuation for the princess was so overpowering that his mind became its own enemy. It simply switched off after hearing the Lord’s assurance and went back to the thoughts of the princess. Satisfied that his prayer was answered by the Lord and that his mission was successful, Nārada now dashed to the Svayaṁvara ceremony. What he did not know was that the Lord, like a true physician, had given him the right medicine and not the poison that Nārada had been thoughtlessly seeking.
What was it that the Lord gave him? Nārada had wanted the Lord’s beautiful form. The Lord gave him the form of a monkey. Sounds cruel? It shouldn’t really. Every being in this creation reflects the glory of the Lord. Every being is divine and hence beautiful. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Monkeys are beautiful, but that is not the kind of beauty Nārada was seeking. What Śrī Hari gave Nārada was for his own good, as we shall soon see.
The Lord’s beauty does not exist only in the adorable form in which he dwells in Vaikuṇṭha. His beauty is equally present in all the different forms in the universe, for it is the Lord who has entered into every bit of the universe after creating it (Taittirīya Upaniṣad, 2.6.1). The Lord is peeping at us through every form. Every form is Hari’s form. If we only had the eyes to see! We are reminded of the words of Sri Ramakrishna:
“There was a time when I too would meditate on God with my eyes closed. Then I said to myself: ‘Does God exist only when I think of him with my eyes closed? Doesn’t he exist when I look around with my eyes open?’ Now, when I look around with my eyes open, I see that God dwells in all beings. He is the Indwelling Spirit of all—men and women, animals and other living beings, trees and plants, sun and moon, land and water.” (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 561)
It is true that to behold the Lord’s beauty in each and every form is a high form of spiritual realization which comes only to a rare individual. Certainly, Nārada was far from this experience in his present state. When he prayed for the Lord’s beauty what he had in mind was the Lord’s Vaikuṇṭha-form.
Why did Śrī Hari choose to give him the monkey-form? It seems probable that the Lord wished to bring outside Nārada what was lying hidden inside Nārada. There is a popular myth that monkeys have pronounced lustful tendencies. These tendencies which remained buried in Nārada’s unconscious mind needed to be raised to the surface in order to make him conscious of them. Nārada had already become a monkey internally. All that the Lord did was to bring that monkey out.
To have an enemy in our own camp is bad enough, but not to know that the enemy exists is worse. Hurdles and problems are inevitable in spiritual life. But to overcome them, we must first know them. The trouble is that we are often unaware of the psychological hurdles blocking our progress, because these hurdles are stored in the unconscious part of the mind. Since most of the time we are carried away helplessly by the unconscious stream of Prakŗti (see Gītā, 3. 33), we have almost no control over our thoughts and actions.
Techniques like Vipassana in Buddhism are potentially helpful to get hold of ourselves in order to examine the mind and to discover its contents. Even apart from this, self-examination should be an indispensable part of our daily practice. To become aware of one’s weaknesses is in itself a great thing, to get rid of them is only the next step. In many instances, the Guru does this for disciples, by bringing out the repressed complexes and desires to the conscious level of the disciple’s mind and teaching the disciple how they should be dealt with.
That is what the Lord did now for Nārada. The demon of lust, hidden in Nārada’s mind, was raised to the surface so that Nārada might become aware of it. But so far, although Nārada’s face had taken on a simian appearance, Nārada himself had not cared to look into a mirror. For one thing, he was too preoccupied with the thought of the princess. For another thing, the Lord did not want Nārada to know of this until the right time came—and the right time had not yet come. Nārada proceeded to the Svayaṁvara ceremony, supremely satisfied that it was only a matter of time before his goal of possessing the princess would be achieved.
It does look odd and embarrassing that a great sage like Nārada should go to the Lord and seek the Lord’s beauty for such a mundane purpose. But then one also sees that because Nārada went to the Lord, and to no one else, with such a trifling objective, he was ultimately saved by the Lord’s grace. It is difficult to imagine what would have happened to Nārada if, instead of seeking the Lord’s assistance, he had resorted to some worldly methods. Probably he would have ruined himself.
This teaches us a great lesson in life: Seek everything from the Lord. No matter how worldly our desire may be, it is better to pray to God to fulfill it than to attempt to fulfill it through worldly means. That is why devotion with desire (sakāma-bhakti) is not condemned in the scriptures. True, it is inferior to devotion without any worldly desire (niṣkāma-bhakti), but on that account sakāma devotion does not become useless. It is worthwhile to remember that a place is found for even such people among the four types who worship of God, as described in the Gītā (7.16).
It is helpful to keep in mind that sakāma devotion is bhakti only in a secondary sense, for bhakti primarily means devotion to God. That is to say, God-realization is the only goal before a true devotee. In sakāma devotion the goal is the devotee’s own happiness (to be attained through the fulfillment of desires), and God is only the means to attain that goal. To put it bluntly, such people are devoted to themselves, not to the Lord. In his lectures on bhakti yoga, Swami Vivekananda makes it clear that prayers for the fulfillment of worldly desires are not bhakti at all. He says:
“… it is all karma or meritorious action… One who wants to love God, [one who wants] to be a bhakta, must discard all such prayers.” (CW 4. 38)
God is the Emperor of emperors. Why then should we ask God for petty, worldly things? God can give us eternal freedom and bliss; why should we badger God for silly, perishable objects of this world? This is the attitude true devotees cultivate and they refrain from all worldly prayers. God becomes their only goal in life. They love God because they love God. To them God becomes both the goal and the means.
But if we look around the world, we’ll see that such people are few and far between. What happens, then, to the vast majority who find it impossible to let go of their endless desires? Should they seek God’s help or should they devise their own worldly methods to fulfill their desires? It is to such people that Vedanta teachers advise: God is our Father, our Mother, our Friend, our Beloved, our everything (see Gītā 9. 18). We should feel free to ask God for everything, even for the ordinary things of life. If we must fulfill any worldly desire, let us go to God even for that. It is far better to seek divine aid than to resort to worldly cunning.
People are bewildered sometimes when they hear that a considerable portion of the Vedas contains prayers and rituals meant to help us fulfill different kinds of worldly desires. But there is nothing really to be shocked by this. In fact, it would have been a matter of surprise if these things had not been there.
What is the purpose of a scripture? It is to help us. Can any scripture afford to ignore the needs and aspirations of the majority of humankind? The fact is that we are full of desires and we want to fulfill them. If we are not shown a good way to do it, we’ll find a bad way to do it, a way probably more dangerous and disastrous. If we have to choose between two evils and there is no viable third option, wisdom dictates that we choose the lesser evil.
The scriptures show the methods—prayers, rituals, austerities—by which even worldly desires can be fulfilled. The methods are so designed that, when we follow them, we have to undergo some amount of self-restraint and purification, though the goal may be worldly. Certainly, this is to be preferred to having a free-for-all, when everyone is concerned with their own happiness, no matter even if it comes at the cost of others’ suffering.
The important point here is that the Vedas don’t say that we must do these rituals meant for worldly enjoyment. They simply say, if we have a particular desire, here’s the method of fulfilling it. The same scripture also points out in no uncertain terms that all worldly desires, whether they are fulfilled or not, are sure to bring sorrow one way or another. The portion where these ideas occur in abundance is the “knowledge-portion” (jñāna-kāṇḍa) of the Vedas. The discerning mind understands this and tries to give up its desires. But in spite of these warnings there are many—indeed, the majority everywhere—who continue to pursue worldly ends.
A time comes, our teachers say, when devotion “with desire” gets transformed into true devotion, or devotion “without desire.” Sooner or later wisdom dawns and we learn that not all of our desires can be fulfilled. We see that no sooner one desire is fulfilled than ten fresh ones pop up. We also find that desires take away our peace of mind, drain away our physical and mental energies and, ultimately, leave us as unfulfilled and hungry as we were before. By and by, the mind becomes weary. The accumulated purificatory effect of our sakāma prayers, rituals and austerities now becomes visible, and a way opens out for us. We begin gradually to love God out of pure love, not in order to gain something for ourselves.
Thus it seems practical enough to go to God for all of our needs, worldly or spiritual. If we don’t get what we need, we can be sure that either we didn’t deserve it or it would’ve done us no good anyway. So long as God remains on our mental horizon, we have God to hold on to even if the whole world slips through our fingers. But if we let go of our hold on God, then we are dragged away even from ourselves. We get disconnected from the true Self—and this produces self-alienation which ends up in alienating us from the world.
The one right thing Nārada did was to approach Śrī Hari. His desire was worldly all right, but he sought God’s help to fulfill it. How that protected him we shall see next time.