Lord Varaha Appearance Day ki Jai !
Date: 2011-02-15 Author: Manohar Krishna das
Hare Krishna Prabhus and Matajis, Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudeva.
Lord Varaha appeared today in order to save the earth and kill the terrible demon Hiranyaksha, who was, in fact, Lord's intimate devotee and doorkeeper in Vaikunta. Hiranyaksha is categorized as a demon. A demon is defined by Srila Prabhupada as one who does not recognize the authority of Lord Vishnu. Demons are characterized by following disqualifications.
pravṛttiṁ ca nivṛttiṁ ca janā na vidur āsurāḥ na śaucaṁ nāpi cācāro na satyaṁ teṣu vidyate
Those who are demoniac do not know what is to be done and what is not to be done. Neither cleanliness nor proper behaviour nor truth is found in them.
His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada while describing the two classes of men says, "One who is a devotee of the Supreme Lord Visnu, they are called deva, or demigods, and persons who know Vishnu or may not know -- on the whole, they are not devotees of Vishnu -- even they are a devotee of other demigods, they are called asura. Just like Ravana. Ravana, he was a great devotee of Lord Siva, but he is described as an asura, raksasa. Similarly, Hiranyakasipu was a great devotee of Lord Brahma; still, he is accepted as raksasa. So unless one is Vaishnava or devotee of the Lord Vishnu, he is asura or raksasa. This is the instruction of the Shastra. Caitanya Mahaprabhu says, ei rupe brahmanda bhramite kona bhagyavan jiva [Cc. Madhya 19.151]. Unless one is bhagyavan, very fortunate, he'll not go back to home, back to Godhead. He will rot here. So this Krishna consciousness movement means we are trying to make people bhagyavan....Unless you are fortunate and intelligent, you cannot take to Krishna consciousness. That is a fact."
Indeed we are very fortunate to get association of devotees. As per Abhay Charan Book Trust, the demoniac tendencies in us which we should carefully avoid are
1) Aim-lessness: Not knowing the goal of life is to serve Lord Krishna and the tendency of not wanting to stop material enjoyment. 2) Not Clean: Na saucam. Cleanliness is next to godliness. To rise early in the morning and cleanse yourself, evacuate, then take bath, cleanse your teeth, etc. and be refreshed. 3) Improper Behaviour: Na Achar. Not well behaved. Respecting elders and Vaishnavas and friendly behaviour to all living entities. 4) Un-Truthful: na satyam. They do not know what is truth or what is truthfulness.
How an intimate devotee of the Lord played the pastime of demon and enemy of Lord Vishnu is related by H.H. Mahavishnu Goswami Maharaj, in one of his Bhagavat saptah lectures (spoken in September 2001 in Sydney) as follows...
"In Vaikuntha, it so happened that there was Jaya and Vijaya and they were the doorkeepers of Krishna’s seventh entrance in Vaikuntha. And it so happened that four Kumaras were trying to go through. Kumaras were pure devotees. They are always, mayy aasaktah manaah. yunjann evam sadaatmaaanam yogi vigata-kalmashah. yunjann evamsadaatmaaanam means always they were practising - sadaa bhakti-yoga. vigata kalmasha means they did not have any inebrieties. Every inebriety completely disappeared from them, and that’s why they did not grow more than five years old. They were Brahma’s mental children. They came out of the mind of Brahma. Very pure. Brahma wanted them to marry and produce the children because Brahma wanted to fill up this planet. And they completely denied in the beginning."Father, we are supposed to obey you, we are supposed to serve you, but please excuse us. This thing we can’t do.”
So they were able to travel anywhere because they were completely pure. The purified living entity has no restrictions. Now as soon you have an Australian passport or British passport or American passport, you can go anywhere, you are purified. American passport … British passport… you are purified (Maharajji laughs). Indian passport… completely gone, rubbish [laughter]. I am not criticizing, but this is how the material world goes. So as soon as you are purified, then no visa required. Here I come every time, they require visa here, I don’t know, somehow or other I miss visa always. So that man knows me, he says, "Here he is". He laughs at me and says "somehow … now this time I am giving you, go." Because I have the British passport so I am purified. [Maharajji laughs] … God, please excuse us. This is the way.
As soon as your life is thoroughly purified by the fiery devotional service to Krishna then there is no restriction. So they were not restricted, they entered all the doors, and on the seventh door this Jaya and Vijaya, it's all Krishna’s arrangement, they stopped them. So then, these were pure devotees, these Kumaras, they should not have been angry towards them. They may be compassionate towards them, that was a natural way. But Krishna wanted something, so they became angry. All these four Kumars became angry. "Who are you?”, they said, "In this Vaikuntha how can you differentiate? There shouldn’t be any discrimination.”
In the pages of Bhagavatam, it is wisely said, that one should avoid this discrimination. Because attachment to anything or any living entity is the breeding ground of discrimination. We are bound to discriminate because we are attached to the living entity. And as soon as attachment is there, the equal vision disappears. We are bound to discriminate. In the pages of Bhagavatam, it is said, that all living entities are part and parcel of Krishna. Somehow or other we have to train our mind to look to every other entity as part and parcels, spiritual relationships. And because we look to the spirits, we don’t differentiate in the bodies. And if you really carry on discriminating people, Bhagavatam says that even the immovable things like mountains and trees, they also hate us. This is the result if discrimination. But somehow or other, Krishna’s wish, Kumaras became angry and they said you are not fit to be in Vaikuntha. So they cursed them. That you should take birth in the material world. In the meantime, when this was going on at the door, Krishna heard about it, and Krishna Himself came there.
He said to Jaya and Vijaya "What did you do? You should know that every living entity that comes to me, they must be pure.” And before Kumaras came, Lakshmi had gone out once and when Lakshmi came back, they had stopped Lakshmi also. So Lakshmi had cursed them that "Now you will suffer from this tendency. I don’t curse you, but you will have to suffer." So again they repeated it and stopped Kumars. Because it was Krishna’s arrangement. He wants to perform, His own pastimes. So He has His own subtle ways, how to send the living entities from Vaikuntha to the Earth planet or somewhere, in the material manifestation. So these two, Jaya and Vijaya, they were cursed, so Krishna came there, and Krishna said to Kumars, that "You have not cursed them, but it is My desire, that they should take birth in the material manifestation.”
Then they were given the choice that either you are born as a devotee for seven lives or an enemy for three lives. So they selected enemy life. This is how somehow or other, in Diti’s home they were forced to take birth in the material manifestation. As soon as they came, they were supposed to be enemy of Krishna. This was the reason why these pair of brothers always were enemy for three lifetimes. The first birth was this …Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu. Then the second birth was Ravana and Kumbhakarana. And then after that, Shishupala and Dantavkra. These are the pairs. Always enemy, always an enemy. Even before he could learn how to speak, Shishupala was abusing Krishna. He learnt the language by criticizing Krishna. So very adamant to criticizing. And every time he saw Krishna, he will flare-up.
The same thing happened regarding Hiranyaksha also. Hiranyaksha also was very powerful. When these brothers stood erect their helmets would touch clouds. So high and mighty. With all the gada in hand. So powerful, materially very powerful. And this Hiranyaksha was so very powerful that within no time he smashed everybody in the material manifestation. In the end, there was nobody to fight with him. So he said, now with whom he should fight. So the mountains and hills were there. He smashed all these, and all land was flat, you know. Then again there was nobody. So he went into the ocean. He went to Varuna, the demigod for water and said, "Come on, let us fight". Varuna said: "This is unnecessary trouble and I don’t want to incur. See, now I have retired, I have decided not to fight". Hiranyaksha said, "Tell me with whom I should fight?" So he said "Yes, Vishnu is coming”, he said, "The earth is underwater. So He is coming to pick the earth up, So He is coming. He is the right person to fight with. Why should He take your earth?” Hiranyaksha replied, "Yes, the earth belongs to me. How can Vishnu touch it? I’ll see that He can’t touch it.”
So he was moving around in the ocean like anything. They were all mystics there were able to stand on water, go inside the water, and create all the trouble. And as we all know, in the end, Varaah Bhagavaan came to pick the earth and fought with him. After killing Hiranyaksha, Varaha Bhagavan also tells that it’s a very very difficult job. He says. So how powerful those demons maybe. The lesson is with material arrangements we cannot save ourselves. However, hard … we make so many arrangements for our safety, and even then death pounces on us."
We are indeed very fortunate to have the association of pure devotees and get guidance from H.H. Mahavishnu Goswami Maharaj so that we can progress in the path of becoming devotees. I pray unto the lotus feet of Maha Vishnu Maharajji, Srila Prabhupada and Lord Varaha to remove all demoniac tendencies in me, so that i become totally fired up in the service of the lotus feet of Gurudev (or pure devotees), practise cleanliness, proper behaviour and truthfulness, and above all have complete faith and dependence on the Lord for everything.
Thank you very much. Yours in the service of Srila Prabhupada and Gurudeva, Manohar Krishna das, Minneapolis.