Understanding the Lord's Actions - Part 4

Date: 2016-04-07 Author: Narahari das

Hare Krishna Prabhujis and Matajis, Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudeva.

This is in continuation of the previous topic titled, "Understanding the Lord's Actions". In the previous offering we saw that when Lord descends,

1. He performs inconceivable lilas to give pleasure to His devotees and to attract fallen souls to His lotus feet. 2. Lord takes pleasure to remain in background and give the credit and glory to His devotees.

We will continue to meditate on the Lord's strength and valour.

Ranchod pastime: After was defeated 17 times, a mleccha King called came to fight with the Yadavas. Now Lord Krishna started running away from Kalayavana who started chasing Him and abusing Him that He is a coward. But the Lord did not bother about his words and entered into a cave where King was sleeping. The Lord hid Himself in that cave. Kalayavana entered the cave and saw Muchukundha who was covering himself with a blanket and sleeping. He mistook him for Lord Krishna. Speaking all ill words, he kicked Muchukunda. When Muchukundha woke up and stared at Kalayavana who woke him up, the mleccha king was burnt to ashes instantly. (Once Muchukunda fought with demons in favour of the devatas as their general. The devatas being pleased with him offered him a boon. The king sought a boon whereby he will sleep for a long time and whoever disturbs him in sleep will be burnt to ashes.) Once Kalayavana was burnt, Lord Krishna came out of His hide-out and offered His darshan to Muchukunda and revealed His Supreme nature. Muchukunda retired to Badarikashrama to perform penances and purified Himself to go back home, back to Godhead.

We may wonder why the all powerful Lord ran away from Kalayavana. There is always very good purpose behind each and every action of Supreme Lord. The acharyas explain that the Lord did not run away in fear, but He ran away to the cave only to bless Muchukunda. He did not want to fight with Kalayavana and wanted him to be killed by the sleeping Muchukunda. Also the Lord did not kill Kalayavana to honour the boon given by Lord and this is stated in Vishnupurana as follows.

There was a brahmana called Gargya who was the priest of the Yadavas. He did not have any children. His brother in law, once humiliated him in front of all the Yadavas saying, "He is not able to have child because he is a transgender." All the Yadavas laughed at Gargya. Gargya was very offended by this and left the place. He went to the south of Vidhya mountains and started meditating on Lord Shiva just by eating powdered iron. He prayed Lord Shiva to bestow a son who will be inimical to the Yadavas and who can challenge the Yadavas in battle. Lord Siva became pleased and bestowed the same to him. This news reached the king of Yavanas and he approached Gargya and worshipped him respectfully. He said, "I do not have children. Please impregnate my wife and produce a son who will challenge the Yadavas." Gargya agreed and as a result a son was born of the Yavana king's wife. They named him Kalayavana and he was made the king. He was well built and he asked Narada Muni, "Who are most powerful people in this planet whom I can challenge for fight?" Naradji replied, "Krishna and Balarama who are the leader of Yadavas are the most powerful." And hence Kalayavana approached for fighting with Lord Krishna.

Since Lord Shiva gave benediction to Gargya that his son will be a challenge to Yadavas, Lord Krishna did not fight with Kalayavana but pretended as if He was afraid of him and ran away. This He did to make the words of Lord Shiva true. Lord Krishna returned to Mathura and immediately Jarasandha came to attack Mathura with a huge army for the 18th time. This time, the Lord did not want to fight with Jarasandha and hence built a fort in the sea and moved all the Yadavas into the fort. Then the Lord along with Balarama escaped from the battle field and ran away far and was chased by the army of Jarasandha. After this incident, Jarasandha, Sisupala and other inimical kings rebuked by calling Him as 'Ranchod' (one who ran away from battle).

This is yet another glory of Supreme Lord. To keep up the vow of His devotees, He is ready to do any kind of sacrifice - even to the extent of breaking His own promise as He did in the case of Bhishmadev or not minding others decrying Him as Ranchod. Again we may wonder why the Lord who defeated Jarasandha's army effortlessly 17 times should run away from the battle in the 18th time. We will meditate on this in the next offering, Krishna willing.

Hare Krishna. Thank you very much. Yours in service of Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudeva, Narahari Krishna dasa Chennai.