SHRILA PRABHUPADA always said that there is always a hidden cause of lord's incarnation and kurma avtaar is not exception to above - this avtaar occured not only to help surs or demi gods but also to reveal the eternal truth that it is supreme personality of godhead himself who holds the devotee along his whole spirtual path ,as kurma avtaar holds mandhara( man is mind and dhara is single line of water in hindi/sanskrit) this means our mind concentrated for one destination- to serve the lord , to love him without any selfish purpose etc.
And each stage in sagar manthan corresponds to parallel stage of a person leading spirtual path (Beginning with ocean of milk till attainment of immortality) as follows-
ocean of milk is same as human conciousness it is same as cerebro spinal fluid in mind with almost same concentration of salts.The mind is like an ocean while the thoughts and emotions are the waves in the ocean .
Mandhara, the mountain symbolises concentration. The word Mandhara is made up of two words Mana (mind) and Dhara (a single line) which means holding the mind in one line.
This is possible only by concentration.
The Devas and Asuras represent the positives and negatives respectively of one's personality. The participation of both the Devas and the Asuras signifies that when one is seeking bliss through spiritual practice, one has to integrate and harmonise both the positive and negative aspects and put both the energies to work for the common goal.
Mount Mandhara was upheld by Lord Vishnu as a Kurma (tortoise). The tortoise here symbolises the withdrawal of the senses into oneself (just as a tortoise withdraws its head and limbs into its shell, they are also five in number as our senses are five in number) as one practices mental concentration and meditation or contemplation which infact is possible only by krishna conciuosness.
Only humans have five senses and are elligible to do bhakti.Senses begins from virus which has half sense ie modern science considers it to be a bridge between living and non-living as it is living (starts dividing) when inside body and is inactive when outside body. examples are HIV , Comman cold etc.Thats why there is no cure for them.
Then bacteria has one sense that is only it can feel touch examples are typhoid, tuberculosis etc.
Plants are having two senses as they can smell also(exhale oxygen and inhale carbon di oxide)these do not have brains as it will be very difficult for them to live at one place(they will get irritated).
Then ants have three senses, higher developed creatures like honey bee,some fishes have four senses(they can 'see' also). The memory begins from fishes.(for eg)As recent findings say golden fishes have memory of only three seconds. This is the reason they never come to know that they are living in aquarium and not huge ocean.
Then animals have five senses in which we humans have fully developed senses along with proper sense of speech.
So lord kurma represents the human being who has withdrawn his heart from enjoyment given by these five senses and using them only to develop Krishna conciousness.
As lord himself is holding mana on his back-It is same like giving one's heart to krsna where he controls our mind and led ourself towards our final goal. Vasuki symbolises desire. Vasuki used in the churning of the ocean denotes that the desire.
Devas and the demons held desire (to seek immortality) as a rope and churned the mind with the help of concentration in krishna conciousness which lord kurma symbolises and withdrawal of the senses. Desire, if not controlled ,will overpower and destroy an individual. Now this desire is to be controlled by holding it from both sides.(Snakes are symbols of desire like we see many snakes coiling around golden pots ,diamonds etc,thus they represent desires of material things. People who die having money , gold in mind are reborn as snakes and then they remain attached to therehidden treasures. Thus greed is very dangerous things.
In Book "NECTAR OF DEVOTION" SHRILA PRABHUPADA SAYS(QUOTING PADMA PURAN):Pure devotional service in krishna conciousness is the highest enlightment and when such enlightment is there , it is just like blazing forest fire,killing all inauspicious snakes of desire." Thus snakes represents desire.
In vishnu sahastranama one of the lord's name is SHESHASHEAYE meaning one who lies on the grand snake sheshnaag internal meanning is one who is above materialistic desires or death which snake(sheshnaag) represents.
Thus holding snale from both sides means controlling our materialistic desires.
Controlling a desire is equivalent to vairagya or dettachment from materialistic things.This VAIRAGYA is of two types:
1.Positive dettachment or vairagya:It means when one possess materialistic thing but do not have attachment for it. Like king janak ,king dhruv who had whole empire to rule but they were not attached to any thing inside. Demi-gods holding tail of vasuki also represents positive vairagya as leaving enjoyment of heaven- they were churning ocean for attaining immortality. Thus in krisna conciousness one should not get attached to any thing which takes us away from our goal even any addiction is not allowed. This can be seen in Iskcon like four regulative principles, also shrila prabhupada forbade to drink tea as it contains caffeine which can lead to addiction. Thus even a small addiction will remove positive vairagya and can hamper our spirtual progress.
2.Negative dettachment or vairagya:It means when one does not have the materialistic thing in need and also does not have desire for it beacuse of his perfect knowledge or bhakti or devotion of lord. Like sudama (sakaha of krishna) never demanded anything from shree krishna he came back to his home without asking for anything even he knew that his wife and sons are dying of hunger.
While going back home (from dwarka) he was thanking lord krisna for not giving him any materialistic thing , thinking lord has done this so that he does not get attached to any materialistic thing.This was his level of spirtual development!!!king rantidevis another example .This is represented by asurs or demons holing mouth of vasuki.
Thus this means when a person becomes complete with positive and negative vairagya his journey towards supreme personality of godhead actually begins.
Then first thing which came out of ocean is poison which was consumed by lord shiva.
Lord Shiva symbolises the ascetic principle. His role in this story as the consumer of poison suggests that one can deal with the early problems of spiritual life by cultivating the qualities of Lord Shiva, namely, courage, initiative, willingness, discipline, simplicity, detachment, compassion, pure love and asceticism. He also represents one's guru as he is the highest vaishnav according to Shrila Prabhupad . In ISKON these habbits are developed from beginning and all the prabhu ji who have taken initiation have to cultivate these habbits.
The poison also symbolises pain and suffering(due to previous births bad karma) which occurs during early stage of spirtual path and this can only be lowered with the help of one's guru and strong faith in him and lord.
The various precious objects that come out of the ocean during the churning stand for the psychic or spiritual powers (Siddhis) which one gains as he progresses spiritually from stage to stage. The seeker should be careful about these powers as they can hamper his progress unless he uses them judiciously, not for selfish gains but for others' welfare.
This energy or siddhis can be lost in two ways removing one from the krishna conciousness:
1. One can ascend to higher planet and become demigod for example becoming indra,varun etc.
2. Using these siddhis in this world only like many dharama gurus these days (or so called babas) are using their spirtual energy interfering with the plan of lord and thus thrown back to lower positions.
Along with these siddhis many auspicious materlistic things also follow.For example Kalp vriksha comes out which is Tree of desire thus all materlistic desires(these are previous births desires which are lying in antarman like maps but the original bhakta do not have any material desires) are fullfilled.
Thus again one needs to control his inner self and move forward.
So one should again develop strong positive vairagya in this stage and should not get attached with any of these things.
This is the reason why the Gods and demons distributed these objects as they did not want to lose sight of their original aim which was to gain immortality. Shree krsna says many loose path while comming to me during this stage as many use their spirtual energy for their selfish purpose and loose sight of their final aim.
This reminds me of famous shalok by SANT TULSIDAS :
PRABHUTA KO SABH KOHI CHAHE
PRABHU CHAHE NA KOYI
TULSI JO PRABHU KO CHAHE
APHE PRABHUTA HOYI
MEANING:
EVERYBODY LIKES QUALITIES OF GOD LIKE HIS GRACE ,HIS SYMPATHY HIS LOVE AND TRIES TO TAKE BENEFIT OF THAT,BUT,NOBODY LIKE SUPREME
PERSONALITY OF GODHEAD HIMSELF. IF ANYBODY LOVES SUPREME PERSONALITY
OF GODHEAD(SHREE RAM) THAN AUTOMATICALLY HIS GRACE WILL FALL UNTO HIM
WITHOUT ANY EFFORT.
Mohini symbolises delusion of the mind in the form of (or originating from) pride. It is the pride of achievement to which the asuras or the demons succumbed and thus lost sight of their goal. Pride and egoism are the last hurdles one has to overcome in spiritual life before experiencing self-realisation. This is final stage where all delusion can occur many fall down due to abhiman or ahankar they have in their mind of the spirtual progress they have made.
SHRI CHAITANYA MAHAPRABHU
IN
SHRI CHAITANYA-CHARITAMRITA SAYS
"To enable one to chant the holy name of lord always ,a person should be humbler than the grass in he street ,devoid of all desire for personal honor, and ready to offer others all respectful obeisances"
Lakshmi represents universal enrichment which comes as an automatic by-product of the internal self-realization or Amrita. and in end amrit represnts immortality which can be achieved only after entering eternal abode of supreme personality of godhead. So all the products in sagar manthan represnts some stage of spirtual path but in all of them role played by lord
KURMA is most significant as controlling our mind(mana) is most difficult task and it can be concentrated only and only with the help of lord himself.
So we must become very sincere towards developing krishna conciousness and regularly chant the mahamantra of lord which will concentrate our mind towards our final aim -the lotus feet of sri krisna.!!!!!!!!
HARE KRISNA HARE KRISNA KRISNA KRISNA HARE HARE
HARE RAMA HARE RAMA RAMA RAMA HARE HARE.!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment