Nrsimha-caturdasi

Giriraj Swami: The Fifth Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam contains some prayers offered by Prahlada Maharaja and his associates to Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva. We shall read from Chapter Eighteen: “The Residents of Jambūdvīpa Offer Prayers.”

TEXT 7

hari-varṣe cāpi bhagavān nara-hari-rūpeṇāste; tad-rūpa-grahaṇa-nimittam uttaratrābhidhāsye; tad dayitaṁ rūpaṁ mahā-puruṣa-guṇa-bhājano mahā-bhāgavato daitya-dānava-kula-tīrthīkaraṇa-śīlā-caritaḥ prahlādo ‘vyavadhānānanya-bhakti-yogena saha tad-varṣa-puruṣair upāste idaṁ codāharati.

TRANSLATION

Śukadeva Gosvāmī continued: My dear King, Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva resides in the tract of land known as Hari-varṣa. In the Seventh Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, I shall describe to you how Prahlāda Mahārāja caused the Lord to assume the form of Nṛsiṁhadeva. Prahlāda Mahārāja, the topmost devotee of the Lord, is a reservoir of all the good qualities of great personalities. His character and activities have delivered all the fallen members of his demoniac family. Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva is very dear to this exalted personality. Thus Prahlāda Mahārāja, along with his servants and all the denizens of Hari-varṣa, worships Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva by chanting the following mantra.

TEXT 8

oṁ namo bhagavate narasiṁhāya namas tejas-tejase āvir-āvirbhava vajra-nakha vajra-daṁṣṭra karmāśayān randhaya randhaya tamo grasa grasa om svāhā; abhayam abhayam ātmani bhūyiṣṭhā oṁ kṣraum.

TRANSLATION

I offer my respectful obeisances unto Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva, the source of all power. O my Lord who possess nails and teeth just like thunderbolts, kindly vanquish our demonlike desires for fruitive activity in this material world. Please appear in our hearts and drive away our ignorance so that by Your mercy we may become fearless in the struggle for existence in this material world.

PURPORT by Srila Prabhupada

In Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (4.22.39) Sanat-kumāra speaks the following words to Mahārāja Pṛthu:

yat-pāda-paṅkaja-palāśa-vilāsa-bhaktyā
karmāśayaṁ grathitam udgrathayanti santaḥ
tadvan na rikta-matayo yatayo ‘pi ruddha-
srotogaṇās tam araṇaṁ bhaja vāsudevam

“Devotees always engaged in the service of the toes of the Lord’s lotus feet can very easily become free from hard-knotted desires for fruitive activities. Because this is very difficult, the nondevotees — the jñānīs and yogīs — cannot stop the waves of sense gratification, although they try to do so. Therefore you are advised to engage in the devotional service of Kṛṣṇa, the son of Vasudeva.”

Every living being within this material world has a strong desire to enjoy matter to his fullest satisfaction. For this purpose, the conditioned soul must accept one body after another, and thus his strongly fixed fruitive desires continue. One cannot stop the repetition of birth and death without being completely desireless. Therefore Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī describes pure bhakti (devotional service) as follows:

anyābhilāṣitā-śūnyaṁ
jñāna-karmādy-anāvṛtam
ānukūlyena kṛṣṇānu-
śīlanaṁ bhaktir uttamā

“One should render transcendental loving service to the Supreme Lord Kṛṣṇa favorably and without desire for material profit or gain through fruitive activities or philosophical speculation. That is called pure devotional service.” Unless one is completely freed of all material desires, which are caused by the dense darkness of ignorance, one cannot fully engage in the devotional service of the Lord. Therefore we should always offer our prayers to Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva, who killed Hiraṇyakaśipu, the personification of material desire. Hiraṇya means “gold,” and kaśipu means “a soft cushion or bed.” Materialistic persons always desire to make the body comfortable, and for this they require huge amounts of gold. Thus Hiraṇyakaśipu was the perfect representative of materialistic life. He was therefore the cause of great disturbance to the topmost devotee, Prahlāda Mahārāja, until Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva killed him. Any devotee aspiring to be free of material desires should offer his respectful prayers to Nṛsiṁhadeva as Prahlāda Mahārāja did in this verse.

COMMENT

The heart is like a throne. Just as Hiraṇyakaśipu sometimes sat on the throne meant for the demigods or devotees, material desires—which are compared to demons like Hiraṇyakaśipu—sometimes sit on the thrones of our hearts. And they cause us so much trouble, just as Hiraṇyakaśipu caused so much trouble to the demigods and ultimately to the topmost devotee Prahlada. But by the devotion of Prahlada Maharaja, the Lord appeared and killed Hiraṇyakaśipu.

Here Prahlada, along with his associates, prays to Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva, “Just as You killed the demon Hiraṇyakaśipu, You should kill our demonlike desires for fruitive work.” Fruitive work means that we want to enjoy, and in order to enjoy we have to work. We work to get some gold or money or some facility to enjoy sense gratification. The desire to enjoy the senses independent of Lord Krishna is demonic. Therefore, Prahlada Maharaja prays to the Lord to come into his heart and destroy his desires for material enjoyment.

Often we hear or say, Nṛsiṁhadeva ki jaya! Sri Sri Radha-Radhanath ki jaya! Srila Prabhupada ki jaya! What is the meaning? The word jaya means “victory.” Victory implies that there is a war or fight, and that ultimately one party is victorious and the other is defeated.

Our desires for material enjoyment and sense gratification are like demons. So we want Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva, and Sri Sri Radha Radhanath, and the spiritual master to be victorious over them. And if they are victorious, what will happen? The defeated party must surrender to the victorious party. Thus, “Nṛsiṁhadeva ki jaya!” means we want Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva to be victorious and conquer our minds and senses and material desires, which are like demons. We want our mind and senses to come under the Lord’s control, and act only under His direction. Otherwise they should not act.

Prahlada Maharaja asks Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva to remove the ignorance from his heart. Ignorance means I don’t know who I am. I think that I am the body, that I belong to the material world, and that the satisfaction of the senses will make me happy. Ignorance means that I feel I can live forever in the world, although I cannot live forever. Ignorance means that I think I am the supreme controller, although I am controlled at every moment; I think I am the supreme enjoyer, although I am prone to suffer at every moment; I think I am the supreme proprietor, although nothing actually belongs to me. Such thoughts constitute ignorance. In fact, anything outside devotional service constitutes ignorance, as stated in the Bhagavad-gītā.

Why do we suffer? Srila Prabhupada and the scriptures explain that suffering is caused by sin, and sin is caused by ignorance. If the ignorance is removed, then the suffering can stop. So we pray to Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva to remove the ignorance from our hearts, to help us realize who we are: the eternal servants of Krishna.

How do we become free from material desires? Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam states, as quoted by Srila Prabhupada, that material desires are just like waves in a river, which flow incessantly. Similarly, there is no end to the flow of material desires within the heart of the conditioned soul. They keep coming one after another, one after another, and there is no relief or end to them. Even jnanis and yogis, who want to get relief from material desires, cannot succeed, because they have no process to stop the waves of material desires. There are many examples of jnanis and yogis who renounced the world, went to the mountains to practice yoga, but in the end came back to the cities and again engaged in material activities because they could not check the flow of material desires. Only one who engages in the service of the toes of the Lord can stop the flow of material desires.

How? Srila Prabhupada explains that although the waves of a river flow without cessation, they flow into the ocean. And sometimes, at high tide, the ocean pushes in the opposite direction from the river, and the waves from the ocean become more prominent than the waves from the river. In the same way, although no one can stop desire, if the desire to serve the Supreme Lord becomes more prominent than the desire for material enjoyment, then the waves of material desire will be overwhelmed by the waves of desire to serve the Lord.

We have to develop the desire to serve Krishna. We have to always think how to serve Krishna, how to please Krishna, how to please Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, how to please Srila Prabhupada, how to spread the saṅkīrtana movement. Although we cannot make desire nil, we can replace material desires for fruitive work with the transcendental desire to serve Krishna.

At the end of his prayer, Prahlada Maharaja asks Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva to remove his ignorance so that he can become fearless. We are full of fear because we identify with the body, and at any moment something may happen to the body. As one Vaishnava poet sings, kamala-dala-jala, jīvana ṭalamala Our body, our life, is like a drop of water hanging on a lotus petal. At any moment, anything can happen, and the drop can fall from the leaf and shatter. Every day we read in the newspaper about lives that have shattered in a moment. And many of us have had personal experience that our life was almost shattered, but by the grace of the Lord we survived. Without some special mercy from Krishna, our life also could have been shattered. So to be afraid in the material world is natural, because we are in a precarious position. As Srila Prabhupada says, we are on a “tiltering” platform. At any moment we can drop and be broken into pieces.

To become fearless, we have to become free from the ignorance that I am the body and the goal of life is to enjoy the senses of the body. The opposite of material desires for sensual enjoyment are spiritual desires for devotional service. Not only is bhakti the opposite of the desire for material enjoyment, but it is opposed even to the desire for impersonal liberation. Bhakti means to have no desire other than to please the Lord. We have to replace the demonlike desires for material enjoyment with the transcendental desire for devotional service.

Thus, when Prahlada Maharaja prays to Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva to vanquish the demons of material desires, to appear in his heart, to drive away ignorance, and to make him fearless, actually he is praying for bhakti. The Lord appears only where there is bhakti. So we too should pray to Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva to kill our material desires, which are like demons in our hearts. He should pull the Hiraṇyakaśipu from the thrones in our hearts and kill them. Then He, Nṛsiṁhadeva Himself, should sit there. And Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva will respond to our prayers. Even devotees who have given up gross material desires in order to engage in the service of the Lord may be put into difficulty by offenses. So devotees can also pray to the Lord to protect their devotional service from offenses, or any other subtle attack of maya. Although devotees have no extraneous desires, they do want their devotional service to be protected.

Everyone should take shelter of Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva. He is the protector of the devotees—externally, from the demons in the world who may attack and try to stop the mission of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Srila Prabhupada, and internally, from the demons of material desire and offense that may attack our devotion.

Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva is very merciful, as we can see in Prahlada wonderful prayers in the Seventh Canto. And we can feel confident that by following in the footsteps of Sri Prahlada (mahājana yena gataḥ sa panthāḥ), we will get the mercy of Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva.

Nṛsiṁha Bhagavān ki jaya!
Srila Prabhupada ki jaya!