Miscellaneous - Religion   

Testament of grace

CHENNAI : Listening to the glory of the Supreme Being and His inimitable deeds in His incarnations has a hoary tradition. Discourse on the Puranas is not merely story telling because the merit of this spiritual practice is unparalleled. The Bhagavata Purana, in fact, is revered as the Lord Himself in book form.

The attitude that a devotee should develop towards listening to His glory, especially this Purana which extols Lord Krishna's sports (lila), is best captured in Uddhava's words after he saw for himself the Gopis' unalloyed devotion to Him when he met them as Krishna's messenger, "I repeatedly salute the dust of the feet of the blessed women of Nanda's Vraja, whose loud singing of the stories of Sri Krishna (Who captivates all) purifies the three worlds."

In her discourse, Srimathi Prema Pandurang said Brindavan was not just the place sanctified by the Lord's sports but the attitude (faith) that a devotee had towards Krishna and Radha. The Bhagavata Purana Mahatmya, occurring in the Padma Purana, identifies Krishna as the Almighty, "We sing the glory of Sri Krishna, who is truth, consciousness and bliss, who is responsible for the creation, sustenance and destruction of the universe, and who puts an end to the threefold agony (that having its origin in one's own body or mind; that inflicted by other creatures and that having its source in natural calamities)." This substantiates why one should study and listen to the Bhagavata Purana as it is a testament of grace. As the mind is both the friend and the foe of a person and is also the cause of all the problems he faces, it has to be disciplined, which listening to it does.

This Purana is unique in that it is as much a work of devotion (Bhakti) as it is of knowledge (Jnana) and dispassion (Vairagya). The Mahatmya describes this through Sage Narada's pilgrimage to holy places when he saw a rare sight on the bank of Yamuna. A young woman in distress was nursing two old men who were lying unconscious. When Narada enquired out of concern she introduced herself as Bhakti and the two old men as her sons, Jnana and Vairagya. Seeing the incongruity of the sons aging before the mother, Narada told her that it was due to the ills of the Kali age and that they could be rejuvenated by listening to the Bhagavata Purana.

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