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Source: The Hindu (http://www.the-hindu.com)

 

Nine modes of devotion to God

 

CHENNAI, MARCH 7. It will not be an exaggeration to say that a

devotee like child Prahlada for whose sake the Almighty

manifested in a unique man-lion form, Narasimha, is more

important from the standpoint of devotees than the incarnation of

the Lord Himself. It is devotees like Prahlada who kindle eternal

hope in the heart of a spiritual aspirant that his faith in the

saving grace of the Almighty will never be in vain.

 

The Supreme Being is posited as beyond the reach of even great

Yogis and saints and the single-mindedness with which they have

performed penance and austerities to realise Him forms the

subject matter of the exhaustive scriptural texts. But the same

texts reiterate that He is easily accessible to His devotee and

in fact bounden to him. So it will be spiritually beneficial to

peruse these texts as a record of the lives of devotees for whose

sake God had manifested in the world from time to time to redeem

them from worldly bondage and distress.

 

Divine will reveals itself in mysterious ways in the lives of

men. By any stretch of imagination or logic one would not expect

a devotee like Prahlada to have been sired by an Asura like

Hiranyakasipu who loathed God. To avenge what he considered

injustice meted out to his brother Hiranyaksha, he wanted to

become invincible. To this end he performed intense austerities

and obtained boons from the creator, Brahma, who granted his

wishes.

 

In his Harikatha, Kalyanapuram Sri R. Aravamudan said that drunk

with power and pelf, Hiranyakasipu started committing atrocities

by violating the injunctions of the scriptures. Everyone lived in

abject terror and when all the living beings and celestials could

not bear his tyranny they prayed to the Almighty to put an end to

his despotism. The Lord promised that He would incarnate when the

demon started harassing his own child Prahlada.

 

That no one can be infallible was proved in the case of

Hiranyakasipu who declared himself to be omnipotent. Prahlada in

spite of the indoctrination he received as instruction from his

preceptor, not only remained uninfluenced but also undeterred

when reprimanded by the teacher that he would be punished. When

Hiranyakasipu sent for him and asked him what he had learnt,

Prahlada outlined devotion to God marked by the following nine

features, ``To hear the names, praises and stories of Lord Vishnu

and chant them, to remember Him, to wait upon Him, to offer

worship and salutation to Him, to dedicate one's actions to Him,

to cultivate friendship with Him and to offer one's own body as

well as one's dependents and belongings to Him'' as the acme of

learning.

 

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