Hindu Article-Resolute devotee

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Resolute devotee

 

CHENNAI: God never fails in honouring His commitment to protect His

devotees who submit themselves totally to Him. Nowhere is this truth

as forcefully established as in the story of Prahlada. Though born in

the Asura race, as the son of Hiranyakasipu, Prahlada was imbued with

Bhakti of a rare order, which was born out of a supreme faith in Lord

Narayana's omnipotence and omnipresence. His faith in the Lord's

protecting power did not flinch even when pitted against severest

challenges, and in the event, he stood vindicated as Lord Narayana

manifested Himself as Narasimha from a pillar. To surrender to this

protecting power of the Lord requires courage, persistence and

unwavering faith to remain steadfast against the pulls of the easier

options that can delude and deceive. Child Prahlada's life is

testimony to the fact that there is no force in this universe that

can destroy anyone who has truly surrendered to the Lord, said Sri N.

Veezhinathan in a discourse on the Vishnu Purana.

It was a strange situation for the child when his father demanded

Prahlada to disown Lord Narayana, because the child's compelling

realisation of the all-pervading presence of Lord Narayana as the

explicit Reality emphasised the exact converse of his father's dogma

in a most transparent and crystal clear manner.

Realising the ultimate power of the Lord as subsuming every other

power, Prahlada remained undaunted when his own father Hiranyakasipu

heartlessly ordered the most frightful and vicious kinds of torture

to be inflicted on him to make him toe his line. Imagine hundreds of

people attacking a small child; or poisoned arrows being aimed at

him; serpents with the deadliest venom being thrown at him; elephants

with sharp tusks targeting his heart; fire, assisted by wind, trying

to burn him; all these and many more such hideous kinds of torture

proved ineffective, because the Lord Himself protected Prahlada at

each juncture, responding to the true devotion of the child.

Faith and conviction that the greatest force resided within him made

him fearless to all the threats.

 

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