True devotee receives Krishna's grace

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Hare Krishna

The scriptures declare that Sri Krishna incarnates in the world to protect His devotees who follow the scriptural injunctions and in the process punishes those who transgress Dharma by creating impediments to those who follow it. Krishna Himself has declared the objective of His manifestation in the Bhagavad Gita, ``For the protection of the virtuous, for the extirpation of evil-doers, and for establishing Dharma on a firm footing, I am born from age to age.''

Lord Krishna who is the very personification of compassion will not punish the offenders intentionally. It is their misdeed which warrants punishment and hence any kind of partiality cannot be attributed to the Lord. On the contrary, it is to make them repent for their actions and turn over a new leaf that is the ulterior motive in such cases and hence it is an act of grace.

One can argue that Krishna who is all-merciful can condone such lapses, but if one understands human psychology it will be apparent that a person who suffers punishment for his offence will think twice before committing the same mistake again and it serves as a deterrent to others also.

This fact has been corroborated in many instances in the epic and Puranic episodes. Parikshit for whose sake the Bhagavata Purana was retold by Sage Suka is a classic case in point. Had he not been cursed to die in seven days he would not have made such a rapid progress spiritually within this time frame by listening to the Bhagavata from the sages. It must be remembered that he had the singular grace of Lord Krishna even before he was born.

Driven by thirst and hunger while hunting and not getting a response from Sage Samika who was in deep meditation when he came to his hermitage and asked for water, the king became indignant and threw a dead snake lying nearby on the sage and departed.

The sage's son intuited what had transpired and cursed that the king would meet certain death in a week's time by the snake Takshaka's bite, greatly angered that the king had the temerity to insult a sage.

But Samika did not laud his son's action. Pointing out that the king was a great devotee of Krishna and that he had acted unintentionally because he was fatigued, he directed his son to inform Parikshit about the curse. The king had also started regretting his action by then and wanted retribution for his conduct and when he learnt about the curse felt it was indeed a blessing in disguise. He spent the time at his disposal listening to the Bhagavata and attained liberation due to the grace of Lord Krishna