॥ ॐ नमो भगवते वासुदेवाय ॥
Sunday, 25 December 2022 VI.02 - How Ajamila is saved.
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The bottomline in this chapter is that Ajamila is saved.
The reason given by Vishnu's messengers is simple. If the Lord is all-powerful and merciful, and if the declaration that His name alone will emancipate man were to be true, Ajamila should be saved!
They point out that Ajamila has uttered the name of Narayana so many times when calling or speaking about his dear son.
स्तेन: सुरापो मित्रध्रुग् ब्रह्महा गुरुतल्पग: । स्त्रीराजपितृगोहन्ता ये च पातकिनोऽपरे ॥
सर्वेषामप्यघवतामिदमेव सुनिष्कृतम् । नामव्याहरणं विष्णोर्यतस्तद्विषया मति: ॥
T: "Even a thief, a drunkard, a person betraying his friend, or even a Brahmin-murderer, or one who commits adultery with his Guru's wife, ... and so on, by simply uttering the name of the Lord, secures protection since the Lord has vowed, “Because this man has chanted My holy name, My duty is to give him protection.”
Vedic rituals are ineffective because they do not instil devotion. Chanting the holy name reminds one of the Lord’s fame, qualities, attributes, pastimes and paraphernalia. Even after ritualistic atonement, one’s mind again runs toward material activities. By chanting "Narayana" at the moment of his death, Ajamila deserves to be set free!
Supposing an ignorant or innocent man has laid his head in a wise and powerful one's lap and has gone to sleep, it becomes the duty of the wise one to protect him! Similarly, even an ignorant chant of the Lord's name should work in favour of the man. It is also like medicine. The doctor knows how it works, and it should work even if the patient is ignorant of its functioning.
Yama's men freed Ajamila from their grasp and left. The messengers of Vishnu too, after accomplishing their goal, disappeared. Now Ajamila got a clear sense of what had happened and how he had been saved even by an inadvertent reference to Narayana. This was his moment of epiphany.
Ajamila was full of contrition. He also recalled his earlier Dharmic life and how he had incurred many sins by his conduct of late. He felt overwhelmed by the Lord's grace even when he had only inadvertently uttered "Narayana". He thought, "Alas, being a servant of my senses, how degraded I became! I fell down from my position as a duly qualified Brahmin and begot children in the womb of a prostitute! Alas, all condemnation upon me! I acted so sinfully that I degraded my family tradition. Indeed, I gave up my chaste and beautiful young wife to have sexual intercourse with a fallen prostitute accustomed to drinking wine. All condemnation upon me! My father and mother were old and had no other son or friend to look after them. Because I did not take care of them, they lived with great difficulty. Alas, being an abominable man, I ungratefully left them in that condition."
"Henceforward I shall not identify myself with the body. I shall give up false conceptions of “I” and “mine” and fix my mind on the lotus feet of Bhagavan."
Thus freed from all material attraction, he immediately started for Haridwar. He practised Bhakti Yoga very sincerely.
When his intelligence and mind were fixed upon the form of the Lord, tAjamila once again saw before him four celestial persons. He could understand that they were those he had seen previously, and thus he offered his obeisances by bowing down before the messengers of Vishnu. Ajamila gave up his material body at Haridwar on the bank of the Ganga. He regained his original spiritual body, which was a body appropriate for an associate of the Lord and was transported to Vishnu Loka.
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