Feb 3, 2004, 12.00am IST
Devakottai Sundararajan Srinivasan.
The Vedas describe God as being Nirguna (free of qualities) and Niranjana (free of blemish).
The Advaita philosophy founded by Adi Sankara explains this concept: “ God or Brahman does not have any gunas or qualities”. However, Ramanuja of the Vishishtadvaita philosophy explains that nirguna does not mean that God has no qualities, it only means that God has no bad gunas or qualities.
Ramanuja has described the various qualities of God in his work Sharanagati Gatyam. However, he became so fascinated by the quality of karuna or daya — compassion — in the Lord that his entire work is mostly about this wonderful quality of the Lord. Because of this quality, He comes to the rescue of all those who surrender completely to Him. The Lord’s compassion is limitless. No wonder, then, He is also known as Karunasagar or ocean of compassion.
The entire work on Daya Shatakam, all of hundred poems, composed by Ve-danta Desika, another great Vaishnavite scholar, is full of praise for the Lord’s compassion. God is all- powerful. Yet, He is generous and forgives those who seek forgiveness, which ultimately leads to their salvation.
The entire principle of Vishishtadvaita veers around Sharanagati or total surrender to God. Vaishnavites believe that by seeking forgiveness through their Guru or Acharya, they will be absolved of all sins and come closer to salvation. In Bhagavad Purana, when Hiranyakashipu asks Prahalad, his son, what is the best thing that he has learnt, Prahalad enumerates nine ways of reaching God and one of them is atma samarpanam or total surrender to God.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says: “Leave everything and surrender to me, I will absolve you of all sins and lead you to salvation”. God does not differentiate between friend and foe, man and animal, caste and creed. He comes to the rescue of all those who surrender to Him with full faith and belief in Him.
Various incidents in Hindu mythology and our puranas and epics illustrate the concept of God as the One who always comes to the rescue of the helpless who care to remember Him. When Gajendra, the king of elephants, found himself compromised by a crocodile who would not let go of his leg, he realised that his herd could not help him.
So Gajendra called out to Vishnu who responded by rescuing and saving Gajendra from the crocodile. Jayantha, in the form of a crow had given unbearable trouble to Sita, but when he fell at Ram’s feet, he was pardoned and his life was saved from the fury of Brahmastra. In order to save the life of an Asura child Prahalad, Vishnu took the form of Nara-simha and killed the Asura king Hiranyakashipu.
The following incidents from the Ramayana and the Maha-bharata encapsulate wonderfully the principle of total surrender to the Lord: During Vastra abharan, when Draupadi’s honour was at stake, as long as she tried to protect her honour with her hands, the Lord did not come to her rescue. The moment she raised both her hands in despair and called out to Krishna indicating that she believed Him to be the only saviour, the Lord came to her rescue and saved her honour.
Vibishana, Ravana’s bro-ther came to surrender to the Lord and fight on the side of Rama. The entire army of Sugriva was against this, but Rama said that even if Ravana seeks forgiveness, he will pardon him and He accepted Vibishana on his side.
Surrendering unconditionally to the Almighty is one way of expressing our confidence in the Divine, for faith works wonders.
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