October 8, 2023
Hari Om Parents,
We started the class with the daily prayers. We did breathing exercises for some time. We chanted Nama Ramayana from my prayers books.
We continued with the story of Ramayana. Sage Vishwamitra along with Rama and Lakshmana now reach Mithila Puri. The people of Mithila Puri were mesmerized by the beauty of Sri Rama. King Janaka and his ministers welcomed sage Vishwamitra, Rama & Lakshman to the palace. Sage Shatananda, one of the ministers of king Janaka, tells the story of sage Vishwamitra to Rama and Lakshmana.
Once sage Vishwamitra, when he was still a king, visited the ashram of sage Vasishta. Where the sage provided him with great dinner and hospitality. Sage had a cow named Kamadhenu or Surabhi. Upon request of the Sage, Kamadhenu was able to provide sumptuous dinner, which fed thousands of army men accompanying the king. Seeing this miracle king requested sage Vasishta to give him Surabhi. Sage Vasishta refused saying that Surabhi was like a daughter to him. The king then tried to take Surabhi forcefully. Upon sage's command Surabhi was able to produce a large army which destroyed King's army and his children.
Humiliated and defeated king Vishwamitra vowed to defeat sage Vasishta. He performed severe penance, and propitiated Lord Shiva. Lord gave him many divine weapons as a boon. Equipped with these divine weapons king went to fight with sage Vasishta. But all the divine weapons were nullified by sage Vasishta mantra power. King was astonished by the mantra power of sage Vasishta. King was extremely distressed, but did not get completely dejected, so he also took a strong resolve to perform the more tapas / austerities to gain similar kind of powers. He went and performed more severe tapas. He wanted to be equal to Sage Vasishta. After some time, king Trishanku approached Raja Rishi Vishwamitra, with a desire to reach heaven with his human body. Learning that this desire was turned down by sage Vasishta, Vishwamitra decided to send Trishanku to heaven with the human body. But the gods in heaven did not allow Trishanku to enter heaven in human form, hence sage Vishwamitra created alternate heaven which is tapas power. With this act his tapas power got depleted.
Vishwamitra again performed great austerities and earned title of Rishi. After this Indra sent Apsara Menaka to distract Vishwamitra, and he spent several years with her in forest. Subsequently realizing his mistake, he went to Himalayas leaving Menaka and did severe austerities. He now gained the status of Maharshi. Still, he was not happy as he did not conquer all his senses. While he was doing austerities, Apsara Ramba was sent by Indra to again distract Maharshi Vishwamitra's tapas. Vishwamitra got angry and cursed Ramba to become a stone. He then realized that he still had to overcome anger, hence performed more severe austerities. After many years of tapas Brahmaji finally confirmed the title of Brahmarshi to Vishwamitra. Thus, sage Vishwamitra attained his highest goal, and became equal in status to sage Vasishta. Obviously at this time he did not have any jealousy or anger towards sage Vasishta and took his blessings.
The story of sage Vishwamitra is very powerful where it depicts an ordinary person rising to become a Brahmarshi. There are many lessons for us to learn from this incident.
1. Goal setting is important, sage Vishwamitra never lost sight of his goal of becoming Brahmarshi to be equal to sage Vasishta.
2. To be aware of the mistakes we make, and importantly we should not completely get bogged down by the mistakes but learn from them and grow. Sage Vishwamitra continued his austerities despite many obstacles in his path, created mainly by his own internal weaknesses.
3. Need to have constant and meaningful effort to achieve our goals.
When we look from standpoint of the inner enemies that sage Vishwamitra had to overcome to achieve his goal
1. Leaving his desire for Kamadhenu - he overcomes lobha or greed
2. From the Trishanku incident - he overcomes ahankara or ego
3. From Menaka incident - he overcomes desire or kama
4. From Ramba incident he overcomes krodha or anger
This shows that in order to achieve great results in the world we need to be able to have control over our mind and senses. Then it will become easier to meet external challenges and achieve our goals.
In the end we chanted along with Swamiji's video Bhagavad Gita verses from chapter four.
Pranams,
Vyjayanti
Devender
