Appreciating the devotional despair of Damodarashtakam

Short meditation at kirtan program in Panama city, Panama

So I will speak on the theme of The devotional Despair He said we praise that You have also Bestowed mercy on the Unqualified earlier And he used the example of Kuvera Manikara Just as you bestowed mercy On them and what is the mercy He is saying not that you liberated Them from the tree bodies and took them to heaven The mercy you gave them was that You gave them bhakti And similarly My dear lord please Give me also And then lastly again he concludes Sometimes when we pray to the lord There is always the fear Will he fulfill my desire or will he not Fulfill my desire And that can cause insecurity in our relationship So Prayer is not just for Getting god to do things that We can’t do That is only one aspect of prayer In bhakti prayer is a limb Of bhakti there are nine limbs of bhakti One of them is prayer So now when we do shravana when we do kirtana Now we are not really asking Anything from the lord there might be some desire in our heart The purpose of shravana and kirtana Is not to get the lord To do something for us it is simply to connect With the lord Similarly in bhakti So in karmakanda The purpose of prayer is to get the lord to do something For us it is not wrong in bhakti But in bhakti the essence of prayer Is not to get the lord to do something It is to connect with the lord And that is why although there is this intense Despair with which he prays to the lord In the last verse he simply returns back To the mode of glorification Therefore he says oh lord you perform Unlimited pastime this one Pastime itself gives so much ecstasy And like that oh lord you have unlimited pastime And the highest of your pastimes Are those with Radharani Thus he concludes by Offering obeisances to Radharani Now Bhaktisanth Swetak explains That actually when Yashodamayi was trying to Tie Krishna, tie Krishna, tie Krishna She is not able to tie And finally she was able to tie So how did it work out? One understanding is that Krishna was pleased with Yashodamayi’s effort And that is why he allowed himself to be tied That is true Another understanding to that is That after a long time Of trying to tie like this Radharani came over there That time Radha was also a small girl And when she saw that nobody was able to Tie Krishna Then she took a ribbon out from her leg And she gave that ribbon to Yashodamayi And that ribbon was small but when that ribbon was added To the rope then that rope was enough Now Krishna said that oh Radharani’s love Is so great that I am Conquered by that love So similarly he says That That Radharani Who is beloved to you And to whom you are beloved I offer obeisances to her In this way this pastime is so relishable But oh lord you perform unlimited pastimes And they are all relishable And we can We can become absorbed even in one pastime Of the lord One pastime touches our heart And then we Connect with the lord through that one pastime That itself can Give us so much devotional emotion By which we can keep Praying to Krishna Calling out to him Remembering him and that will propel us In our journey towards him So the fame of Yashodamayi And the love To which is binding Krishna Doesn’t shift to Radharani