Mukunda Mala Stotra 32 – 4: Return back to our real life by the grace of the holy name
tri-bhuvane sanjivanaika aushadham: “[The holy name is] the medicine that revives our dormant spiritual life.”
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Mukund Mala Stotra, verse 32, part 4 Tribhuvana is all the three words Sanjivana is that which brings back to life The one medicine that brings all the three words back to life. So certainly we may say that all the worlds are alive but this aliveness and activity of the world is in the arena of death. It is in forgetfulness of Krishna and it is under the spell of time.
The real life of the soul is in loving service to Krishna and that loving service is invoked and activated by the desire to serve. So the holy name is the medicine that revives us spiritually and not just us human beings but all the three worlds it can revive spiritually. And how does it revive all the three worlds? By infusing within the hearts of those who chant the holy names the desire to serve Krishna.
As long as we have the desire to enjoy separate from Krishna we stay in the arena of death forgetful of our real life and as if we are Mrityu Jeevitaha we are like the living dead. We are living but we are dead to our real life and even in this false life we are going to die very soon. But when we chant the holy name attentively we experience Krishna’s presence Krishna’s power, Krishna’s beauty Krishna’s joyfulness we get a glimpse of that by attentive chanting of the holy name and that invokes within us the desire to love Krishna and to serve Krishna and when that desire strengthens to that extent it is almost like we wake up from the material life which is like a dream and we return to the reality of spiritual life in loving relationship with Krishna.
So this life and all the activity that we are doing is like the activity in a dream and the holy name is awakening us to the real life of love and relationship with Krishna. Now just the contact of the holy name with our consciousness is so satisfying if we do it attentively and intelligently that it will invoke within us the desire to serve. But along with that the very chanting of the holy names our Acharyas have explained is a prayer for service.
So when we are chanting the holy names we are praying to Krishna, please engage me in your service. Now what is required to be engaged in Krishna’s service? Actually Krishna is offering us so many services all around us but what we lack because of which we are unable to engage in Krishna’s service is that we have a deficit of the desire to serve and we have an excess of the desire to enjoy. So when we are praying to Krishna by chanting please engage me in your service that means effectively we are praying to Krishna please give me the desire to serve you.
I have some understanding that I should serve you based on the message that you have given the teachings that your devotees and representatives have given but that knowledge, that understanding has not transported into a desire to serve. Please, my dear lord, even if I am chanting mechanically right now transform this mechanical chanting into intentional conscious expression of my desire to serve you and Krishna will reciprocate with this desire and increase our desire to serve Krishna. So in this way the holy name enables us to revive our real life in two ways.
First is just by the contact with Krishna the desire to serve Krishna increases and by chanting in the mood of praying to Krishna for engaging us in his service also brings the reward of Krishna blessing us with the increased desire for service. And this way the holy name ushers us back to our real life. Shri Nama Prabhu Ki Jai