Naam Ramayana 6 – Let the Lord touch and transform our stone-like heart

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Naam Ramayan, Kaushik Makha Samrakshaka Rama, Shreemad Ahalyodharaka Rama, Lord Ram’s past times in his first forest stay with Vishwamitra are being described here, Kaushik is the another name of Vishwamitra, before Vishwamitra became a sage by performing severe and prolonged austerities, before that he was a king, his name was Kaushik, so Kaushik Makha Samrakshaka, Makha refers to sacrifices, so the lord protected the sacrifice of Kaushik, Ram, he stood guard and he protected the sacrifice from the various demons and day and night as the sacrifice was being performed, he stayed guard and eventually he ensured that the sacrifice was successful and towards the end when the demons came to disrupt the sacrifice and desecrate it, he destroyed the demons and he, the survivors they went fleeing and this way he Makha Samrakshaka, so Krishna is the protector of dharma, dharma rakshaka, dharma balak, dharma gup, that is one of the names of Vishnu in the Vishnu Sahasranam, one who is the protector of dharma and further it is said Shreemad Ahalya Dharaka Rama, Shreemad Ahalya, so Ahalya was a wife of Gautam Muni and she had been cursed to become a stone because she had been unchaste knowingly and then Lord Ram came in, Lord Ram discussed that stone with the lotus feet and she became transformed, she resumed her form as a beautiful woman and as a, she resumed her role as a chaste wife to a great sage, so Shreemad Ahalya Dharaka Rama, Dharaka is one who is the deliverer, so he delivered Ahalya, so similarly actually our heart has become like stone, you know and the fact is that no one has cursed us, we have cursed ourselves and to the extent we become obsessed with material enjoyment, to that extent we become desensitized to spiritual emotions, to the extent we get excited, agitated, worked up with worldly emotions, we go down, especially not refined material emotions such as those which come from poetry or art or nature but grosser material emotions connected with sex and alcohol and while dancing and basically while living, the while living seems very emotional, people in parties, they laugh loudly, they sing loudly, they scream and screech loudly, now a days we see that everything is becoming so gross, so sports is becoming often quite gross, people want bang bang bang in cricket, people want beat beat beat in say boxing, in WWF and things like that, so to the extent we get caught in gross things, our emotions are excited only by gross physically violent, physically turbulent stimuli, then we go descend into the lower modes, passion, ignorance and then that Lord who is in transcendence, we can’t connect with him emotionally and that’s why we feel no emotions in relationship with him, that’s how our heart becomes like a stone towards the Supreme Lord, because we can’t perceive, we can’t feel any emotions towards him, this stone is insentient, stone is often used as a metaphor for something which is unfeeling, he had a stone like heart, that means he has no feelings in his heart, so our heart becomes stone like towards the Supreme Lord and paradoxically to the extent our heart becomes stone like, to that extent we consider the deity to be nothing but a stone, because we can’t perceive spiritual dimension of the deity and we can’t experience any emotions in relationship with him, but even when our heart has become stone like like this, if the Lord’s contact happens, if the Lord comes and touches us, be it with his lotus feet or with his sublime sound vibration as the holy name, then just as from the stone to which I had been reduced, she became elevated to her beautiful original form, like that our spiritual emotions start getting activated and eventually our Swaroopa becomes revealed, just as the Lord delivered Ahilya, so he can deliver each one of us, Shreemad Ahilyo Dhara Karama, so even when we chant and feel and we pray and we hear Krishna Katha, we take darshan of the Lord, even if we don’t feel any emotions, we should know that actually every contact with the Lord is changing the stone like state of our heart and is making our heart more devotional, more receptive to devotional emotions and gradually the stone like covering will fall apart and our heart or spiritual heart which is rich with spiritual emotion, which is brimming and active with spiritual emotions will emerge forth, will burst forth and we will be enlivened with spiritual energy, that is what we can all aspire for and with that aspiration, with the inspiration coming from this vision of inner transformation, we can apply ourselves to the process of remembering Krishna, the process of contacting him during our chanting and doing our part in bringing about this transformation of our stone like heart into a devotional heart.
Thank you.