Naam Ramayana 8 – Let the Lord enter and enchant our heart

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
meditation. Thank you.
Nama Ramayan is going on and Mithilapur. So Vishwamitra had called Lord Ram not just to get his own purpose fulfilled in terms of having the demons who were disrupting his sacrifice, having those demons killed, but he had another purpose in his mind. Although he was a renunciate, he knew that the Lord had come to perform a particular pastime as the ideal human being, as the ideal king.
And in that pastime, the Lord would get married to his eternal consort. So Vishwamitra felt inspired to do the service of a matchmaker. And he told the princes, Ram and Lakshman who were there with him that in Mithila, Sita’s swayamvar is going to be performed.
And there’s a great bow and whoever will be able to lift that bow, that person will get the hands of the beautiful bride. So as per the desire of Vishwamitra, Ram and Lakshman proceeded with him towards Mithila. And when they entered Mithila, citizens of Mithila, they were attracted, they were captivated by this beautiful Prince Ram.
First when they saw the great sage Vishwamitra has come, they were impressed, awestruck. And naturally, when some great person comes, you want to know who are the people with him, who is this person with him, who is this person with him. So they saw those effulgent sages there and these young, handsome princes are there.
Who are they? And when they just enquired, they found, oh, these are the princes of Ayodhya and they have come for the swayamvar of Sita. So the elder brother Ram is going to seek her hand. They were delighted and especially Ram was so beautiful, so kind, so graceful, so powerful and their hearts got attracted to him.
Yes, we want this person, we want Ram to be the groom for our kingdom’s daughter, our princess Sita. So all the people were attracted to Ram as an individual self, how he was so attractive and further as a potential groom for their princess. The citizens had rushed, citizens and the soldiers, attendants of the palace and the city near the gates itself, they had rushed inside to inform Maharaj Janak that the great sage Vishwamitra has come and Videha, so the Videha can have various meanings, Vaidehi is the name of Sita.
Vaidehi can also be the name of, sometimes it is used also for Rukmini in the 10th canto of Srimad Bhagavatam. Videha is a name which has been used for many cities in the Vedic context. Here Videha refers to the king of Janakpuri, that is Janak Maharaj.
So this Janak Maharaj first offered obeisances to Vishwamitra and then he was introduced to his associates and when he saw, he heard that they are the princess of Ayodhya, he was delighted and especially when there is a father who has a young daughter of a marriageable age, then every young man, the father offers to perceive that as a potential groom and then the father has to evaluate, is this man suitable as a suitor for my daughter or not? And then if he is not, then he has to keep the man away and if he is, then he has to see how the match can progress further. So when he saw that, Ram was so handsome, so powerful and when he heard about his valorous feats in having killed so many demons, he felt, this indeed how fortunate will be my daughter if she gets this young lad as her husband, how fortunate will I be if I get this Ram as my son-in-law, how fortunate will indeed our whole kingdom and our dynasty be if it can get connected with Ram and he started praying and dreaming and hoping that this aspiration of his heart to be related through the bond of marriage of his daughter with Ram be fulfilled. This way he captured the heart, so Ram captured the heart of Maharaj Janak as well as of the citizens of Mithilapuri.
Now the lord, he is all attractive and just as when he entered into Mithilapuri, he attracted the hearts of all the residents there and of the king also. Similarly, when the lord enters into our heart, into the city of our heart, the body is compared to a city, the heart itself can be compared to a place. So when the lord enters into our heart, then he can attract us too.
He can captivate us too. All that we need to do is open ourselves to him, not see him through the prism of our preconceptions, rather we open ourselves to see him with Shastra Chakshu, through the saintly devotees who tell us who that person is. Just as the citizens of Mathura understood Ram’s glory by seeing that he had come with Vishwamitra and Vishwamitra held this young prince in such great reverence.
So he must be special. So like that, sometimes we may feel attracted to Krishna when we hear his pastimes. Sometimes we may not feel attracted to Krishna, whichever form of the lord we are hearing about.
But when we look at the great saintly people who have devoted themselves to him and we think about how great they are, how saintly they are, how loving they are and they are devoted to the lord. So surely this person whom they are devoted to must be very special and let me also become devoted to this person and let me also open the doors of my heart for him to come in, to enter and to enchant. And every time we call out the lord’s name attentively, we are actually opening the door of our heart for his entrance and for us to become entranced by him.
Thank you.