Prayers to Rama 1 – May my devotion flow to you undiluted and undistracted

Transcript

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Prayer to Lord Ram In the state of devotional absorption the Lord becomes everything for the devotee this means that whatever shelter the devotee may have got in whatever other thing all that and more the devotee gets in Krishna or in this case Ram ultimately Ram and Krishna are one and the same person there’s different manifestations of that one supreme person so normally if we look at the normal trajectory of our life, we get shelter in different people at different times sometimes we may get, especially in the earliest of our childhood, we get shelter in our mother as we grow up we get shelter in our father, our mother nourishes her with her breast milk and with her tireless and often selfless care then the father guides and trains us into manhood helping us to become to face life in its various complexities Swami Ram as we grow up then we may seek employment in someone especially if we have a benevolent employer then we get shelter in that employer also so we get financial support social standing sometimes even practical guidance from our master and then as we move forward through our life we also have friends and friends also guide us in various ways so so my mother is ultimately Ram that means whatever love, whatever affection whatever care whatever I’m getting from my mother ultimately I’m getting from Ram without him I would not be able to get any of this similarly whatever guidance, whatever strength whatever wisdom whatever I get from my father it is ultimately coming from the Lord. It is the Lord who is present in their heart and it is He who is guiding them to express their affection for me of course they are individual beings in their own right who do love us but at the same time we also need to see that whatever they are able to do for me they have the loving intent to do it but translating the intent into action the ability for that is given to them by the Lord so thus we understand that it is the Lord who is the doer so there is parallel doing that happens, our mother and father love us and so does the Supreme Lord through them similarly whatever support and help we get from our guide, from our master from our boss of course the word boss doesn’t have any of the connotations that are there of the word master there is an affectionate sense of subordination that is there in the idea of a benevolent master and that is what is to be applied here in the case of the Lord and then after that we have the sense of friendship many of the trials that we face in life we cannot share them with somebody from a senior generation we need someone in our own generation somebody who is more or less equal to us to share it with and we often get enormous affection from our friends so Matsakha Ramachandra that friendship which we are getting from different people that is also coming from Ram ultimately it is he who is giving it to us Matsakha Ramachandra and apart from that also if there is any other people who have given us some shelter Sarvasame Ramachandra Dayalu Sarvasame Ramachandra Dayalu that whatever shelter I may have got from anyone whatever help I may have got from anyone it is ultimately the merciful Lord who has given it to me such is the mercy of the Lord that He He acts through many many different agents for our ultimate well-being and thus naanam jaane naiva jaane na jaane that in our normal functional roles we have various relationships and responsibilities in those relationships which we do need to execute execute during the course of our life but at the same time our ultimate relationship is with Krishna and especially at the time of death when we have no one with us except Krishna it is for us to take shelter of Him only when we take shelter of Him can we attain Him naanam jaane naiva jaane na jaane this is the mood of undistracted undiluted surrender distraction refers to our consciousness going off somewhere else our emotion going to someone else dilution refers to our offering our emotion in a slightly weakened sense that means we hold, we let some emotion go to someone else or we hold some emotion back so that maybe we will give it to someone in the future but here what has been talked about is undistracted and undiluted devotion so that is the significance of this verse naanam jaane naiva jaane na jaane my dear lord I don’t know anyone no no I do not know anyone except you you are my be all and end all this is similar as the mood of the unknown verse where there the lord is addressed in the second person here he is addressed in the third person in that famous verse tameva mata chupita tameva bandhusya sakha tameva vidya dravinam tameva sarvam mamadeva deva tameva sarvam mamadeva deva so my dear lord you are my mother, you are my father you are my brother, you are my friend you are my wealth, you are my knowledge you are my everything you are the god you are you indeed are Lord of everything. That same mood where it is addressed in the second person to Lord is now here addressed in the third person to Ram.
O Ram, you are my mother, you are my father, you are my master, you are my friend, you indeed O merciful one are my everything. The emphasis which is done by affirmation in the first half is done by negation in the second half where it is said O Lord, I do not know anyone except you. So we too can pray by repeating such prayers that our devotion to the Lord which is often distracted and diluted in various ways may also become wholehearted, become undistracted and diluted and may just let the pouring of, outpouring of the love of our heart reach fully to the Lord, eternal Lord of our heart.