Tulasi Shalagram Vivaha – The inconceivable manifestation of the love between the Lord and the devotee

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you very much Hare Krishna on the occasion of Tulsi Shaligram Vivaah let us contemplate on the extraordinary manifestation of the lord’s divine love which this festival illustrates when Krishna descends from the spiritual world to the material world the purpose is to attract us back to him to demonstrate his wonderful pastimes and thereby attract us back to him so he manifests in various ways he manifests as a deity as the holy name and he manifests as the avatar so he comes at various times and he manifests the avatar to attract us so when he manifests in this way the primary purpose of his manifestation is to attract us towards him so the pastimes of the lord are also meant for that purpose to enable us to become attracted to him now when we look at this particular pastime it’s an extraordinary pastime wherein we are forced to look beyond appearances to substance Tulsi Shaligram Vivaah if somebody looks at it from just a superficial external perspective one will say what is this there is a plant and there is a stone what is there to celebrate in that but the Bhagavatam if it demonstrates anything it demonstrates how the love between the lord and the devotee can manifest in extraordinary ways so for example in the seventh canto we have the lord coming in a ferocious half man half lion form and the devotee is an endearing form of a small child five year old child so the lord can take extraordinary forms as he does in his various avatars in Narasimhadev Matsya, there is Kuruma, there are different avatars who come in different forms and this is the lord can come in different forms even the devotees can be in different forms so we see Vatrasur Vatrasur is a asura born in the demoniac family and his form is also ferocious initially when he appears and comes in the battlefield just by seeing the soldiers in the sight of demigods fleeing in fear so he is the antithesis of what we would think of as a devotee normally we would think of a devotee as soft, gentle, wearing a tilak and having a beard bag Vatrasur has got nothing of that sort Vatrasur is the antithesis of what we would normally consider as a devotee and yet he is an exalted devotee so through the example of the extraordinary forms in which the devotee manifests and the extraordinary forms in which the lord manifests and the extraordinary ways in which a devoted heart can manifest whatever be the external form of the person, what we learn is to go beyond externals to see the essence and the essence of the reciprocation of love so in this particular pastime of Tulsi Shaladram Vivaha what we see is the same essential spirit which is celebrated in the Rasa Leela where Krishna and the Gopis are dancing in the supreme festival of love the lord in his sweetest and highest form as Krishna and the topmost devotees as the Gopis, they unite in the supreme celebration of love through the divine dance, so that same essential principle of the union of the love, union in love of the lord and the devotee is manifested in the Tulsi Shaladram Vivaha so the devotee manifests as Tulsi Devi and the lord manifests as Shaligram Sheela so there is an elaborate story behind this and the essential point of the story is that the lord and the devotee can manifest in any form, so Shaligram Sheela is considered to be a Swayambhuva Vigraha and the Vigraha of the lord can manifest in various ways so normally certain sacred stones are used, sacred or in the case of Jagannath, Darubrahma certain sacred trees, wood is used and then from which the Shilpak the artisan gets the deity to manifest but unlike these the Shaligram is a form of the lord wherein the lord himself manifests as the deity in a particular stone, so the stone doesn’t have to be cut or shaved or anything like that it’s directly considered to be the lord so normally the stone is considered to be dead and it doesn’t even fall among the 8.4 million species normally speaking so stone is considered to be there is Thavar and there is Jangam there is Jada and there is Chitta so the stone is considered normally to be Thavar, to be Jada, to be unconscious but the lord is so merciful that in that which is unconscious or through that which is unconscious the lord manifests himself and even among the various species the trees are considered to be among the lowest aquatic trees they are considered to be lowest but the lord’s greatest devotee actually Tulsi Maharani is ultimately an expansion of Radharani and Radharani is the top most devotee of the lord so the lord manifests as Tulsi Maharani sorry the devotee manifests as Tulsi Maharani, the lord manifests as Shaligram and the devotee’s joy is in the celebration of love between the lord and the devotee so that’s how this particular festival is not just a festival involving some some outdated rituals of worshipping a stone and a tree no actually if you understand the timeless love between the lord and the devotee which is eternally being celebrated in the spiritual world but that is manifested in this world in an inconceivable way where both the lord and the devotee take on forms which don’t seem to be really devotional which don’t seem to be divine but by going beyond appearances to the essential substance we can learn to see the principle of devotion and pray that the same principle of pure devotion may also progressively manifest in our heart thank you