Why did Prabhupada recommend worship of Narasimha amongst all avataras? Isn’t this against the principle of peace?

From Sheela Mataji

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question from Bhakti Shila Mataji.
Why did Shila Prabhupada choose Narasimha in his temples? There are so many avatars who have killed demons then why this one asura killer avatar? Answer is Krishna has many incarnations and all those incarnations do perform the three functions of paritranaya sadhunam vinasyasya duskrtam dharmasamsthapanarthaya sambhavam yuge yuge. So, they deliver the devotees they kill those miscreants who are disrupting social and moral order in social moral and spiritual order in society and they also re-establish dharma. Dharma is moral and spiritual order.
Now, these three functions are common to all incarnations but every incarnation has a specific mood. For example, Lord Ram’s specific mood is of the ideal human being maryada purushottam, the ideal human being, the adarsha purushottam. So, similarly Lord Krishna’s mood is of rasaraj, he is relisher of various pastimes.
So, that way Lord Narasimhadev’s mood is primarily that of a protector. So, the focus when devotees worship Narasimhadev is not so much on his killing of the demons, killing of Hiranyakashipu. The focus is on his protection of Prahlad.
So, the devotees want to serve Krishna enthusiastically and this world is a place where there are many dangers because that is the nature of this world and especially for those who are trying to practice spiritual life there are even greater dangers because this is Kali Yuga and there are temptations externally as well as tribulations from forces, anti-theistic, anti-devotional forces who want to crush and terminate all religion and spirituality in the world. So, Hiranyakashipu was one such person. Now, this is a pastime that happened historically millions of years ago but Hiranyakashipu also represents the temporarily flourishing godless atheist who was threatening the devotees and Srila Prabhupada when he started the Krishna consciousness movement often there were temples in various parts of the world.
In America at one time in a temple there was a bomb that exploded, a hand grenade basically and several devotees were injured. Srila Prabhupada said thereafter we should have the Narasimha Arati in the temple and we should invoke Narasimhadev as the protector. So, Narasimhadev is generally worshipped as the protector.
As I said different avatars have different moods but Narasimhadev specifically is in the mood of giving protection and traditionally whenever there is a danger the great acharyas have often invoked Narasimha for protection. So, the speciality of the Narasimha avatar is not so much the killing of the demons that’s why we will not see that because of the violent imagery which is seen in Narasimha picture it is not that devotees start engaging in violence not at all. The idea is in this world there is danger and one needs protection.
So, the pastimes that we understood both at the historical as well as a symbolic level the symbolism doesn’t replace the history, it doesn’t supplant the history, it supplements the history. So, the symbolism is that although there were many demons throughout history and they were all creating disruption but Hiranyakashipu was a demon of formidable proportions and he had conquered practically the whole universe in his times and he also wanted to specifically torment and terminate the pure devotee Prahalad and Prahalad was defenseless because there was everybody in the universe had been subordinated so nobody would come to his rescue and moreover it was like a family matter because Hiranyakashipu was the father of Prahalad so who will protect a child from a parent who is abusive. So, Prahalad in a sense was utterly protectionless and yet he was protected.
So, Hiranyakashipu protected him or Hiranyakashipu threatened him for a long time but Prahalad was protected all the times in various extraordinary ways by Narasimhadev through his mystical arrangement and finally when Narasimhadev appeared at the challenge of Hiranyakashipu is the lord there in this pillar and the lord appeared and delivered Hiranyakashipu also so lord is not primarily interested in killing anyone he is interested in delivering everyone so even the killing of a demon purifies the demon and delivers the demon so the focus is on protection not on destruction so even in this world we have a peacekeeping force so it is paradox that for keeping peace sometimes we need force but similarly sometimes in the spiritual culture although the spiritual culture is ultimately meant for establishing the supreme peace but sometimes the forces who are disrupting the peace the people are so bent on being evil being anti-moral being anti-social that they cannot be reformed in this life and for such cases and the only way to stop them from harming society and harming even themselves by doing bad karma is by taking away from them the power the position and even the body with which they are doing all those sinful activities and then the soul having no such powers then it goes on it is also purified by the contact with the lord and the soul goes on to an auspicious destination so this does not at all contradict the principles of ultimately the lord wanting the well-being of everyone and the devotee also wanting the well-being of everyone but it illustrates how the lord is ready to go to any lengths to ensure the well-being of those who devote themselves to him so because in Kali Yuga devotees face a lot of dangers so Shri Prabhupada asked us to establish the Narasimha Aarti as an integral part of our morning program and to worship Narasimhadev regularly to thereby seek