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RE: Lord Narasimha

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Lakshmi Narasimhan • March 29, 2003 


Srimathe RAmanuajaya Namaha

NOTE: This is what I thought of and hence, does not necessarily 
reflect the ideas of our purvacharyas.

According to Ramanuja Sampradayam, all the sentients/insentients are 
created by lord for his happiness, i.e his expectation is that they 
must serve him out of their will and not by order. Hiranyakashibu was 
one amongst those, who didn't want to serve him, rather, was trying 
to stop other bhagavathas from serving the lord. And we know the rest 
of the story regarding how Narasimha avataram took place etc. When 
lord finally killed him, he did that with his own hands. One must 
remember that according to our sampradayam, anyone who is killed by 
the lord gets the moksham. Ravana, kumbakarna , vali and others did 
get the moksham. But, in hiranya's case, it was by the hands of the 
lord. So, my thought was that:
 
a) The avataram that he took i.e the beast/man form - hence tearing 
one off is not questionable. This justification is for others.
 
b) For those who are seeking the real intention of the lord - the 
lord could have thought as follows: HE created this Hiranyan, only to 
serve HIM. But, Hiranyan ended up troubling others. Now HE has killed 
Hiranya who is getting the moksham. To justify the moksham that is 
being given to him(by the very sankalpam of the lord), the lord 
wanted to find out how HE could use his body to serve HIM for some 
purpose(the idea behind the creation was to serve him and hence this 
needs to be justified). Just after the death, Hiranya's soul(having 
attained the realization) would have regretted that the body it was 
attached to was of no use for the God.  So, the lord would have tried 
to grab something out of him which is the intestine and would have 
found that it could be used as a garland. This would have made the 
hiranyan's soul happy, because, the soul would have felt that, the 
body that it was attached to was of some use to the lord.
 
c) The lord came as an avatar and he had every right to do whatever 
he wants. This cannot be questioned as a "barbarian act" etc.
 
Why Intestine?? Good question. Two important things are good in us. 
One is the mind, that can think about good things and can distinguish 
the good and bad for the atman, and this mind is an attribute of the 
atman. The other one is the intestine, that does good to the body and 
that could distinguish what is good and what is bad for the body. In 
case of Hiranyan, once the atman was detached from the body, mind 
becomes out of question. The remaining is the body in which the thing 
that does most of the good is the intestine. And hence, this was 
picked up by the Lord and worn as a garland.

Once again, it might be silly and very much questionable, but, it is 
something that came up in my mind. I apologize for any 
mistakes/silliness.
 
Yatheendra Pravanam Vandhe RAMYA Jamataram Munim

Adiyen RAmanuja Dasan,
Lakshmi Narasimhan



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