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Re: vibIshaNa saraNAgati

From the Bhakti List Archives

Mani Varadarajan • October 16, 1998 


Sri Venkatesh wrote:
> This itself proves that our emberumAn is such a kAruNyan, that He 
> accepts all the bad deeds of His bhaktA with bhOgyam and gives Him 
> the mOksha. This is also beautifully explained by Swami Desikan in 
> his dayA sathakam in SlokA 97 starting "outsukhyam...". AdiyEn do not 
> know the exact slokA and so does AruLALap PerumAL emberumAnAr in his 
> gnAna sAram. I don't remember the pAsuram. Shall write about it 
> shortly.

The sloka by Swami Desikan is a beautiful one:

	autsukya pUrvam upahRtya mahAparAdhAn
	  mAtaH prasAdayitum icchati me manas tvam |
	Alihya tAn niravaSesham alabdha tRptiH 
	  tAmyasyaho vRSagirISa dhRtA daye tvam ||

In this sloka, Desika poetically describes his interaction
with the overwhelming compassion of the Lord, personified here
as Daya Devi (our correspondent in Los Angeles, Sri Krishnaswami,
aptly calls this the "Love" of the Lord).

What can the helpless jIva offer the Lord who already has
everything (avAptasamastakAman)? Desika concludes that the
only thing that he has that the Lord does not have is his
mountainload of sins (mahAparadhAn).  After all He is without
stain, and the jIva is full of it. Receiving these along with
his AtmA, Daya Devi takes all of these sins and licks them 
all up (Alihya) and still is not satisfied! What a wonder 
this is! exclaims Desika.

This verse sets forth the amazing purifying power of the Lord's
grace.  Not even a mountainload of sins can exhaust the Lord's
grace.  However, Desika did not take the philosophical position 
that the Lord actually "enjoys" the sins of the jIva; some
other Sri Vaishnava acharyas took this position, but Desika
felt that if this were actually the case, this would mean that
the more sins a jIva commits, the more the Lord would be pleased!
Swami Desikan writes in his commentary on Ramanuja's Saranagati
Gadya that this "enjoyment of sins" position expressed by other 
Sri Vaishnava acharyas was an exaggeration (ativAda), mentioned 
to extol the Lord's grace, and not to be taken literally.

aDiyEn rAmAnuja dAsan,
Mani