Srimad Bhagavatam Skanda 1 - Mangalacharna

|| Sri Veda Vyasaya Namaha ||
Hari Om

Srimad Bhagavatam cleanses kalimala or the pollutant of Kali, destroys sins, shows the indweller, the Lord, in oneself by bringing Vairagya towards the materialistic world, and gives pure devotion, crystal clear and clean knowledge. Let’s take-up this good deed of learning and understanding Srimad Bhagavatam in the English language which is quite widely understood.

Before starting any good deed, we need to pay our obeisance to the Lord, Gods, and Guru. To our doubts of why not directly go to the content and focus on subject matter, the sadgurus have clarified that the Mangalacharna or the prayer seeking divine blessings at the beginning will remove all obstacles and yields fruit. So, Mangalacharna involving prayer to the Lord, Gods, and Gurus before the start of any good deed would result in the purushartha.

Hence, let’s gather our all attention towards Lord, fill our heart with devotion, let’s pray to him, the Gods and the Gurus that the good deed what we have taken-up be fruitful and successfully completed. Also, let’s seek blessings to have in us the desire to investigate Srimad Bhagavatam, understand the various principles in the philosophy, draw essence and implement it by practising in our day to day activities of life or as the spiritual parlance goes, make anusandhana to bring about a qualitative change in our behaviour so that the Lord is pleased with us:

Always being satisfied, having no expectations with full of attributes, stainless, creates, sustains, destroys, regulates all non-living including liberates all living just by expression of his attributes is the only Lord having the Lordship. My salutations to HIM. My Salutations to Goddess Lakshmi who always wonders about the attributes of Lord to whom she is dearest. By assigning the most important and difficult task of locating Goddess Sita or getting the Sanjeevani, has been dear to Lord. My Salutations to Prasanna Hanuman in whose abode resides Goddess of Bhakti. Appearing always as sweet sixteen and bitten the sweetest fruit of all seasons and in whose orchestration only the best of Bhagavatas like Indra, Bali, SanatKumara, Uddhava, Narada, Prahlada, Dhruva, do sankeertana, my salutations to Sri Sukacharya the dear son of Lord and all the Bhagavatas. By repetition of whose name the quintessence of Vedas would be understood easily, my prostration to such Guru Sri Raghavendra. 

जन्माद्यस्य यतोऽन्वयादितरतश्चार्थेष्वभिज्ञः स्वराट्
तेने ब्रह्महृदा य आदिकवये मुह्यन्ति यत्सूरयः ।
तेजोवारिमृदां यथा विनिमयो यत्र त्रिसर्गोऽमृषा
धाम्ना स्वेन सदा निरस्तकुहकं सत्यं परं धीमहि ॥ १॥

This Mangalacharna or verse of prayer composed by Lord Veda Vyasa is the essence of the whole Srimad Bhagavatam. It is a summarization of entire Srimad Bhagavatam. The brief meaning is as follows: 

The Lord Narayana is Param as he is supreme, full of good attributes, independent, bright, full of knowledge, bliss, has created the Universe that includes several forms of himself, all living beings & non-living things, sustains it, destroys it, regulates it, bestows both Ignorance & knowledge to confine to birth & death and liberate to provide moksha. As he is not a juggler, nor a cheat to create an illusionary universe and has no blemishes, he is Satyam or the Truth. Though He has no benefit to himself, he creates & sustains the universe for the benefit of other living beings and has all the knowledge required for the same. At the beginning of creation, He gave birth to the first being, four-faced Brahma and bestowed him with the knowledge for the creation. Also, only of his blessings, one gets knowledge. 

Dhimahi, our meditation to such Lord Narayana, who is Satyam and Param. 

The mangalacharna of Lord Veda Vyasa quoted above is very auspicious and particularly for recitation in his own words. Hence, it is very essential to know this by heart with the understanding of its meaning. The Lord has written this for shreyas or benefit of the people who are studying Srimad Bhagavatam. This axiom of Satyam-Param-Dhimahi is his expression of generosity. This is the highest knowledge of meditation which the Lord is teaching by hand holding the devotees. He is clearly telling the right process of meditation is to meditate on his attributes. By doing so, he would bless such attributes to the Jiva or being to their individual capacity. The thoughtless process of meditation is not what the Lord is looking from his dear devotees.
As there is no difference between the attributes of the Lord and his name, Lord Veda Vyasa has listed a thousand names or attributes in Vishnusahasranama. However, for a common man to understand the meanings of the name and meditate the attributes could be difficult. So, all along in Srimad Bhagavatam, Lord Veda Vyasa has embedded the attributes as the essence in stories and narrated that in an elaborate way. Like a dear grandmother of a three years old telling stories to imbibe moral in the child, Lord Veda Vyasa has done so in Srimad Bhagavatam. Also, one would receive an immeasurable amount of benefits by repeating and doing anusandhana of these verses of prayers.

Hari Om
Sri Krishnarpanamastu

Feed Burns

Subscribe to Tattva Jnana of Srimad Bhagavatam to serve you in your email Inbox by