{"id":59855,"date":"2023-02-19T13:06:14","date_gmt":"2023-02-19T12:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=59855"},"modified":"2023-02-19T13:06:08","modified_gmt":"2023-02-19T12:06:08","slug":"what-to-ask-mahajan-yamaraja-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=59855","title":{"rendered":"What to ask Mahajan Yamaraja for"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Caturatma das: If you uphold your Dharma, Dharma will in turn protect you. This is an important thing to remember, that we all have a particular quality, a particular religious responsibility as Vai\u1e63\u1e47avas and if we embrace those qualities of Vai\u1e63\u1e47avas and are very true to them then they will also protect us as we go about our life\u2019s work. There is one of those thoughtful phrases you see posted in different places around and it says, \u201cYou know, your honesty is who you are when nobody is watching.\u201d<\/p>\n

So this is the important thing to remember that the qualities that we\u2019re supposed to represent as a devotee; we should be embracing those, and then this same qualities will be our own strength. In this way, Yamar\u0101ja served a very interesting purpose with Yudhi\u1e63tira; a purpose that\u2019s benefited by all of us today.<\/p>\n

Yamar\u0101ja is one of the twelve Mah\u0101janas. These are the personalities that give us our understanding and our standards in K\u1e5b\u1e63\u1e47a Consciousness. We can greatly benefit from that. Now for the non-devotee, for those not interested in their spiritual upliftment, Yamar\u0101ja has one purpose, he\u2019s the lord of death. He\u2019s feared by everyone who is not in their devotional position and he is the source of anxiety and stress when an individual who is not a devotee is leaving this world. But for those of us who are taking those instructions that he gives in our K\u1e5b\u1e63\u1e47a Conscious development, he actually becomes our friend.<\/p>\n

Aside from that, so many of the devotional practices we do daily protect us from Yamar\u0101ja. It is said that, \u201cOne who wears the Tilka on the forehead, has the Tulasi beads on their neck, who sings the nice song of Tulasi, who waters Tulasi Dev\u012b, such a person never sees the lord of death\u201d. This is why devotees don\u2019t fear Yamar\u0101ja. They take him as an instructor. Now generally you wouldn\u2019t go to the lord of death and seek instructions on your devotional practices. But because he serves the dual purpose as a Mah\u0101jan, his instructions, his directions are very beneficial to the living entities. Our \u0100c\u0101ryas they give us a little bit of guidance, they say that there are actually three things that we can go to Yamar\u0101ja and ask for. Because he is a Mah\u0101jan, he\u2019s capable and interested in giving us these three things. Do you want to know what those three things are? Get your pens and papers ready?<\/p>\n

The first one is that we can ask him for good S\u0101dhana. Isn\u2019t this what we all desire? I mean, we all have our standard of devotional service that we\u2019re executing, but couldn\u2019t it be a little bit better? Couldn\u2019t I read just little bit more? Couldn\u2019t I chant my Japa just little bit better? Couldn\u2019t I be little more attentive to only eating K\u1e5b\u1e63\u1e47a Pras\u0101dam? Couldn\u2019t I make more of an effort not to fault-find and criticize others? These are all practices of our S\u0101dhana that we can ask Yamar\u0101ja, \u201cPlease help me develop these.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second thing we can ask Yamar\u0101ja for: \u201cCleanliness.\u201d Inside and outside. Outside, of course, you take Pras\u0101dam and wash your hands. It\u2019s funny! I was just giving a class in Alachua to the children\u2019s school. I go there weekly and speak about the Vai\u1e63\u1e47ava \u0100c\u0101ryas to the different grade levels of kids. I was talking about M\u0101dhav\u0101c\u0101rya last week and how during the time of M\u0101dhav\u0101c\u0101rya it was the latter part of the middle Ages in Europe, and the one thing we have from the middle Ages is the black plague. This comes about primarily because of the lack of cleanliness that existed at that time. When I asked the following question to each of the grade levels from the little five-year-olds to the fifteen-year-olds, \u201cWhich of you had a shower or a bath this morning?\u201d every single one of the kids raised their hand. I said, \u201cWhich of you had a shower or bath yesterday morning?\u201d and in all the grade levels, every single kid raised their hand. I said, \u201cWhich of you will have a shower or bath tomorrow morning?\u201d and they all raised their hands. Then I told them, \u201cThe thing is that in the middle Ages in Europe, they bathed, oh you know, once every two weeks, once a month maybe?\u201d They all had the same reaction, \u201cEeeeeee!\u201d[indicating displeasure] That was it; they considered it to be a horrible thing! \u015ar\u012bla Prabhup\u0101da if he would drink water, he would rinse his hands and mouth, so cleanliness outside. Cleanliness inside by being very thoughtful of what we\u2019re thinking and where our mind is dragging our consciousness.
\nThe final thing that a S\u0101dhaka is encouraged to ask from Yamar\u0101ja is for the ability to control our senses especially at the time of temptation. In this way we can be very-very thoughtful of these three points; and these are things that can help us in our devotional life; and this is part of the whole pastime that took place here in K\u0101myavan at Dharma Ku\u1e47\u1e0da.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Hare <\/p>\n

Caturatma das: Yamar\u0101ja is one of the twelve Mah\u0101janas. These are the personalities that give us our understanding and our standards in K\u1e5b\u1e63\u1e47a Consciousness. We can greatly benefit from that. Now for the non-devotee, for those not interested in their spiritual upliftment, Yamar\u0101ja has one purpose, he\u2019s the lord of death. He\u2019s feared by everyone who is not in their devotional position and he is the source of anxiety and stress when an individual who is not a devotee is leaving this world. But for those of us who are taking those instructions that he gives in our K\u1e5b\u1e63\u1e47a Conscious development, he actually becomes our friend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recent-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59855"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96312,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59855\/revisions\/96312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}