The previous episode saw the all-important event wherein King Parikshit attaining “Mksha”, with snake “Takshaka” making his way into King Parikshit’s palace. As the time nears by, King Parikshit gets bitten by the snake and as all people witness, King Parikshit’s “Atman” departs from his physical body once and for all and starts its journey like a flame, all the way to reach Vaikunta! From this important event, we can clearly understand that if one listens to this Shrimad Bhaagawatha Puraana text with ardent devotion and respect, Bhagawan Krishna ensures that he / she has a “clear path” towards attaining “Moksha” without a doubt. We’ve witnessed earlier, how King Parikshit was cursed by the son of a sage who was in deep penance. King Parikshit had accidently thrown a dead snake around the sage’s neck and as a result, the sage’s son got angry over that. As the curse is inflicted upon him that within the next seven days, his life is going to come to an end, initially King Parikshit was panicking and didn’t know what to do. It is at this time, Sage Sukhaachaarya entered into King Parikshit’s palace and gave him this entire sacred text. It is only with this, King Parikshit attains enormous clarity on how the “Atman” is entirely different from the “Deham” (Physical body) and that, death can never confer itself on anybody if one understands the clear difference between these two important parameters. As Sage Sukhaachaarya leaves the palace after the seven-day recital, King Parikshit’s fear of death is totally gone and is out of question now! Even when the snake bit him, he was unperturbed and happily accepted the end of his human birth, and thus, attained the highest “Moksha” with the divine grace of Sage Sukhaachaarya and Bhagawan Krishna together.
With this, we come to the fag end of this great text and in today’s episode, we would witness in brief, how Bhagawan Krishna gives His divine darshan to Maarkandeya. Post this, we would directly go into the “Rukmini-Bhagawan Krishna-Kalyaana” and with that, we would finish this project. Moving on thus, with the Maarkandeya episode, once upon a time, Maarkandeya has a special desire to witness Bhagawan Krishna’s divine darshan. Many of us might know who Maarkandeya was, and so, I’m not going into the description about it at the moment. As Maarkandeya expresses his wish of having a “special darshan”, Bhagawan Krishna laughs and replies from Vaikunta thus, “Oh Maarkandeya! You’re such a great realized soul! Why should you want a “special darshan” of mine? What happened all of a sudden?” Upon hearing this from Bhagawan, Maarkandeya replies thus, “Oh Bhagawan! Nothing has happened! It’s just my wish that I see you one-on-one! That’s it. I leave it to you, as to how “special” you want to give a “Darshan” for me!”
Saying thus, Maarkandeya leaves the choice and decision to Bhagawan Krishna as to how, when and where does He want to give the darshan. Listening to this, Bhagawna Krishna was extremely pleased with Maarkandeya’s total surrender and thus, Bhagawan immedialtely appeared before him with all His charm, compassion and His enormous physical form. Upon seeing this, Maarkandeya was extremely pleased and was having tears in his eyes. He did not expect Bhagawan to pay heed to his request so quickly like this! However, as we all know, Bhagawan is an embodiment of compassion towards His ardent devotees – He never delays things even for a second. If an ardent devotee prays to Bhagawan sincerely, Bhagawan’s heart melts in joy and compassion. This is the perfect example to underscore and reiterate this point here. Thus, the lesson to be learnt for all us from the Maarkandeya’s episode is that, it is upto us to develop that ardent devotion towards Bhagawan and with that, He would definitely shower and bestow His divine grace on each and every one of us.
With this, we come to the end of this small episode, and we’re now left with the all-important “Rukmini-Kalyana”. We shall wait till the next episode to witness this interesting event from the tenth Skanda. Stay tuned! 😊
The Indian Dharma 