verse
Prem Prabhu ka baras raha hai
Pee le amrit, pyaase
Saaton teerath tere andar
Baahar kise talaashe?
pre-chorus
Kan-kan mein Hari, kshan-kshan mein Hari
Muskaanon mein, ansuvan mein Hari
chorus
Mann ki aankhein tune kholi
Toh hi darshan paayega
Pata nahin kis roop mein aakar
Narayan mil jaayega
Pata nahin kis roop mein aakar
Narayan mil jaayega
verse
Niyati bhed nahin karti
Jo leti hai, woh deti hai
Jo boyega, woh kaatega
Yeh jag karmon ki kheti hai
Niyati bhed nahin karti
Jo leti hai, woh deti hai
Jo boyega, woh kaatega
Yeh jag karmon ki kheti hai
pre-chorus
Yadi karm tere paavan hain sabhi
Doobegi nahin teri naav kabhi
chorus
Teri baah pakadne ko
Woh bhes badal ke aayega
Pata nahin kis roop mein aakar
Narayan mil jaayega
Pata nahin kis roop mein aakar
Narayan mil jaayega
verse
Neki vyarth nahin jaati
Hari lekha-jokha rakhte hain
Auron ko phool diye jisne
Uske bhi haath mehekte hain
Neki vyarth nahin jaati
Hari lekha-jokha rakhte hain
Auron ko phool diye jisne
Uske bhi haath mehekte hain
pre-chorus
Koi deep mile toh baati ban
Tu bhi toh kisi ka saathi ban
chorus
Mann ko Manasarovar kar le
Toh hi moti paayega
Pata nahin kis roop mein aakar
Narayan mil jaayega
Pata nahin kis roop mein aakar
Narayan mil jaayega
verse
Kaan laga ke baatein sun le
Sookhe huye darakhton ki
Leta hai Bhagwan pareeksha
Sab se pyaare bhakton ki
Ek prashn hai gehra
Jiski Hari ko thaah lagani hai
Teri shraddha sona hai
Ya bas sone ka paani hai
pre-chorus
Jo phool dhare har daali par
Vishwas toh rakh uss maali par
chorus
Tere bhaag mein patthar hai
Toh patthar bhi khil jaayega
Pata nahin kis roop mein aakar
Narayan mil jaayega
Pata nahin kis roop mein aakar
Narayan mil jaayega
Pata nahin kis roop mein aakar
Narayan mil jaayega
Village Tale of Innocence Lost: A Folklore Reflection on the Kamsa Within
Among the many stories that drift through villages and temple courtyards, there are some that may not belong to history, yet remain unforgettable because of the truth they reveal. This is one such tale — simple, unsettling, and deeply symbolic.
In a small village there stood a beautiful temple, the heart of the community. The temple priest knew a gifted young painter who often came there, and one day he requested him to paint a scene from sacred lore for the temple walls. The painter agreed.
The villagers gathered all the boys of the village so that one could be chosen as a model for Krishna. Among them was a child of extraordinary beauty — bright-eyed, graceful, and innocent. The painter chose him at once, and a lovely image of Krishna began to take shape.
But before the work could be completed, the painter was called away by opportunity. He moved to the nearby town, found work, earned fame, travelled widely, and over the years became a celebrated artist. At last, after a long and successful career, he felt the need for quiet and returned to the village of his youth.
The temple still stood, almost unchanged. The priest was still there too, older but recognisable. One day he reminded the painter of the unfinished picture lying in the temple storeroom and asked him to complete it. The painter gladly agreed.
When the old canvas was brought out, the image of Krishna still shone with youthful charm. What remained was the figure of Kamsa.
Once again, the villagers were assembled so that the painter could choose a model. But this time he could find no one suitable. The people of the village were simple and contented; their faces did not carry the shadow he was looking for. So they went to the prison in the nearby town, hoping to find a man whose features might serve for Kamsa.
A prisoner was chosen and, with permission, brought to the temple to sit as the model. By now the painter was famous, and villagers crowded in to watch him work. They admired the power of his brush as the face of Kamsa slowly emerged upon the canvas.
Then something unexpected happened.
The prisoner began to cry — not quietly, but uncontrollably. The painter stopped and asked him why he was weeping.
Through his tears the man said, “Many years ago, when you painted Krishna in this temple, it was I who sat before you as the model.”
The same child who had once been chosen for Krishna had now become the face of Kamsa.
Whether this tale happened exactly as it is told is not the point. Folklore survives because it captures something true about human life. And this story does so with painful force.
How does a child chosen to represent Krishna become a man fit to represent Kamsa?
That is the question at the heart of the tale.
The child had beauty, innocence, and sweetness — but innocence alone is not enough to carry a life safely through the years. A face may shine in childhood, but adulthood is shaped by choice, company, values, discipline, and the unseen battles of the heart. No one remains close to Krishna by accident.
The story becomes even more meaningful when Krishna and Kamsa are seen not merely as figures in a sacred narrative, but as possibilities within us.
Krishna represents harmony, truth, sweetness, compassion, and the divine centre toward which life can turn. Kamsa represents fear, ego, cruelty, insecurity, and the violence that arises when the heart loses its anchor in dharma. The tragedy of the tale is not simply that one man fell, but that it reminds us how slowly, silently, and tragically a life can drift away from its own light.
Kamsa does not appear in a single day. He grows in small permissions — in anger allowed to harden, in greed that is excused, in bitterness that is fed, in company that drags us downward, in the steady neglect of conscience. The fall of a life is usually not dramatic at first. It begins in little abandonments.
And yet the most moving part of the story is not the fall, but the tears.
For the prisoner’s tears tell us that something in him was still alive. He remembered who he had once been. He saw, perhaps in one unbearable moment, the distance between the child chosen for Krishna and the man sitting for Kamsa. Such tears are not only sorrow; they are also grace.
The real sorrow of the tale is not merely that a child once chosen for Krishna was later chosen for Kamsa. The deeper sorrow is that somewhere along the road of life, he had lost sight of the Krishna within himself. Yet the story does not end in darkness. The prisoner’s tears are themselves a kind of mercy. For the one who can still weep over what he has become has not entirely lost the path back. A heart that still trembles at the memory of Krishna is not a dead heart. Perhaps that is the quiet hope hidden in this village tale: innocence may be lost, dharma may be forgotten, and life may wander far into shadow — but the soul that can still remember, still grieve, still long, has not been abandoned by grace. Krishna, after all, is not only the Lord of the pure child; He is also the patient redeemer of the fallen one who turns back at last.
The Kamsa within grows in forgetfulness;
the Krishna within awakens in remembrance.
: Krishna Between Arjuna’s Vishada and Yudhishthira’s Grief
The Mahabharata is not merely a story of war. It is also a profound study of what happens to the human heart when it is asked to uphold dharma at a cost it can barely bear. We remember Kurukshetra as a battlefield of heroes, vows, weapons, and destiny. But beneath all that grandeur lies something painfully familiar: the anguish of having to do what is necessary when necessity itself feels unbearable.
This is why the Mahabharata remains so alive. We may never stand on a battlefield between two armies, but life places us again and again in situations where there is no easy path. We may have to make a decision that is right, yet painful. We may have to speak a truth that wounds someone we love. We may have to accept that avoiding conflict will only deepen the wrong, yet entering it will leave scars. In such moments, the story of Krishna, Arjuna, and Yudhishthira ceases to be epic alone; it becomes a mirror.
It is in this light that two moments in the Mahabharata shine with extraordinary depth: Arjuna’s Vishada before the war and Yudhishthira’s grief after victory. Between these two collapses stands Krishna — not as a distant god untouched by sorrow, but as the one who must guide his beloved ones through both the terror of action and the burden of its consequences.
Two moments of collapse
The first great collapse comes before the war begins. Arjuna asks Krishna to place the chariot between the two armies so that he may see those assembled for battle. What he sees shatters him: grandsire Bhishma, revered teacher Drona, cousins, friends, uncles, elders — all those who have shaped his life and belong to his world. Suddenly the war ceases to be a matter of justice and strategy. It becomes intensely personal. His limbs fail, his mouth dries, the Gandiva slips from his hand, and he tells Krishna that he cannot fight.
This is Arjuna Vishada — the despair that seizes the heart before action. It is not ordinary cowardice. It is the anguish of a sensitive and righteous man who sees too clearly what action will demand of him. Arjuna knows that the Kauravas have committed terrible wrongs. He knows that adharma has crossed all limits and that every effort at peace has failed. Yet when he sees the faces of those whom he must strike down, his resolve collapses into sorrow.
The second collapse comes after the war has ended. The Pandavas have won, but there is no joy. The field is filled with the dead — Bhishma on his bed of arrows, Drona fallen, Karna gone, Abhimanyu slain, the sons of Draupadi killed, and countless others extinguished. Yudhishthira, who had borne humiliation, exile, insult, and the refusal of justice with immense patience, now looks upon the cost of victory and feels no triumph at all. Instead, he is overcome by remorse and disgust for kingship itself. What is a kingdom worth if it has been won over the bodies of one’s own kin? How can one sit on a throne built upon such devastation?
This is Yudhishthira’s Vishada — the despair that seizes the heart after action, when the consequences have become real and irreversible.
One brother breaks before the war. Another breaks after it. One cannot bear to begin; the other cannot bear to continue. And in both moments, Krishna is there.
Krishna between two desolations
What must Krishna have felt, standing between these two crises?
“Shock” may not be the right word, for Krishna knows the human heart too well to be surprised by its tremors. He knows Arjuna’s tenderness. He knows Yudhishthira’s conscience. He knows that these are not hard men intoxicated by violence, but men whose very nobility makes them vulnerable to sorrow. Yet one can still sense the immense weight of his position. Krishna is the one who sees the full arc of events when others can see only fragments. He knows that the war is terrible; he also knows that allowing adharma to triumph would be more terrible still. He knows that compassion is sacred; he also knows that compassion, when clouded by attachment and confusion, can weaken justice. He knows too that victory itself can be a wound.
Everyone else in the Mahabharata seems allowed one fragment of truth. Bhima has his righteous fury. Draupadi has her burning sense of violated justice. Arjuna has his tenderness and moral recoil. Yudhishthira has his conscience and aversion to bloodshed. Karna has his loyalty and tragedy. Bhishma has his vows and helplessness. Krishna alone must hold the whole together. He must see the necessity and the horror at once. He must strengthen those who falter before duty and console those who break under the burden of fulfilling it.
Perhaps this is one reason Krishna can appear so lonely in the Mahabharata. He must bear a wholeness of vision that no one else around him can sustain for long.
Arjuna’s sorrow: when compassion becomes paralysis
Arjuna’s collapse before the war is among the most beloved moments in sacred literature because it is so recognizably human. He does not say, “I fear death.” He says something harder: “How can I kill my own? What joy can come from a kingdom purchased with the blood of those I revere and love?” He even argues that the destruction of families and the collapse of dharma would be too great a price.
There is nobility in this grief. Arjuna is not bloodthirsty. His sorrow proves that he has not become brutalized by warfare. A lesser man might have rushed into battle with excitement. Arjuna trembles because he sees the human reality of war.
And yet Krishna does not allow Arjuna to remain in that state. Why? Because Krishna sees that Arjuna’s compassion, though genuine, has become clouded by confusion at the critical moment. Arjuna is not renouncing violence from the serene height of detachment. He is shrinking from a terrible duty because the immediate emotional pain of the situation has obscured the larger moral truth. He sees his relatives, but not the catastrophe of allowing adharma to stand unopposed. He sees the blood that will be shed, but not the deeper blood that has already been shed through deceit, humiliation, attempted murder, and the corrosion of dharma in the kingdom.
Krishna’s response in the Bhagavad Gita is therefore not a dismissal of sorrow but a reorientation of vision. He does not mock Arjuna’s pain or ask him to become hard-hearted. Instead, he lifts Arjuna from immediate emotional collapse to a wider spiritual and ethical horizon. He teaches him about the immortality of the Self, about svadharma, and about action without ego — doing what must be done without clinging to reward or shrinking from consequence.
Krishna’s message to Arjuna may be summed up simply: “Your sorrow is understandable, but it is not yet wisdom. Do not confuse your trembling heart with the voice of higher truth. Stand up, see clearly, and act.”
Yudhishthira’s sorrow: when victory feels like defeat
If Arjuna’s Vishada is the sorrow of anticipation, Yudhishthira’s grief is the sorrow of aftermath. It comes not from imagining the cost, but from standing amid the cost once it has already been paid.
Yudhishthira had long preferred peace. Even after the dice game, exile, and repeated betrayals of the Kauravas, he did not hunger for war. Only when every avenue had failed did he consent to battle. And then the battle came — not as a clean restoration of justice, but as an avalanche of loss.
After the war, Yudhishthira sees not a righteous victory but a world reduced to ashes. The kingdom he has won seems tainted. The throne looks less like a reward than a burden. He feels responsible for the deaths of elders, kin, teachers, and friends. He questions whether kingship itself is worth such destruction. He wishes to renounce, to walk away, to refuse the crown.
This is a different crisis from Arjuna’s. Arjuna’s question is, “How can I do this?” Yudhishthira’s is, “How can I live with having done it?” Arjuna wants to lay down his bow before action begins; Yudhishthira wants to lay down kingship after action has ended.
Krishna must answer both, but the answers cannot be the same. To Arjuna he gives metaphysical clarity and a summons to action. To Yudhishthira, the answer is not a second Gita but a return to responsibility. The dead cannot be restored by grief. The war cannot be undone by remorse. The survivors still need order, justice, healing, and governance. If Yudhishthira now abandons the throne out of revulsion for what has happened, then the suffering of the war will yield not renewal but further collapse.
In effect, Krishna must tell Yudhishthira: “Your grief is real, but grief cannot be allowed to become abdication. The kingdom now needs a just ruler precisely because so much has been destroyed.”
The terrible cost of necessary action
What makes these two Vishadas so profound is that both Arjuna and Yudhishthira had, in their own ways, accepted the necessity of war. Neither was ignorant of the Kauravas’ wrongdoing. Yet when necessity became concrete — either in anticipation or in aftermath — both faltered.
This is not merely an epic theme. It is one of the central truths of human life. We often know what is right in principle, but the lived cost of doing it can still undo us. It is one thing to say that a painful decision is necessary; it is another to watch a relationship fracture because of it, to endure the loneliness that follows, or to carry the ache of knowing that someone was hurt even when the decision was just.
This is why the Mahabharata does not glorify war. It reveals something subtler and harder: sometimes dharma itself wounds the heart of the one who upholds it. Not because dharma is cruel, but because the world is tangled, relationships are deep, and right action in a broken world rarely arrives without sorrow.
Krishna knows this. He does not promise Arjuna or Yudhishthira a path without pain. He offers something more difficult and more compassionate: the strength to endure pain without abandoning truth.
If we try to imagine Krishna’s inner view of both Arjuna and Yudhishthira, perhaps it would be this: they wanted justice, and rightly so, but they were still unprepared for the full price that justice would exact in a fallen world.
Did they think adharma would leave quietly? Did they think a kingdom poisoned by deceit, envy, humiliation, and attempted murder could be restored without tearing through the fabric of family and affection? Did they think righteousness in an age of decay could be established without passing through grief?
Krishna does not make light of this cost. But neither does he allow it to become an excuse for surrendering to unrighteousness. If one refuses to confront evil because confrontation will be painful, then evil acquires a kind of immunity. If one abandons responsibility after fulfilling it because the heart is shattered, then the world is left leaderless just when healing is most needed.
Krishna’s wisdom lies in holding together two truths that human beings often separate: hard action is sometimes unavoidable, and hard action leaves wounds even when it is right. He neither sentimentalizes duty nor romanticizes sorrow. He asks for something almost impossibly difficult: to act without hatred, to grieve without collapse, and to continue without becoming inwardly bitter.
This is where prayer enters life
At this point the Mahabharata comes very close to the heart of ordinary life. Most of us are not asked to fight wars. But many of us are asked to live through situations in which every option hurts.
A parent may have to make a decision for a child that the child will not understand for years. A family member may have to insist on a painful truth rather than maintain a comforting lie. A person may have to walk away from a relationship or an institution because continuing in it would violate conscience. Someone may have to care for a loved one through illness while knowing there is no happy resolution in sight. In such moments, one can feel both Arjuna and Yudhishthira within oneself — the fear before the decision and the desolation after it.
This is where prayer becomes something far deeper than ritual consolation. Prayer is not always a request for the situation to change. Often it is the act of placing one’s trembling heart before the Divine and saying, “I do not know how to bear this, but do not let me betray what is right. If I must walk through this, walk with me. If I must wound and be wounded in the service of truth, keep my heart from hardening and my mind from breaking.”
Prayer does not always remove Kurukshetra. It does not spare us the battle, nor erase the consequences of what duty demands. But it can keep us from entering the field alone. It can prevent sorrow from turning into paralysis, and remorse from turning into self-destruction. It can give us what Krishna gave the Pandavas in different ways: clarity when the mind is clouded, companionship when the soul is exhausted, and steadiness when grief threatens to dissolve responsibility.
Perhaps this is why bhakti is so precious. In moments of easy joy, devotion is sweet. But in moments of moral exhaustion, devotion becomes shelter. When the mind cannot solve its own pain, it can still bow. When the heart cannot justify the path it must walk, it can still pray for strength to walk it cleanly. When duty has left us scarred, bhakti can keep the scar from becoming poison.
There is something deeply moving in the way Krishna accompanies both Arjuna and Yudhishthira. He is compassionate, but his compassion is not indulgence. He does not say to Arjuna, “If you feel bad, you may abandon the field.” He does not say to Yudhishthira, “If you are broken by grief, you may abandon the throne.” He listens to sorrow, but he does not allow sorrow to dictate the collapse of dharma.
This is a crucial spiritual lesson. We often think compassion means easing pain by removing demands. Krishna shows a harder and holier form of compassion: the compassion that helps a person remain true to duty even when duty wounds them. It is the compassion that says, “Your pain is real, and I will not despise it. But I will not let it become the reason you turn away from what must be done.”
A reflective reading such as this becomes even more meaningful when we remember where these moments stand in the Mahabharata itself.
Arjuna’s collapse on the battlefield forms the opening movement of the Bhagavad Gita in the Bhishma Parva. When Krishna places the chariot between the armies and Arjuna sees Bhishma, Drona, kinsmen, and friends assembled for slaughter, his heart gives way. This state of inner collapse is traditionally called Arjuna Vishada, and the first chapter of the Gita itself is titled Arjuna Vishada Yoga — the Yoga of Arjuna’s Despair.
Yudhishthira’s post-war despair unfolds in the shadow of the Stri Parva and Shanti Parva. The Stri Parva gives us the immediate atmosphere of lamentation after the war — the cries of the women, the grief of mothers and widows, and the unbearable aftermath of Kurukshetra. The Shanti Parva then becomes crucial, for it contains the long effort to restore Yudhishthira inwardly after the war. Burdened by guilt and disgust for kingship, he receives instruction from Bhishma on raja dharma, apad dharma, and moksha dharma. In a sense, if the Bhagavad Gita is Krishna’s answer to Arjuna before the war, the Shanti Parva becomes part of the great answer to Yudhishthira after the war.
These textual anchors matter because the Mahabharata does not treat despair as a side note. It places despair at the very heart of dharma. The Gita begins with grief. The great post-war books linger over remorse, mourning, and moral exhaustion. The epic refuses to pretend that righteous action always feels clean or triumphant. It shows instead that even those who stand for dharma may stagger under its cost.
The Mahabharata does not tell us that the right path will feel victorious. Sometimes it will feel costly, lonely, and devastating. Sometimes we will do what conscience demands and still sit amid the ashes asking whether anything was gained. Sometimes we will be Arjuna before the act, unable to lift the bow. Sometimes we will be Yudhishthira after the act, unable to lift our eyes.
What the Mahabharata offers in such moments is not a neat resolution, but a sacred companionship. Krishna does not promise a life free of impossible choices. He promises something more intimate: that when the hour of impossible choice comes, the soul need not face it without light.
The prayer of the heart, then, may be very simple:
when duty wounds the heart, stay near.
When sorrow confuses me, give me clarity.
When action terrifies me, give me courage.
When consequences break me, give me endurance.
Do not let grief make me abandon what is right.
Do not let duty make me hard.
Let me act without hatred, grieve without despair, and continue without losing You.
That may be the deepest lesson of Krishna between Arjuna’s Vishada and Yudhishthira’s grief. Dharma is not always radiant. Sometimes it passes through fire. Sometimes it leaves tears behind. But when prayer holds the hand of duty, the heart can survive even what it cannot fully understand.
On Thought Control and Guarding the Mind:
Commenting on the DHAMMAPADA verses regarding the volatility of human thought, the Mother emphasized that thoughts are actual forces we let into our consciousness, and we must learn to curate them like guests in a house:
"Nothing can harm you as much as your own thoughts unguarded."
The Mother says something like this-
We live in a world of vibrations, a world of waves... When you are in a state of passivity, all kinds of thoughts, suggestions, and impulses enter into you without your even being aware of it. You must learn to watch your mind, to be a sentinel at the door of your consciousness. When a thought approaches, you must look at it and say: 'Does this belong to the truth? Does this make me progress?' If it is a thought of weakness, of fear, of jealousy, or of anger, you must push it away immediately, as you would throw an enemy out of your house.
निरन्तरान्धकारित-दिगन्तर-कन्दलदमन्द-सुधारस-बिन्दु-सान्द्रतर-घनाघन-वृन्द-सन्देहकर-स्यन्दमान-मकरन्द-बिन्दु-बन्धुरतर-माकन्द-तरु-कुल-तल्प-कल्प-मृदुल-सिकता-जाल-जटिल-मूल-तल-मरुवक-मिलदलघु-लघु-लय-कलित-रमणीय-पानीय-शालिका-बालिका-करारविन्द-गलन्तिका-गलदेला-लवङ्ग-पाटल-घनसार-कस्तूरिकातिसौरभ-मेदुर-लघुतर-मधुर-शीतलतर-सलिलधारा-निराकरिष्णु-तदीय-विमल-विलोचन-मयूख-रेखापसारित-पिपासायास-पथिक-लोकान्
The 195-letter Sanskrit compound is generally identified as occurring in Varadāmbikā Pariṇaya Campū, composed by Tirumalāmbā.
The compound is painting a scene of:
summer heat and thirsty travellers
a cooling shelter
young women serving perfumed cold water
fragrance, flowers, mango groves, soft sand
a vision so beautiful that it feels like rain clouds pouring nectar.
करारविन्देन पदार्विन्दं, मुखार्विन्दे विनिवेशयन्तम्। वटस्य पत्रस्य पुटेशयानं, बालं मुकुन्दं मनसा स्मरामि॥ श्री कृष्ण गोविन्द हरे मुरारे, हे नाथ नारायण वासुदेव। जिव्हे पिबस्वा मृतमेव देव, गोविन्द दामोदर माधवेति॥ विक्रेतुकामाखिल गोपकन्या, मुरारि पादार्पित चित्तवृतिः। दध्यादिकं मोहावशादवोचद्, गोविन्द दामोदर माधवेति॥ गृहे-गृहे गोपवधू कदम्बा:, सर्वे मिलित्वा समवाप्ययोगम्। पुण्यानि नामानि पठन्ति नित्यं, गोविन्द दामोदर माधवेति॥ सुखं शयाना निलये निजेऽपि, नामानि विष्णोः प्रवदन्तिमर्त्याः। ते निश्चितं तन्मयतमां व्रजन्ति, गोविन्द दामोदर माधवेति॥ जिह्वे दैवं भज सुन्दराणि, नामानि कृष्णस्य मनोहराणि। समस्त भक्तार्ति विनाशनानि, गोविन्द दामोदर माधवेति॥ सुखावसाने इदमेव सारं, दुःखावसाने इदमेव ज्ञेयम्। देहावसाने इदमेव जाप्यं, गोविन्द दामोदर माधवेति॥ जिह्वे रसज्ञे मधुरप्रिया त्वं, सत्यं हितं त्वां परमं वदामि। आवर्णये त्वं मधुराक्षराणि, गोविन्द दामोदर माधवेति॥ त्वामेव याचे मन देहि जिह्वे, समागते दण्डधरे कृतान्ते। वक्तव्यमेवं मधुरम सुभक्तया, गोविन्द दामोदर माधवेति॥ श्रीनाथ विश्वेश्वर विश्व मुर्ते श्री देवकीनन्दन दैत्य शत्रु । जिव्हे पिबस्वा मृतमेव देव, गोविन्द दामोदर माधवेति॥ श्री कृष्ण राधावर गोकुलेश, गोपाल गोवर्धन नाथ विष्णो। जिह्वे पिबस्वा मृतमेवदेवं, गोविन्द दामोदर माधवेति॥
