On this page
Maitreya’s Question
Maitreya said to Parashara, “O guru! Everything you have told me I have heard well and taken to heart. Now there is one more thing I wish to know. The seven islands, the seven nether worlds, the seven realms, every place within this whole cosmos, from the gross to the subtlest of the subtle, all of it lies packed with beings bound by karma. There is not so much room as an eighth of a finger’s width where some creature does not live. At the end of their allotted span every one of them passes under the sway of Yamaraja, and by his command suffers the many torments of hell, then, once released from those torments, wanders through the wombs of gods and other kinds. O best of sages! Tell me the deed by which, once a man has done it, he never falls under Yamaraja’s power.”
Parashara said, “O Maitreya! This very question was put long ago by the great soul Nakula to the grandsire Bhishma. Hear now the answer Bhishma gave him. He said that in an earlier age a brahmana of the Kalinga country had come to him. Whatever this man foretold, in whatever manner he said it would come to pass, happened exactly so; Bhishma had never once seen a single word of his turn out otherwise. Trusting that gift, one day he put this same question to him. A sage who could remember his own past lives had once told that brahmana an utterly hidden secret, a conversation that had passed between Yama and his messengers. The brahmana repeated that dialogue to Bhishma, and Bhishma to Nakula. Hear now how it went.”
Yamaraja’s Secret Command
Seeing his messenger standing close by, noose in hand, Yamaraja spoke softly into his ear, “Those who have gone for refuge to Lord Madhusudana, those Vaishnavas, leave them be. Every other man is mine to rule, yet over them I hold no authority. The creator, whom the gods themselves worship, appointed me under the name of Yama to weigh the sins and merits of the worlds, and even so I stand subject to my master Shri Hari, holding no independence of my own. Lord Vishnu is able to command even me.
“As gold, one and undivided, still shows itself in many forms through such distinctions as a bracelet, a crown, an earring, so the one Lord Hari is known through the many imaginings of man and beast and all the rest. And as, when the wind falls still, the specks of dust that flew within it settle back into the earth and become one with it, so all these beings, born of the churning of the gunas, dissolve at the last into that same eternal Supreme Self. When a man bows at the Lord’s feet with his mind fixed on the highest truth, all his bonds of sin burn away like an offering of ghee poured into fire. Such a man you must let pass, keeping your distance from him.”
The noose-bearing messenger asked, “Lord! Tell me, what is the devotee of Hari, the creator of all, truly like?”
Who Is a Devotee
Yamaraja said, “O messenger! The man who never swerves from the dharma of his own varna, who holds one and the same feeling toward friend and foe, who takes no one’s wealth and does violence to no living being, that man of spotless mind, free of passion and its kin, is a devotee of Lord Vishnu. He whose mind the filth of the Kali age has left unstained, who has settled Shri Janardana within his heart, know him for the Lord’s deepest devotee. He who counts even another’s gold lying unguarded in a lonely place as worth no more than a blade of grass, and who dwells on the Lord ceaselessly with an undivided heart, that man is Vishnu’s devotee.
“How far apart they stand: Lord Vishnu, spotless as a mountain of crystal, and the faults of passion and hatred lodged in the minds of men. These two can never be joined, just as the burning heat of fire never lingers in the rays of the moon. The man who is pure of mind, free of envy, calm and clean in conduct, who is the well-wisher, the friend, the benefactor of every living thing, free of pride and of maya, in his heart Lord Vasudeva dwells forever. The moment the eternal Lord takes his seat in such a man’s heart, that man grows gentle of form in this world, as a young sal tree reveals through its own beauty the exquisite sap brimming within it.
“O messenger! Those whose mass of sin has fallen away, whose hearts stay fixed without pause on Shri Achyuta, in whom there is not a trace of vanity, pride, or envy, those men you must let go from a distance. He in whose heart the imperishable Lord Hari dwells, bearing conch, discus, and mace, has all his sins destroyed. How, after all, can darkness remain where the sun is present?”
Those You Must Not Approach
“And O messenger! The man who steals the wealth of others, does violence to living beings, and speaks falsehood and cutting words, in the heart of that evil-minded man the boundless Lord never rests. He who cannot bear the sight of another’s fortune, who slanders and injures the good, who though prosperous neither worships Vishnu nor gives anything to His devotees, in the heart of that lowest of men Shri Janardana never takes up residence. He who shows greed for wealth even toward his dearest friends, his kin and relations, his wife, son, daughter, father, and household servants, do not take that sinner for a devotee of the Lord. And he who stays forever drunk in the company of base men and binds himself tighter and tighter with sinful deeds is a beast in human form.
“But those whose understanding has grown so steady that they hold ‘all this show of the world, and I myself, are the one Lord Vasudeva alone’, and who cry out, ‘O lotus-eyed one! O Vasudeva! O Vishnu! O upholder of the earth! O Achyuta! O wielder of conch and discus! I am in your refuge’, those sinless men you must release from afar. Wherever the gaze falls of a man in whose inmost being that imperishable Lord dwells, there, by the power of the Lord’s discus, our strength and valor are undone. Neither we nor you have any passage there. That great soul is fit for Vaikuntha and the realms beyond and for nothing less.”
The Secret Concluded
The Kalinga brahmana said, “O best of the Kurus! Thus did Dharmaraja, son of the Sun, speak to instruct his messenger.” Then Bhishma said, “O Nakula! That entire account I have repeated to you exactly as it was. In this ocean of the world there is no protector of the soul apart from the one Lord Vishnu. The man whose heart stays fixed on the Lord without pause has nothing to fear from Yama, from Yama’s messengers, from Yama’s noose, from Yama’s rod, or from Yama’s torment; none of them can do him any harm.”
Parashara said, “O sage! In answer to your question, all that Yamaraja said I have now recounted to you.”
Source: Vishnu Purana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)