WHILE praying to God, ask only for love for His Lotus Feet.
When Rama redeemed Ahalya1 from the curse, He said to her, “Ask a boon of Me”. Ahalya said,
“O Rama, if you deign to grant me a boon, then please fulfil my desire that I may always meditate on your Lotus Feet, even though I may be born in a pig’s body.”
I prayed to the Divine Mother only for love. I offered flowers at Her Lotus Feet and said with folded hands: “O Mother, here is Thy ignorance and here is Thy knowledge; take them both and give me pure love for Thee.
Here is Thy holiness and here is Thy unholiness; take them both and give me pure love for Thee. Here is Thy virtue and here is Thy sin; here is Thy good and here is Thy evil; take them both and give me pure love for Thee. Here is Thy dharma and here is Thy adharma; take them both and give me love for Thee.” (192)
- The beautiful and devoted wife of a great sage named Gautama. Indra, the king of heaven, infatuated with her beauty seduced her, impersonating her husband. The sage, coming to know of this, cursed her and turned her into a stone’, but he said that the touch of Rama’s feet would restore her human form. Indra, too, received his share of the curse, as a result of which he had a thousand eruptions on his body. Hence he is known as the “thousand-eyed God”. ↩︎