Reinvent The Self!

This blog, tries to represent Jarasandha as a pain body. I want to extend this or to generalize this notion of Jarasandha to mean anything that makes us age, makes us old, makes us decay! To put it in other words, Jarasandha is a disease that attacks us, attacks our mind, attacks our body. We have a disease means essentially we are not at ease! Disease makes us lose our independent nature and become dependent!

Nobody likes to be dependent, on anything, or anybody. We therefore naturally fight to overcome this dependence and therefore to become independent! Freedom struggle! How we fight this attack of disease (attack of Jarasandha)?

We again depend on our army! Our army is our body, our mind, our society, our money. We use all the resources at our hand to fight that disease. Imagine I have a cold or fever, I use medications to fight it and indeed the cold or fever goes away. I do exercise to fight the disease, or in most cases, to prevent the disease from coming. I go to a picnic to relax my mind. I plan a trip with my friends to come out of the feeling of loneliness. In short we earn or cultivate our resources to make them the best fighters.

One might say how can we say that exercising is fighting. We exercise to prevent the disease. Or, in fact we do most of the things to prevent the disease from coming. Well. I would like to cite the quote, “A penny saved is worth a penny earned!”. A disease well fought is worth a disease prevented. In any case, we have a fear of disease. We hate disease.

There’s a story of King Khatvanga, in Shrimad Bhagavatam. King Khatvanga, helps the gods upon request, in the fight with Daityas and wins. After winning the fight, gods offer him a boon. The king Khatvanga asks, “Reveal to me how many years more I shall live. Only then can I decide which boon I can ask from you!” To his surprise, the king is told he had only one moment left to live.

Instead of asking for more moments, which he could easily have done, he accepted the reality. A reality that is transient. He immediately went on to meditate on Lord Vishnu and attained liberation. Khatvanga is composed of Khatva (broken) and Anga (body). It’s also a weapon that “breaks” our association or bond with this samsaric world, “Anga“!

Lord Krishna, also fought Jarasandha and defeated him 17 times! In their 18th encounter, Krishna takes “A Mountain Leap“, displacing His army and people from Mathura to Dwarka! Mathura means the sweet or pleasant land (material pleasure) and Dwarka means to doorway to the eternal Brahman!

Both the stories point to the pointlessness in fighting the Jarasandha, the disease, the decay, the disorderliness, the entropy! Instead one should constantly meditate on Him, The King of Dwarka, to become eternally free from the disease called Jarasandha!

And what is meant by meditating on Him? It’s also called Pranayama or deep breathing, focusing on breath. It’s related to Bhima who is the son of Vayu (Prana vayu, life), the breath of vitality. That’s precisely why, if you observe, it’s the Bhima who finally kills Jarasandha!