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          When the gods want to punish us, they grant
          ------------------------------------------- 
 
                  us our desires (?kaama?)
                  ------------------------ 

The Vishnu-Sahasranamam enumerates several names of
the Almighty that are derivatives of the word ?kaama?.

(1) In Shloka 32 ?nAma? #295 He is called ?kAmahA?
i.e. He is the Creator of ?kaama?, the power of Desire
that enlivens all the worlds. This ?nAma? echoes the
Lord?s own declaration in the Bhagavath-Gita:

balaM balavataa.n chaahaM kaamaraagavivarjitam. 
dharmaaviruddho bhuuteshhu kaamo.asmi bharatarshhabha
.. 7\.11.

?Know Me to be the mainspring of all virtuous Desires
in all beings, O Arjuna!?

(2) In ?nAma? #296 He is hailed as the Supreme Lord
who inspires the great deeds or achievements of the
world that are enabled  by the engine of individual
energy i.e. by the sheer propellant force of ?kaama?. 
Hence He is ?kAmakrit?.

(3) In ?nAma? #298 He is ?kaamah?. Possessing
captivating qualities such as ?shIla?, ?owdArya?,
?dayaa? and such other endearing ones, the Almighty is
Himself the ?object of craving? for His devotees. They
are besotted with His form and beauty. (There is the
legend of TiruppAn-AzhwAr, the great saint of S.India
who once looked into the eyes of the Deity at
SriRangam and became so bewitched by their beauty, he
swore that having feasted upon those eyes of the Lord
his own mortal ones would never again settle for
anything less to witness in the world --- ?yen
amudhinai kanda kaNNgaL matronninnai kAnAvE?). 

(4) In ?namA? #299 the Almighty is called
?kAmapradah?. To His devotees striving to attain Him,
and equally too, to those who desire worldly ends, He
grants them their desired ends, each exactly according
to his or her deserts. This is an echo of the voice of
the SvetasvatarOpanishad (6.13): ?EkO bahUnAm yO
vidadhAthi kAmaan? ? ?He is the only One who grants or
fulfills the desires of many?. It is also echoes
Krishna?s own words in the Bhagavath-Gita:

  yo yo yaa.n yaa.n tanuM bhak{}taH
shraddhayaarchitumich{}chhati . 
  tasya tasyaachalaa.n shraddhaa.n taameva
vidadhaamyaham.h .. 
                                                      
7\.21.. 

?I reside in everyone's heart as the real motive Power
behind the intensity of their Desire. As soon as one
resolves to pursue and realize a particular desire, it
is I who make such resolve strong-willed, firm and
fruitful!?
 
(5) Then again in Shloka 70 ?nAma? #657 there is the
name ?kAmadevah? ascribed to the Almighty. (Krishna?s
devotees like the ?gOpikAs? and ?naayikAs? of
Brindavanam were utterly bewitched by His attractive
form and demeanor. Hence to them He was ?Kamadeva?,
the Supreme Paramour).

(6) In ?nAma? #658 the Lord is called ?kAmapalah?: He
freely bestows on his devotees favors sought by them
and protects them; hence He is Kamapalah.

(7) In ?nAma? #659 God is hailed as ?kAmi?: He is the
most gracious and generous of compulsive givers. He
simply loves giving. Every seeker looks to Him
therefore with eager expectation to receive boons and
desires. Hence He is ?kAmi?.

             ****************

A very incisive Vedantic thinker of the modern time,
Eknath Easwaran, in his book of commentary on the
?Vishnu-Sahasranama? titled ?The Thousand Names of
Vishnu?, wrote an extremely illuminating passage about
the several ?nAmAs? of the Lord rooted in the word
?kamaa?. I do not hesitate to quote it below rather
extensively since not only does it shed light upon why
?kaama? came to be a divine ?nAma? for the Almighty
but, furthermore, it also greatly helps one in
appreciating the Vedantic flavour of the main message
contained in the TiruppAvai expression ?maRRai nam
kaamangaL maaRRu?.     

(QUOTE): ?One of the most frequent incidents in Hindu
mythology (?purANa?) is for someone to sit down in
profound meditation until the Almighty appears in
person to grant him/her a boon. This is a vivid way of
reminding us all that every strong desire (?kaama?) of
ours is a prayer. When we have a powerful desire that
we cannot forget, we are meditating on that desire,
actually praying for it to happen and be fulfilled. In
time, the very depth of that desire will release the
deeper resources to bring it within our reach.

?There is nothing occult or extraordinary about this;
it is simply the dynamics of desire (?kaama?) working
quietly but efficiently behind the scene. When someone
is haunted by the desire to make money, for example,
that desire focuses all his will and drive and
attention. The very intensity of that focus will
release creative schemes for extracting wealth in ways
the rest of us may never see.

?Desire is the key to life because desire is power.
The deeper the desire, the more power it contains. It
is the power that gives life meaning. To desire
something is to will it, and to will it is to achieve
it. (This is called ?icchA-shakti?). The Upanishads,
in fact, say: ?You are what your deep driving desire
is. As your deep, driving desire is, so is your will.
As your will, so is your deed. As your deed, so is
your destiny?.

?Wherever you find great success in life, it is due to
the intense unification of desires. This is
particularly easy to see in a person of genius for
whom most personal desires are focused very dearly on
one particular, overriding goal. 

?For the person with many small desires, the power of
desire (?kaama?) trickles away in many different
directions. There is not much power in a trickle that
dissipates away, and little desires often fail to
reach their goal. But then, because they are little,
it does not matter much if many of them should get
nowhere. What matters is the sense of futility that
builds up in a person whose desires are many and
trivial and unrealized. Like rain that falls on a
mountain peak, running down slopes on every side, his
vitality is dispersed and drained away; his life
itself gets fragmented.

?On the other hand, there are people whose lives are
moulded by one all-consuming desire, as overwhelming
as a mighty river like the Ganges or the Mississippi?.


?The irony of it all, of course, is that getting your
wishes (?kaama?) granted is not necessarily the way to
become happy in life. I think the Greeks had a saying
that when the gods want to punish us, they grant us
our desires. We need no god to punish or reward us;
the natural consequences of our actions are their own
punishment or reward.?(UNQUOTE) 

                ****************

If fulfillment of one?s heartfelt desires and strong
?kaami-c? urges could guarantee everlasting happiness
in life, surely, ?paurAnic? characters like Ravana in
the ?Ramayana? and Hiranyakasipu in the story of
Prahlada, for example, should never have ended up
meeting the sad fate they eventually did. Greek
mythological characters like King Midas too should not
have been the woe-begotten men they ended up being.

Both Ravana and Hiranyakasipu, as the ?purAna?
narrates, were driven by one overwhelming and
?unified? desire. It was to reign as undisputed lord
of the world in their lifetime. They were overbearing,
power-crazed beings. And yet they were extremely
devout in worship too. They prayed earnestly and
incessantly to all the powerful gods of the Vedic
pantheon like Indra, Brahma and Shiva who, pleased
with such worship, promptly granted Ravana and
Hiranyakasipu the greatest single, ?unified? desire of
their lives. The gods thus made Ravana monarch of all
he surveyed. 

Yet, ironically, as the ?itihAsic? story-line later on
clearly shows us, in the very act of granting Ravana
his heart?s desire, the gods sowed too the seed of his
eventual and tragic destruction, did they not? 

The Greeks, after all, were wise people indeed. They
were not wrong when they said that when the gods want
to punish Man, they simply grant him his desire!

                ******************

Thus, the moral of those ?paurAnic? stories, and the
underlying message conveyed to us through their
mythological characterizations, such as Ravana and
Hiranyakasipu, is that the human heart desires
passionately but too unwisely. The tragedy of Man is
not that he is hapless victim in the grip of his
?kaama?. The real tragedy is that his ?kaama?, his
desires in life are: 

(a) either too many, too trivial to be really
meaningful in the larger context of Life?s purpose; 

(b) or, they are far too ?fragmented? or far too
fissiparous to turn into a dynamo of real power and
vitality (?icchA-shakti?) needed for purposeful human
action or achievement;

(c) or else, even if their desires came to be somehow
?unified?, they are, alas, invariably misplaced and
most often misdirected.

And it is precisely against such a tragedy befalling
them that the wise "aaypAdi" girls in the TiruppAvai
sent out their ringing prayer to the Almighty: "maRRai
nam kaamangaL maaRRu"!

                   (to be continued)  

Regards,

dAsan,
Sudarshan 



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