The Devotee and the Sage's Wrath

The sages told the Pandavas of King Ambarisha, who was both a mighty emperor and a supreme devotee of the Lord, and of how his devotion protected him even against the wrath of the most terrible of sages - teaching that the Lord himself is bound by the love of his devotees.

Ambarisha was a great king, ruler of a vast and prosperous empire, but his greatness as a ruler was nothing beside his greatness as a devotee. His whole heart was given to the Lord Vishnu. He ruled justly and well, but his mind was always fixed upon God; he used his hands for service, his speech for praise, his every act for the Lord. So pure and complete was his devotion that the Lord was pleased with him beyond measure, and granted him a special protection: the Sudarshana chakra, the Lord's own discus, the invincible weapon of Vishnu, was set to guard Ambarisha and to protect him from every harm.

Once Ambarisha undertook a sacred vow of devotion, a long fast culminating in a holy day, which by the rules had to be broken at a precise and auspicious moment - not before and not after - by taking food after first honoring and feeding a guest. The king kept the long fast faithfully, and as the appointed hour for breaking it approached, he made ready, hoping a worthy guest would come whom he might honor and feed first, as the rite required.

And a guest did come - but a most dangerous one. It was the sage Durvasa, famous throughout all the worlds for his immense spiritual power and, even more, for his terrible and uncontrollable temper, whose curses had brought low gods and kings alike. Ambarisha received the fearsome sage with the greatest reverence and joy, worshipped him as an honored guest, and invited him to dine, so that the king might feed him and then break his own fast at the proper time. Durvasa accepted, and said he would first go to the river to bathe and perform his daily rites, and then return to eat. And he went off to the river.

But Durvasa delayed at the river. He performed his bath and his rites and his meditations at length, and the time wore on, and still he did not return - and meanwhile the precise, narrow window in which Ambarisha was required to break his fast was approaching and beginning to slip past.

The king was caught in a painful difficulty. On one hand, the rules of his vow required him to break his fast at the exact auspicious moment, which was now passing; to let it pass unbroken would be to fail his sacred vow. On the other hand, the laws of hospitality forbade him to eat before his honored guest had eaten; to take food before Durvasa returned would be a grave discourtesy to a brahmin, the very thing most likely to kindle that terrible sage's legendary wrath. To keep the vow, he must eat; to honor the guest, he must not. Either way he seemed bound to commit a fault, and to offend either heaven or the most dangerous of sages.

He turned to the learned brahmins of his court for counsel on how to escape the dilemma without sin.

The brahmins gave the king a careful answer. "There is a way, O King, to honor both requirements," they said. "Take only a sip of water. By the rules, taking water is considered both as breaking the fast and as not truly eating - it satisfies the requirement to break the fast at the proper moment, yet it is not a meal, so you have not truly dined before your guest. In this way you keep your vow without giving real offense to the sage."

Ambarisha, wishing to do right by both his vow and his guest, followed this counsel. As the appointed moment arrived and Durvasa had still not returned, the king took a small sip of water, and no more, to fulfill his vow at the proper time, intending fully to feed Durvasa and eat his own meal the moment the sage came back. It was done in good faith, by the advice of the learned, with the sole purpose of doing right by everyone and offending no one.

But it would not be taken so by the sage.

When Durvasa returned from the river and perceived, by his yogic sight, that the king had taken water before he, the guest, had eaten, his terrible temper blazed up at once. He took it as a deadly insult - that this king should presume to break his fast, even with a sip of water, before honoring his brahmin guest. He would hear nothing of the king's good intentions or the brahmins' careful reasoning; he saw only that he had been slighted, and his fury knew no bounds.

"You dare to eat before me, your guest, you proud king?" the sage thundered. "You shall pay for this insolence!" And in his rage, Durvasa tore a lock of his own matted hair and dashed it to the ground, and from it, by the power of his accumulated penance, there sprang up a fearsome demon - a being of fire and fury, a Kritya, created for the single purpose of destroying Ambarisha. The dreadful demon rushed upon the king, blazing, to kill him.

But Ambarisha did not flee, and did not even raise a hand to defend himself. He stood perfectly still and calm, unafraid, his mind fixed as always upon the Lord, trusting wholly in the God to whom he had given his whole life. He neither fought nor begged; he simply stood firm in his devotion, and waited.

As the demon rushed upon the calm and trusting king to destroy him, the protection the Lord had set over his devotee sprang into action. The Sudarshana chakra, the blazing discus of Vishnu, appeared of its own accord to guard Ambarisha. In an instant it fell upon the fearsome demon that Durvasa had created and burned it utterly to ashes, destroying it in a moment, so that not a hair of the devoted king was harmed.

And then the discus, having destroyed the demon, turned upon the one who had sent it - upon Durvasa himself. For the chakra of the Lord does not look kindly upon those who seek to harm his sincere devotees, and Durvasa, for all his power and his holiness, had in his pride and wrath tried to destroy a soul utterly devoted to God. The blazing discus, terrible and unstoppable, came for the sage.

Durvasa, who a moment before had been the furious master of the situation, suddenly found the invincible weapon of the Lord bearing down upon him, and for the first time in his life the terror of the worlds knew terror himself. He turned and fled for his life.

Durvasa fled, and the Sudarshana chakra pursued him without rest. The sage ran through all the three worlds seeking refuge, but nowhere could he escape the blazing discus at his back. He fled to the ends of the earth, and the chakra followed. He fled up to the heaven of Indra and begged the king of the gods to save him - but Indra confessed he had no power against the weapon of Vishnu, and could not help him. He fled to the creator Brahma, and to the great god Shiva, and to every power he could think of, falling at the feet of one after another and begging protection - and each in turn told him that none of them could withstand or turn aside the discus of the Lord, and that he must seek help elsewhere.

In his utter desperation, Durvasa fled at last to Vishnu himself, the very Lord whose weapon pursued him, and threw himself down before him, begging to be saved. But Vishnu gave him an answer that is the heart of the whole tale.

"I cannot save you, Durvasa," the Lord told the trembling sage, "for I am not free in this matter. Understand the truth: I am, as it were, in the control of my devotees. I have given my heart so wholly to those who love me with a pure and undivided devotion, as Ambarisha loves me, that I am bound by them; I follow their will; I am theirs to command. My devotees have captured my very heart, and I can deny them nothing and will allow no harm to come to them. You have wronged such a devotee - a soul that is dearer to me than my own self - and so my discus pursues you, and I myself cannot call it back. There is only one in all the worlds who can save you now: Ambarisha himself, the very king you tried to destroy. Go back to him, fall at his feet, and beg his forgiveness. If he forgives you and prays for you, the discus will spare you. There is no other refuge for you anywhere."

So Durvasa, the proudest and most terrible of sages, who had set out to destroy the king, had now to flee all the way back to that same king as his only possible savior, humbled utterly, his pride in ashes, his life depending on the mercy of the man he had wronged.

Durvasa rushed back and fell at the feet of King Ambarisha, the discus still blazing at his back, begging the king's forgiveness and his protection. And here the greatness of the true devotee was shown. For all this while - through the whole long flight of Durvasa through the worlds, which had taken a great span of time - Ambarisha had not eaten, but had waited, fasting still, refusing to break his fast and dine until his guest could be fed, even though that guest had tried to kill him. He bore Durvasa no grudge at all. He had never wished him harm; he had only stood in his devotion and let the Lord protect him.

Now, seeing the sage in terror and begging at his feet, Ambarisha was filled not with triumph but with compassion. He prayed earnestly to the Sudarshana chakra, praising it and beseeching it to spare Durvasa and withdraw, for he held no anger against the sage and did not wish him to die. And because the discus was bound to honor the wish of the devotee it served, at Ambarisha's prayer it grew calm and withdrew, sparing Durvasa's life. Then the king, with perfect graciousness, welcomed the humbled sage as his honored guest after all, fed him, and only then broke his own long fast and ate. Durvasa, utterly humbled and amazed at the king's devotion and his boundless forgiveness, blessed him and departed a wiser and a chastened man.

The sages drew the lessons for the Pandavas. "See the protection of sincere devotion: the king did nothing to defend himself, yet the Lord's own weapon guarded him, for God allows no harm to come to those who love him purely. See the wonder of how God binds himself to his devotees - so won over by their love that he says he is in their control, and will not let them be harmed even by the mightiest of sages. See the danger of pride and wrath even in the holy: Durvasa's ungoverned temper, over a mere sip of water taken in good faith, nearly destroyed him. And see, above all, the greatness of the true devotee, who bore no grudge against the one who tried to kill him, but waited fasting for his guest and then, when that enemy lay helpless at his feet, prayed for his life and welcomed him with honor. That forgiveness, and that devotion, are the heart of the tale."

And the Pandavas took to heart both the protecting power of devotion and the surpassing nobility of a heart that forgives even the one who sought its destruction.