In plain words
But even within this natural thing, something unnatural is contained. They go to a stone serpent and pray. ‘O king of serpents! Appear before me and put an end to my troubles,’ they pray. But when that very serpent comes as a serpent, living and before their eyes, they kill it with the very stone they consecrated. ‘Kalla nāgara kaṇḍara kaṇḍacakkeraṭlu’: kalla nāgara means that when they see a stone serpent they offer it lumps of sugar. When the real serpent comes, far from feeding it, they even take its life.
The greatness of the name of Rāma
What must God be like? Who can decide it? No one at all can decide it. God alone must decide what God must be like; no one else has the authority to decide it. Tyāgarāja too said this very thing. “Who is there to decide You?” Who is there to decide who You are? To the mantra of the jīva, ‘rā’ is the life. To the mantra of Śiva, ‘ma’ is the life. To the mantra of Mādhava, ‘rā’ is the life. “I bow to the great one who knows this secret,” he said. In the name Namaśśivāya, the Pañcākṣarī, the syllable ‘ma’ is the life. In the Aṣṭākṣarī Oṃ Namo Nārāyaṇāya, the Vaiṣṇava name, the syllable ‘ra’ is the life. If the syllable ‘ra’ goes out of Nārāyaṇāya, it becomes ‘Nāyaṇāya’, like one who has died. Only when that ‘rā’ comes is it natural, as a thing that has life in it. Nārāyaṇāya: that is why, in this Vaiṣṇava name, ‘rā’ is the life. In the Pañcākṣarī Namaśśivāya, ‘ma’ itself is the life. Without the syllable ‘ma’, it is ‘Naśivāya’. That means, that which has no Śiva. So the syllable ‘ma’ simply must be there. The joining of these two is this very name ‘Rāma’. That is why this is a name whose very form is life. ‘Ra-a-ma’. The joining of the letters of these three is this: ra, the seed of fire; a, the seed of the sun; ma, the seed of the moon. The oneness of these three is the name of Rāma. The seed of fire burns to ashes all the sins there are.