24. कामक्रोधविवर्जितः Kāma-krodha-vivarjitaḥ

One who was especially free from anger born of desire

How desire arises, leads to anger and destroys a person, was seen in the context of nāma 13. It has been seen in nāma 18 that His Holiness was One who was completely devoid of desires. Ruling out the cause, desire, automatically implies that its effect, anger, is ruled out. Thus, interpreting the term ‘kāma-krodha (desire-anger)’ here as indicating that His Holiness was free from ‘desire and anger’ would amount to a double redundancy. Hence, the term may be taken here to mean ‘anger born of desire’.

Lord Kṛṣṇa emphasizes that desire and anger are among the triple gates to hell. It has been said, “My salutations to anger that severely burns him who gives it refuge!”⁶⁷ Thus, the very nature of anger is that regardless of whether or not it harms the one at whom it is directed, it certainly harms the one who harbours it. This real anger, is what is born of desire. By saying that His Holiness was vi-varjita, especially free from, kāma-krodha, anger born of desire, this nāma explicitly rules out such anger in His case. So by implication, should any anger remain at all, it must necessarily have been both not real and hence only seeming, and not born of desire and hence born of something else. As His Holiness’s universal, infinite and unconditional compassion was uniformly consistent across His thoughts, words and deeds (vide nāmas 2, 22, 37 and 106), His apparent anger must necessarily have been born exclusively from such compassion of His. Indeed, in this profound sense, He was especially free from anger born of desire.

All this apart, there was an overarching reason for His Holiness to display anger at times. As mentioned earlier (under nāmas 1 and 10), once His Holiness attained jīvanmukti, though He had transcended the need for nirvikalpa-samādhi, He kept slipping into and remaining in the state for long durations. As narrated in the context of nāma 10, His Guru aroused Him from the state before it could become irreversible. His Guru told Him, “Though unswervingly established in Brahman, you should learn to show, whenever appropriate, interest, appreciation, concern, anger, curiosity and the like in your dealings with devotees, the Maṭha’s staff and others.” The senior Jagadguru then cited, from the Yoga-vāśiṣṭha, the advice given by Sage Vaśiṣṭha to Rāma: “Sport in the world, O Rāghava, with assumed attachment, anger, etc., on the outside but without any turbulence in the heart, as a doer externally but internally a non-doer.”⁶⁸ His Holiness

78 25. Karābja-vilasad-daṇḍaḥ discerned from His Guru’s words that to facilitate interpersonal dealings without any hypocrisy or subterfuge, His mind should accommodate fleeting emotions, and that appearance of thoughts and feelings merely when necessitated by and as appropriate to situations would enable effective and totally unpretentious functioning while leaving the mind basically silent. He always conducted Himself accordingly, in perfect deference to His Guru’s words, showing anger too, whenever appropriate.

❧

Sri P. S. Narasimhan, a close devotee, recollected, “Once a leading disciple from Delhi was insisting that His Holiness should, during His stay in Delhi, take part in a rally for the protection of cows; this was scheduled as a big public protest and was to be televised. Raising His voice, His Holiness told the disciple, ‘I do not want all this. It is not necessary that I should join a demonstration for cow-protection or appear on television. I am, however, very much interested in the protection of cows and maintain several cows in Sringeri. This, one and all can see.’

“The next moment the fleeting show of anger had subsided and His Holiness was His usual personification of peace. After all the other disciples had left, my wife and I had stayed back to take leave of His Holiness. I referred to this incident and expressed my humble admiration for the extraordinary way in which His Holiness had been able to summon a show of anger and then to revert to His usual poise in an instant. His Holiness remarked, ‘There are certain occasions when we have to exhibit a show of anger. Anger must be under our control, to be used when necessary and abandoned when the need ceases.’”

❧