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5699 Read The Great Four Heavenly Kings
The Great Four Heavenly Kings
In the Buddhist faith, the Four Heavenly Kings are four guardian gods. Each of them watches over one cardinal direction of the world. The four divine attributes which characterize the Heavenly Kings are Wind, Harmony, Rain and Prosperity. They are currently living in the Caturmaharajika heaven which is located on the lower slopes of Mount Sumera. This is the lowest of the six worlds of the devas of the Kāmadhatu. The Heavenly Kings are the protectors of the world and fighters of evil and all satanic forces, each commanding a legion of supernatural creatures to protect the Dharma (Highest Teachings Of Purity & Wisdoms). On orders of Lord Sakra (Supreme being Of The Heavenly Realm), the four kings and their retinue stand guard to protect Trayastrisa from possible attacks by the Asuras. These are extremely violent & reckless beings once threatened to destroy the kingdom of the Devas.
In fact, Devas and asuras are cousins. But this has not stopped them from going into many wars with each other. The gods sometimes had an upper hand, but mostly they were defeated. In the Upanishad we are told that the gods are lesser in number than the Asuras. Also in the epic of the Mahabharata, the Pandavas were lesser in number than the Kauravas. Once upon a time, in one of the many battles fought, the Devas seemed to be on the verge of being defeated by the asuras. Bhagwan Vishnu suggested a way to achieve victory. He told the Devas that they should challenge asuras where both the teams would churn the sea. The team that emerges victorious will have right over the nectar that is produced from the ‘manthan’ (or churning of the ocean). This nectar will give the victorious team an upper hand over the other. According to Narayana, this nectar can greatly increase their powers and attain an imperishable body after drinking it. Hence, the Devas struck a deal with the asuras and convinced them by promising them some nectar. Mandarachal Mountain was brought to the sea and tied with a gigantic serpent Naga to churn the sea. But the heavy mountain started sinking into the sea. Bhagwan Vishnu came to the rescue and assumed the form of Kurma avatar (tortoise) and kept the mountain afloat as asuras tugged on one end and Devas on the other. Fourteen jewels were produced in the ‘manthan’ which went to the Devas, ensuring their victory.
Back to the topic of the Four Heavenly Kings, all four serve Lord Sakra, the lord of the devas of Trayastrisa. On the 8th, 14th and 15th days of each lunar month, the Four Heavenly Kings will send out messengers or personally see how virtue and morality are faring in the world of men. They then report upon the state of affairs to the assembly of the Trayastrisa devas.
The Four Heavenly Kings are the remarkable beings that protect the four corners of the world. In Chinese Buddhism, they are popularly known as the Great Dharma Protectors, seen in the shrines of the Maitrieya Buddha. All Four Heavenly kings have the power to control the weather and climate on Earth. They each carry a distinctive magical weapon that represents the source of their supernatural powers.
Two of the Heavenly Kings have friendly faces and fair colored complexion. The other 2 shows a more ferocious and darker appearance. This represents that the GOODNESS in this world must be taught and implemented both through gentle and authoritative means.
This picture was taken during a Buddhist ceremony in Indonesia
Four Heavenly Kings materized during a Fire Puja
Heavenly King of the North
Mo Li Shou (Vaisravana)
Mo Li Shou (Vaisravana) carries a huge umbrella. This great lord has a fierce and dark looking appearance. Resting around his shoulders and arms is a magic dragon with no claws. This dragon has the ability to call upon the swiftness of the wind and tides, control the climate and master the forces of the seasons. Whenever he puts up his umbrella, the sky over the battlefield turns dark and a cyclonic storm howls, sending sand and rocks whirling about. When this happens, the eyesight of his rivals is sure to be impaired. When he is about to shut up his umbrella, the rivals are drawn into it, trapped and arrested. He has blue skinned and wrathful in appearance. On other occasion, he holds up a stupa instead of an umbrella. He resides in the Crystal Palace on the north of the Four Heavens. Mo Li Shou should be placed in the North to overcome all bad influences from that direction.
Heavenly King of the East
Mo Li Qing (Dhrtarastra)
Holding a Chinese lute, (pi-pa), he is “The One Who Upholds The Land” through Harmony, and also known as Lord of Thunder. As his lute represents ease, comfort and the good things of civilization, it also symbolizes Harmony and Balance; the string must neither be too tight nor too loose, and so all human affairs must be conducted with moderation. His magical black sword is described as having the power to cut through all evil and pierce through the bodies of evil demons instantly disintegrating their flesh. In his wrathful aspect, he is able to pluck the strings of his lute and raise up strong wind. As his enemies stop to listen, the wind whips up the campfire thus burning the camps to the ground.
Heavenly King of the South
Mo Li Hong (Virudhaka)
Holding a sword, he is known as “The One Who Enhances Virtue”. By using his Sword of Wisdom to control evil, he enhances and improves the lives of all sentient beings. As the God of Death and the Underworld, sometimes he is depicted trampling a demon under foot, representing the control over evil. His actions are of great benefit, with an overtone of bringing prosperity.
Heavenly King of the West
Mo Li Hai (Virupaksa)
Holding a snake in one hand and a wish-fulfilling jewel in the other, he is known as “The One With Broad Perception” who watches over the world with a thousand eyes. As Lord of the Cosmic Order, the snake in his hand signifies that he is the King of Nagas (Serpents), and he serves to raise up our awareness and inspire in us the Bodhi mind.
They are also vowed to protect the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Buddha's followers from danger.
Heavenly Devas
However, it is a little known fact that evil forces are larger in quantum than the beneficent forces in the world above because of the impulse towards evil, which is the urge towards contact with the objects of sense, is more powerful than the impulse towards God. People rarely turn to God as mostly we go down to objects of sense. So the number of spiritual seekers moving towards the light of God, perhaps, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. But the downward forces rejoicing in contact with senses are plenty, and therefore their number is more. So the war went on for ages and ages.
The gods had a brainwave. They conferred among themselves. “This state of affairs cannot be for a long time. We must find out a means of overcoming the Asuras. We shall chant the holy Udgitha Saman, which is a Veda mantra, and some of us will be engaged in doing this work of holy recitation to quell the Asuras.” So the deities, who were all implanted in the sense organs such as the eyes, ears, etc., and even the mind, were all requested to undertake this discipline of chanting the Udgitha. The deity of the speech was told: “You chant the Udgitha for us, and with the power of this great force, we shall overcome the Asura forces.”
The Asuras got wind of it. They knew that a great spiritual discipline was being undertaken by the Devas so that they may overcome the Asuras. So the Asuras thought, “We shall not allow this to happen. We shall not permit this spiritual discipline to go on. We shall attack it.” When speech was chanting the holy mantra, the Udgitha, Asuras came and attacked, and speech was quelled and thrown down. The Upanishad says that this is the reason why often speech that is uttered by people is not beneficent, not worthy, not delicate, but is harsh, barbaric, cruel, cutting and insulting to others. This detrimental negative attitude adopted by speech often is the effect of the evil influence imprecated upon it by the Asura forces. So the deity of speech was defeated.
Then the gods told the deity of the nose, “You chant the mantra; speech is defeated.” So the deity of the nose started chanting the holy mantra, and the Asuras understood this. They came with a force and attacked this deity of the nose. That is why it is said that we can also smell bad odour, and not only fragrance. So sometimes we close our nose when certain odours enter our nostrils. The nose was defeated.
The angels told the other sense organs, one by one, to chant the mantra, and all had the same fate. They were all overcome. The Upanishad tells us that every sense organ has, therefore, a double activity. It can do good and it can do bad; it can receive what is good and it can receive what is bad. We can hear nice things and we can hear bad things also. The mind also was defeated. The mind was inflicted with the evil by the Asuras when it chanted the mantra. So it can think right and it can think wrong. Thus, there was no way out. The gods were defeated repeatedly. They were utterly helpless.
When they were all thus defeated, they joined together and considered as to what could be done under the circumstances. They thought that they had made a mistake in choosing their agents for chanting the Udgitha. So they asked the vital force, the Prana Sakti, which is prior to the operation of the senses, which impels the senses to act—as the sun impels all activity in the world, himself not doing anything. They said: “O Prana, chant the Udgitha for us.” And the Prana, the unifying force, the vital energy, chanted the Udgitha. And when the Prana started the chant, the Asuras came in a large battalion to attack it. What happened? They were thrown back. As a mud ball thrown against a hard rock breaks into pieces and becomes dispersed in all directions, the Asuras were thrown and cast in various directions, powerless by the force of the Udgitha chant conducted by the vital force, Prana Sakti—a thing which the senses could not undertake, and could not succeed in doing. Then the Devas won victory over the demons. They assumed their original positions of angels, which had been occupied by the Asuras, the demons. Now, inasmuch as the Asuras were quelled and overthrown completely in this battle with the force of a chant conducted by the vital force, the gods regained their original positions. The lost kingdom was regained. “One who knows this secret also regains one’s own position,” says the Upanishad.
Here is a very mystical anecdote given to us in the sacred text, the Upanishad, which is very precise and goes to the point. The meditational process, or spiritual discipline, is described here in the form of a story. The angels fall and lose their positions due to the evil influence of the Asuras. And in order to regain their lost positions, they have to take recourse to the vital force, and not to the sense organs. The sense organs are not our friends in the practice of spirituality. They succeed in making an attempt only, but really they do not succeed in the end.
Now what does all this mean to us? It means everything to us. The gods, the angels, the celestials are the denizens of the Garden of Eden. They are bosom friends of God, limbs of the Almighty, scintillating sparks of the Divine Conflagration, inseparable from the Supreme Being. That is the angelic condition. There, in that condition, the consciousness of the angel is a perpetual awareness of its relation to the Almighty. The angels never lose consciousness of God. Whether it is Deva, or Michael, or Gabriel, or any other angel mentioned in the scriptures, whatever be the name given to these angels, they are perpetually in the presence of God. They are the guardians of heaven; they are parts of the Divine Kingdom.
There is eternal daylight there, says the Upanishad. “Sakrit vibhato hi brahmalokah.” In Brahmaloka, which is the Indian counterpart of the Garden of Eden in the Bible, there is eternal day—no night there. It is all blazing radiance. This blazing radiance does not come from some object hanging in the skies, as it is the case here in this world. The radiance of Brahmaloka is not the effect of a light coming from some lamp, not even a lamp like the sun or the moon. It is self-radiance. It is the light emanating from everything that is there. It is light shining upon its own self, and not shining on some other object which cannot shine. This is the Kingdom of God, this is the Garden of Eden, this is Brahmaloka, this is the world of the angels, the gods, the celestials.
The angels fell. What is this falling? The Upanishad’s answer is that the fall took place due to the Asura influence, which is a difficult thing for us to understand. The problem of evil is an indescribable problem for everyone. Philosophically conceived, the Asura is the impulse towards sense objects. The desire for anything other than one’s own self is the Asura, or the demon. This is something very interesting. We can know where we stand by the measure of this yardstick. One who desires anything other than one’s own Self is the Asura. The angels have no such desires. They are self-satisfied, self-contained, self-complete, radiant sparks of divinity. Something happens! Nobody knows the mystery of creation. This mystery, this so-called something seems to have occurred, whether it was the cause of the fall of Lucifer or the cause of the fall of anybody else. Something happened. This mystery diverted the attention of the angels in a direction which is contrary to the original angelic vision. So we do not think like angels. We think like men and women, like human beings. What is the difference between the vision of the celestials and the vision of the mortals like us?
The Upanishads have many things to tell us in regard about this interesting feature in the process of creation. An explanation of the significance behind this anecdote can be found in the Aitareya Upanishad, wherein the description of the descent is characteristically described. When the angel, the celestial or the god becomes the mortal, the subject becomes the object and the object becomes the subject. This is what has happened. In the beginning of the creation process, the universe remains as an inseparable body of the Almighty. Since God revealed Himself as this creation, all things in creation are inseparable from God’s Being; and since God cannot be regarded as an object, nothing in this world can be regarded as an object. Since the world is the body of God, it is an appearance of the glory of the Almighty Himself.
But, for every one of us, the world is an object of sense, as if God Himself has become a sense object. We are running after things which were originally inseparable from us but which have now assumed the context or the position of the things which are external to us. The origins of our own present individualities, the causes of our present form of existence have erroneously assumed the position of an object of sense outside. The world is an object of sense for every one of us. And we have assumed a false position of subjectivity or the position of a seer or experiencer, while we are the experienced objects from the angelic or the cosmic point of view. The so-called subjectivity in us is an objectivity to God, and to assume that we are subjects is to assume what Lucifer assumed in the presence of the Almighty. Now what position we are all occupying in this world will be clear to every one of us.
The senses were asked to chant the holy mantra. We also chant the mantra every day. We employ our sense organs in the practice of spiritual sadhana. The chanting of the Udgitha is nothing but the invocation of God, the Almighty, for the purpose of overcoming this evil influence by which we have somehow or other become entangled in attraction to objects, the evil influence inflicted upon us by the Asuras. But the senses are not reliable instruments for spiritual practice. The ears, the nose, the senses of seeing, touching, tasting, etc., are not our friends. And, therefore, to ask them to chant the spiritual mantra would be to court defeat in this battle. This has actually happened.
The cosmical envisagement is impossible for the sense organs. The very idea of contemplation in yoga or meditation on the Divine Principle is a non-sensory or a super-sensory aspiration arising from us. Spiritual aspiration is a super-sensory impulse. It is not a sensory impulse. It has very little to do with the sense organs. What we call pratyahara, the well-known word, is the accumulation within ourselves of a force which overcomes the distracting influences of the senses—the production of a cumulative energy within ourselves which precedes the distracting movements of the senses. This is actually what is meant by the Prana which sang the Udgitha and won victory.
Contributed by Clement
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Last modified : 26 May 2011 - 03:53 PM (GMT+7:00) |
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