Lalitha Devi Story

The Story of Sree Lalitha Goddess Lalitha and Lalitha Sahasranamam - Kameshwara and Maa Lalitha Kameshwara and Laitha Devi During the ancient times, there was a powerful demon named Taraka. He was controlling and lording over the Universe with his unequalled power and strength. A group of devas then resolved that only Skanda can destroy Taraka. But, due to the penance of Lord Siva, the birth of Skanda had been delayed. Manmata (the God of love) was assigned by the devas to wake up Lord Siva from his deep meditation. With the intention of performing his job, Manmata applied the flower – shafts of lust on Lord Siva, who then roused with uncontrollable anger and burnt Manmata with the energy of his Third eye. Another energy flame from Lord Siva’s third eye gave birth to Lord Skanda, who then destroyed Tarakasura. However, due to the absence of Manmata, creation in the World had stopped. Realizing this, Lord Siva blessed Manmata for his rebirth. As he sprinkled the holy water over the ashes of Manmata, another demon named Banasura was accidentally created. The supreme strength of the demon spoiled the righteousness of the three worlds. Indra, the king of Devas performed a yagna according to the advice of Lord Siva and as a result of this yagna, Devi Sree Lalitha appeared, embodying the powers of creation, protection and destruction. The Devas praised her in eloquent terms as Universal Mother. Lord Siva married her in the avatar of Kameshwara and the Kingdom of Sree Lalitha originated from the Sreepura, a beautiful city at the crest of the mount Meru, built in the form of Sree Chakra. In a fierce battle that lasted for a long time, Sree Lalitha destroyed Banasura. The philosophical base of this unprecedented success of the Devi is that, the ‘ajnana’ (ignorance) is removed by ‘Jnana’ (realization). Wisdom Behind the Story of Goddess Lalitha Daksha means a skilled person, often we see that we get skills in many fields and in the process we sometimes knowingly or unknowingly get arrogance, due to this arrogance we ignore the divinity in us, who is represented by Lord Shiva. We often don’t listen to our conscience and fall to various trouble. Dakshas daughter Sati is representing the energy of the divinity, the truthfulness, who gets married to Shiva. When arrogance in us reaches its peak and ignores totally our consciousness, insulting it, then Sati, the truthfulness sacrifices herself…in arrogance we often don’t see the truthfulness of us or others and act in a manner which brings miseries to us and around us. Once the tragedy happens out of arrogance, then our conscience pricks us, this is represented by Lord Shiva punishing Daksha. Later, as lust (Manmatha) peaks and try to affect our conscience, two things can happen, either fall in to the sensations of lust or control ourselves by killing the lustful desires, same thing is represented by Lord Shiva killing Manmatha by the fire of his third eye, then when gods pray, he revives him but lust now takes the form of Banasura, the anger resulting out of unfulfilled lustful desires. Bandakasura and Manmatha, endowed with Thamoguna and Rajoguna respectively, are personifications of anger and lust. Unfulfilled lust leads to anger and Desire is the root cause of misery. One should strive to overcome these two qualities. Though both anger and desire cannot be completely effected, they can be kept under proper check without causing any hindrance to the practice of Dharma with the grace of Goddess Shri Lalitha Tripura Sundari, Sri Kamakshi. The three gunas namely Sathvaguna, Rajoguna and Thamoguna signify judicious action, indiscriminate action, and inaction respectively. By vanquishing Bandakasura and subduing Manmatha, Goddess Sri Kamakshi (one who fulfills the desires of her devotees) demonstrated to the entire world the futility of inaction the need for careful avoidance of indiscretection and the importance of incidences in judulgence action. So this anger is later killed by the shakti of the divine by raising our consciousness from lustful desires and anger to the state of bliss, a bliss, which is the blessings received by reciting the thousand names of Shakti , Sri Lalitha Tripura Sundari. Thus, showing how we can turn our various material and lustful filled desires in to inward blissful state of consciousness, merging of the Shakti with Shiva in us, atmarathi.