Daya madi salahaiyya
dayamaaDi salahaiyya bayanivaranane hayavadana ninna charana nambideno jeeya Bhaya = fear is caused by ignorance. Knowledge is the light which can remove fear. A crude example would be- a shepard grazing his cattle in a wood is not scared when it is still day because he can see everything around him , but the same person would be terribly scared to be lost in the woods after dark, because he has no knowledge about what might be there lurking in the dark corners and is afraid that it may pounce on him before he knows what is happening. The same is the case with the jeevas in samsara who are totallty in darkness about self as well as God and thier relationshipto Him. The Lord's hayagreeva/hayavadana roopa is the roopa in which the Lord first imparted the knowledge in the form of the Veda's to Chaturmukha Brahma. So Dasaru is appealing to the Lord in this form to grant him or rather ignorant but derserving souls the right knowledge . The 'nambideno' word tells us that in order to gain such knowledge we need to have faith in His existence and His power to unshackle us from this bond of samsara by His grace. kshana kshana ke naa maaDi danta papangala yenisalavalla ashishtu endu phanishaayi nee yenna avagunagalenisade nenahinaathura kottu daasanendenisaiiya Dasaru appeals to the Lord . He says ," I am doing countless papas every second so much so that I can't say that I have made this much or that much papa because the list is endless .Please,” Oh Phani shayi ,O Lord who has the serpent for his bed, you should neglect the number of bad qualities I have and give me pious thoughts about your glory doing which I can then be called as your dasa." It is said in the puranas that a jeeva has taken birth so many times that if during every birth a drop of milk from the mother as she feeds her child fell to the floor , then the volume of such milk droplets would be much much more than the volume of countless oceans. So imagnine what and how many papas would be accumulated if we were to count the papas moment by moment during those endless births. It would be much more than the drops of water in the countless oceans by countless times as the jeeva has been born countless times. Dasaru calls out to Lord Narayana who sleeps on the bed of infinite oceans of milk to come to our aid . Narayana is the form of the Lord Sri Hari who relaxes on the milky ocean and takes care of his devotees. Whenever the devas headed by Indra face a problem, they approach the Lord in the KSheera sagara for help and it is His grace in this form which comes to the aid . So Dasaru is calling out to Sesha shayana and begging him not to take into account his bad qualities. Here Dasaru makes the relationship between the quality or guna and the papas. So it follows that the papa rashi's are a hinderance to cultivating good spiritual habits/gunas. The papa rashis emnate from and provide nourishment to the six seeds of bad qualities namely kama(desire), krodha(anger),moha(excessive attachment), mada(pride), lobha(greed), matsarya(jealousy). Thse are also called as the arishadvargagalu . These seeds sprout into further papa karmas. In order to escape from this he begs the Lord to give him the continious zest for contemplation which inturn can purify and cleanse the soul of countless papas and minimize the arishadvargas and lead him to better spiritual practice and exposure of the good gunas present in the satwic mukti yogya jeevas . kanda kanda kaDege popa chanchala manavu pinDa thimballi bahu ishta taanu bandAtadavanendu bayalige thaarade konDaduvantha bhakuthi kottu salahaiyya Dasaru says , Oh Lord, my mind is fickle and strays from one object to another without regard for the appropriateness of contemplation and my indriyas are completely under the control this fickle mind. As a result every time I think of something I want to experience it using my indriyas. At one time I might be tasting a new food, at another watching a film , and at another time using my sense of smell and touch to obtain pleasure. I am not able to use my intellect to control my mind and there by control my senses." Here bayalu means world , as well as field. It could mean that Dasaru is asking theLord not to bring him to the field as a person in the fairground keeps going from one attraction to another until the time is up so also lifetimes could be spent in enjoyment using the various indriyas without any purpose except instant gratification. Dasaru begs the Lord to spare him this situation and grant him bhakthi which will enable him to extoll the gunas of the Lord . He says , bhakthi kottu salahaiyya" implying that such bhakthi if granted by the Lord is itself a shower of his grace. The meaning for bayalu is taken as world then Dasaru asks the Lord not to bring him back again and again into this world but shower him with the ultimate grace that is bhakthi to extol his glories. It is relevant to note that Lord Hanuman was asked by Lord Rama to ask for anything and it would be granted. At that time he asks for 'TRUE BHAKTI ' and nothing else. This same Dasaru in his Madhva nama refers to this as " aja padavi rama koDa baralu nija bhakuthiyane beDi varava paDeda ". jAti dharmava bittu ajAmilanu irutiralu pritiyindali mukuthi koDalillave kyAti yanu keli naa morehokke salahaiyya vatajana paripala sri ranga viTTala Dasaru pleads with the Lord, "You have forgiven AjAmila for straying from the path of dharma and helped him to get the right knowledge and from there lead him to mukthi, I have listened to the stories fo your grace on your bhakthas and come to entreat you , please shower your grace on him. You , who are the indweller of mukya prana devaru who in turn is the preraka for all karmas of a jeeva should take pity on me and encompass me with your loving grace, Oh Ranga viTTala." In the world too a child would tackle his father in a similar manner. If he is not able to convince the father about the absolute fairness of his request and already know that he has not done anything good to deserve a toy or book, then he will take the example of some other instance when the elder brother or sister or cousin was forgiven after pleading forgiveness and granted his/her request. Similarly here Dasaru pleads with the Lord by giving examples of His immense compassion on erring devotees and asking Him to show compassion in him too. In the Bhagavatha purana - Ajamila is a brahmin who strayed from his prescribed duties but on one occasion when he was about to die he saw yama dootas and called out the name of his son 'Narayana'. At the moment he had called out that word as a desperate gesture thinking that his son would come to his aid. But actually his old samskaras were awakened by the utternace of the name and he realised that Narayana was the name of his Lord. In the world too, we experience such things. We do hear of such phrases - the name rang a bell , the perfume bought back memories of his long dead mother, the delicious smell reminded him of his hostel days etc etc. A single trigger of a word, smell or sight is suffiencient to set off a series of memories to come flooding back. Similarly Ajamila recollected the glory of the Lord and in that instant the yama dootas were sent off by Vishnu dootas. Later he did severe penance for 10 years and reached the feet of the Lord. So the calling out to the Lord and extolling his glories is what we need to do continuously so that it froms part of our subconsious /samskara . Here it is quite clear that no effort on the part of a jeeva can remove and cleanse the soul of its papas, durgunas except the grace of the Lord. In order to acquire God's grace one needs bhakthi. In order to have love or bhakthi towards God we need to know His greatness so we need knowledge. Now we are back to square one. So let's entreat Lord Hayavadana to bestow that knowledge on us.