Slokam 4

Sage Durvasa visits Ambarisha’s palace.  Ambarisha was just about to commence the Dwadashi rites, by breaking his fast and taking food.  The king invites sage Durvasa to take food.

The slokam mentions the characteristic of sage Durvasa as someone who was always used to harassing others.

Extract from Wikipedia

In the Puranas, Durvasa (Sanskrit: दुर्वासा) also known as Durvasas (Sanskrit: दुर्वासस्), was an ancient Rishi, the son of Anasuya and Atri. He is great devotee of Lord Shiva and goddess Parvati. He is known for his short temper. Hence, wherever he went, he was received with great reverence from humans and devas alike.^[2]

His one famous temple called Rishi Durvasa Temple is located in village-Aali Brahman, tehsil-Hathin, dist.-Palwal, Haryana.

Durvasa’s curse was known to be very powerful.  There are multiple instances in the puranas regarding how venemous his curse was;

Extract from Wikipedia

Rishi Durvasa's curses were very dangerous. He was known to have cursed devas as well as some of the notable people of the time. Some of them are:

1.Indra (Indra was cursed to lose all his powers )

2.Shukracharya ( to forget sanjeevini mantra)

3.Lord Shiva (lord Shiva will not able to marry in his original form)

4.Goddess Saraswati ( away from brahmaloka)

5.Lord vishnu (Krishna avatar) [“Your death is in your foot.” when Krishna was resting in forest, he was put to death due to an arrow shot into his feets.Krishna suddenly remembered the curse of Durvasa.]

6.Goddess Laxmi (Rukmini avatar) to separate from beloved husband.

7.Shakuntala ( Shakuntala avoided Durvasa while at the ashrama(hermitage) of sage Kanva this enraged him and he cursed her that her beloved will forget her about whom she was thinking i.e Dushyanta.)^[3][4]

8.Kandali (cursed to death)

Durvasa leaves Ambarisha,  to go to the banks of Yamuna, to perform his daily ablutions prior to having lunch.

The king has to break fast soon, per the requirement,  to begin Dwadashi rites.  He however cannot do so since that would tantamount to an insult to the honored guest.

Durvasa decides to test the patience of Ambarisha, by walking very very slowly to the Yamuna. He does not seem to take cognizance of the fact that the king has been through a long fast that needs to be broken soon.

Ambarisha is now in a conflicting situation. Like Ambarisha,  life throws everyone of us into these conflicting situations, all the time.  We are pulled between service to the Paramathma and discharging our worldly karma. We are pulled between dharma and adharma,  and each situation has its own unique problems that did not have a precedence.  There are very few situations in our life that are exactly the same as a prior situation that we have experienced.  Life throws us into unprecedented personal and global calamities every day of our existence.  The Corona virus is a problem without a parallel. 

Contradictions,  conflicts, dilemmas, are the challenges of life. A challenge is basically a conflict.  There is a destination to reach, but there are hurdles to overcome.  The primary conflict in life is to allocate our limited resource of time and energy between spiritual attainment and pursuit of worldly ambition.  Essentially the conflict is between spending quiet time with the Paramathma and interacting with family, friends and co-workers.

When we are travelling, we will usually reach points where the road splits into two forks. One going left and the other going right. We have to go one way or other.  We cannot take both.  Only one of them will take us to our destination.  The other will take us away from it.

Similarly,  we are thrown into conflicts only to make us decide which path we want to take. Do we go the adharmic way or do we go the dharmic way?   Do we take the worldly way or do we take the spiritual way?  We cannot take both ways.  So we have to decide our destination, and be clear about it, before we start our journey.

After we decide on the destination, and set out on the path,  we may lose our way either accidentally, or because we changed our mind on the destination. If after going down the wrong road, we realize we have made a mistake,  life always gives us the option to reverse or take detours and get back on the correct path.  But we pay a price for straying away from the right path. We lose time,  resources and endure a lot of anguish and pain before we get onto the right track and resume our onward journey.

This alternating between the right and the wrong roads mainly due to accidentally losing our direction on a physical road.  But on the mental road of life temptations and necessities pull us in the wrong direction all the time.  Life certainly tests our convictions and reveals to us our true level of attainment, so we can correct our course by being truthful about our intent to ourselves.

May we always heed the guidance of the Paramathma, in resolving the conflicts of our lives.