Samudra Manthan: a stitch-up or a path to salvation?

Samudra Manthan

My children were listening to a story. I was sitting with them, squirming with discomfort.

The story was Samudra Manthan: about the churning of the ocean by the devas and asuras that produced Halahala, the terrible poison, and Amrita, the nectar of immortality. We’d chosen this story because it is one of the nicer, less gory Indian puranas, but I still was uncomfortable, because it story reads like a divine con-job.

The devas invite the asuras to work with them to churn the ocean, implying that they would share the Amrita. Yet, when the Amrita does emerge, Lord Narayana shows up disguised as the beautiful Mohini, gives all the Amrit to the devas and none to the asuras. This was justified because the devas were devotees of Lord Narayana, while the asuras were not. Bascially, its okay because “they” are not God’s people.

To my ears, this moral logic sounded a bit like the logic that European colonials used to justify the genocide of Native Americans, or that Nazis used used against the Jews. I needed to step in and re-frame this story. I needed to find a reasonable interpretation.

It turns out that my grandmother, Kamala Subramaniam, had been similarly troubled by the Samudra  Manthan story, and had thought through its implications. I found a considered, and positive, interpretation in her translation of the Srimad Bhagavatam. Here’s her take:

"The incident of the churning of the ocean must be pondered over. The devas and asuras were both working towards the same end: finding of Amrita. Both worked strenuously and equally sincerely towards this end. They both pulled the mountain Mandara with the snake Vasuki as the rope, and both efforts were equal: as a matter of fact, the asuras put in more work since they had more powerful arms.

As a result, however, the devas enjoyed the benefit while the efforts of the asuras were all wasted. This was because the devas had surrendered themselves to the Lord. They had taken the dust off the feet of the Lord, and their labour were duly rewarded.

Men of the world, when they strain their minds, their riches, their actions and other similar things towards benefiting themselves, their children, their homes and their personal happiness, their actions become all futile. If however, man does the same things dedicating the actions to the Lord, man’s actions will never be fruitless."

I like the Samudra Manthan story partly because churning the ocean is such an easy metaphor for the life-work of a karma yogi, of people like you and me who work to earn a living and raise a family. The point of this metaphor is not that God will appear at the denouement, and distribute goodies to “us” but not to “them”. It is that dedicating one's life-work to the Lord, whatever you conceive Her to be, is its own reward.

Looked at this way, the difference between the devas and asuras is not intrinsic or inborn. The difference arises from the way they frame their lives, the lens through which they choose to see their work. The devas dedicate their work to the Lord, they experience bhakti, and bhakti is the difference between the Amrita the devas experienced, and the bitterness and cynicism the asuras must have experienced.

ॐ  नमो  भगवते  वासुदेवाय.