Hanuman Chalisa Doha

     
                    Hanuman Chalisa   Doha


    Pavana tanaya sankata harana

  Mangala murati rupa,

Rama lashana  sita sahita

Hrdaya basahu  sura bhupa.

Oh Hanuman,the son of wind god, you are the remover of distress and manifest form of auspiciouness. Oh the King of gods, reside in my (Tulasidasa's ) heart along with Shri Rama, Lakshmana and Sita.

Here the poet prays to his Lord Hanuman requesting him to come and dwell in his heart. The son of wind god who is the remover of all difficulties and whose very form is auspicious is the king of all gods.

The entire Hanuman Chalisa extols Hanuman, dwelling on his virtues, his qualities of head and heart, with a special reference to his prowess, primarily used for assisting the fulfillment of the divine mission of protecting the good and noble and eliminating the evil and the wicked. The elimination of   is not confined to the physical destruction of wicked people but also entails the conversion of the sinful into saints. His master Rama's mission was also the destruction of the evil, protection of , ennoblement of and upliftment of the down trodden. Similarly, Hanuman is known as sankatamochana, one who relieves sufferings of the people.

He is the symbol of auspiciousness. He is the personification of all that augers well for a being or untarnished purity, leading to success and accomplishment of all sorts. He proved this fact in his entire life by living like that. So hecan be considered as the king of deities namely all those forces that symbolize goodness and prosperity. The title Sura Bhupa ( king of gods ) is also appropriate in view of his lineage, he being the son of Kesari, the brave monkey chief and endowed with the divine powers of wind god and Lord Shiva.


Hanuman chalisa ends with this verse with an emphasis to the effect that the seeker, represented by Tulasidasa is convinced that his heart has been swept clean of the dirt and mire of passions, thoroughly cleaned with the pollen dust of the lotus feet of the Guru ( Hanuman ) by the composition and recitation of Hanuman Chalisa and has become the fitting abode for the divine master Rama along with Lakshmana and Sita to reside in. So he prays to Hanuman, who is the gate keeper of Rama to come and reside with Rama, Lakshmana and Sita. The Lord always resides wherever his devotee ( Hanuman is ).

Tulasidasa is also a devotee of Rama. So he is confident that Rama will surely reside in his heart along with Hanuman. Here Tulasidasa can also be symbolic. Any devotee with a pure heart can make his heart a dwelling for the divinity to reside in. Lord Rama represents knowledge, Mother Sita devotion and Lakshmana, dispassion. Shri Hanuman embodies all these qualities. Worship of Hanuman will help absorb these qualities in us also.Then our heart will be a residence for divinity namely full of bliss.

One cannot miss the symmetry seen in the first Doha and in this concluding Doha.

In the first Doha, Tulasidasa seeks his preceptors's ( Hanuman's ) grace for the purity of heart by dispelling the darkness of ignorance so that he could sing the glory of Raman's deeds, which confers both material and spiritual prosperity on the devotee.

Hanuman's ecstatic love for Raman is well-known. He did not care for money, honor, comforts, or anything else. He longed only for Rama. And this yearning led him to see Raman in his own heart. He is not only a self-realized devotee but finds immense joy in leading others to the same path.

The goal of life, that is self-realization is an inward journey cultivating discrimination between the Real and the unreal, God or Self alone is the Real that is to say, the Eternal and the world is unreal, that is to say, transitory.

For God-realization , a self-realized preceptors alone can guide a seeker. A guru transmutes all the baser metals of our desires and passions into the pure gold of devotion and divine love. And when the heart becomes pure, the knowledge of Self dawns on its own.

In the concluding verse as seen, Tulasidasa feels restless for Rama when his heart becomes pure and mind free from attachment to the things of the world. He is confident that his prayer will reach the Lord. A devotee's heart is the temple of devotion. So the poet Tulasidasa again prays to Hanuman, his preceptors-guide to reside along with Rama, Lakshmana and Sita in his heart so that he could always treasure, cherish and revel in the bliss of proximity and presence of the God in his own heart as a treasure chest.

Here, we see the fruition of devotion and culmination of the search which ends, when the sincere devotee finds his Lord in his own heart as a treasure.

This is nothing but the exalted state of discovering the eternal joy within one's own self, when the devotee finds his complete identity with his God and experiences that his God is inseparable from him.