Angry, frustrated, bitter

सभाThe hall

At Yudhiṣṭhira's great sacrifice, the rājasūya, every king of the land sat in one hall, and the sages with them. The first honour had to go to one of them, and it went to Kṛṣṇa. Yudhiṣṭhira washed His feet with his own hands, dressed Him in yellow silk and jewels, and his eyes filled so that he could not look at Him. The whole hall stood with joined palms. Namo, they said, jaya. Flowers fell. 10.74.28 to 29

क्रोधThe fury

One man did not stand. Śiśupāla, king of Cedi, son of Damaghoṣa, had listened to Kṛṣṇa's qualities being praised until he could not bear another word. He sprang up from his seat, flung his arm into the air, and in front of every king and every sage he hurled hard words at the Lord. He was not afraid of anyone in that hall. 10.74.30

इत्थं निशम्य दमघोषसुतः स्वपीठाद् उत्थाय कृष्णगुणवर्णनजातमन्युः।
उत्क्षिप्य बाहुमिदमाह सदस्यमर्षी संश्रावयन् भगवते परुषाण्यभीतः॥Bhāgavata 10.74.30

A cowherd, he said. A stain on his family. Outside every caste and every duty, a man who goes his own way and has not one quality to his name. Shall a crow eat the offering meant for the gods? He went on and on. None of it was new. Nārada says that from the day he could first lisp, his tongue had been turned against Kṛṣṇa. His whole life had been one anger, and it had one face. 10.74.31 to 37, 7.1.17

मौनThe silence

Kṛṣṇa said nothing at all. The kings could not bear to hear it; they covered their ears and walked out, cursing the king of Cedi. The Pāṇḍavas and their allies sprang up with their weapons raised to kill him. And Śiśupāla, not shaken for a moment, took up his sword and his shield and went on hurling his words at everyone who stood with Kṛṣṇa. 10.74.38 to 42

ज्योतिThe light

Then Kṛṣṇa rose. He held His own people back, and with His sharp-edged discus He took the head of the man who was coming at Him. The hall broke into uproar, and the kings who had followed Śiśupāla ran for their lives. And then something happened that no one in that hall had expected. 10.74.43 to 44

चैद्यदेहोत्थितं ज्योतिर्वासुदेवमुपाविशत्।
पश्यतां सर्वभूतानामुल्केव भुवि खाच्च्युता॥Bhāgavata 10.74.45

A light rose out of Śiśupāla's body and went into Vāsudeva, while every being there watched, like a meteor falling from the sky to the earth. Not into the ground. Not away into the dark. Into Him. 10.74.45

क्योंWhy

Yudhiṣṭhira could not understand it. A man who had reviled the Lord all his life, from the time he could speak, and he goes into Him before the eyes of the whole world? Why did his tongue not wither, why did he not fall into darkness? He turned to Nārada. 7.1.13 to 20

एतद्भ्राम्यति मे बुद्धिर्दीपार्चिरिव वायुना।
ब्रूह्येतदद्भुततमं भगवान्ह्यत्र कारणम्॥Bhāgavata 7.1.20

My mind wavers over this, he said, like the flame of a lamp in the wind. Tell me this greatest of wonders. The cause of it must be the Lord Himself. 7.1.20

Nārada's answer is the root of this whole house of lamps. Bind the mind to Him by enmity, or without enmity, by fear, by affection, by desire, in any way at all: He does not see these as apart from Him. And then he said what nobody would dare to say: 7.1.25 to 28

यथा वैरानुबन्धेन मर्त्यस्तन्मयतामियात्।
न तथा भक्तियोगेन इति मे निश्चिता मतिः॥Bhāgavata 7.1.26

As a man becomes one with Him through enmity held fast, so he does not even through the yoga of devotion: that is my settled mind. The insect shut up by the wasp in its cell thinks of nothing but the wasp, in rage and in fear, and so it comes to have the wasp's own form. Śiśupāla did not think of Kṛṣṇa less than a devotee does. He thought of nothing else, and Nārada says it was so for three lives. 7.1.26 to 27, 7.1.46

जन्मत्रयानुगुणितवैरसंरब्धया धिया।
ध्यायंस्तन्मयतां यातो भावो हि भवकारणम्॥Bhāgavata 10.74.46

With a mind seized by an enmity that had grown through three births, thinking of Him, he became one with Him. For the feeling is the cause of becoming. 10.74.46

हर राहEvery road

गोप्यः कामाद्भयात्कंसो द्वेषाच्चैद्यादयो नृपाः।
सम्बन्धाद्वृष्णयः स्नेहाद्यूयं भक्त्या वयं विभो॥Bhāgavata 7.1.30

The gopīs came to Him by desire, Kaṃsa by fear, Śiśupāla and the other kings by hatred, the Vṛṣṇis by kinship, you Pāṇḍavas by affection, and we by devotion. 7.1.30

कतमोऽपि न वेनः स्यात्पञ्चानां पुरुषं प्रति।
तस्मात्केनाप्युपायेन मनः कृष्णे निवेशयेत्॥Bhāgavata 7.1.31

None of these is a Vena. So let the mind be set on Kṛṣṇa by any means at all. Vena was the king who felt nothing toward Him, neither love nor hate, and he was the one who was lost. As Śrīdhara reads this verse, it was for want of intensity: there was nothing in him that burned toward the Lord. The kind of feeling did not decide it. Its force did. 7.1.31

उसके भीतर की आगThe fire in him

Every Jyotirgana knows this fire. Anger at the ones who would not understand, at the ones who sold it to him, at the years, at the village that talks, at himself. He has been told to put it out, as if the anger were the enemy, and he has tried, and it has come back hotter.

The Bhāgavata does not tell Śiśupāla to put out his fire. It does not praise it either: his words hurt a whole hall, and the story does not pretend they did not. What it says is stranger than either. A fire that never once let go of its object went where it was pointed. His anger was not his ruin. It was the most faithful thing in him.

So nothing in him has to be killed. The force that rises in him, sharp, fast, loud, is the same force a sage spends a life gathering. Thrown at the people round him, it burns them and comes back to burn him. Turned, and held on one point, steady, as the flame is held in this lamp's practice, it becomes a light that goes where he has pointed it.

The only one lost in this story is the one who felt nothing. He is not that one. Whatever is burning in him tonight is the material.

The story: the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, 10.74.28 to 46 and 7.1.13 to 46, read in Sanskrit in the GRETIL e-text (Ulrich Stiehl); the verse numbers are that text's, and in the seventh book they run one lower than some printed editions (7.1.30 here is 7.1.31 there). Why Vena was lost is as Śrīdhara Svāmī reads 7.1.31 in his Bhāvārthadīpikā. The telling in English is ours, and so is what it means for him.