Summary: By thinking of and praying for the welfare of others, the Lord's mercy acts in such a way that it will change their minds and they will stop thinking of sense gratification! 5.18.9 is a GREAT verse to recite if you are ever called upon to make a public address on the topic of Peace; please note this text carefully for this purpose. The previous text certainly goes well with this one. First seeking one's own internal purity, as well as praying for the same mercy to be bestowed upon all others (#8), text 9 is an invocation for Peace and Pure Devotion. The prayer starts from a very broad audience (all persons!), and funnels down in stages to one's own internal consciousness. If you have access to do so, please examine the word-for-word translation of these two verses. They are very nice verses to memorize, or to regularly recite.
Reading Assignment a) Srimad-Bhagavatam 5.18.8
om namo bhagavate narasimhaya namas tejas-tejase
avir-avirbhava vajra-nakha vajra-damstra karmasayan
randhaya randhaya tamo grasa grasa om svaha;
abhayam abhayam atmani bhuyistha om ksraum.
TRANSLATION I offer my respectful obeisances unto Lord Nrsimhadeva, the source of all power. O my Lord who possesses nails and teeth just like thunderbolts, kindly vanquish our demonlike desires for fruitive activity in this material world. Please appear in our hearts and drive away our ignorance so that by Your mercy we may become fearless in the struggle for existence in this material world.
PURPORT In Srimad-Bhagavatam (4.22.39) Sanat-kumara speaks the following words to Maharaja Prthu:
yat-pada-pankaja-palasa-vilasa-bhaktya karmasayam grathitam udgrathayanti santah tadvan na rikta-matayo yatayo 'pi ruddha- srotoganas tam aranam bhaja vasudevam
"Devotees always engaged in the service of the toes of the Lord's lotus feet can very easily become free from hard-knotted desires for fruitive activities. Because this is very difficult, the nondevotees "the jnanis and yogis"cannot stop the waves of sense gratification, although they try to do so. Therefore you are advised to engage in the devotional service of Krsna, the son of Vasudeva." Every living being within this material world has a strong desire to enjoy matter to his fullest satisfaction. For this purpose, the conditioned soul must accept one body after another, and thus his strongly fixed fruitive desires continue. One cannot stop the repetition of birth and death without being completely desireless. Therefore Srila Rupa Gosvami describes pure bhakti (devotional service) as follows:
anyabhilasita-sunyam jnana-karmady-anavrtam anukulyena krsnanu- silanam bhaktir uttama [Caitanya caritamrta. Madhya 19.167]
"One should render transcendental loving service to the Supreme Lord Krsna favorably and without desire for material profit or gain through fruitive activities or philosophical speculation. That is called pure devotional service." Unless one is completely freed of all material desires, which are caused by the dense darkness of ignorance, one cannot fully engage in the devotional service of the Lord. Therefore we should always offer our prayers to Lord Nrsimhadeva, who killed Hiranyakasipu, the personification of material desire. Hiranya means "gold," and kasipu means "a soft cushion or bed." Materialistic persons always desire to make the body comfortable, and for this they require huge amounts of gold. Thus Hiranyakasipu was the perfect representative of materialistic life. He was therefore the cause of great disturbance to the topmost devotee, Prahlada Maharaja, until Lord Nrsimhadeva killed him. Any devotee aspiring to be free of material desires should offer his respectful prayers to Nrsimhadeva as Prahlada Maharaja did in this verse.
b) Srimad-Bhagavatam 5.18.9
TRANSLATION May there be good fortune throughout the universe, and may all envious persons be pacified. May all living entities become calm by practicing bhakti-yoga, for by accepting devotional service they will think of each other's welfare. Therefore let us all engage in the service of the supreme transcendence, Lord Sri Krsna, and always remain absorbed in thought of Him.
PURPORT The following verse describes a Vaisnava: vancha-kalpa-tarubhyas ca krpa-sindhubhya eva ca patitanam pavanebhyo vaisnavebhyo namo namah Just like a desire tree, a Vaisnava can fulfill all the desires of anyone who takes shelter of his lotus feet. Prahlada Maharaja is a typical Vaisnava. He prays not for himself, but for all living entities, the gentle, the envious and the mischievous. He always thought of the welfare of mischievous persons like his father, Hiranyakasipu. Prahlada Maharaja did not ask for anything for himself; rather, he prayed for the Lord to excuse his demoniac father. This is the attitude of a Vaisnava, who always thinks of the welfare of the entire universe. Srimad-Bhagavatam and bhagavata-dharma are meant for persons who are completely free of envy (parama-nirmatsaranam). Therefore Prahlada Maharaja prays in this verse, khalah prasidatam: "May all the envious persons be pacified." The material world is full of envious persons, but if one frees himself of envy, he becomes liberal in his social dealings and can think of others' welfare. Anyone who takes up Krsna consciousness and engages himself completely in the service of the Lord cleanses his mind of all envy (manas ca bhadram bhajatad adhoksaje). Therefore we should pray to Lord Nrsimhadeva to sit in our hearts. We should pray, bahir nrsimho hrdaye nrsimhah: "Let Lord Nrsimhadeva sit in the core of my heart, killing all my bad propensities. Let my mind become clean so that I may peacefully worship the Lord and bring peace to the entire world." Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura has given us a very fine purport in this regard. Whenever one offers a prayer to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, one always requests some benediction from Him. Even pure (niskama) devotees pray for some benediction, as instructed by Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu in His Siksastaka:
ayi nanda-tanuja kinkaram patitam mam visame bhavambudhau krpaya tava pada-pankaja- sthita-dhuli-sadrsam vicintaya
[Caitanya caritamrta Antya 20.32, Siksastaka 5]
"O son of Maharaja Nanda [Krsna], I am Your eternal servitor, yet somehow or other I have fallen into the ocean of birth and death. Please pick Me up from the ocean of death and place Me as one of the atoms at Your lotus feet." In another prayer Lord Caitanya says, mama janmani janmanisvare bhavatad bhaktir ahaituki tvayi: [Caitanya caritamrta. Antya 20.29, Siksastaka 4] "Life after life, kindly let Me have unalloyed love and devotion at Your Lordship's lotus feet." When Prahlada Maharaja chants om namo bhagavate narasimhaya, he prays for a benediction from the Lord, but because he is also an exalted Vaisnava, he wants nothing for his personal sense gratification. The first desire expressed in his prayer is svasty astu visvasya: "Let there be good fortune throughout the entire universe." Prahlada Maharaja thus requested the Lord to be merciful to everyone, including his father, a most envious person.
According to Canakya Pandita, there are two kinds of envious living entities: one is a snake, and the other is the man like Hiranyakasipu, who is by nature envious of everyone, even of his father or son. Hiranyakasipu was envious of his little son Prahlada, but Prahlada Maharaja asked a benediction for the benefit of his father. Hiranyakasipu was very envious of devotees, but Prahlada wished that his father and other demons like him would give up their envious nature by the grace of the Lord and stop harassing the devotees (khalah prasidatam). The difficulty is that the khala (envious living entity) is rarely pacified. One kind of khala, the snake, can be pacified simply by mantras or by the action of a particular herb (mantrausadhi-vasah sarpah khalakena nivaryate). An envious person, however, cannot be pacified by any means. Therefore Prahlada Maharaja prays that all envious persons may undergo a change of heart and think of the welfare of others. If the Krsna consciousness movement spreads all over the world, and if by the grace of Krsna everyone accepts it, the thinking of envious people will change. Everyone will think of the welfare of others.
Therefore Prahlada Maharaja prays, Sivam mitho dhiya. In material activities, everyone is envious of others, but in Krsna consciousness, no one is envious of anyone else; everyone thinks of the welfare of others. Therefore Prahlada Maharaja prays that everyone's mind may become gentle by being fixed at the lotus feet of Krsna (bhajatad adhoksaje). As indicated elsewhere in Srimad-Bhagavatam (sa vai manah Krsna-padaravindayoh [Srimad Bhagavatam 9.4.18]) and as advised by Lord Krsna in Bhagavad-Gita (18.65), man-mana bhava mad-bhaktah, one should constantly think of the lotus feet of Lord Krsna. Then one's mind will certainly be cleansed (ceto-darpana-marjanam [Caitanya caritamrta Antya 20.12]). Materialists always think of sense gratification, but Prahlada Maharaja prays that the Lord's mercy will change their minds and they will stop thinking of sense gratification. If they think of Krsna always, everything will be all right. Some people argue that if everyone thought of Krsna in that way, the whole universe would be vacated because everyone would go back home, back to Godhead. However, Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura says that this is impossible because the living entities are innumerable. If one set of living entities is actually delivered by the Krsna consciousness movement, another set will fill the entire universe.